Kambi Gathesha

Columbia School of the Arts promotes its film master’s degree program with a skillfully produced trailer that offers a seductive sales pitch to prospective applicants. The school boasts that students’ films play at “every major film festival you can think of: Telluride, Berlin, South by Southwest and Tribeca, Cannes.” Deans and professors tout the program’s focus on practical training and portfolio development set students up for industry success: The school proudly announces that students are “making things from the first day they come here and they’re making things as they walk out the door.”

To the Editor:

Lanbo Zhang's article (West versus west, Feb. 7, 2013), which critiqued the way students encountered and discussed the concept, "the West," was problematic, offensive, and thus begs a response. Throughout his entire article, whether intended or not, Zhang essentially claims that the Global Core and similar spaces where students are asked to deconstruct "the West" are anti-intellectual, uncritical, and unscholarly. He writes that in those spaces, "the Western mentality" is "bastardized and unfairly depicted" and that class conversation "devolves into an indictment of Western civilization's most cherished values." These points are of great concern to me not just because they're ridiculous and extreme, but because they reflect a larger institutional problem–a reactionary response from students and faculty to academic disciplines and scholars that require students to rethink their most cherished beliefs, including—but not limited to—"the West" and its relationship to the Third World.

This dismissive response has resulted historically in the underfunding or dismantling of academic fields of study, the denial of tenure, or even the denial of Ph.D.s for certain scholars. I suggest Zhang read the work of professor Paul Zeleza for a thorough discussion of how these dismissive responses explain why African studies is not given its due respect. I would also suggest he read about the experiences of Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop who was actually denied a Ph.D. from a university for his attempts at encouraging a solid deconstruction of "the West." Zhang's response, and others like it, reflect an unwarranted fear and encourage an academic setting in which it is considered wrong to require students to rethink their dearly held beliefs regarding "the West."

Zhang engages in the very same game of caricature he claims he derides. He begins his piece by mentioning the Global Core, then moves on to his experiences from Asian humanities (which is still too general) to make his point—but then indicts Global Core as a whole. This is unfair. It treats his experiences in this narrow subset of classes (within a large field) as exemplary of intellectual practice in the Core more generally.

He doesn't demonstrate even a cursory understanding of the history, function, and content of certain classes considered part of Global Core. His claim that we "desire to compare and contrast the Western with the non-Western" is false and misses the point of classes such as professor Mahmood Mamdani's Major Debates in the Study of Africa. There, the framework of comparison is precisely what is rejected in his class on the grounds that it sets up one society or one way of being as "normal" and another as not. Moreover, the notion that class conversation "devolves into an indictment of ... cherished" values from the West grossly misrepresents the nature of class conversations. In the class, I am specifically asked: If there is solid evidence that science, mathematics, monotheism, philosophy, agriculture, and writing, existed in places like Northeast Africa and Southwest Asia long before they were present in regions we now call "the West," how can they be termed "Western values"? This is a perfectly legitimate question to pose to students in an effort to get them to rethink the concept.

Kambi Gathesha, GS '14

During Black History Month, someone in the African Students Association posed a question: Is BHM relevant to us as Africans? It spoke to a politics of identity that I felt informed the fragmented nature of the social movements waged by students of African descent, and, more broadly, students of color here on campus. It reflects a lack of awareness of the history of African and Diaspora unity that has defined our social movements. While it was considered in the context of BHM and posed within the ASA, it is not a problem specific to our group nor is it confined to the month of February. Rather, it is powerfully reflective of the fact that we often plan, organize, respond, and create dialogue within our groups instead of across our groups. While this is valid, it is not complemented by student groups of color at Columbia coming together to engage each other politically and intellectually. However, this fragmentation is not the students' fault but is in fact the tragic consequence of institutional practices that work to divide communities of color. Interestingly, our fragmented mobilization eerily mirrors intellectual practice at Columbia, whereby Ethnic Studies is taught separately from African-American Studies, which is in turn separated from African Studies. Our challenge, then, as we continue to confront the status quo, is to transcend these practices which foster and reproduce division. African and African-descended students must operate in the tradition of intergroup solidarity that informed the earliest incarnations of African and African-American studies and enabled African and African-descended people, and, more generally, students of color, to construct the countercultural spaces at institutions like Columbia. This allows us to continue to fight to decolonize the university by defending affirmative action, challenging attacks on campus safe spaces, condemning the efforts to transform and marginalize our fields of study, critiquing the "western-centric" nature of the Core Curriculum and its consequences, and posing questions that speak to racism, sexism, and classism. Fragmentation became clear during BHM. The discussion on ethnic studies, African-American studies, and social movements left out the parallels between the challenges those fields faced and those that African studies faced. There was mention of the hunger strikes that led to the creation of Ethnic Studies, but no mention of the same student activism that resurrected African Studies. There was a panel that discussed the University's efforts to radically transform the field, further marginalize it, and create distance between it and African-American Studies, but it did not mention the same effort waged against African Studies. The conversation would have been richer had we been in dialogue with each other. We must engage with our history, then use it as a guide moving forward. Indeed, what I propose is not unique but is inspired by the examples of our forebears who built institutions where African people from both the continent and its Diaspora engaged ideas critically in contexts like the Pan-African Congress of 1919, which brought together Africans to address European colonization, to the African and African-American Studies departments at historically black colleges and universities like Howard and Lincoln University. Thus, a dialogue to facilitate knowledge, understanding, and political and social action between Africa and the Diaspora is not novel, but has been undermined. It is necessary to resurrect this tradition because we need to understand the universal as well as particular issues facing people of color globally, and then engage our many political and intellectual traditions. Thus, African-Americans must engage with the African thought of B.A. Ogot and Cheikh Anta Diop, while Africans must critically engage with Leo Hansberry and W.E.B. Dubois. Caribbeans must find the intersections between Mau-Mau and the Black Panthers, and we, in turn, must know the legacy of Maroon communities, C.L.R. James, and Eric Williams. Crucially, we must study comparatively: Ethnic studies and African-American studies majors must also critically study Africa and vice versa. Moreover, we must participate more actively in each other's student groups by consistently supporting each other's events and by listening to the multitude of perspectives informed by geography that exist in our communities. BHM provided a rich opportunity to begin a discussion. Now we must turn that discussion into a prolonged, unified political project beyond BHM. The author is a General Studies junior majoring in history and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies. He is the political chair of the African Students' Association.

To the Editor: Melissa von Mayrhauser's article ("Global centers grow, but concerns remain," Mar. 30), which appeared as part of Spectator's special issue on global centers, was problematic. First, her article presented host countries like Kenya as a threat to Columbia's noble project. The article ignored the extent to which the global center could actually be a threat to the host country. In Kenya (my home country), for example, the global center will work with the government to "advise local governments on policymaking." But Kenya's governments have historically championed pro-western policies, marginalized leftist intellectuals like Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and politicians like Tom Mboya, and, according to Malawian historian Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, employed right-wing scholars to provide intellectual support for their policies. This is a problematic relationship. Her article stated that Columbia "must be careful to uphold its principles of academic integrity and non-discrimination," but this uncritically accepts that Columbia has these principles. In actuality, Columbia is far from a model of academic freedom and integrity! Anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj and political scientist Joseph Massad were nearly denied tenure for their scholarship critical of Israel. Professors in MESAAS have been targets of right-wing attacks and smear campaigns by entities like Campus Watch and conservative policy advocates like David Horowitz. Most seriously, though, her article presented a misleading and stereotypical image of Africa. She wrote, "In Kenya, homosexuality is illegal." But this is not true! In actuality, there is a penal code created under British colonialism which criminalized same-sex male acts—not homosexuality itself. Gay Kenyan activists argue that no one has been prosecuted since independence. Furthermore, Kenya's new constitution has protections on sex and privacy. According to students I know working in Kenya, no one would be denied a visa based on sexual orientation. Further still, the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya works tirelessly to improve the lives of gay Kenyans. And, despite discrimination, Kenya has a small yet thriving, loving, and open queer community. Like her previous article discussing Kenya ("Nairobi global center raises questions about discrimination," Feb. 13), this one is ill-informed, is stereotypical, and frames Africa as backward and repressive. In the future, I urge Ms. von Mayrhauser to adjust her frame and research more thoroughly. Kambi Gathesha School of General Studies