Andrew Jones, the 24-year-old head of the Bruin Alumni Association at UCLA, is offering a $100 bounty to students who offer information on instructors who are “abusive, one-sided or off-topic” in their discussion of political ideas. Never mind the fact that many of these professors are recipients of teaching awards conferred by students.

Jones has posted a list he calls the “Dirty 30,” in which he accuses 28 professors of unpatriotic behavior with a rating system of “Power Fists.” The last two names on the list have, apparently, not yet been determined.

The most offensive contenders for the list this month are professors Peter McLaren and Kent Wong, both receiving a Jones score of 5/5 “Power Fists”:

1. Peter McLaren (5/5 Power Fists)
This Canadian native teaches the next generation of teachers and professors how to properly indoctrinate students — Paolo Freire-style.  Thanks to his hard-charging efforts, McLaren debuts at the top of the charts.  Long live the king!

2. Kent Wong (5/5 Power Fists)
In any other group, Kent Wong, the dyed-red laborista radical, would be hold [sic] an undisputed title for heavyweight extremism.  If Wong keeps up his public attack on everything to the right of Chairman Mao, he may still do it.  Stay tuned!

Los Angeles Times writers Stuart Silverstein and Peter Y. Hong observe that “although the group says it is concerned about radical professors of any political stripe, it has named an initial ‘Dirty 30’ of teachers it identifies with left-wing or liberal causes.” So far Jones has raised $22,000 from 100 donors in support of his efforts.

Jones is the former chairman of the UCLA student group, the Bruin Republicans. He graduated in June 2003 and now supports himself as the only full-time employee of the Bruin Alumni Organization.

Wavering, barely discernible, language awakens. She seems never able to find her bearing in the human space that is taking hold of the creature who wakes slowly, or at once. When her awakening is sudden, space strikes at man as if it had been waiting to overwhelm him, to make him know he is only a human being and nothing more.

Meanwhile, the flow of time, always delayed, kindly takes to the creature who wakes wrapped in his own time. This time he treasures and will not surrender, lodged in it as he is with confidence. And language awakens amid this vital confidence that nests in the human heart and without which man would never speak. One could even say that this vital confidence and the source of language become mingled, or link up into a union that allows the human lot to improve.

Language is of a tame disposition. This she manifests in her awakening. Wavering, she murmurs, she babbles in broken, barely audible words. She is like a foolish bird who does not know where she ought to go, as much as she tries to rise in her feeble flight.

This nascent, wavering language comes to be replaced with words arrayed by the conscious intellect that articulates them. As if the intellect, too, were taking hold, challenging the space that relentlessly pushes into sight, confronting the day that calls for an immediate action, a single doing comprised of a whole series of deeds. Words loaded with purpose.

And so the first language retreats, returns to her silent, hidden meandering, leaving behind the imperceptible trace of her own opacity. She is not lost. As babble, as the murmuring of the indelible confidence, she will cross the range of words dictated by purpose, releasing them one by one from their chains. And during this brief dawning, one feels how language slowly grows in silence. In the soft glow of being reborn, language, at last, disentangles herself, all the while leaving her seed intact. The seed that in the pale dawning of freedom always made itself known a moment before reality broke in.

And reality remained such, nourished by freedom and propped up by language, being spoken and taking shape. For language and freedom come before reality, foreign and intrusive as it is to the creature who has not finished waking into being human.

El despertar de la palabra

Indecisa, apenas articulada, se despierta la palabra. No parece que vaya a orientarse nunca en el espacio humano, que va tomando posesión del ser que despierta lenta o instantáneamente. Pues que si el despertar se da en un instante, el espacio le acomete como si ahí le hubiere estado aguardando para definirle, para hacerle saber que es un ser humano sin más. Mientras el fluir temporal, en retraso siempre, se queda apegado al ser que despierta envuelto en su tiempo, en un tiempo suyo que guarda todavía sin entregarlo, el tiempo en el que ha estado depositado confiadamente. Y la palabra se despierta a su vez entre esta confianza radical que anida en el corazón del hombre y sin la cual no hablaría nunca. Y aún se diría que la confianza radical y la raíz de le palabra se confundan o se den en una unión que permite que la condición humana se alce.

Es de dócil condición la palabra, lo muestra en su despertar cuando indecisa comienza a brotar como un susurro en palabras sueltas, en balbuceos, apenas audibles, como un ave ignorante, que no sabe dónde ha de ir, mas que se dispone a levantar su débil vuelo.

Viene a ser sustituida esta palabra naciente, indecisa, por la palabra que la inteligencia despierta profiere como una orden, como si tomara posesión ella también, ante el espacio, que implacablemente se presenta y ante el día, que propone acción inmediata que cumplir, una en la que entra toda la serie de acciones. Palabras cargadas de intención. Y la palabra primera se recoge, vuelve a su silencioso y escondido vagar, dejando la imperceptible huella de su diafanidad. Mas no se pierde. Como un balbuceo, como un susurrar de la inextinguible confianza atravesará las series de las palabras dictadadas por la intención, soltándolas por instantes de sus cadenas. Y en esta breve aurora se siente el germinar lento de la palabra en silencio. En el débil resplandor de la resurrección la palabra al fin se desprende dejando su germen intacto, que en el débil clarear de la libertad se anunciaba un instante antes de que la realidad irrumpiese. Y quedaba así luego la realidad sostenida por la libertad y con la palabra en vías de decirse, de tomar cuerpo. La palabra y la libertad anteceden a la realidad extraña, irruptora ante el ser no acabado de despertar en lo humano.

About the piece: Composed in exile, in between journeys from a village under the French Alps to Rome and back, Clearings in the Wood (Claros del bosque, 1977) is the most mature work of the Spanish poet/philosopher María Zambrano.

Clearings in the Wood stands out among those of my thoughts that spilled into print, for it comes out of the writing’s own irrepressible surge that resulted in notebooks and pages no one is aware of, not even I, reluctant as I am to reread myself.

I believe this book most resonates with the “idea” that “thinking is above all—as a source and as an action—the making sense of what is being felt,” understanding by experience the “inborn feeling (el sentir originario),” a term I have been using for years.

Jan Vihan Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.

Bernard Lewis is probably the most prominent academic speaking about Islamic fundamentalism.    The articles “What Went Wrong?” and “Roots of Muslim Rage” in The Atlantic framed the debate in America.  He has made regular forays into the White House to explain his theory that the Muslim world is responding to the sense of inferiority it has nurtured at least since the Reconquista.  

Lewis tends to discount the importance of current grievances and implicitly assumes that people are mostly motivated by things that happened hundreds of years ago.  It may be that there is more historical awareness in the Muslim world than in America, but ancient history is not what makes so many Muslims sympathetic to Osama bin Laden.  Specifically, Lewis refuses to recognize the importance of American support of Israel, which most Muslims see as the driving force behind the radicalism.  He has even agreed with the ludicrous neo-conservative idea that local governments create anti-Israel sentiment to draw attention from their own repression.

Although Lewis’ Orientalism makes him distasteful to many people, his ideas are still helpful.  It is easy to believe that Muslims have a vague understanding of the historical dominance of Muslim culture over Christianity and that this contributes to a persistent unwillingness to accept subordinate status.  However, this does not directly lead to the ideology.  A reasonable person would listen when someone says they harbor resentment over the imposition of Israel, the support of repressive regimes, and the innumerable problems left over from colonialism.

What Lewis gives us is the long historical perspective, which helps explain why the effects of these betrayals were so uniquely dramatic in the Muslim world.  Some cultures become demoralized by their subordinate position, as has happened in much of Latin America.  If the society has no organizing ideology, it can’t mobilize to change the situation and slough off the dominators.  Some societies do develop ideological responses, as both Japan and Germany did.  To Lewis’ credit, nobody would think to explain the rise of the Nazis or Japanese militarism without some historical perspective.   However, it would be quite wrong to leave out the Treaty of Versailles or the Great White Fleet.

The Arab world particularly, but joined by other related Muslim cultures, has been engaged in a battle for its destiny for much of the last century — maybe longer.  The structure of international politics and economics has placed them in an inferior position.  The imposition of Israel against their will and several catastrophic defeats in the wars to retake the land confirmed it beyond any doubt.  In response, the Arab world has generated two major ideological movements.  Pan-Arab nationalism was a vital force until the disastrous miscalculation of the 1967 war against Israel.  The Baath, pseudo-nationalist rulers in Iraq and Syria, lived on as the carcass of this movement.  Radical Islamists who have taken up the banner will likely one day fail their own substantial test.  But unless the entire Muslim world is forced into demoralization and an acceptance of defeat, there will continue to be ideologies of resistance.

Pete DeWan

“When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I’m talking about…. It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard.”

The Senator’s remarks (made at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Harlem) have been blasted by the Bush administration, including Laura Bush, for comparing the current House of Representatives to a Southern plantation. Senator Clinton claims that we “know what [she’s] talking about” — but do we? In Clinton’s parlance, plantations are synonymous with slavery and racism, and perhaps that’s the way it should be given the historical realities of Southern culture prior to the Civil War. But in the South, retirement communities in the Outer Banks are named “Green Plantation,” and the homes of former slave owners are tourist attractions on the historical registrar.

Plantations symbolize different things to different races, political parties, and regions in our nation. I’m no proponent of  the South’s romantic recasting of its past, but Clinton’s use of the plantation as a metaphor obfuscates her point and can only serve to further alienate a region the Democrats must retake. The Democrats don’t need to use contentious symbols in unrelated political dialogue when it’s the homogenous, conservative men and women of the House of Representatives that truly need the nation’s attention.

llouison

It’s hard to believe that Havoc didn’t generate more inquisition or outrage during its initial release.  It’s one of the most racially condescending films I’ve ever seen.  Havoc is the modern equivalent of Shirley Temple learning valuable lessons from her shucking and jiving servants.  Who would have thought THEY could teach US?  

Havoc follows the gapingly empty lives of rich, L.A. white kids who build their identities around a parody of hip-hop culture:  slang-drenched vernacular, rap video clothing, and a propensity for senseless displays of aggression and violence.  Their lives take a turn for the worse once they decide to cruise across the tracks to the “bad” part of town in search of slumming “realness.”  But at least one of the girls, Allison (Anne Hathaway), finds the illicit and violent drug culture to be sexually titillating and decides to start hanging out with the same drug dealer who put a gun to her boyfriend’s head.  At first, you think that this will be yet another Romeo and Juliet regurgitation, but this movie aims much lower than cliché, instead leading into one of the most uncomfortable sex scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Drug dealer Hector (Freddy Rodriguez) doesn’t want a relationship with Allison, he really just wants her to roll the dice to figure out how many of his friends get to gangbang her and her “I’m so drunk” friend.  Allison ends up opting out, but her friend goes forward only to have to scream her way out once the pile-on begins.  She accuses them of raping her, though the movie implies that she’s lying despite a few moments that most viewers would readily identify as rape.  That’s the major problem with Havoc — the fact that it flows like it’s written by the immature, inane, and carnivorously vacuous main characters.  Though Havoc clearly wants to indict these white teens for skimming a minority culture without developing a nuanced view of the people they’re shoplifting from, it really ends up being more often than not passive-aggressively racist.

The drug-dealing Latino gang has absolutely nothing redeeming in their lives which include hotel rooms stuffed to the brim with their babies’ mommas, gang bangs as entertainment, and one scene in which they oafishly try to cruise through the rich neighborhood looking to beat the hell out of the girl pressing charges for rape, only to be stopped by the racially profiling police.  Given the film’s portrayal of minorities as sociopaths on the fringe of culture, tempting pretty white girls who soon learn better, it’s impossible to draw any conclusion other than the fact that this “hip-hop culture” thing, whatever it is, is unambiguously bad for the white children of promise, who will be torn from their potential by a culture of unremitting pathology.  Sadly, I don’t think this is what director Barbara Kopple intended, but her fumbling after-school-special dialogue and Crayola character scribbles take complicated interactions and commit cookie-cutter massacres of them.  

Terry Sawyer

Though professionally I have to watch a lot of television shows I really don’t care for very much, there are few that are truly must-see TV for me.  Fox’s 24 is one of those shows, and I have been happy to see that the producers have been able to continue a premise that could have easily been a two-season splash-and-crash like Stephen Bochco’s season-long murder trial series, Murder One.  The exploits of the maverick agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and his breaking-all-the-rules way of saving the world is a stream of action, drama, and seat-of-your-pants thrilling suspense that easily sucks people into watching each week.  Last season I knew that I would be unable to catch every episode week to week, so I taped the entire season and watched it almost within a two-week period.  All I can say is that it was hard not to watch all 24 episodes in one sitting, and I came as close to being an addict as I would wish.

If you haven’t had the chance to catch 24 yet and you like non-stop Energizer Bunny drama, then I oblige you to watch the four-hour, two-night premier beginning this Sunday and continuing Monday.  24 is probably the only show for which could extend a premier over two nights.  As you probably know or could guess, 24 follows a storyline that takes place in one day with each episode comprising one hour of that day.  If you can suspend the belief that in many episodes Jack or other characters seem to navigate the streets of Los Angeles in a record amount of time, the real-time scenario is quite compelling, and to the writers’ credit, the show seems to keep one step ahead of what is happening in the news each week.   When recent headlines dealt with U.S. torture policy and possible illegal wiretaps, viewers of 24 can’t help but think of Jack Bauer and his dubious exploits that usually circumvent regulations, treaties, and laws but always seem to get the bad guy.   For those who are critical of officials, like Jack, who overstep their bounds, the show doesn’t let him go unpunished — just look at all he’s gone through: wife and daughter kidnapped, wife killed, electric shock torture, having to kiss the woman who killed your wife, fired from your job, being shot at constantly, becoming a heroine addict undercover, demotion, having to fake your own death, and the list goes on.  It’s not a pretty sight.

The show’s center is the aforementioned government agent Jack Bauer who happily breaks every rule in the book to help prevent some kind of disaster from occurring, from assassinations to nuclear bomb attacks.  And the writers have thrown everything they could possibly think of at him to keep him from achieving his objective — which is what makes the show so exciting.  Besides Jack and a few key characters, the cast is ever changing but always revolves around Los Angeles’ Counter Terrorist Unit, or CTU, as the agency Jack always seems to return to work for and is somewhat of a character in itself.  I wonder if college students are playing drinking games like they used to do with The Bob Newhart Show where they would take a shot every time a character would say “Hi, Bob” on that 70s sitcom — in this case, it would be whenever a character says CTU.  I don’t think anyone would be conscious for too long.

It’s hard to find another show on television with as much stuff packed into each episode, including storylines, characters, and action.  According to Jon Cassar, series producer and director of most of the key episodes (including the four hour premier), “You have to understand that we do what amounts to about ten to twelve feature films each year and I would say that the quality of our shows are equal or better than anything in theaters right now.”

According to Cassar, the decision the writers and producers made at the end of season one was key in making 24 one of television’s best series.  “When they decided to kill off Jack’s wife Teri (Leslie Hope) it ended up being the best thing we could have done because after that anything could happen.  No character is safe no matter how loved they are by the fans.  It’s funny to see the actors all rush to see if they’re the next one voted off when they receive new scripts.”  Even Kiefer Sutherland has said in interviews that he knows that Jack Bauer himself will have to be killed off at some point in order for the show to keep its edge.

To understand the reach the show has made worldwide, there’s an interesting anecdote that Cassar related.  During the filming of a close-up of someone punching in phone numbers for season one, the prop man, doubling as the actor, dialed his own cell phone number.  Usually, in films and TV shows, the 555 exchange is used in place of a real phone number to prevent anyone dialing a real person.  The show aired as shot and no one thought much about it until one afternoon while in production on season two, the prop man’s phone rang and on the other line was a curious fan from Sweden who had just seen the episode in question and decided to see whose number the character dialed.  The prop man talked with the fan for a little bit and then passed the phone around the set.  They began getting more and more calls from around the world and what they found was that the fans were not only avid about the show but offered terrific feedback that helped the writers and producers in the development of future episodes.

24 is a cornucopia of action, suspense, thrills and chills, great drama, and some of the most interesting characters on television (or in movies, for that matter).  This season looks like an even bigger thrill ride, and I highly recommend you catch every episode of this terrific series.  I bet that you’ll be riveted to your television set and so disappointed each week when the hourly time counter rolls over to the next hour.  24 premiers on Fox this Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, continuing on Monday at 8 p.m. ET, and settles in its 9 p.m. ET Monday slot the following week without any preemptions until the season finale in May.

Rich Burlingham

I was given a body—what should I do with it,
So unique and so mine?

For the quiet happiness to breathe and to live,
Whom, say, should I thank?

I am the gardener, I am also the flower,
In the dungeon of the world I am not alone.

On the windowpane of eternity,
My breathing, my warmth have weighed down.

A pattern is being imprinted on it,
Recent yet unrecognizable.

Let the mist of the moment drip—
the dear pattern cannot be crossed out.

Дано мне тело—что мне делать с ним,
Таким единым и таким моим?

За радость тихую дышать и жить
Кого, скажите, мне благодарить?

Я и садовник, я же и цветок,
В темнице мира я не одинок.

На стекла вечности уже легло
Мое дыхание, мое тепло.

Запечатлеется на нем узор,
Неузнаваемый с недавних пор.

Пускай мгновения стекает муть—
Узора милого не зачеркнуть.

~1909~

About the poem: In the symbolist stronghold of St. Petersburg, Osip Mandelshtam’s debut collection Kamen (Rock, published in 1913) rallied readers for whom words evoked a physical world of razor-sharp contours, rather than standing for an imagined realm of perplexing abstractions.

Jan Vihan Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.

This week, once again, the big international news is the continuing progress of Iran’s nuclear program.  It seems fair to assume that the ultimate goal is to create nuclear weapons.  Why else would they risk the inevitably painful economic and political consequences?

Most news stories and magazine articles simply take it as a given that Iran having nuclear weapons is a bad thing.  At one level, of course it is.  No matter how small the chance of any particular government using nuclear weapons is, more countries means a greater chance of some city being devastated.  It may also be that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons will lead other countries in the region to step up their own efforts to counter it.

Some worry the danger of Iran having nuclear weapons is that it might hand off nuclear weapons to international terrorists.  This is specious.  Iran has a functioning state, and no government is likely to hand its most important weapon to a bunch of guys in a cave and tell them to do what they like with it.

Finally, there is the most important argument.  A nuclear Iran would change the balance of power in the region, fundamentally threatening the interests of Israel and the United States in particular, and the other states in the world more generally since everyone is dependent on the oil.

Iran is within range of at least six nuclear states: Israel, America, Pakistan, India, China, and Russia.  Of these, Israel and the United States are implacable enemies.  Both have made multiple military strikes in the Middle East, and each has invaded and occupied another country in the region in the past 25 years.  Pakistan is an unsteady neighbor — a possible threat to become an anti-Shia theocracy at any time.  India, China, and Russia are currently business partners, but none of these connections probably looks too reliable from the Iranian perspective.  How could any Iranian government not pursue nuclear weapons?

The current western solution to the problem is to punish Iran if it doesn’t submit to manifestly inadequate conditions.  This is stupid.  Given Iran’s military position, no punishment is likely to be strong enough.

Another option is to provide some guarantee of Iran’s security, as well as some serious consideration of its demands concerning the regional political order.  This would need to come from the United States, which is clearly the most frighteningly aggressive and hostile threat.  It is also the one power that could ensure that Iran would be safe from the others.  The American government needs to realize that sticks will never work and start offering a whole bunch of carrots.

Otherwise, there will be a nuclear Iran, and the U.S. and Israel will need to learn how to deal with a true regional power unlikely to be very sympathetic to their designs for dominance.  It’s not immediately obvious that this situation would be worse for the locals than what is happening today.  A stalemate of non-interference might be the result.

America needs to decide now which course it prefers.  The current situation is untenable.  Waiting much longer to offer a non-nuclear future will guarantee the opposite.

Pete DeWan