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Sunday, September 18, 2005
Marxist Boot Camp 101
Welcome to CSUMB, komrade.
Reducation Monday through Friday.
Football on Saturdays 1PM
Pity poor Philip Laverty who, unable to land a job at any of the really good colleges, was forced to take a lecturing position at California State University Monterey Bay in order to stay off food stamps and out of his parents basement. First we'll let Phil (and we'll call him Phil because we're not sure if he has his doctorate yet, and the world already has one too many Dr. Phils as it is) describe the people who gave him a job:
California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) opened in 1995 on the former Fort Ord Army Base through President Clinton’s “Peace Dividend,” that Democratic plan to exploit President Reagan’s triumph over the Soviet Empire to devastate our military and intelligence services.
Okay. Let's stop here. We're not sure if he's saying that Ronald Reagan won the cold war so that he could "devastate our military and intelligence services", or if he's blaming this on the Clenis. Our experince would indicate that it's probably the Clenis's fault, just like 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, and the Chesney/Zellwegger breakup (and thank god they didn't have time to have kids and square the piggy-eyed gene). Oops. Sorry. I digress. Back to you Phil:
Now, a former, thriving military community has become a Marxist boot camp and bastion for radical, militant, racial identity-politics as well as a refuge for academic hacks.
Which is how Phil found his way there, port:storm. You get the idea.
But tell us, Phil: what is wrong with CSUMB?
CSUMB could as easily have been named CSU-Affirmative Action. CSUMB is unique among American state colleges in that it was conceived as an Affirmative Action university and officially oriented as an institution of leftist political indoctrination. Declarations from the university’s “Vision Statement” provide a sense of CSUMB’s direction (see also the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences statement of Educational Philosophy):
The campus will be distinctive in serving the diverse people of California, especially the working class and historically undereducated and low-income populations…The identity of the university will be framed by substantive commitment to multilingual, multicultural, gender-equitable learning.
The curriculum of CSUMB will be student and society centered and of sufficient breadth and depth to meet statewide and regional needs, specifically those involving both inner-city and isolated rural populations, and needs relevant to communities in the immediate Tri-County region (Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Benito).
Our vision of the goals of California State University, Monterey Bay includes: a model pluralistic academic community where all learn and teach one another in an atmosphere of mutual respect and pursuit of excellence; a faculty and staff motivated to excel in their respective fields as well as to contribute to the broadly defined university environment. Our graduates will have an understanding of interdependence and global competence, distinctive technical and educational skills, the experience and abilities to contribute to California's high quality work force, the critical thinking abilities to be productive citizens, and the social responsibility and skills to be community builders. CSUMB will dynamically link the past, present, and future by responding to historical and changing conditions, experimenting with strategies which increase access, improve quality, and lower costs through education in a distinctive CSU environment. University students and personnel will attempt analytically and creatively to meet critical state and regional needs, and to provide California with responsible and creative leadership for the global 21st century.
Omigawd. Read this again:
Our graduates will have an understanding of interdependence and global competence, distinctive technical and educational skills, the experience and abilities to contribute to California's high quality work force, the critical thinking abilities to be productive citizens, and the social responsibility and skills to be community builders.
Those bastards! Those filthy indoctrinating bastards! "critical thinking"..."productive citizens"..."community builders". What the fuck is up with that? How are we to spawn another generation of Republicans (short of adopting even more Irish kids from South America) with all of this namby-pamby "productive citizens" feel-goodism
Sorry. I get carried away. But things like that just make me so damn mad....
Okay. Back to Phil. He provides a buch of links back to the CSUMB website explaining how they do things and if they seem rather innocuous, well they're not, and if you were a part-time college lecturer you would see right through them and that they are in code which, when pasted to a Word document, kerned and held up to the light of a blood moon spells out: K-I-L-L-W-H-I-T-E-Y.
No. Really. It's kinda spooky.
As you can imagine, even though Phil's academic hack credentials matched up with any of the other hacks at CSUMB including the Tenured Hacks and the Department Head Hacks and even one Hack Emeritus, he fit in like Jonah Goldberg at an anorexia support group. And so...the horror...the horror:
In addition to opposing this indoctrination on intellectual grounds, I have a personal stake in the debate over CSUMB: my teaching contract was not renewed this semester after I objected to remaining in a shared office where my officemate, the aforementioned Juan Oliverez. Oliverez is a former Salinas City Council member who also sued to attempt to prevent Governor Schwarzenegger’s recall election. At issue was my objection that Oliverez monopolized wall space above the only desk in the room with left-wing propaganda posters. The messages of these posters inspired my protest, messages such as:
We are warriors, training in the schools and
on the streets of barrios everywhere.
We are the founders of a New Brown Empire.
We call ourselves Chicano, Latino, Mexicano, and Indigenous.
We are Soldiers of the Sixth Sun.
All of his posters were created by Chingao (Spanish for “F—k”) Productions. Another poster is a poem about a Chicano student, the message of which is that because George Washington wasn’t Chicano and therefore not his “father,” the student should not be required to learn about this founding father. Other posters continued on similar militant themes.
And because Phil opposes racism, he reacted strongly to the mere fact that someone mentioned race:
Because of my longstanding commitment to countering racism and my concern for race relations in America, I was led to object to the messages of Oliverez’s posters. I did not want to be associated with these messages day in and day out and have to explain or comment on them to my students. I certainly would not have objected if it was Oliverez’s own office and would only encourage him to expose exactly who he is and in what he believes. I originally wrote to Oliverez:
Juan:
I assume the decorations in building [15], room 110 are yours. If not, please disregard this note. Are you using this office currently? I'm unsure because your name is not listed outside. If not, would you please remove your posters? If so, were you unaware that this office is a shared space?
Philip
Oliverez responded that he was aware, but there was plenty of wall space for my decorations. He copied his e-mail to the departmental administrative assistant, who pointed out to me Oliverez's seniority and “graciousness” in scheduling his office hours on the days he teaches instead of the days I teach. She offered to have another desk placed in the small office for my decorations.
To counter these images and messages, I considered hanging photographs of American presidents, the Declaration of Independence and an American flag. Instead, I decided to write to the chair of the department, George Baldwin, and reply to the administrative assistant, Lilly Martinez, to express my concerns, understanding that retribution would likely follow. In my e-mail I stated that I would no longer meet with students in that office because, “I strive to encourage my students to be nuanced and critical in their thinking on issues of history, politics and identity, and to maintain high evidentiary standards. I encourage respect for the dignity and humanity of all peoples. The office is embarrassingly counterproductive in this regard.” Martinez immediately responded with the following e-mail suggesting that I had acted with disrespect towards Oliverez in my initial e-mail and implying that I am a racist.
Phil: It doesn’t appear (in my opinion) based on the tone and really, disrespect in your initial e-mail to Dr. Oliverez that you encourage respect for the dignity and humanity of all peoples. As a former student of Dr. Oliverez, I find him to be of the highest caliber instructor [sic.] and person [sic.] who encourages respect for everyone. I suggest you talk to Dr. Baldwin about alternative office space – perhaps you can meet your students in the other adjunct office in 17/110 unless of course the Native American posters offend you? [emphasis added]
Lilly
Actually I think she was implying that Phil was a touch thin-skinned, and everyone knows that we should judge a person by the content of their character and not the thickness of their skin.
Martinez's e-mail rests on the Orwellian logic that to point out Chicano racism is itself an act of egregious racism. Martinez then barged into my locked office during my office hours, with another faculty member in tow – without knocking – to confront me and further berate me, stating in the end that she was, “surprised and disappointed.” After I stated that I would no longer be meeting with students in the office, Oliverez immediately rearranged his decorations placing his “Soldiers of a New Brown Empire” prominently and hanging a new poster of Ernesto “Che” Guevara with a poem that begins with the line, “Yo soy con el Che.” (“I am with Che.”)
I'm more interested in the logic of people who can barge into a locked office. Did they kick the door down? Did they knock politely and announce that they had a candygram for Prof. Laverty and bumrush the cracked door? Did they teleport? Because if they teleported someone should tell Michelle Malkin so she can headline a post: Mexicans Now Teleporting Over Our Borders! I Am White, By The Way!
I received no communication from the department whatsoever concerning a contract for employment this semester. I heard anecdotally from two professors in the department that Martinez and Oliverez have both filed unsubstantiated complaints against me. I have neither been formally made aware of these complaints, nor have I been provided with the opportunity to respond to them.
And so now Phil shares an office at Human Events with David Horowitz and gets paid in remaindered copies of Radical Son and has to listen to Horowitz go on and on about how he and the Black Panthers blah blah blah...
And he still doesn't have a place to hang his poster.
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