Culture

Authoritarian Politics in the Age of Manufactured Illiteracy

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The dark times that haunt the current age are epitomized in the monsters that have come to rule the United States and who now dominate the major political parties and other commanding political and economic institutions. Their nightmarish reign of misery, violence, and disposability is also evident in their dominance of a formative culture and its attendant cultural apparatuses that produce a vast machinery of manufactured consent. This is a social formation that extends from the mainstream broadcast media and Internet to a print culture, all of which embrace the spectacle of violence, legitimate opinions over facts, and revel in a celebrity and consumer culture of ignorance and theatrics. Under the reign of this normalized ideological architecture of alleged commonsense, literacy is now regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data, and science is confused with pseudo-science.

Culture

Freedom University: Students & Allies Fight for Access & Education in Georgia's Public Colleges

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I had the opportunity to speak to one of the young leaders of this movement. Melissa Rivas-Triana, a 21-year-old Freedom University student, was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Melissa spent most of her life, kindergarten through 12th Grade, in Georgia’s public education system, and because of The Ban, when it came time for college her options were limited, not due to a lack of merit qualifications, but because of her status. Melissa has been studying at Freedom U. for four years, and during this time she has become one of the most penetrating voices in Atlanta’s immigrant youth movement. We talked about the roles allies play in her movement and her thoughts about outsiders’ solidarity in activism.

Culture

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism

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Despite all the well-deserved derision the report received, the Regents in their infinite wisdom decided to keep the identification of anti-Zionism as potentially anti-Semitic; the final version of the Principles includes “anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism” as the new official red line which the University of California is supposed to police.

Culture

The UC Regents and Anti-Semitism: A Q&A with Judith Butler

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There has been a lot of discussion, and furor, about a recent statement approved by the University of California Board of Regents. The original statement of “principles against intolerance” contained language both condemning anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in the UC system. “Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California,” the proposed statement read.
The language asserting anti-Zionism as an instance of intolerance and discrimination became the center of debate about free speech and the suppression of political viewpoints. Jewish Voice for Peace, California Scholars for Academic Freedom, and activist Judith Butler, among many others, all voiced opposition to the clause. The UC Board of Regents eventually approved a revised draft of the statement. The language about anti-Zionism was changed to: “Anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California.” Tikkun reached out to Butler to discuss the revised statement, free speech, and anti-Semitism on UC campuses. Below is our Q & A.

Culture

After the Delegation

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I don’t know that my challenge was every Brandesian’s challenge. We are a contingent of students from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. The Jewish members of our group represent a wide spectrum stretching from secular to modern orthodox. Every one of us has individual feelings about Israel and a unique perspective on the conflict. But a wonderfully surprising by-product of this partnership is that the Brandeis students developed friendships and understandings about our own commonalities and differences which further strengthened bonds within the group, enriching the entire group’s experiences and creating a foundation for continuing the work that had just begun.

Culture

Provide Students with Mental Illness the Medical Care They Paid For

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I sat down to breakfast with my cereal, orange juice, and bottle of pills. Around me were several undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who lived with me at the cooperative house where I served as Resident Advisor from 2012 to 2014. When the conversation turned to my pills, I explained, as naturally as could be, that I was taking lithium carbonate to treat my mental-health diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, Type II. As the students’ eyes widened, perhaps wondering about the fitness of their new RA for the job, I explained that mood disorders based in brain chemistry are extremely common, that treatment is easy, that I’ve never felt better since beginning treatment. With a confidence rooted in life experience, I said to the students that I am a high-functioning person who gets a lot done, who accomplished a lot as a student at MIT years ago, and who has continued that pattern through a leadership career in political technology and now into studying for the rabbinate.

Culture

The Yale Controversy

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Yale’s Halloween controversy raises chronic issues that won’t go away. Prior to the holiday, the University’s Intercultural Affairs Committee sent students a memo: To quote directly:
While students . . . definitely have a right to express themselves, we would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.

Culture

Bringing Kids Back To The Commons

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Surely my baby was as good as a dog. I’d read that nursing home residents benefited enormously from contact with therapy dogs. During and after dog visits these elders were more alert and in better moods. So I figured, why not bring my baby to a nursing home? I contacted a nursing home around the corner.

art

Normalizing The Extraordinary in Medellín, Part One

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I arrived in Medellín, Colombia a few days after a man who claimed to be acting with divine guidance killed three and wounded nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.The very next morning I learned that 14 people had been killed and 22 seriously injured at an attack on a holiday party at the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health. A day or so later, “The Daily Show” ran a montage of clips of President Obama responding to a series of mass shootings. Watching that, you start to ponder the normalization of terror. Many people in the U.S. like to think of Americans as civilized. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone righteously condemn the barbarism of another society without noticing the scale of our own.