Dear Prof. of History Vera Schwarcz,
Restraining from a defense of this weekend’s conference, (where I learned how to run efficient meetings, make phone trees and four-foot puppets) I think it necessary to show how the tone and language of your Wespeak contributes to silencing a variety of voices. The tone of the text attempted to legitimize your own comments by speaking above the students and to Bennet, as if anyone else reading was sitting in on a conversation between two marble statues. Addressing Bennet, you wrote, “As a historian, you know that we cannot ignore the context of the ‘text’…” Then, in an attempt to validate a debated opinion you leave a source unnamed while stressing his scholarly Cambridge training. Finally, without any evidence or incorporation of differing perspectives you write, “Wesleyan is already soiled by an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism.”
Perhaps we have differing views of what intellectualism means. To me it means constantly challenging the idea of a singular hegemonic history that is validated through the positionality of those who construct that history. As a historian, your Wespeak, and the idea that you and Doug have control over this ‘educational institution’ are complicit in this.
Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes, “in most of Europe and North America: the role of the historian is to reveal the past, to discover or at least, approximate the truth. Within that viewpoint, power is unproblematic…At best, history is a story about power, a story about those who won.” It is in resistance to this objective history and education that multiple histories and stories develop. Often, these are never encouraged within the educational institution because, for whatever reason, they are not seen as, “Solid, tough-minded learning.” (How was X-House established? Why is there such a reluctance to bring in Ethnic Studies?) In fact, most of those narratives act in direct opposition to the idea of a ‘historian’ or ‘history’ specifically because those voices, experiences and languages are being erased by an objective history and the educational institution.
I would question how the reaction to organization around Palestinian struggle is related to rising hate crimes against Arabs and South Asians in the U.S, blindness to targeted violence against Muslims in Gujarat, or the current war in Iraq. How does an educational system run by predominately ‘objective’, ‘tough-minded’ white people contribute to oppression and violence? (How much does Alan Dachs, the chairman of the board, stand to profit from Bechtel’s involvement in Iraq?).
To end with, I look to your concluding comment, “Doug, we have a weighty task ahead.” Personally, I’m not concerned with your weighty task of educating the young students, I’m concerned with educating myself. History is never dead and the ideas presented here don’t disappear outside ivory walls. That’s why I went this weekend, because this education is mine to create, not yours to give.
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