What height of obscure intellectual reasoning have we reached! AAAAAGH! A Wespeak on Friday (“Liberal critique of divestment,” April 4, 2008, Volume CXLIII, Number 37) for investment told us that asking for divestment from corporations would result in giving power to corporations and legitimizing their ability to impose their will and that it’s not democratic for we should use the “appropriate” route through government instead. What?! Would the Wespeak also have us believe that the Montgomery bus boycott was problematic? That protestors should have approached the city government and not boycotted the buses, for it was the government that legislated the racial segregation policy? That when we ask to divest and take away money, we are somehow giving corporations too much power! What phrasing! What twists of logic! We are the vivacious people and we will assert our voices how we need to when we are being ignored like on Feb. 15, 2003, when the biggest public political demonstration in history happened, and millions of people across the globe protested, but the U.S. government ignored us and listened to the corporations. Enough! I can’t take it any more! And yet still I’m taking it.
And this notion of academic freedom? How does taking a political stand on divestment make the University create an environment less accepting of voices?…Because a political stand on divestment is always being taken. The world is not a neutral place, so doing nothing is not neutral. I am so sick of hearing that investing with our feelings only on making the most money is not political. The market, money, is not apolitical, the mechanisms behind corporations getting money is not some god-like invisible hand that works completely on its own with no fingers in politics. That is bullshit. And you know…us pro-divestors can also pretend the University isn’t taking a political stand with divestment; this is what the press release can say: “The University realized it was implicit in the war-making industry manifested in the War in Iraq, and due to its dedication to political neutrality, is pulling all funds from aforementioned industry. Thus Wesleyan University will be neither explicitly helping nor harming the war process and can better nurture an environment of academic freedom on campus.” And you know, if the University did divest, I believe that all of you who don’t want divestment won’t feel like your academic freedom is infringed upon, you won’t feel like you can’t voice your views, you won’t feel like you are scared to have discussions any more than you may feel now. The only difference I think you’ll feel is that your opinions aren’t being listened to by the University—sort of like most every other group on campus.
You can keep spinning and sewing arguments that are more and more complex and use more and more concepts to create more and more seeming problems with divestment. But I leave you with two quotes.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.” —Albert Einstein.
“Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.” —Frederick Douglass.
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