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(11/13/15 4:41am)
“Wait a minute ...” Joshua Allen wrote on their Facebook profile at 1:33 p.m. last Sunday, “I just closed the TEDxMiddlebury conference and after I was done talking people stood on their feet and started clapping. What the actual f***?!”
Joshua Allen, a self-identified “organizer, abolitionist and freedom fighter,” visited the College last weekend to challenge the ideas the college community has about Gender Justice and the Black Lives Matter movement. On Sunday, Nov. 7, Allen gave a speech titled “A World Without Cages” at the student-organized TEDx event in the Mahaney Center for the Arts (MCA).
The next day, Allen continued the discussion about the intersection of gender justice and race in their workshop called “Organizing at the Intersection of Black Lives Matter & Gender Justice” in Warner Hall. Over fifty students and a handful of staffs, faculty and community members participated in the workshop.
In an interview, Allen explained why they were surprised by the enthusiasm they received at TEDx.
“I was shocked and of course, honored,” Allen said, “because for centuries in the U.S., the work that people like me do, that black people, that radicals do, who engage with work that is anti-state, has constantly been delegitimized as labor that can be respected.” To have been invited to an institution that has been predominantly white since day one, and then to be given a standing ovation at TEDx, was “something that goes against the tradition in American history,” Allen added.
But if the students’ impassioned reaction for Allen’s TEDx speech and their workshop offering on Monday afternoon are anything to go by, then there is a critical mass in the student body which is eager to challenge the American tradition.
And they can do so in ways both large and small, as Allen encouraged them to do in the check-in question he asked at the start of their Monday workshop. They invited each person to say their name, preferred gender pronouns, and “what they are feeling like today outside of the gender binary.” Many of the students, professors, staff and community members in the room offered deeply resonating or flat-out hilarious answers: someone was a kazoo, others a sneeze that never came, or sensual poetry. It was like a ride through the field of infinite possibilities, a testament to the unfathomable range of human experiences that nullifies the two options permit- ted by the gender binary.
Allen then had the workshop attendees respond to two statements: 1) LGBTQ folks who are black are more likely than their white counterparts to experience homophobia in their family, and 2) The category of “people of color” is a useful construct for understanding the various forms of structural inequality that currently exist between white people and everyone else, respectively.
While the response to the first claim was quite mixed, most attendees assented to the second statement. Allen, in explaining why they disagreed with the first, traced history back to the sodomy laws which white European settlers imposed upon colonized populations throughout their worldwide empires that introduced rigid gender norms which were not there before. As such, they argued that homophobia is much more at home in the Western tradition than the common stereotypes of black families would have people believe.
As for their second statement, almost every student who spoke admitted that they found themselves in a dilemma when using the term “people of color.” They thought the term useful when they wanted to identify the United States as a white supremacist nation-state, but they are at the same time cognizant of the danger of lumping together the varied experiences of different immigrant communities, especially blacks and non-blacks. Above all, as Allen reminded me in the interview, there is a crucial distinction between indigenous people, who are the original inhabitants of this land, and blacks and people of color, who are immigrants. By denying that there is a difference in kind amongst the injustices that these groups have been sub- jected to historically, users of a term like “ people of color” risk submerging important historical truths about this country.
In a final exercise, the attendees were divided up into two large groups, and each first discussed within itself their responses to their prompt before they summarised their conversation for the larger group. The first prompt dealt with the reality that “gender non-conforming and Non Binary folks are more likely to be harassed by the police, physically assaulted and earn less than $10,000 a year than their binary trans counterpart,” and the second with the statistics that only 47 percent of survivors of physical violence to LGBTQ people of color report their attacks to the police.
The first prompt opened the discus- sion up to broader themes such as the way the gender binary and the nuclear family serve as the basic building blocks of a capitalist society.
Reflecting on the second prompt, attendees mentioned the victim-blaming culture of police procedures, which simply
puts the survivor through another facet of their traumatic experience of living in the U.S.; the internalized homophobia among LGBTQ people of color, which prevents survivors from admitting to themselves that they have a serious enough case to report; and the likely failure of community policing programs due to racist ideas that underpin who constitutes a “suspicious” person and who does not.
In the end, Allen challenged everyone to think of multiple ways to work in soli- darity with bodies that we identify as the Other, and with that, they rushed off to the airport to catch a flight that would bring them to South Africa to meet with other organizers there.
For the Middlebury community, Joshua Allen is an example of someone who is working tirelessly to demonstrate that the past has not really passed, the present is pregnant with infinite possibilities and the future does not simply lie ahead of us: it is slowly gathering itself together, a present-future that we can become a part of, too.
(11/04/15 7:31pm)
On Monday 26th of October a Chinese Author came to speak at the Robert A. Jones conference room on being a writer in contemporary China, "When Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction." His name was Ning Ken, and like his novels, he is more than what meets the eye. It was his pen name, of course, but I only realized what it could mean politically when I wrote it out in Chinese. The direct translation would be “would rather,” and when I asked him to make a sentence with it, he offered this: “I would rather write in this way than to achieve fame and rake in a lot of money.”
The dose of personal resistance that Ning lets out through his pen name is palpable enough. Yet his attitude towards dress and appearance is altogether quite different. Ning is a medium-height man in his mid-fifties, who dressed in smart casuals, a pair of jeans, black shoes and a brown leather jacket on both of the two days I saw him. His looks were that of an honest, harmless man. From my conversations with him I know him as a very friendly “uncle,” someone who is passionate about the ways that he has been able to synthesize various aspects of the contemporary Chinese society through his writings.
One has to wonder, why do being a good writer and enjoying popularity have to be in constant tension with each other in the Chinese context? Ning is the author of no fewer than five novels, and his most well-known ones touch on very controversial and taboo subjects. His critically-acclaimed novel about a university professor who escapes to Tibet after the June Fourth Tianamen Massacre ’89, Sky Tibet, reached the final rounds in the nomination process for a prestigious award only to stay there because of a government order.
Though this may be enough to frustrate many writers with a fiery passion and an unequivocal sense of justice, qualities that certainly describe Ning, he has a very clear sense of the privileges and responsibilities of a writer in contemporary China. When I asked him at his lecture whether there is an ideal readership in his mind, his answer was rather astonishing: he said that he does not write for anyone, that it does not concern him whether his books sell or not. Instead, he just wishes to exploit as fully as he can the possibilities that present-day China has handed to him.
The literary movement that he is spearheading is called “the ultra-unreal,” a term whose meaning is still slowly taking shape in the Chinese literary world. The label came out of a conversation he was having with a friend, when they were discussing the most recent scandal that involved a top level government official. This time, a deputy chief justice from the Hebei province died in a car crash, his supposed “legal” marriage to four wives being exposed when all four of them wanted to claim his body. For him this is a classic example of what is ultra-unreal about the Chinese society: things happen that “surpass the unreal or the imaginary.”
Over lunch, he told me that each epoch should leave its own unique mark in the literary history of the world. He said though the underlying human desires may not change very much from epoch to epoch, the circumstances with which each has to work to fulfil those desires differ. Subjects such as romance, marriage, and the domestic life have been explored almost to perfection by the 19th century English novels. Or take the Latin American brand of magical realism for example: a mix of severe social critique, history, and pop culture, which even until this day still lends itself to a relevant way of making sense of dictatorial rule and patterns of inequality.
For Ning, the ultra-unreal is an unprecedented exploration into the ways that an illogical system operates on a consistent brand of logic that keeps on producing illogic results. He argues that there is not a civilisation comparable to the contemporary Chinese one, wherein the logic of power is so absolute and its reach so far and so complete. Evidence for this claim can be found in the absolutely ghastly speed at which everything is moving in the country: from GDP growth to cell phone usage and car ownership rates to the build-out of highways and railways systems.
Ning’s novels are concerned with those very few who can wield power without any checks and balances. He chooses never to write directly about the System. In one of three parallel plots in his newest novel, Three Trios, he talks about an official who has lost favor with the Party and falls in love with a woman. He describes this character’s journey as “the gradual reawakening of his humanity,” the part of him which had been suppressed as a government official because everything then was transactional.
As a writer he is also aware of how adaptable this particular brand of Chinese logic is: he mentioned the newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and characterized it as the spreading of the Chinese approach to economic development beyond China. It is a particular logic of economic development that relies too heavily on government-led public infrastructure investment projects, a natural product of a highly centralized power system. Just like in his own works, Ning showed a deep understanding of the resilience and pervasiveness of power. Yet, with the kind of wonder and disbelief that Ning beholds the current Chinese establishment, can he not be anticipating the radical changes that this unmistakably unsustainable approach to development is subjected to? At a time when the Chinese GDP growth is at its all-time low and the unemployment rate its all-time high within the past two decades, Ning’s visit gave the college community an invaluable insight into why these might be, and where the country is going from here.
(04/16/15 1:24am)
Students in the Davis United World College Program, representing as many as 60 countries, will gather in Wilson Hall today to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Program. It will only be the second time this year – and also the last – that this group has come together under the banner which had brought them here in the very first place.
For some Scholars, this is their chance to express the desire to see more institutional support for the Program. In a survey sent out to the current cohort of 106 UWC Scholars, out of the 59 respondents, nearly 80% agreed that “UWCers at Middlebury should have a more institutionalized presence.” When asked to rate the following statement, “There is a supportive environment here where UWCers can continue to serve the College and the wider community according to the UWC values,” on a scale from 1 to 5, the average score came out to be 3.03, demonstrating that the Scholars neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement.
This partnership between the College and philanthropist Shelby Davis, established in 2000, has so far enabled over 350 UWC graduates from 82 countries to pass through the doors of this institution. This year, as per the norm of recent years, UWC Scholars represent over 40% of the international student population. At a school that set itself on the path to become “the first truly global liberal arts college” in 2007, it will be difficult to overstate the importance of such a program.
“It has made a huge difference,” President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said at the annual dinner gathering two springtimes ago. He stressed that the Scholars’ presence in the classrooms, cafeterias, and residence halls add global perspectives and different life experiences on world issues that contribute to “the atmosphere for education… that creates global citizens.”
The core of the worldwide UWC Movement consists of fourteen high schools in five continents. With a network of National Committees in 147 countries that is tasked with recruitment, its vision “to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future” that originated from the Cold War era continues on until today. The College, in fact, occupies a unique position in this education movement, as the office of Davis UWC Program is headquartered here at VT 05753. It provides logistical support to over 6000 Scholars, representing nearly 150 countries, spread out across this country in 91 colleges and universities.
If anything, the choice of putting a globe in the newest logo of this institution reaffirmed the College’s strong commitment to fostering intercultural awareness and understanding, the very same values that are the cornerstones of the UWC movement. Yet, at the same time, there is hardly any administrative support for the UWC Scholars after they are brought here.
“We don’t do anything special from an administrative point of view to treat the UWC scholars better or separately from anyone else,” admitted Mike Schoenfeld, the College’s Senior Vice President and Chief Philanthropic Advisor. According to him, after spending two years at their respective UWC, being active and willing to interact with others is “in their nature.”
Indeed, this may seem to be the case, given the strong presence of UWC Scholars in campus life. Out of all the fellows at the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship (CSE), for example, almost half of them – eight out of eighteen – are a UWC Scholar. More than half (8/14) of all the summer grants that have been awarded by the Center since three summers ago are designed or co-designed by a UWC Scholar. “They have developed an understanding of community engagement and social entrepreneurship from cross-cultural experiences in high school,” observed Heather Neuwirth ’08, Associate Director of the CSE.
But some current Scholars tell a different side of the story, “It would greatly help UWC students here to have upperclassmen/staff that we can go to for emotional support and other advice,” wrote Adara Wicaksono ’17 in the survey. Another Scholar, Lee Michael Garcia Jimenez ’18, asserted that a mentorship program or support network will greatly benefit especially first year students, citing that many of them find the transition to the College difficult. “We find ourselves trying hard to adjust to new cultures and communities,” agreed Jovita Ho ’16.5, “and carrying on the UWC mission becomes a lower priority.”
For some, even talking about UWC has become a taboo, “In general UWCers are ashamed to talk about UWC,” Jimenez continued, “I feel like my experience is invalidated and I feel silenced.” The result, he pointed out, is that only negative stereotypes are being repeated about the Scholars, “Suddenly I am a rich pretentious international when I am actually an American and I had [a] scholarship to [go to] UWC, and my friends are not pretentious,” he said.
The dual forces of isolation and a sense of loss are sometimes enough to destroy one’s newfound passion and willingness to engage fully in their community. Ashley Laux from the Community Engagement Office, who has worked with many UWC Scholars since 2011, understands this process, “I think it’s easy to lose that unique energy without spending time with a cohort that has experienced something similar,” she told me, “capturing that wonderful energy and keeping it strong could create more of a collective social impact here on campus.” She has witnessed students before who were “jazzed up about what UWC meant to them,” and then lost their motivations because there was no reunions where they could recapture the energy.
A senior Scholar, who wished to remain anonymous, disagreed. He worried that any form of institutionalization might just turn out to be redundant. “Don’t make other international students or students in general feel like they’re incapable of being humanitarian and committed to humanity,” he said, “We’re not the only ones.”
But a support system for the Scholars needs not be self-congratulatory. Instead, it can be set up with the ultimate aim of empowering each Scholar to become able and willing to be of service to the College community and beyond. Laux suggested regular service-based or reflection-based reunions where UWC Scholars can remember the core values and experience of UWC, recapture that energy, and bring it to their time at the College.
In their survey responses, many Scholars pointed to the Posse Program as a model that the UWC Program could possibly emulate. Naina Qayyum ’15 explains why logistical support from the College is paramount, “Nothing can organically sustain itself in a busy place like Middlebury where everyone has so much on their plate,” she said, “as students come and go, who will keep up with the administrative work from year to year?”
Indeed, the needs that have been met with the Posse Program sound almost identical to the needs of some current UWC Scholars, “A lot of times students have felt like they don’t fit in here,” Ross Commons Dean Ann Hanson told me. “Posse has helped students feel like this is their place and their campus.”
A significant number of those who responded to the survey also suggested a UWC+1 Retreat modeled after the Posse+1 Retreat. “I like the idea of UWC+1 retreat,” wrote a senior who chose to remain anonymous, “particularly because there is confusion about what UWC is or why we are represented in such [a] high number here.” Schoenfeld also used the Poss+1 Retreat as a model, “you get students from all different backgrounds, and talk about the background that you benefited from, some of the values you developed at the UWCs,” he told me, “Posse is trying to do the same thing… [they] bring other people in to talk about some of things they learned in Posse training.”
(03/12/14 5:02pm)
What do the words “transdisciplinary artist” evoke to you? Last Monday, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, self-described “information artist,” gave a public lecture in the Johnson Memorial Building about how she uses art as an avenue for active inquiry into the ethics of various kinds of modern-day technologies, like wire-tapping and DNA sequencing.
A quick search on the Internet reveals that Dewey-Hagborg is not the kind of artist that works in a studio; she spends her time everywhere except the studio. For her most widely-publicized art project – called “Stranger Visions” – for instance, she collected hair samples and cigarette butts on the streets, performed DNA sequencing in a lab, and appeared on the cover page of the magazine, “Government Technology.”
She nearly had to appear in court as well because, according to the NewScientist.com, she may have broken the law by carrying out genetic testing without the owner’s consent.
However, this is precisely the reason why she is successful: her art exposes people to aspects of technological advancements that they had no idea could be a threat to their privacy at all. Besides the 3D sculptures that she made from random DNA traces, some of her previous projects include reconfiguring speech collected from a train station using speech recognition systems, computer algorithms and “elgooG,” a search engine that functions like Google except that it prioritizes the least popular results.
Her politicized creative intent has enabled her to take her art far beyond the confines of an art gallery. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars made her an “expert” in synthetic biology, CNN invited her for a live interview in 2013, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, BBC World News and BBC News Magazine have all published articles about her, and the list goes on.
A graduate of Bennington College, a small liberal arts college in Bennington, Vt., Hagborg’s career path is one that should not be too far from any liberal arts undergraduates’ imagination. Professor Sanford Mirling, in his introductory speech for the artist, described her as a great example of an artist with a liberal arts background whose work “breaches [the] gaps of Science and Art”.
“I tend to think of the stuff I’m doing as projects rather than artworks,” Dewey-Hagbog said at the beginning of her talk. “They tend to be sprawling and ongoing, and I never necessarily know when they’re done, or even when they properly began. They just sort of all blend into each other.”
She said she usually starts off each project with a question. To her, art is about asking questions and researching and experimenting. At the end of the talk, she encouraged the undergraduates in the audience to become more engaged with topics such as new technologies, which “are going to have major repercussions on our culture in the coming decade.”
“Now is the time to question these things … [the undergraduates of Middlebury College] are uniquely poised to examine these intersections [between technology and culture],” the artist said.
When someone in the audience asked Dewey-Hagborg what her next project is, she replied, “it is very political and tactical,” she paused, “but it’s a secret!” She smiled the sly smile of someone who is proud of her work and the heated debates she knows it will stir.
(02/26/14 5:50pm)
Education studies professor Jonathan Miller-Lane gave a public lecture last Wed., Feb. 19, that began with medieval church music — with improvisation on the saxophone — and ended with him standing in a white Aikido hakama, a traditional piece of samurai clothing worn in various forms of martial arts.
In his lecture, titled “Shaping a Life of the Mind for Practice: An Inclusive Vision for a ‘Global’ Liberal Arts College,” he sought to synthesize purely intellectual pursuits with experiential learning and merge body, brain and spirit together in the work that students and faculty do. It came at a time when the faculty is debating whether certain internship experiences should be counted toward academic credits, in the context of an even larger debate about the subordinated nature of experiential learning in the liberal arts education. Instead of picking any one side of the argument, Miller-Lane argued that learning is mind-based, not brain-based, in order to find a creative solution to the liberal — or illiberal — education dichotomy.
While we should prioritize our intellectual mission on this campus, he argued, we need to understand that becoming a better thinker is not all just brainwork.
“To talk about the mind is to speak of the marvelous and unique expression of body, brain, and spirit that is the human being,” he said, and when we understand our mind as “embodied, lived experience” then we will start “attending to the bodies on one’s campus, and the experience of those bodies… That brings with it a profound commitment to inclusion,” he said. This means that we all need to constantly remind ourselves that “there is no prototypical Middkid, there is no ‘normal,’” he said. “There is just us, each and every one of us, here, working on making sense of our lives and trying to make this place work as a community of safety, challenge, discomfort and, hopefully, beauty.”
And how might this be possible on a campus where students, faculty and staff alike all seem to be rushing to do everything?
This is where “contemplative practices” come in, which refer to meditation and mindfulness exercises. Several professors on campus have pioneered this pedagogy, including environmental studies professor Rebecca Gould. She feels that contemplative practices don’t “interfere with the rigor of the class, but enhance it.”
“We are accustomed to rushing through material, rushing through our days, multi-tasking and feeling stressed,” she said. “I highly value productivity, but I worry about when the drive to ‘do things’ begins to interfere with deep learning and with meeting one another as whole people. So it’s always a challenge to move away from our default way of doing things, but once you get past the challenge, the benefits are rich and on-going. My students have reported on the challenges and benefits in a fairly consistent way over the years.”
Kelsey Follansbee ’16.5 is currently taking a class with environmental studies professor Marc Lapin, who also uses contemplative practices in class. One exercise prompt: “consider a party we had essentially marginalized in our conversation about sustainability,” Follansbee said. “Taking several minutes to reflect enabled me to open up and find new meaning in our discussion and its implications.”
All to say, contemplative practices are not only beneficial to the well-being of the learners, but they can actually be used to find “innovative ways to engage with the content of a course,” as Professor Gould suggested. Specifically, they “help us know, experience and understand at an inner personal level the real connections and inter-relationships that we live every day,” Professor Lapin said.
Such practices that lead to inclusion have received more praises than sneers. Alongside students and faculty’s overall support for bringing such practices to the classrooms based on class feedbacks, there is a group that gathers every semester to share ideas, according to Lapin. They also invite outside practitioners, as well as staff and students, to share their experiences and practices. Even so, Gould thinks that these practices can be adopted more widely.
“I am hoping to create some occasions where we can share what we do with other interested, but less experienced, faculty,” he said.
The choice of the medieval church music at the beginning of Miller-Lane’s lecture was not random, of course.
“The combination of a saxophone improvising over medieval polyphony was meant to reflect two fundamental ideas of Western music: improvisation and composition,” Miller-Lane said. “I was suggesting that at its best a Middlebury education might offer the same opportunity for us as students, staff and faculty – we encounter the traditions of learning (compositions) while, hopefully, cultivating and supporting students’ ability to add their own improvisation.”
With this new insight into what the learning process constitutes, it seems like faculty and students are only going to demand more opportunities to regain the intentionality to their work in the classroom. Experiential learning and contemplative practices need not be seen as threats to the traditional intellectual rigor, but complements to that experience that is vital because it reinvigorates the body, mind and spirit.
(11/14/13 5:08am)
Dear friends,
Today, on Nov. 14, I am going to voluntarily fast for a whole day in solidarity with the Filipino delegate to the UN COP19 climate talk, Mr. Yeb Sano.
I chose this day because on the same day, Divest Middlebury is holding a candlelight vigil to commemorate the lives that have been lost, and are still being lost, due to Typhoon Haiyan. Just as Mr. Yeb Sano is fasting because his “countrymen... are struggling to find food back home and… [his] brother... has not had food for the last three days,” I am choosing to refrain from eating on Thursday because I treat his countrymen as my countrymen, his brother as my brother, and I want to bring this issue to more people’s attention on campus.
Far too many people do not have the luxury that I do to choose to fast: Typhoon Haiyan alone has caused 2.5 million people in the Philippines to rely on food assistance. Many more storms like this one will come, and 95% of the death resulted from such “extreme climate disasters” is going to be people from developing countries.
The reason why this figure is so skewed towards people in “developing” countries is because they are less adequately prepared for coping with climate disasters than “developed” countries. Rapid population growth and urbanization produce clusters of poorly constructed houses in cities in developing countries which are extremely vulnerable to even smaller-scale climate events, let alone “extreme climate disasters.” Natural disasters, as it turns out, are only part of the story: poverty, a booming population, geography, meteorology, and shoddy construction, are equally, if not more, important factors.
Whether we accept it or not, climate change does not lie in the distant future. It is now, and it is right here. I have a few friends from the Philippines who have family members there, as I know that many of you do, too. Even if this is not the case, you may well know other friends that do. Thus, it is utterly impossible to deny how closely our lives are linked to the lost lives and survivors of the strongest typhoon to have ever hit land.
This record-setting storm has made it clear to the world that we are now living in an era of “Climate Changed.” Yet, governments around the globe are not doing enough to curb carbon emissions. Not only has CO2 concentration in the atmosphere risen to an all-time high last year, but the gap between the estimated level of CO2 in 2020, as calculated from the latest pledges made by countries around the world, and the targets required to keep temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, has reached an all-time width as well. In other words, the chasm between ambition and reality is only widening year after year.
This is going to be an important day for us to remember the time we are in. I hope that many of you will join me, or at least support me, in this fasting, so that collectively, we can make a powerful statement that we recognize that climate change is not an abstraction, nor is it merely a scientific fact, but an indispensable part of our daily, lived reality.
With gratitude,
Adrian
ADRIAN LEONG ’16 is from Hong Kong.
(10/09/13 11:48pm)
“It was like a scene from the Godfather,” Derk Sauer said as he was speaking in front of the audience in the RAJ conference room last Thursday. He was describing a scene in which he met with a Russian oligarch who wanted to offer him protection, in a casino in Moscow; it was 11 a.m., and he was surrounded by girls in short skirts and the oligarch, who had found his number and called him the previous day. Sauer was forced to accept this invitation because the oligarch claimed to know his children and the route he always took to go to work. The most important lesson Sauer learned from his many years’ of experience working in Russia was that “if you’re afraid, then you’re in trouble.”
Sauer was invited to become the President of RBC Information Systems last year. RBC is a leading Russian multimedia company, which works to spread and broadcast business information; it can be found in print, online and on television. Sauer, Dutch by birth, spoke to the College community last week about the developments that have taken place in Russia in the past two decades, focusing on his personal experiences.
A self-identified “Maoist,” Sauer said that he belonged to the “Marxist-Leninist Party” when he was covering the wars in Vietnam, Angola and Mozambique, among other places. In Amsterdam in 1989, he met a group of Russian journalists who belonged to the Union of Journalists in Russia. At that time, he was excited by what Mikhail Gorbachev was doing as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, so he could not pass up the chance to meet the Soviets in the east.
His first impression of Moscow in 1990 was that it was “a dark place” with little light and few advertisements. There were not any friendly people on the streets and no infrastructures either, and journalism in a liberal society’s tradition was nowhere to be found: the newspaper was simply a mouthpiece of the government, and journalism schools only taught Soviet ideologies.
Once Sauer got there, he saw a niche market for glossy magazines, so he set one up with the Union in 1990. By 1992, he managed to set up his own company that printed the Moscow Times, a paper with a current circulation of about 35,000 copies that still remains the only English-language daily newspaper in Russia’s capital. Without office space, he contacted a hotel in the area and made a bargain with them – in exchange for a few guest rooms, the hotel would get their name in an advertisement in the first free newspaper in Europe.
With the office set up, Sauer still needed to find someone who was willing to print out his twice-weekly newspaper for him, which at that time he envisioned with a circulation of 30,000 copies. Unluckily, that number was so small compared to the state-run newspaper at that time, which circulated at around 8 to 10 million copies daily, that the printing firm’s managers jeered at Sauer’s effort. Nonetheless, Sauer managed to strike a deal with the printing company because they also owned a farm and were desperately trying to find someone who could teach them how to make cheese. Sauer, being from Holland, knew many friends back home who would do him a favor, so the riddle was solved.
Commenting on the current state of press freedom in Russia, Sauer said that it is mixed. On the one hand, freedom of the press is upheld in printed and online media. Sauer pointed out that he never had to censor an article because of its political undertone. On the other hand, the television industry is still very much a channel for “indoctrination.” The government mainly controls the television channels because they are still the main source of information for the masses. The informed portion of the population travel widely anyway, so they did not think that censorship would matter for these people.
When asked how he dealt with the mafia in Russia, Sauer said that he has devised and adopted the shareholder responsibility approach. He sold 10 percent of the shares of his company to a Russian oligarch that vowed to protect his business without influencing his writers’ reporting. Even when that oligarch’s related businesses suffered some public scandals, under their prior agreement, Sauer’s newspaper still reported the news truthfully and honestly.
Roksana Gabdul ‘16 was most surprised that the government did not see the point of censoring his newspaper.
“Sauer was free to criticize the government because his newspaper was read by the select few rather than the whole Russian population,” Gabdul said. “The government would be more worried if his newspaper was widely read by the regular Russian people.”
Towards the end of the lecture, Sauer said that one people be clean as long as they are clear and strong: “Russians respect and like strong people.”