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(04/21/17 4:26am)
Last Thursday, journalist Nancy Matsumoto visited the College to lecture about sake, how it’s produced and its role within Japanese culture. The lecture, hosted by the Japanese club and MiddUncorked, took place at the Axinn Center. A sake pairings dinner at Proctor Hall occurred afterward.
Based in Toronto, Canada, Nancy Matsumoto is a freelance writer and editor whose work specializes in sustainable agriculture, food, sake, arts and culture. According to Matsumoto’s biography at nancymatsumoto.com, her writings have been shared in reputable publications such as Time, Newsweek, Health, People, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and The New York Times.
She also co-authored the book, “The Parent’s Guide to Eating Disorders: Supporting Self-Esteem, Healthy Eating and Positive Body Image at Home”. The book is a recipient of a National Parenting Publication award, and is the “the definitive encyclopedia for parents who are concerned about their child’s weight eating,” according to an expert in the field.
Matsumoto’s lecture started by asking the question, “What is sake?” The word “sake”, in Japanese, translates to alcohol.
Sake, although having a range of aromas and sharing the same sweetness and dryness range of wine, is more closely related to beer. Like that for beer, the creation of sake involves transforming grains into sugars, and then converting the sugars into alcohol using yeast. Sake, unlike wine, derives sugar from rice grains rather than fruit. Facilitating such a process requires the skills of a master brewer, or toji.
Matsumoto then guided the audience through the history of sake. Sake, a culturally significant drink in Japan, is at least 2,000 years old. The sake most people are familiar with today dates back to 1,000 years ago. Some historians suggest that its first creators were women, and that it was reserved only for gods, shrines and temples. In fact, traditionally, brewing sake passed down multiple generations as a family business. Nowadays, sake still plays an integral role in Japanese contemporary life and culture.
The discussion returned again to the process of creating sake, albeit at greater detail. According to Matsumoto, the elements that comprise sake are surprisingly simple, since it requires only a few ingredients: water, rice and yeast. The environment for brewing must be strictly controlled, however.
After the rice is cooled and fanned, it is then taken to a koji-muro , a warm, cedarlined room that is favorable for producing a certain kind of mold. This mold is cultivated to grow on rice for between 48 to 72 hours; the resulting product, mold-inoculated steamed rice, is called koji.
The koji is transferred to a small tank where water, rice and yeast are added. This portion of the sake brewing process aims at creating a yeast starter, known as shubo or moto.
The yeast affects the aroma and flavor of the sake. Shubo temperature is strictly controlled, and the environment surrounding the shubo must be kept clean. After two weeks, the yeast starter eventually is transferred to a larger tank where three more rounds of rice, water and yeast are added. The larger tank is left to ferment for three to five weeks, and the sake is pressed and filtered afterwards. The sake is then aged for about six months, and is diluted with water before bottling, reducing the alcohol level from 20 percent to about 15 percent.
Matsumoto then presented the different categories of sake, which are dependent upon rice milling percentage. For example, daiginjo, which is milled to 50 percent or less, is known to be light, complex and fragrant. Ginjo is classified for milling rates less than 60 percent, honjozo or 70 percent or less and fustu-shu for anything without a minimum.
Matsumoto also went on to discuss sake pairing, and how a sake’s subtle taste makes the drink very food-friendly. Some may want to drink sake with foods that have tastes of similar or contrasting quality.
Matsumoto dove into stories from the brewing industry, and how recent global events have affected large sake manufacturers. We heard about female brewers, and how they have contributed to the experimentation and innovation of sake creation. We also learned about the “ginjo” movement of the 70s, and how the number of brewers have declined in the industry.
Learning about and understanding sake is helpful in constructing one’s worldview of Japanese culture, whether it be contemporary or historical.
“[Sake] has a long history,” said Michiko Yoshino ’17, Japanese Club president. “Drinking culture plays a big part in school and work culture, having parties to celebrate the end of a long project or a way to treat clients. Sake is one of those ways people use to accommodate social situations. As one of Japan’s national drinks, it is recognized globally and Japan prides itself on making fantastic sake.”
Sake has provided enjoyment and leisure for the Japanese people, past and present. Since it is recognized internationally, people across the world have shared in sake’s pleasure; perhaps by studying it, others will come to greater appreciation of Japanese culture.
(04/21/17 12:58am)
The April 9 meeting began with a discussion pertaining to election reform within the senate bylaws. President Karina Toy ’17 proposed that the senate consider framing the election for Co-Chair of Community Council as a one-semester ticket where candidates would run for the spring and fall semesters separately. Such a change would allow students going abroad or living off campus for a semester to still run for the Co-Chair position.
The current Co-Chair, Travis Sanderson ’19, asserted that an elected individual could still be effective while holding the position for a single semester.
Senator Wilson, however, shared that her entry into the SGA for just one semester was a difficult transition, and that a split election could potentially impede Co-Chair efficiency. The motion to split Co-Chair elections was then put to a vote, and with 11 in favor, 3 opposed and 3 abstained, it was ultimately passed.
President Toy then outlined the clarifying changes within her Bylaws Amendment Bill. Such changes formally clarify the amount of money allocated to campaigns, the length of Feb senate positions and the newly introduced split election process for the Co-Chair of Community Council. These alterations were unanimously passed with all senators in favor of the bill.
The senate discussed an Elections Council Bill that would call for a special meeting of the senate in response to an electoral tie. Each of the tied candidates would have five minutes to address the senate, which would be followed by a secret ballot among senators to break the tie. The President of the SGA would be allowed to cast a vote to alter any ties within the senate ballot.
Senator Aliza Cohen ’17 expressed her concern that such a tiebreaking policy would diminish the democratic foundations of the SGA. Senator Nikki Lantigua ’17 echoed this sentiment, asserting that this procedure would give too much power to the senate. In response to these concerns, the senate called a straw poll on the tiebreak proposal; 12 were opposed to the policy, while only 4 were in support.
As an alternative tiebreak policy, Senator John Goldfield ’20 proposed the implementation of an additional runoff election between tied candidates. President Toy then provided additional guidelines of this additional election, specifying that tied candidates would have 12 hours to submit 100-word statements on why they should win, which would then be emailed to all relevant constituents before the 24-hour runoff election period starting at noon the following day. This revised policy was unanimously approved.
The April 17 meeting began with a reminder about Staff Appreciation Day, which will be held on April 20. President Toy then reviewed aspects of her Constitutional Reform Bill, which sought to rephrase certain Constitutional clauses and remove redundancy. This bill made alterations to the senator impeachment process, specifying that senators may not miss more than two meetings over the course of office, or no more than five meetings with a proxy substitute. It also asserted that meeting agendas and minutes should be sent out 48 hours prior to the next meeting as opposed to just 24 hours. The Reform Bill was unanimously approved.
(03/16/17 5:52am)
On Saturday, March 11, The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs hosted its Fifth Annual International Conference, drawing many students, faculty and staff who were keen to hear lectures on the theme, “From Scroll to Scrolling: Shifting Cultures of Language and Identity.” The conference was composed of seventeen lectures by scholars from around the globe, each organized by theme into six individual 90-minute sessions.
Lead organizer of the conference and Director of the Rohatyn Center Tamar Mayer introduced the event on Thursday, March 9, before speakers Stephanie Ann Frampton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Associate Professor of Anthropology James L. Fitzsimmons commenced the lectures.
Mayer thanked everyone who made it possible and situated the theme within a historical and modern day setting.
She spoke about a New York Times piece written by Ilan Stavans, the LewisSebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, entitled “Trump, the Wall and the Spanish Language.”
In his piece, Stavans likened President Trump to Shih Huang Ti, the Chinese Emperor who built the Great Wall of China and banned all books from the kingdom – acts which seem parallel Trump’s construction of the wall between the U.S. and Mexico and his elimination of the White House website’s Spanish-language option.
“[Stavans] points to the power of political authority within languages,” Mayer said. “In addition to demonstrating the potency of words within a binary of structure of us versus them, the Shih Huang Ti story illustrates the role of new writing systems in forging a national identity and the power of political authority to make decisions about language.”
“This was the case more than two millennia ago and remains so today,” Mayer said.
Mayer’s intention was to emphasize the relevance and importance of language to modern culture, which is evident in Stavans’s piece regarding the minimization of the Spanish language within the U.S. and the resulting exclusion of Spanish speaking U.S. citizens.
“Of the more than seven thousand languages and dialects that exist today, it is predicted that less than 10 percent will survive by the year 2100,” Mayer said. “Since language is an important menu for culture and the display of heritage and history, linguistic and cultural survival are intertwined.”
In a lecture titled, “Learning to Write in the West,” Frampton, who is a scholar of classics and the history of media in antiquity and an associate professor of literature at MIT, spoke about her research into the formation of the written Roman alphabet.
Frampton argued in her abstract “that from its first appearance the Roman alphabet — our alphabet — was a deeply multicultural and historical technology, tying the Romans in visible ways to the communities that surrounded them.”
She shared a photo of the earliest known example of the Greek alphabet, which was an inscription on a vase used in burial practices in Osteria dell’Ossa, Italy. Its inscription, which reads “she who spins well,” is assumed to refer to the woman buried with it.
Frampton spoke about the way in which this inscription gave value to what was otherwise a simple, clay vase, and how this was most likely the reason it was included in the burial.
“When writing first appears in Italy, when the alphabet first appears in the Western Mediterranean, it appears to give value to the very material that exists as its physical support,” Frampton said.
Frampton discussed the way in which the inscription upon the vase reflected not only material value, but also many aspects of the community’s culture. Frampton concluded her lecture with a focus on the “fundamental integration” of object and text, as seen in the relationship between the vase and its inscription.
“The meaning of the inscription is indelibly linked to the substrate on which it was written, both integrated into the activity of honoring [the woman],” Frampton said.
“By re-joining texts and object, this interpretation secures the significance of this faint text as an intentional monument of commemoration for the woman in whose tomb we find it,” she said.
Fitzsimmons followed Frampton with a lecture entitled, “A Spectrum of Literacy: Writing and the ancient Maya.” He argued that the complicated nature of the Mayan writing system was actually intentional because, as he said in his abstract, “for the ruling class, broad illiteracy was a key part of statecraft.”
Throughout his talk, Fitzsimmons built upon Mayer’s introductory point that when authorities control language, they also control knowledge.
He displayed an image of ancient Mayan glyphs and described the way in which such inscriptions were most often read aloud because so much of the population was illiterate.
“Being able to read and write, being able to understand the complexities of the system you see here was probably not an ability shared by people everywhere,” said Fitzsimmons. “The vast majority of people [in these Mayan communities], perhaps as much as 99 percent, could not read or write ... The elites were the ones continuing to read and write inscriptions.”
However, Fitzsimmons emphasized that this did not mean that most of the population was ignorant or unintelligent, and that the elites were not necessarily all completely literate, which is where the “spectrum of literacy” comes into play. Many elites used scribes who were able to read the complex Mayan system and were not accessible to the common man.
Fitzsimmons’s lecture was followed by an extended question and answer session, in which themes of status, literacy and the democratization of language were discussed.
The lectures also generated thought about the aesthetic value of language, and student audience member Kylie Winger ’19 brought up the phenomenon of tattoos in America being written in Chinese and Japanese characters and tshirt slogans in China and Japan being written in English.
Winger, who is a Literary Studies major at the College, said she attended the conference because of an interest in the theme.
Winger has taken Chinese for six years, and as a result felt an appreciation for those who are able to decipher the Mayan glyphs Fitzsimmons displayed.
“Sometimes I would run across people who would be blown away that I could read Chinese — it was such a foreign thing,” Winger said. “That’s how I felt when [Fitzsimmons] was talking about the Mayan writing system — it’s insane that we can read that.”
In addition to the discussion of language in Frampton and Fitzsimmons’s lectures, topics ranged from a study on “The Democratization of Texts and Qur’anic Healing in Morocco” to a lecture on the “Theater of Rebellion: Danny Yung and Political Hong Kong Theater.”
The Rohatyn Center will be hosting its Sixth Annual International Conference on March 8-11 of next year, this time focusing on the theme, “The Decolonization Project.
(03/16/17 1:34am)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNUYdgIyaPM
In writing about the leaders of the 1960s, James Baldwin remembered just how young they all were. Medgar Evers and Robert F. Kennedy were 37 in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was 34, Malcolm X, 38, John F. Kennedy, 46. Baldwin was 39, the only one to survive the decade, and the only one not named Kennedy to reach the age of 40.
During the final years of his life, Baldwin, who died in 1981 at the age of 63, wrote the first thirty pages of a memoir detailing his relationships with Evers, X, and King. That unfinished manuscript, titled “Remember This House,” has been revived and reimagined in writer-director Raoul Peck’s latest work, “I Am Not Your Negro.”
Though Baldwin is the documentary’s main subject, the film is not biographical, nor does it truly explore his legacy as a writer and public intellectual. Rather, Baldwin’s notes, letters, and reflections act as a kind of Trojan horse, used by the film to explore the lasting legacy of racism in the United States. The film makes use of archival footage, photographs, and Baldwin’s writing (narrated by Samuel L. Jackson) to illustrate how he, as a black man, saw the world around him.
Baldwin’s effectiveness as a commentator comes from the seemingly effortless and brilliant way in which he tied political and cultural issues into one. Among his most effective critiques were those of Hollywood, and the way in which the movies falsely represented American life.
The best example Baldwin provides comes from the 1958 film “The Defiant Ones,” which stars Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as two convicts who break out of prison. In the film, Poitier’s character is able to jump on a train to escape, however, he jumps back off when Curtis’s character is unable to hop aboard.
As Baldwin says, the scene from the film was designed to provide a feel good moment for white moviegoers. According to Baldwin, while white people in the audience shared a sense of relief, black people in the audience were thinking, “Get back on the train you fool!”
“The black man jumps off the train in order to reassure white people, to make them know that they’re not hated,” he says.
“I Am Not Your Negro” illustrates how Hollywood pushed false narratives, and how the entertainment industry has perpetuated stereotypes and presented false realities. Baldwin recognized that movie executives can be just as powerful and problematic as those who hold public office. His insights, and the film in general, expose the hypocritical and selective way in which the history of the United States is presented, remembered, and interpreted by those who have power over our institutions and culture.
“If any white man in the world says ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,’ the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing he is judged a criminal and treated like one, and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad n*gger so there won’t be anymore like him,” he tells Dick Cavett.
The film’s greatest achievement comes from the way in which it blends Baldwin’s decades-old reflections, and ties them to the political and cultural issues of today. As Jackson reads Baldwin’s words, images of Barack Obama, of Ferguson, and of Black Lives Matter appear on-screen. These pictures, and Baldwin’s words, tie together the past, present, and future.
“I Am Not Your Negro” forces us to reevaluate the way in which we examine and reflect on our history. It reminds us that fights for progress span generations, and that the past is really not as far away as it may seem.
(03/10/17 2:57am)
“Let him speak,” I hear some of my peers say, looking upon the Charles Murray protest with distaste. “He has a right to free speech.” As a firm believer in debate and civil discourse, I wonder if such a critique may be misguided.
For too long a flawed notion of ‘free speech’ has given way for individuals in marginalizing people of color and gender minorities. While I defend his right to speak his mind, I find that providing Murray with an elevated platform at a college to project his largely disproven ideas extends beyond the realm of ‘free speech’ and does more harm than good.
As Americans, we find ourselves lucky enough to be able to talk about our political beliefs without legal consequence. The government cannot throw us in jail or punish us for the words we write or the things we say. (With the exception of lying under oath, violating security procedures in contracts, and hate speech.) This is our constitutional right to free speech. In contrast, the right to free speech does not mean that individuals or institutions have a positive burden to offer all ideas a stage, a microphone and a large space for an audience to listen. It does not mean that academic institutions or students must guarantee all individuals 45 minutes of unchallenged and broadcasted speech, no matter how harmful or false the arguments are. Clearly, student protesters were not violating Mr. Murray’s First Amendment rights when they spoke out against him. They were changing the terms of the discussion.
This is not to say that students ought not engage with Mr. Murray’s ideas at all. At the point where colleges and universities have discretion over the way ideas are presented, I believe that they ought to maximize the academic experience of such ideas. They must take into account the implications of the format of the speech, official co-sponsorships and how students can meaningfully engage with the topic at hand. Students should be able to compare and contrast similar ideas in history and analyze the impact such writings had on society as a whole. To that effect, I do not think Middlebury made sufficient avenues for students to discuss, tackle and fully understand the implications of Mr. Murray’s ideas.
First, co-sponsorship by the Political Science Department and an opening speech by the President of Middlebury Laurie L. Patton, gave the speaker an aura of legitimacy. Instead of elucidating the fact that Mr. Murray has no peer-reviewed work (and his race-based analysis is largely false), the introductory remarks emphasized how influential his books have been and that he was a fellow at a think-tank. President Patton did very openly state that she disagreed with his views, but avoided saying that his work does not meet academic standards. While students have the right to bring speakers of all kinds to campus, the university itself must be responsible and academically honest when giving such events a show of approval through co-sponsorship. Students have the obligation to keep academic institutions accountable to a truthful and well-rounded education.
Second, and more importantly, the way in which Murray’s talk was formatted did not allow for equal discussion. Were students, especially students of color, expected to just sit and listen to an individual speak for 45 minutes about how they were inferior to Whites? Do Asians have to accept Murray’s false characterization that we have “higher IQ’s” than other races, and as a result become the metaphorical ‘punching bag’ for issues surrounding race and class? Where was the avenue to speak out against such ideas? How could students engage in debate on an equal playing field when Mr. Murray had a stage and a microphone, and we were just nameless and faceless members of the audience? Without a platform for legitimate debate, it seems that students had few non-disruptive tools to get their voices heard.
Free speech is not the same as elevated speech. Places of higher education must take that distinction into account when deciding which ideas deserve elevated platforms and which ones are better expressed through other means, whether it is through equal discussion or debate. The aftermath of Murray’s talk has shed light on the deep divisions within Middlebury’s campus. While reconciliation will be a painful process, I hope that we can heal and grow together, creating a mutual understanding that does not marginalize or undermine any community members’ fundamental voice or humanity.
Elizabeth Lee ’17 writes about nuances in defining free speech.
(03/10/17 2:54am)
There are a lot of words, links and thoughts being put out into my Facebook newsfeed with regards to last evening’s Charles Murray event by my Middlebury communities right now. Here is my very long spiel on every step of what has unfolded to be a messy, difficult, complicated process for us all.
Step One: Bringing Charles Murray to this campus. I personally believe that there are other more rigorous, more influential, less condescending and less racist conservative scholars and academics that could have been brought to campus from whom and in conversation with whom I would be happy to learn. If this is intellectual battle, and I am not sure it is, there were more intellectuals to choose from (even from the list of AEI fellows). I am open to a debate about class differences in America, about the bubble we inhabit, about the politics of poverty. When that comes coupled with arguments about genetics, race and culture, I think we lose the entire point of an equal, intellectual debate.
Step Two: ‘Institutional’ Endorsement of Murray. First, I hearken back to my comments about intellectual rigor above. What are the precedents we are setting for a standard of scholarship within this community? Second, I believe that President of Middlebury Laurie L. Patton, Professor of Political Science and Department Chair Bertram Johnson and the heads of the AEI campus chapter are incredibly intelligent, thoughtful people — however, given Mr. Murray’s work, more thought should have gone into the ways this would be interpreted within this community. Here are a few examples of the problematic ways we have been according such time, space and resources to Mr. Murray: having the President introducing him, offering departmental endorsement, setting it up in a space the size of Dana or Wilson, having it be a speech instead of on a panel, having significant police/security presence, widely announcing it merely a week before he was scheduled to speak. I have had to read Murray for class. I will engage with his ideas within the classroom. Bringing him to speak on a stage on campus is different, because it is not a space where we can take pause and respond to his work critically. He has been answering questions about his books for years. Two hours of listening to him, even a week of preparing questions, do not measure up to that — I repeat, that is not an equal exchange. Speakers are teaching moments within an educational setting. I hope you understand how the structure of this event can be seen as an invalidation of some folks’ beliefs (and humanity) and to some others, a provocation. To emphasize his presence in a top-bottom way is, in some ways, to provoke a reaction. I am all for academic distance, theorizing and conversation, but if that seems to come at the emotional cost of some of my peers, I wish that those who made space for Mr. Murray had reflected more carefully on what debate means, and had considered alternative ways of placing him into our campus conversation.
Step Three: Organizing Dissent. Student and faculty activists had about one week to organize. We are not professional organizers. There was no way this would not have been messy. To those who asked if we, the organizers, had even read “The Bell Curve”, you also go to Middlebury. Is it a fair expectation to have everyone read all his prolific writing in a week whilst also being a student here? I personally read about 150 pages of Murray last weekend, and still wanted to listen to him. I agree with many who say that Mr. Murray’s voice and views are a reality in our world. But when I say I wanted to listen, this does not mean I did not want to dissent. The two are not antithetical to one another. If I had complete control of the situation (which I am glad I didn’t because that misses the point of what it means to learn to organize and collaborate), I would have wanted to protest him outside, carry our voices and our signs and our dissent into the space and be allowed to force him into dialogue. If he said something we disagreed with, I would have wanted us to be able to boo at him, shout back, and then, during the Q&A, challenge him and disrupt the idea that this was an equal exchange. I, personally, did not want to shut him down, because I see that as ineffective. To me, that is giving him what he wants from us. That being said, I understand why those who deemed that necessary felt so, and I think we should all pause and reflect upon why some of our peers made that choice.
Step Four: The Fall Out. There are lines, of course. I in no way condone the physical violence against Professor Stanger and Mr. Murray, nor any violence against student protesters. These acts are undeniably reprehensible, and we have to rethink the role played by actors external to this campus, be they security personnel or agitators, in impacting our community. We also have to rethink our reactivity, and the cruelty with which we at times choose to respond. To those who yelled obnoxious, personal, mean things to our classmates who were on that stage, shame on you. Simultaneously, to those who glared at protesters, hurled insults at them and have decided that there is no more to them than hatred and anger, shame on you too. To paint this situation as a binary of anti and pro-free speech, or of anti and pro-white supremacy, as some of my peers have been doing, is to take away from the incredible, beautiful nuance within and beyond the activist community. Mostly, it frightens me when my peers say any form of dissent should be punished. In my view, if you were scared of those who verbally shut down this event, but do not see Murray’s vitriol as equally scary, then you are choosing not to see the harm he perpetuates and misunderstanding why folks like me, who wanted to listen to him, were protesting to begin with. This is not a matter of “us” versus “them.” To create such a dichotomy is to ignore not only the fundamental racism of Murray’s arguments, but also to not see the humanity in each other.
Step Five: Moving Forward. If it is possible, I think we should move away from talking about Charles Murray. He has had his share of attention, and by the looks of it, he has enjoyed it. It seems to me that most of us disapprove of his ideas. We have consensus there. If that is the case, let’s talk about where we disagree with each other. I think we should talk about what civil discourse, resistance and resilience mean for this campus, especially given broader structural inequalities and power differentials here at Middlebury, in the U.S. and in the world. I think we should move, as a professor of mine pointed out, from the rhetoric of resilience, which favors some, to material resilience, which forces us all to be brave. I want us to move from the idea of a debate to the work of fostering connection, empathy and support for one another. Let us treat the aftermath as a learning moment in the same way that some of us treated his coming here. We as a community have a lot of growing to do. I personally believe that I stand to learn more from you, my peers, my faculty and my campus, than I do from Mr. Murray.
Thank you for reading this if you got this far. Let us learn, converse and heal together.
Jiya Pandya ’17 writes on the many facets of last week’s protest.
(03/10/17 2:50am)
As soon as word got out that Middlebury College would host a lecture by Charles Murray (CM), students gathered and began organizing to ensure that he would not have a platform to share his ideas on our campus. Why did a large and diverse group of students put their lives on hold to plan and participate in organized dissent (knowingly breaking college policies and putting their education in jeopardy)?
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), one of the most reputable civil rights organizations in the U.S., takes a firm stance in defining Murray’s political position as one of white nationalism that promotes eugenics. According to SPLC, Charles Murray, “has become one of the most influential social scientists in America, using racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor.” The SPLC goes on to say that “Murray, a statistically minded sociologist by training, has spent decades working to rehabilitate long-discredited theories of IQ and heredity, turning them into a foundation on which to build a conservative theory of society that rejects equality and egalitarianism.” Murray’s ideas and research were fundamental in driving a political agenda that we believe to be more mainstream on this campus than many admit. Opposed to addressing the lasting damages done by centuries of racist laws enacted by a culture that privileges whiteness, many people on this campus believe that people of color in the U.S. simply do not work hard enough.
On Thursday, demonstrators held signs that read “Resist White Supremacy,” “No Eugenics,” and “Expect Resistance Here” as they collectively read a statement that touched upon the deep history of eugenics programs in the state of Vermont throughout the 1930s, when Native Abenaki people were targeted for state-sanctioned forced sterilizations. In articles and open letters circulated before the event was scheduled to take place, students and alumni declared that under no circumstances should the College provide a platform for CM’s white supremacist ideologies.
Yes, freedom of speech is important and should be upheld in an academic setting; however, there are clearly fallacies within the administration’s interpretation of this constitutional provision. Not all opinions are worth amplifying or legitimizing. There are some theories that fabricate statistics and are rooted in hate.
And let us notice the context in which we choose to invoke free speech. There would be no cries in defense of the first amendment if student groups had brought a holocaust denier; no one would be yelling free speech if students were opposed to a climate change denier coming to campus. Neither the administration nor any department would have any issues denouncing these potential lecturers for their faulty science or hateful views. Yet as we saw on Thursday, our professors made an exception to offer a platform to racialized genetic inferiority, in the name of “rhetorical resilience” over academic honesty.
The Political Science Department endorsed Charles Murray as a fellow leader in academic thought. Why do we only care about free speech when it calls into question the genetic inferiority of our fellows students. What is the point of academia, if our political science professors can’t discern between conservatives and hate speech extremists?
We are deeply sorry that Professor Stanger was injured and hope that she gets well soon. Regrettable acts of violence aside, this protest was absolutely essential. If the rise of Donald Trump has taught us anything, it’s that the world beyond Middlebury College is not a classroom. If racist sh*t comes up, “rational” debate cannot dismantle it or effectively combat its growing power. The idea that bigotry will collapse under academia’s enlightened rationality is false. We must name it and deprive it of power. Robbing Charles Murray of one platform for his racialized pseudoscience is a small but important part of that resistance.
PS: Here are the two URLs that are hyperlinked in the piece
Eugenics in VT: http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/VT/VT.html
Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/charles-murray
Anna Jacobsen ’16.5, Joshua Claxton ’18 and Austin Kahn ’17.5 consider the implications of last week’s protest.
(03/10/17 1:40am)
On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I would like to thank the protesters who prevented other people from hearing Charles Murray’s last week. The Trump administration is under siege by investigators and subpoenas. But you provided a welcome distraction. From Steve Bannon’s point of view, it couldn’t have turned out better. As for myself, I would really like to hear how different protest groups and options interacted up to the critical moment, around 4:45 p.m. on Thursday March 2, when a bunch of you decided not to walk out. If this group included newcomers pushing for a fight, and if this was still the Nixon administration, my next question would be, any chance they work for the FBI? Nowadays, the next question would be, any chance they work for an Alt-Right sting that persuaded you to do stupid things on camera?
However this happened, the shut-it-downers acted out the inhumanity you say you oppose. Shut-it-downers preempted other strategies, that would respect a speaker’s right to be heard and make the protest look good, so that you could rhythmically stomp on free speech. The rest of us do not understand how, in the name of fighting hate-speech, you could hate-speech a speaker for two hours, then attack him and his escort as they tried to leave. But there’s a possible explanation for why you could do this with a clear conscience — is it because of how you think about race?
The reason I ask is that you used race to justify your actions. Racial epithets played all too well in this liberal enclave. The Southern Poverty Law Center uses pull-quotes to accuse Charles Murray of racist pseudoscience and white nationalism, which you escalated by calling him a white supremacist. Now I’m hearing protesters defend their actions by saying it’s okay to punch Nazis. So Charles Murray is equivalent to a Nazi? Rhetorical escalation often backfires; if it sends you into a rage, your opponent will look more reasonable than you do. That’s certainly how Murray looked, standing patiently at the podium for half an hour, as the halo of free speech descended upon his brow.
Calling Murray a white supremacist is like calling an abortionist a baby-killer. Eighth- month abortions kill viable infants. But if you label abortion providers as baby-killers, you make a false generalization and dehumanize them. This is to be avoided if you want to avoid violence. In the case of Murray, his use of psychometrics to characterize broad populations has made him popular with Republicans who feel that government handouts encourage anti-social behavior among low-income Americans. This puts him on a slippery slope that can quickly lead to white supremacy; it is possible that Murray enjoys being on this slippery slope; but neither this nor white nationalism nor scientific racism are positions that he articulates. Murray is better defined as a bio-determinist or genetic fatalist, the limitations of which are easy to explain.
Those of you who race-baited Murray as a white supremacist put yourselves on your own slippery slope. You dehumanized him, which made it easy to justify violence against him, which is exactly what happened. You are also on a second slippery slope, which I care about just as much because I do not want to see Donald Trump win a second term in the White House. If having conservative attitudes about poverty is tantamount to racism, are you now going to label all the American voters who think this way as racists?
Cultural conservatives, whose attitudes strike liberals as backward, include tens of millions of Democratic voters in the last election, and they are not all white. You can accuse as many people as you want of being racists, but don’t expect them to vote for you in the next election. Of course, maybe you’ve stopped caring about elections. Look how badly the last one turned out. If American elections are inextricably linked to white privilege, what do they matter? If free speech is inextricably linked to white privilege, what does that matter either?
About ten years ago, Charles Murray came here to talk about the controversy over “The Bell Curve”. There was no campaign to disinvite him and faculty members held a debrief the next day, to ensure that any interested parties understood the weak points of his argument. What has changed to make him so unacceptable now? Is the difference Donald Trump in the White House? Certainly Trump’s use of invective has inflamed the atmosphere, but how about our own local production of racial classification?
Ever since the Nazis fed anthropology texts into their bonfires, my profession has argued that race is a cultural fiction with no more basis in genetics than being French or Morrocan. There are no genes that make the behavior of a black race differ from the behavior of a white race. Far more important in shaping behavior and outcomes are cultural programming and social conditioning. And so as far as anthropologists are concerned, race is little more than a fetish or disguise for social class, ethnic or cultural differences.
Our arguments won over many American liberals, but we were not as successful with American conservatives. One conservative rejoinder was … what? What do you mean there’s no such thing as race? As far as they can see, racial determination of behavior and outcomes is common sense. For evidence they still appeal to the IQ scores that Charles Murray and his co- author deployed in their 1994 book. A second conservative rejoinder also became popular … you’re saying race is fictional? Wonderful! Now that we’ve outlawed discrimination, let’s treat everyone equally, so we can stop worrying about race.
This second conservative rejoinder put liberals in an awkward position. Our only possible response was … wait, wait, wait! We can’t stop thinking about race because racist attitudes are still strong. Think about all the inherited inequalities — structural racism. And so the same liberals who argued that race is a cultural fiction now also had to argue that race is the hidden reality behind other forms of injustice. And so we learned to sing a complicated tune about race — or perhaps we sing two different tunes at the same time. Some of us (including myself) stress that any form of racial classification is a way of misleading ourselves. Others of us (including many who study race for a living) focus instead on uncovering its insidious impact in many realms of life.
At elite colleges like Middlebury, the challenge of making underrepresented minorities feel welcome has prompted many initiatives organized around the concept of race. This includes hiring faculty who, quite understandably, interpret their mandate to include identifying hidden racial agendas in a prevailing white environment. Judging from what some of our students now publish regularly on the oped pages of The Campus, race saturates every issue at Middlebury College. But does it really?
Long ago in 2001, in “Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensititivity Training and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution,” Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn pointed out that race activists increasingly perceive “a world of endless slights. Here racist crimes and social faux pas are one and the same — all inspired by a monolithic, unabated white racial hatred. All whites must confess to their inherent racism, or they are, in the words of the recovery movement, ‘in denial.’” Yet if racial classification is a cultural fiction, if it is always a disguise for what’s really going on, can anti-racism scholars and activists fall into the trap of propagating it rather than undermining it?
That they indeed can is argued by the sociologist Frank Furedi in “What’s Happened to the University?” Interestingly, campus episodes that Americans might attribute to our penchant for racial divides, lawsuits and psycho-babble are, according to Furedi, also very common in Canada, Australia and Britain. What’s shared by universities in each of these countries is the rapid spread of the “vulnerable groups” concept. This leads to what Furedi calls “the weaponization of emotions,” that is, the public display of fragility and anger as political bargaining chips. Becoming offended has become an irrefutable rationale for ending discussion, which makes it a claim to entitlement. What’s being demanded is administrative paternalism, Furedi concludes, which guarantees further cycles of infantilization.
Could a spiral of dependency and anger explain how, on our campus, the demand for inclusion and safe space has become a demand for intolerance? Is this why our anti-racism activists last week were hurling racial invective? I heard racial insults, not just against Charles Murray, but against white women, white liberals and students of color whom shut-it-downers accused of racial disloyalty. Racialism is what I think I was hearing. Racialism is the insistence that one’s primary loyalty should be to one’s own racial group. If this is really what you think, white supremacists agree with you.
(03/10/17 1:10am)
There are numerous reasons to want to challenge Murray’s ideas and research. Some believe that one of his books, The Bell Curve, is very offensive, as it shows that IQ scores and overall intelligence are based on some aspect of genetic superiority, classified by race and gender. In all honesty, I have never read his work, so do not believe I am able to form a justified opinion on this matter. I challenge anyone who has a strong opinion about his work to read it, and not just random, out of context sentences.
After learning how “unpopular” some of his research is, I was excited to see how the academic community at Middlebury was going to challenge him. I envisioned that Murray would give his talk, all the while being respected. Then I was hoping there would time for well-phrased and thought out questions, ones that would spark communication and debate. I wanted to hear how Murray defend himself against some pretty powerful claims that were being made against him and his work.
I was left appalled as protesters prevented him from uttering a single word to the audience. The protesters claim to want Middlebury to be a safe and inclusive space for all. But did they stop for a moment to consider how Murray, the AEI club or people in the audience felt as the protesters prevented the lecture? There are people who wanted to listen, learn and debate Murray and unfortunately, they were prevented from achieving those goals.
Even more disheartening is what happened in the minutes after the protesters prevented Murray’s talk in the hall. Soon, the protests found his new location, and made noise outside. Un-phased by the protestors, Murray finished his talk and opened the floor to questions. Professor Allison Stanger and a few students were able to ask questions that sparked interesting and meaningful discussion between Stanger and Murray. Stanger openly admitted that she does not agree with most of Murray’s research and ideas, but that did not prevent them from having a civil discussion. In these short few minutes, the talk achieved its goal of sparking intelligent conversations.
I was shocked by the response of the protesters, and grateful for Stanger’s desire to engage with Murray. President Patton’s hope that we, as a community, can “train ourselves to make critiques, and to respond to critiques, in a way that focuses on the path forward together, and allows for honest engagement.” I learned much from listening to Stanger and Murray’s conversation, and I hope others did as well.
What frustrated me the most was when I learned that protestors jumped on top of Murray's car and twisted the hair and neck of Professor Stanger. Bill Burger reported to the Addison Independent: “The protesters then violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and trying to prevent it from leaving campus, at one point a large traffic sign was thrown in front of the car.” This violent display sent Stanger to the hospital — and a message to the greater public. People may now see Middlebury as a place where free speech will be countered with violence.
Not all, or even a majority, of the original protesters took part in the fire alarm pulling and violent actions. But the fact is there were people who claim to be fighters for equality, freedom and inclusivity who acted in complete contradiction to their beliefs.
As more polarizing issues make national news, there will be an increase in conversation. We must engage in conversations with all people, even with those with such radical views. It is the duty of those who claim that their views are “civil” and “morally correct” to bridge the void between “us” and “them.” Even those with disgusting, disrespectful and blatantly false views. Let those “uncivil" people makes fools of themselves, if their views are so foolish. But I think all the while you must act with more civility than those you are opposing. I respect Murray, Stanger and President Patton, who tried so hard to bring a complex conversation to Middlebury. I guess we were not prepared to respond.
(03/03/17 2:45am)
Debate, disagreement, criticism and controversy. These define the American experiment and our experience as citizens. We think, argue and act because we have always cared deeply about the state of our country and the future of the American project. This clash of ideas has shaped our history, and is as important now as ever. The bipartisan American Enterprise Institute Club invited Dr. Charles Murray to speak today, not to push an agenda or even to try and convince you of his theories, but rather to start a conversation. We believe that what Dr. Murray has to say on the current divisions in our country is worth hearing and engaging with, regardless of one’s political beliefs. It would be useful for all to better understand why there is such a great divide between the working class and the elite, to understand how these divisions contributed to the election of Donald Trump, and how they are reshaping American society. Dr. Murray is trying to understand the causes of the “coming apart election,” and it is essential that we try to as well.
This is why our voices, in articles, demonstrations and discussion, are of vital importance. Although many people may not agree with Dr. Murray we would like to invite everyone to participate this Thursday in Wilson Hall. Your attendance and participation will serve to enable true debate and growth.
The event will begin with a few words from President Patton on the importance of discussion and debate for the liberal arts. Following Dr. Murray’s talk on his 2012 work Coming Apart, there will be a lengthy Q and A moderated by Prof. Allison Stanger. We structured the event this way so that everyone will have the opportunity to ask questions, and challenge each other’s, and our own, convictions.
This discussion is incredibly valuable. We will not all agree. We are not operating under the false pretenses that Dr. Murray will radically change anybody’s mind. We hope that this event will allow for us to engage in a conversation that facilitates a better understanding. Without this desire to understand one another, especially people we disagree with, we cannot move forward. Instead, we will only continue to come apart.
(03/03/17 2:38am)
I know that the people who penned “AEI invites you to argue” are good, well-meaning people. I understand the premise: a college should be a place for rigorous academic discussion, where students should argue, disagree, learn from their disagreements and thereby learn from each other. It’s why at Middlebury we try to keep classes small and lectures few — so that students have opportunities to engage with each other as well as the material. My hope is that this piece contributes to rather than sabotages this ideal.
I can understand the perceptions that would lead the AEI to invite a controversial speaker such as Charles Murray. Indeed, when I first arrived at Middlebury I was clueless to the systems of power constructed around race, gender, sexuality, class or ability, and found that when I talked about these issues as I understood them — or rather, as I didn’t — I was met with blank stares and stigma rather than substantial debate. As a young bigot, I can recall thinking: “I thought at Middlebury I would get to have intellectual discussions, but instead it feels as though my views are being censored.” However, as a first-year I had failed to consider a simple, yet powerful component of debate: not all opinions are valid opinions. I had fallen into the trap of false equivalence.
False equivalence is simple: just because two sides are opposed does not mean they are equally logically valid. When Bill Nye agreed to debate Ken Ham, a Young Earth Creationist, on the legitimacy of evolution, he hoped the livestreamed event would be a perfect platform to disabuse Ham of his ridiculous and false views of life on Earth. Indeed, Nye’s arguments were sound and Ham’s were absurd. However, as a scientific education event, the debate was a failure since, for two hours, a man preaching reason and a man preaching absurdity were given a podium of equal height, a microphone of equal volume and an equal amount of time to speak. Yes, the event illustrated “both sides of the issue,” but the existence of an opposition does not necessitate its validity. The event was irresponsible and played right into Ham’s hands, lending his brazen denial of fact a much-needed veneer of validity.
And yet Charles Murray’s views are even more dangerous than Ham’s. Ham disavows a scientific theory; Murray disavows the fundamental equality of all human beings. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center: “In Murray’s world, wealth and social power naturally accrue towards a ‘cognitive elite’ made up of high-IQ individuals (who are overwhelmingly white, male and from well-to-do families), while those on the lower end of the eponymous bell curve form an ‘underclass’ whose misfortunes stem from their low intelligence. According to Murray, the relative differences between the white and black populations of the United States, as well as those between men and women, have nothing to do with discrimination or historical and structural disadvantages, but rather stem from genetic differences between the groups.” In other words, Murray is a eugenicist who blames the unprivileged’s misfortunes on them being too stupid. You have not wandered onto the set of Django Unchained — the year is 2017 and a person who earnestly believes these things is being invited to Middlebury College.
Is this the “discourse” and “debate” and “intellectual diversity” we want on our campus? Are we back to the 18th Century — debating the equality of human beings? When Murray spews his ignorant bullshit, are we supposed to listen attentively and nod our heads and have a “dialogue” with these ideas? How can we possibly entertain his ideas? Doing so is a) not only grossly disrespectful to our peers who Murray targets and b) a waste of time because eugenics is a debunked pseudoscience. This is a classic tactic of fringe thinkers — “if you disagree with me, don’t protest, debate me.” This “debate” will never go anywhere since we defend our ideas with facts and they defend theirs with “alternative facts.” When we try to engage these ideas, suddenly the burden of proof will fall to us to debunk what has already been debunked. And when we do disprove it, suddenly we have to prove the validity of our proof. Ken Ham did the same thing to Bill Nye — when Nye demonstrated that carbon dating disproved him, Ham challenged the validity of carbon dating. No amount of proof will ever be enough for these people to conquer their own prejudices.
And this is not even to go into what a flagrant middle finger Charles Murray’s presence on this campus means to the students he has targeted with his inflammatory work. Once again, it’s up to women and POC to convince white men that they deserve to be on this campus and that they deserve equal opportunity. As a white man, I am privileged to have never had my human worth up for debate, let alone be studying in the same building as someone who advocates for this very notion. And yet here we are — Charles Murray is coming to campus, and the only way you can express how aggravating it must be to have to defend your human worth is through the proper, respectable channels, all of which ensure that you will never succeed. And, god forbid, you get visibly angry about this fact, you are a “snowflake” or “coddled millennial” or some other insult targeting young people with the perceptiveness of realizing that this whole situation is fucking bullshit and the integrity to be enraged by it.
Surely this country is in a crisis and some of the most divided it has ever been. Indeed, there should be discussion. However, I will not be using the human dignity of my peers as a bargaining chip to achieve this discussion. So, thanks for the invitation, but I’ll pass.
Nic Valenti ‘17 writes in about Charles Murray’s 3/2 talk.
(03/03/17 2:36am)
This Thursday at 4:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall, Dr. Charles Murray will discuss Coming Apart, his 2012 book which “explores class divisions in the United States, placing particular emphasis on the White working class.” Murray’s conclusions are upsetting, particularly those in his 1994 book The Bell Curve which drew immense criticism for its assertion that genetic variations between races explain differences in the general socioeconomic success of a race. Regardless, we must decide how we will address the reality of Murray’s visit on Thursday. In this editorial, we will advance one response to Murray’s presence that we believe is an effective choice of action for many. When Charles Murray comes to speak this Thursday, we encourage students of Middlebury — whose mental and physical health permits — to attend the lecture and resist as a collective.
It is our duty to show up and challenge Charles Murray — preferably, with some demonstration of our presence in numbers — to the extent that we are able. We should arm ourselves with information and research that negates Murray’s, not to change Murray’s mind or even to engage with Murray himself, but to engage with one another. We believe this is the most effective way to further progress on our campus and stand in solidarity with those whose humanity is targeted by the arguments of Dr. Charles Murray. We do not find it futile to show up on Thursday. Instead, we believe that all who find themselves capable need to be at the lecture at 4:30 p.m.
We are upset by the influence of men like Murray in this country, and are frustrated by the pressure put upon historically oppressed communities to defend themselves in the face of intellectualized discrimination like Murray’s. There are many valid ways to approach his visit, and we respect and admire any of those who choose to take non-violent action on Thursday.
But we cannot let the words of Murray be normalized or accepted without refute; our presence at such a talk is important not only in working to challenge the ideas we find problematic, but to show those targeted by Murray that we do not condone his beliefs. Again, we do not presume to be able to change Charles Murray’s mind. But we can show our fellow students — students whose humanity Murray would call into question — that we will stand in solidarity together. Murray calls the validity of the lives of marginalized people into question, and the pain of such dehumanizing ideas is redoubled when privileged bystanders react with apathy. We cannot react with apathy. We must demonstrate to our fellow students that we are willing to stand and fight against ideas that invalidate the worth and worthiness of marginalized people, that we take those threats personally and seriously.
Murray spouts and represents the ideals held by many Americans; it is valuable to put a face to this “other side,” a side that has significant presence in our current political environment. We cannot deny that Murray’s views find favor with many — Coming Apart was on the NY Times’ list of 100 Notable Books of 2012. We can’t ignore their influence, as harmful as they are. However, we can — and we must — work against these disturbing ideas. We must look Murray in the face and challenge what he stands for with all our collective might. We must stand up to him and show our peers that we do not tolerate white supremacy at Middlebury, that we do not tolerate white nationalism at Middlebury. We do not believe that ignoring this man (or those like him) is as effective as actively, deliberately resisting him. We need to make clear — to Murray and to the Middlebury community — that rationalizing racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination is unacceptable. By showing up on Thursday and resisting him, we will demonstrate our strength and solidarity as a Middlebury community.
We will show our student body, one which includes many identities threatened by Murray’s positions, that we are prepared to resist those who challenge certain identities. No one person on this campus is going to unravel the personal convictions that have formed the basis of Murray’s 40-year career in one lecture. We do not believe this is possible, nor do we believe this is our responsibility. We must consider, however, our community. We can turn this into a space in which to meet students unfamiliar with these topics and show them what we as a community believe in. This is our chance to show our fellow students that we are a tolerant and diverse community that does not subscribe to the base and extremely harmful ideals of Charles Murray. We encourage the Middlbury community to read the range of op-eds submitted to The Campus this week, to research Murray’s arguments, to research counter-arguments and finally, to be there on Thursday — to the extent that we each find ourselves capable — prepared and ready to fight.
The editorial represents the official opinion of the editorial board of The Middlebury Campus.
(02/24/17 1:15am)
Imagine a museum exhibition that not only amazes, inspires and entertains you along every step, but also challenges you with questions and ideas posed by every meticulously selected work of art. The latest exhibit at our very own museum, American Faces: A Cultural History of Portraiture and Identity, which opened on Feb. 17, guarantees viewers a fulfilling experience of such with more than 90 pieces that broaden the definition of American portraiture.
Richard Saunders, director of the College Museum of Art, is the curator of American Faces and the author of a recently published book with the same title. In an interview on Sunday, which was suitably turned into a tour of the entire exhibit, Saunders explained his long-term fascination with American portraits and identity. He has been interested in portraits since he was in college, and wrote his dissertation in graduate school on a portrait artist. Unable to find a good book about portraiture to assign to students in his classes, Saunders put years of his work into his own book.
According to Saunders, the exhibit is a “distilled version of the book.”
“The idea is that the Americans have been interested in creating images of themselves for hundreds of years, and so I was interested in why,” he said. “So I thought, well, can I break that down into groups? Can I create, as I’ve described this as a rudimentary taxonomy, a system to look at all this?”
To answer these questions, the exhibit is divided into seven sections, based around the same seven chapters in the book that bring out different themes and stories. The one hour of my first visit to the opening felt like barely enough to absorb the wide variety of the pieces selected; from oil-on-canvas paintings and daguerreotype to caricature and videos, the exhibit could be somewhat overwhelming, and requires close attention and active thinking from the viewer.
“That’s why the [label] texts are so long,” Saunders said in response to this observation. “I felt that it was important to do that, because otherwise people wouldn’t understand necessarily why something was here. I hope people get it. It’s like anything; you try and throw it out there, and see if people are interested.”
The first section of the exhibit, titled “The Rich,” starts us off with more traditional oil-on-canvas paintings, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries, which were commissioned by wealthy people. People’s desire to showcase social status, wealth and fashion is apparent throughout the colonial period and into the first decades of the Republic.
“Many of these people are being flattered through the portraits,” Saunders said. “The idea was to make them look better. It’s like the ultimate Donald Trump experience.”
He pointed out that Trump once said he saw a 35-year-old when looking in the mirror, while the president was also dissatisfied with a painting of his 35-year-old self.
“I’d like one of [my students] to work on images of Donald Trump, because he has such an ego and a focus on his own [image],” Saunders said.
The portraits hanging on the wall from two centuries ago seem not so cut off from the present; in fact, they are so immediately related to our media world today, whether personal or political.
In the next section, “Portraits for Everyone,” two pieces on loan from the Andy Warhol Museum bring the audience to a new era of portraiture and identity. Saunders emphasized the importance of Warhol’s portrait of Ethel Scull, an art collector, which is one panel of a huge commissioned portrait consisting of 35 more of such pieces.
“He wasn’t interested in doing paintings like that,” Saunders said, pointing at the oil paintings from the former section. “So this is really important, in terms of telling how commissioned portraits by wealthy people changed in 1963 when he did this.”
The borrowing of this piece in part led to the installation of an actual photo booth in the exhibition, placed among other works of art.
“The photograph, on which this [Ether Scull painting] is based, was taken in a photo booth exactly like that,” Saunders said, highlighting the importance of the machine in impacting mainstream American painting.
As an interactive element of the exhibit, the photo booth allows visitors to take four black-and-white snapshots for free (despite the vintage words painted outside that indicate a 25-cent fee).
“Fame” brings together works of different media that look at famous people. “Images of celebrities have been gradually replacing portraits of heroes,” reads the section note. Across the wall printed with a large image of LeBron James hangs Constantino Brumidi’s “The Apotheosis of Washington” (1859), which is a preliminary work of the Capitol dome in Washington D.C.’s interior painting, depicting George Washington surrounded by holy figures in the clouds. Saunders commented that the Capitol dome is probably the most “hallow shrine” in this country, in which “Washington has become a god.”
“He’s moved on from being a real person,” he said. “He’s the embodiment of ideas and American beliefs about being noble, being moral and being patriotic.”
Walking towards the fourth section called “Propaganda,” Saunders explained that no portraits are accidental, and there is always a reason why a portrait is made. A number of the works included are political, including a Warhol painting in 1972 commissioned by the Democrats to create a negative portrayal of Richard M. Nixon, a more recent political caricature “Who Does He Think He Is” (2008) by Pat Oliphant depicting Barack Obama and a small TV looping the first televised presidential debate between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon.
“This is about the obvious use of portraits for different agendas, for selling you an idea, or a product, or a political belief,” Saunders said. “It’s all about control, about image.”
The fifth section, “Self and Audience,” was, according to Saunders, the part he felt most challenged by in the curating process. Again, he attempted to showcase the long history of artists making self-portraits with a wide variety of works, along with ideas of the intended audiences for the portraits. Included in the section is C. Zimmerman’s panoramic photograph, “Women of the Ku Klux Klan.”
“[This photograph is about] an allegiance of a group that most people would find awful,” he said. “But these people certainly cared about being identified with that group.”
He pointed out that most of the people in these group portraits seem to be happy and proud to be part of the group.
“It’s about issues of identity. We all want to figure out where we fit into something, and connect to things that we care about and believe in.”
The section also includes more contemporary works, such as “Genetic Self-Portrait: Hair,” which is a hair’s image under a microscope, and a “Name Self-Portrait (with Beethoven),” on which the artist Gene Beery identifies with Beethoven through mere words and no image.
“Ritual, Power, and Memory” combines the ideas of monuments and memorials.
“This whole section really is about how we remember people, and how we use their lives to tell other narratives or establish beliefs that we feel are important,” Saunders said.
One of the most intriguing works displayed is a collection of postmortem portraits from 1850-75, which are small images of deceased people. Saunders is fascinated by how Americans have a hard time talking about death, though taking these images was a very popular thing to do back then.
“Most of these people were probably never recorded in painting, particularly the little babies who died, and infant mortality was enormously high,” he said. “So this was a way to honor them and to remember them.”
The other side of the section is devoted to public monuments and the breaking down of them in cases of people rejecting the power, both acknowledging the abundance of life-size bronze statues of celebrities in the U.S. and the ways in which they resonate with the public.
The exhibit ends in the center, where the seventh section titled “Gallery” offers the audience a resounding conclusion. “Portrait of Stephen Colbert” is likely to catch the audience’s attention immediately, with its unorthodox composition of portraits within a portrait. Saunders argues that the piece is “a satire of formal portraiture.”
“It’s funny in one regard, very funny,” he said. “But also I think it’s symbolic too, about the seriousness with which people take images.”
Lastly, Saunders discussed a painted portrait of John M. McCardell, Jr., President of the College from 1991 to 2004. The painting was commissioned by the College, and normally hangs in the Board Room in Old Chapel, along with portraits of all other former presidents.
“The idea is that Middlebury [College] dates back to 1800, and the board of trustees has a fiduciary responsibility to care for this institution and make sure it’s preserved and succeeds and thrives,” Saunders said. “By surrounding [the place] by all the people that kept it going, it sends a message, and it kind of underscores the decisions that are being made.”
It is Saunders’ hope that viewers can understand the importance and value of these carefully analyzed portraitures and the whole reason behind American people’s fascination with them. He attributes this particular reason to the founding of the U.S. as a country of immigrants where, for a lot of the people, their heritages are traced to other places. For Saunders, the idea that connects portraits with hierarchy in Great Britain, where some of the first groups were coming from, is mixed with the Americans’ values on individual success.
“It’s all based on identity, and how we view collective identity and individual identity,” Saunders said. “We talk about selfies as being different, and I don’t think selfies are different at all. I think they are just part of a continuum of lots of different things in world we’ve already been doing. It’s just the latest phenomena.”
(12/09/16 2:06am)
It is not often that we, as college students, venture outside the college bubble. Sometimes it is easy to forget that not everyone is a teenager or a twenty-something, and that there are people living in Middlebury who are not students or teachers at the College. However, when we do find ourselves exploring the town and beyond, we are awakened and inspired by the experiences that those in the outer community have to share.
Celia Watson ’17 brought the stories of elders in the Middlebury community to life in her senior independent work, “Old Enough to Know Better, Young Enough to Do It Again.” In this piece, Watson created an intriguing and stunning picture of senior life, as told by the elderly residents of Project Independence in Middlebury. Project Independence, a branch of Elderly Service in town, serves as a day center for elderly people who need supervision, and provides a wealth of services for seniors throughout Addison County.
The play, which was written, devised and produced by Watson, was transcribed almost completely verbatim from interviews with members of Project Independence. It was performed on Dec. 2 and 3 at Project Independence and at the College on Dec. 4. There was a question and answer session after the performance, which gave the audience the opportunity to learn about the process that Watson and the actors went through to get the final product. The work featured actors Lucie Heerman ’19, Will Kelley ’19.5, Steven Medina ’17 and Gabrielle Owens ’17, as well as sound operator Alex Williamson ’17.
“When I first began discussing this project with Theatre faculty, we talked about a number of different organizations in town that were centered around a specific social issue or population,” Watson said. “I am good friends with Jack DesBois ’15.5 who works full-time at Project Independence, and when I talked about my idea to do a verbatim piece, he was supportive and helped set up introductions with the staff there. I had heard and read about devised plays featuring the elderly population (often associated with ‘Reminiscence theatre’) and I thought this group would bring a variety of topics to explore. There is also something profound about theatrically exploring aging, as it is a process that happens to all of us and also isn’t frequently talked about in our culture.”
According to Owens, who played Mary, Dorothy and Diane, sharing and relating the elders’ stories to a broader audience was one of the project’s goals.
“Elders are too often forgotten and shoved aside, hidden away in nursing homes or care centers, in modern American society, while the stories and wisdom they have to share with us remain immensely valuable,” she stated. “I think what we were all working towards in this production was a greater understanding, both for ourselves and for our audience, of what it means to age — what is lost, but also what is gained.”
The stories touched upon the lives and traumatic experiences of the interviewees. One story depicted the condition of Parkinson’s; another told of the death of a spouse; another, a first date at the drive-in movies. Since the interviews were recounted and acted verbatim, the actors worked with the unique oratory habits of each interviewee. This attested to the impressive acting chops of the performers, who used voices and physicality to retell the stories of the elders.
“The process of doing a verbatim show is different because it was a new way of approaching my character,” said Medina, who played Pedro. “It felt as though I relied less on analyzing a text, and more on feeling what it is like to be a human, and because Pedro was such a great guy, what it means to be a wonderful person who has come such a long way.”
The recordings from the interviews with the elders were essential in Medina’s portrayal of Pedro.
“Being that Pedro had a stroke and spoke English as a second language, there were some noticeable differences in his speech pattern. Learning this would be hard if I did not have both the vocal recordings and written script. The vocal recording allowed me to understand what he actually said because I was able to listen and interpret his speech, which allowed me to ‘feel’ like Pedro.”
“Working with verbatim text brings a lot of character, humanity and originality to dialogue that is often hard to convey through fictional speech,” affirmed Watson. “However it does pose many challenges, in that if you want to stay true to the person’s words, you perform them word for word, even if it flows less smoothly than typical theatre speech.”
Throughout the night, the various stories recounted on the stage created lifelike portrayals of the people from the center. The stories told of heartbreak and loss, of mental and physical atrophy, of youth and aging. As a whole, the stories showed sides of the community that can be lost in the on-campus bubble, reminding the audience that there are people outside the College who have experiences to share.
“I found that the elderly really appreciate one-on-one conversation and interest in their lives and stories,” Watson said. “Some of the most gratifying moments were actually having the interviews themselves, being off-campus for a bit and having coffee with them at the breakfast table.”
According to the cast, the interviewees received the performance very well.
“As a performer, I have rarely felt that I had such a strong and immediately evident impact on an audience as I did at Project Independence,” Owens said. “I saw several of the interviewees crying or on the verge of tears during the performance. Most notably for me personally, the real life version of ‘Diane,’ who was the character in the jean jacket, was sitting right in front of me while I delivered her monologue and she started crying about midway through. After I finished her monologue, she called out, ‘Thank you.’”
(11/17/16 9:42pm)
Has Middlebury College developed a case of lockjaw? Following Shaun King’s talk in Mead Chapel two weeks ago, Campus reporters asked students what they thought of his ideas and Black Lives Matter. Many said they were reluctant to be quoted by name. The Campus was able to publish only opinions favorable to King and BLM.
Last week, as a stunned crowd in the Crossroads Café watched Donald Trump win the presidency, the celebrations apparently were confined to dorm rooms. In public spaces, the only permissible expressions seemed to be forced levity, consternation or grief.
When someone wrote Black Lives Matter on a blackboard, prompting someone else to cross off the word “Black” and revise it to “All Lives Matter,” our new Community Bias Response Team felt obliged to issue a communique.
The bias response team, the rest of the college administration, the Campus, the Student Government Association, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Anderson Freeman Resource Center, and other diversity campaigners all seem to be on the same page, but is this impressive alliance of inclusionists excluding a significant share of the college community?
Personally, I have yet to find the silver lining in Trump’s victory. I share the cringing and anxiety of most of the people around me. But we cannot blame Donald Trump for our case of lockjaw.
Elite colleges like Middlebury are a bit like Christian monasteries in the Middle Ages. Our tax status and ability to pass on endowments undivided by inheritance makes us wealthier and wealthier in relation to the surrounding population. Some of our working-class staffers have less privilege than any professor or student--regardless of your skin color, gender status or current social class. If you don’t think this applies to you, let’s add up your tuition benefits and likely future earnings. Without privilege, you wouldn’t be reading books about it.
Middlebury College also resembles Christian monasteries in that we have a noble mission but, day to day, are competing with each other. Who will win the election for abbot? Whose agenda will prevail? Over time the shifting agendas, disagreements and deals of administrators, faculty, students, alumni and trustees have produced multiple discourses and claims that don’t necessarily mesh very well:
We’re a liberal arts college (so we take the time needed to develop subtlety and nuance in understanding complex issues).
We’re as competitive as possible (so we seek to admit and hire the best and brightest).
We’re also a big family (so we claim to have enduring loyalties).
We’re inclusive (which means we welcome new kinds of students and faculty).
We could get sued over that (which requires the constant addition of new forms of surveillance to control risk and assure compliance).
Not only can these commitments collide—every year the administration announces new improvements to manage the collisions. But the improvements can also collide. For example, what happened to our campaign against stress? How long did it stop us from announcing tempting new opportunities to stress each other out? And so I wonder if this college’s vulnerability to lockjaw originates in our attempt, following the advice of the Apostle Paul, to be all things to all people.
Nowadays, being all things to all people requires diversity and inclusion. Over the years, Middlebury College has defined this primarily in racial terms, rather than in terms of social class. There were good reasons to do this, but there were also good reasons not to—one of which is that focusing on race has led to our current fixation with privilege as a function of skin tone, when it actually has stronger roots in social class.
If I’m correct about this, I wonder if we could unlock our jaws with more discussion of how we’re using pregnant terms like race and racism, microaggression, cultural appropriation, and safe space. I say “pregnant” because, while you may expect one thing from these terms, you have a good chance of getting the opposite.
Let’s start with the biggest and scariest word of all, especially in a liberal enclave like Middlebury College. Race is a structural form of inequality that needs to be addressed in a liberal arts education. It is also a cognitive error. Skin tone is not a reliable guide to privilege or lack of same, nor is it a reliable guide to much of anything. My impression is that some Midd faculty encourage students to believe that race is the root of all social evil and that every issue should be racialized, that is, analyzed in racial terms. This is a serious mistake in my view; race is a recent invention, human beings never have lacked other rationales for mistreating each other, and it is rarely a good mono-causal explanation.
Microaggression is intended to describe how a classroom can be stacked against a minority. Judging from an administration-sponsored webinar last year, a microaggression is any perceived slight. But what if the perception is wrong, and how can any difficult issue be discussed without arousing emotions? Calling out students or faculty for microaggressions is more likely to shut down discussions than improve them.
Cultural appropriation is another concept intended to prevent slights to minority students. The problem is that anyone’s culture is, by definition, our assemblage of appropriations from the people around us. Culture is appropriation. What campaigners wish to prevent is cultural misappropriation, but if they are serious about defining what is and is not appropriate, they will have to classify individuals into pre-determined cultural groups and judge what styles of personal expression belong to each group. Good luck!
Safe space is, like campaigning against microaggressions and cultural appropriation, intended to protect minority groups from racial slights. Safety is a word like apple pie and motherhood—no one objects to it. But if the very idea of President Donald Trump makes many of us feel unsafe, should the college rope off areas where he shall not be named?
An underlying problem runs through all three of these concepts. Given that any argument is back-and-forth microaggressions, given that anyone’s culture is a sum of cultural appropriations, and given that our contemporary world is a threatening one, these concepts can be invoked to shut down any exchange of disturbing information.
That’s not what proponents want. What they do seem to envision is that certain people will have the right to label an interaction as a microaggression or a cultural appropriation, and that certain people will have the right to demand safe space. But not everyone. Thus white students will not have the right to demand safe space from a discussion of the slave trade, nor will they be able to claim cultural ownership of Alpine ski gear and business suits.
What the three concepts require, in practice, is classifying everyone on campus into potential victims and potential victimizers. Currently, the most popular label for this category of potential victims is “students of color.” “Of color” is an expression with a long and honorable history. It enables you to situate yourself outside the usual categories. It also builds solidarity between different groups who might otherwise compete with each other, making it very useful in broadening political platforms.
But should Middlebury College use skin color as an administrative category? I will argue no, because when color becomes an administrative category, it requires the institution to classify us on the basis of our skin tone. Exactly who has color? Asian-American and Asian students? Everybody from the Mideast and Latin America? Everybody with an Hispanic surname? And what about the assumption that students of color lack privilege whereas white students have it? Thanks to international student flows, immigration, and intermarriage, as well as Vermont’s class structure, skin tone on this campus is far from an accurate indicator of privilege.
This is why I think we’ve developed a case of lockjaw. With the best of intentions, our administration is mandating concepts that are so racially charged that, in the name of broadening conversations about race, they are instead shutting them down. If race is a cognitive error, we can’t escape it by constructing a new racial system. If we do construct a new racial system, it will empower some people at the expense of shutting other people up, just like the old racial system did.
Professor David Stoll writes in about racial discourse following the election.
(11/11/16 12:50am)
Among the attendees of the first ever Feminist Alumnx Retreat this weekend was Melian Radu ’13, a former English and American Literatures major with a focus in Creative Writing and a Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies and Sociology minor. A recent MFA graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Radu has been featured in Vetch, the first literary journal devoted to poetry by transgender writers. The mission statement of Vetch is to “help bring into the world trans poetry that does not feel the need to translate itself for a cis audience.”
On Friday, Nov. 4, Radu performed in an intimate poetry reading, which included such works as “Premortuary School,” “How Much Google Will You Do, Gull?” and “The Part of the Penal Code Which Applied to Drag Queens Was Section 240.35, Subsection 4.” Her work offers commentary on technology, intimacy and surveillance. She is currently working on her debut manuscript at her new home in L.A.
The Middlebury Campus had the opportunity to speak with Radu on her experiences at the College, the inspiration behind her poetry and her recent publication in Vetch.
How did you start writing poetry?
I was interested in writing as long as I could remember, but I figured I could do novels. I wanted to write fantasy novels – I still want to write fantasy novels – but my junior year of high school, I was like, “I want to improve the descriptive writing in my fiction. All the imagery is very bland, and poetry is about cool images, so I’ll write some poems to practice.” And from there I tried poetry and never went back.
The most serious-ish poem I can remember writing that year was inspired by the movie The Brave One with Jodi Foster, which at the time I didn’t have much of a political-ish, theoretical sense of. But now that I look back, it speaks deeper. It’s a vigilante justice sort of movie, where her husband’s long-term partner is mugged and the system fails to do anything about it, so she sort of takes it into her own hands. It’s sort of this somewhat feminist-y, action-y, dark, intense thriller. So I felt compelled, I guess, to write a poem about that and explore sort of what her motivations were.
What did you study at Middlebury?
I was an English and American Literatures major with a Creative Writing focus. It’s a very unofficial-ish sort of thing, but it does mean you take some extra creative writing classes and you get to do a creative writing thesis instead of a big long paper – which is why I picked the major, really, initially. It was still a very new thing when I got to Middlebury. My main intellectual pursuits were in my minors, which were Gender Studies and Sociology.
How did those two fields of academia intersect with your writing?
The more I got into critical theory and whatnot, the more it kind of came into my poetry. And my undergraduate thesis was about true incidents, mostly, of people attacking or in some way damaging works of art – even though I do have rather a suspicion of poetry. I’ve seen lots of poetry that wants to be political and therefore ends up not being very interesting or poetic.
That’s not the case in a broader sense. I mean, Claudia Rankine is part of the most famous at the moment. You know, incredible books she’s put out in the past few years that just electrified people in the sense of what people can and should be doing in terms of our larger culture and society. But I’ve also seen the other side, where it’s just very hand-fisted, schlocky and not interesting. So I want to avoid that. But I am, of course, drawn to these concerns. So yeah, that thesis, whenever I mention it to people, I guess the contrast was pretty immediate. People were like, “Oh my gosh, someone would blow up the statue or they would splash acid on this famous painting or punch a hole in a Monet? Like, that’s disgusting, how horrible. That’s worse than, like, beating somebody up. They should be in prison for that.” That, to me, is horrifying.
So I guess the concern at the center of it was, of course I like art. I love these classic works. But at the same time, I also, in the end, place a lot of value, more value, I can come right out and say it, on human life. So when I see people being actually in prison for long periods of time or whatnot for these things, it immediately unsettles me. I was interested in exploring that sort of contradiction in those poems. Like, different ways of looking at these incidents.
Do you see your poetry as a form of activism?
I don’t know how much of it is known at Middlebury anymore, but I certainly did some things when I was here. I mean, all-gender housing, all-gender restrooms, whatnot. I believe deeply in that kind of work, and I sort of believe deeply in the artistic work that I do. So somehow there’s definitely the overlaps to it, and I’m cool with those. But also for me, I draw some line in the sense of, I want to write poetry that’s interesting and effecting change or affecting a person. But I do have a distrust of people who want to see their poetry as the first and foremost activist thing they do.
I mean, I see ways in which it’s worked, and I guess it relates to my own work a lot, but there was a particular discussion a few years ago of drone poetics. Like, we have this dislike of this uprising drone usage, drone warfare, so we’re gonna write these poems in the sense of, we’re gonna look back at the state, we’re gonna surveil them. Our poems will be like little drones watching over the government or something. I don’t know, you can hear my skepticism – like, are these poems gonna be read to people in the government? Are they gonna suddenly be like, “President Obama’s gonna realize what terrible thing drones are and stop using them to bomb small children”? I doubt it.
The people who write these poems probably do other things as well, but I guess I would be skeptical of anyone who thought that was the first and foremost way we’re gonna have impact. As one tool in a toolbox, great, I guess that’s the bottom line of it. But I like concrete action for sure. I like very much that I was able to write poems that said interesting, cool things while I was at Middlebury, and I also did other things that would have concrete effects.
Your work will be featured in the newest issue of Vetch. Can you speak more on nature of this publication?
It’s the first publication primarily of trans-authored poetry, at least on an ongoing basis. [The editors] are very much interested in the idea of what is it like to write poetry from a trans perspective. Every issue seems to have a great theme they bring up to anyone who’s submitting, with a broader concern that’s also rooted in a trans experience. This new one that’s coming out, they gave us “ekphrasis” – literal Greek – which is looking at something, describing something, in the oldest classical sense. The perfect ekphrasis sense is, you look at a statue, describe it in words, and then someone who saw those words would have the exact same experience as the person who looked at the statue. Now, that perfect description is kind of tough to pull off, but it’s the idea of work that responds to something that you see.
A lot of my own thesis was ekphrasis in terms of reacting to the work as I was seeing it, to a photo that was being damaged, or reacting to the site of somebody damaging it. So that was the theme of the issue, but they made it like, “We think transness is often involving rewriting one's experience in a certain sense. How can you rewrite as you also reinterpret something you see visually?”
What inspires your poetry?
What I do like about Vetch in their mission is a way to engage a trans identity in a way that is not totalizing. It’s not all about that. It is nice to be able to expand outward. Like, yes, we’re trans, we’re writing from that experience, but also there’s a lot more than that going on. It’s very rare for me to write a poem anymore that is about my gender dysphoria or something, but certainly it’s in there. I mean, I do write a lot about sex and nudes and whatnot. So it’s really shot through with a lot of queer sexuality. But technology is really the driving force.
What is one piece of advice you would give to an aspiring poet?
This may be overly prescriptive, but I know it worked well for me and I’ve given it to a lot of people: to very aggressively pursue change or avoid sameness in their writing. Very much my Middlebury writing career was gradually trying a new thing in every poem. If the last two poems were first person, this one's gonna be third person. I haven’t written a formal one in a while, so I'm gonna do a villanelle [a 19-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains]. This one’s from my own perspective about my life, but now I'm gonna do a persona poem from somebody else's poem.
Avoid getting caught up in a “this is my style” if you want to develop a voice. That’s a concern that people have and I very much had at one point – and did I really develop a voice? I don’t know. I guess people say, “That sounds like you, that’s unique, so that’s a voice” – but what is, anyway?
What would you say to anyone interested in your work?
That they should feel free to jump at the chance to critique it. ’Cause it is very much in constant flux, and I am always more than ready to have somebody say, like, “No. Not working. On any number of levels.” Which can be creative or, like, “No, I think the way that you engage with surveillance is overly informed by this particular idea you have that is inaccurate. ’Cause there are other aspects to how technology shapes people’s lives in ways you’re not considering.” Because poetry is very much informed by one’s perspective and mine has those limitations. I’m always interested in exploring and plugging holes in, but also expanding in different ways.
PEER REVIEW
Your dog dies and you give him to
Science. You do this with all your things.
On a hook on the wall of the study
glints Journal of Microbiotics: Science
saw fat content in the rate your ice
cream melted. His study has reduced
obesity and was widely hailed in Europe.
Winter was hard, with Science taking
up the whole couch. Poor St. Nicholas—
your parakeet whose body you gave
to Science who gave it back: Husk is
husk, he said. There is nothing to learn from this.
When the ice thaws you think you will sink
Nick to Belize. Science is getting a PhD
in psychoanalysis and asks: Who are the men
in your life? What else will you give me?
I am hungry and could eat nine cigars.
Your dog has died but his stem cells
cure your SAD. Science will save you yet.
(11/04/16 12:31am)
On Thursday, Oct. 20, the Chilean television show Bala Loca (Stray Bullet), created by Assistant Professor of Film and Media Culture David Miranda Hardy premiered in Dana Auditorium. More than 60 students, faculty and community members gathered for the series’ pilot, which the host Professor Jason Mittell called its “U.S. premier.”
The series centers on a 50-year-old journalist who is a former investigative reporter under Chilean dictatorship. The 10-episode series explores issues in contemporary Chilean society, particularly the relationship between money and politics as well as the distrust of businesses and institutions. The show debuted in June on CHV, a Turner-owned Chilean network, and attracted both local and international audiences.
In the discussion following the screening, Hardy explained certain elements in the series and how they came to be. The decision to have a main character in a wheelchair, namely journalist Mauro Murillo, was the one thing that Hardy refused to negotiate. In a follow-up interview with Hardy, the intriguing process of making Bala Loca was further elaborated.
Yvette Shi (YS): How did you decide to make a TV show in Chile?
David Hardy (DH): I just came here a couple years ago, and that’s where I have my identity still. That’s where most of my creative ideas still are happening. That’s where I have my network, so I know how to go around producing. I hope in the mid-term to long-term, I will start producing stuff here. I would love to do something in Middlebury actually, I’m working on something so we can produce something super local.
YS: Do you see your experiences here at Middlebury influencing your decisions when making the show?
DH: Not really. That show is something I started while I was there, and my mind is thoroughly thinking of the audience there. But, one of my concerns or curiosities last night was to watch a group of American people, to see how it was received. And in the comments I’m receiving, and also because the show was seen by many other Latin American people from different countries before, I think it does have an international appeal. I follow closely with politics here too, and I think there are a lot of crossovers. It’s talking about issues like health insurance. Probably all Western countries are having that discussion. And then as you move into the show, you have the relationship between money and politics. It’s absolutely at the essence of the current political campaign here. So there are things that are very specific, and there are things that are idiosyncratic.
I wanted to make a show that has a strong local flavor and identity. You can say it’s absolutely Chilean, and that’s one of the reasons that it’s a success in Chile. People are really happy to see themselves reflected on the screen. And it can be appealing to other audiences. There is kind of a global audience for series; basically in the world of cable they are really on demand. Of course Chile has its own niche there, and they were very happy to receive the series.
YS: How do you see the Chilean dictatorship play into the show?
DH: It’s so recent in Chile, it’s really hard not to talk about it. It’s impregnated everything in Chilean society. We played around it, it’s not the main theme at all in the show, but we do play around it. We do acknowledge how essential is the power structure in Chile today.
The one thing that might be different is that we are not talking about dictatorship in a traditional Leftist way, which is a place of victim of human right. We are talking, hopefully in both ways. We talk about human rights, but we also talk about the economic and systemic influences in current Chilean society.
I think there are issues in the show that are at the very edge worldwide. I haven’t seen many series treating disabilities the way we do. And it’s fascinating, because it is very front and center. Nobody describes a character as the guy in a wheelchair. I think we managed to put a very charismatic, compelling character in a wheelchair, without being the center of the narrative. And I think there’s not a lot of that. I’ve been watching a lot, you go from PD-centering, rehabilitation, medicalization of the problem, asexual troubled characters … But he goes in and out of cars, you see stairs in his house; he’s not problematic.
YS: What do you do to keep the series smart but at the same time entertaining? Is there a conflict?
DH: There are all these horror stories about television executives pushing changes in your content; we didn’t have much of that. That could be a challenge, when somebody is demanding changes in the narrative that are meant just to satisfy the audience, or increase the ratings.
I want people to be engaged. “Entertainment” is a dirty word sometimes, because people rate it as if it’s entertaining, then it’s shallow. And I don’t see it as incompatible at all. I think being entertained is to be engaged, and to have emotions with the characters, and to be challenged to make reflections on current political issues. And of course we didn’t want to give a lecture to anybody, we wouldn’t be didactical, telling people how to feel or how to think.
YS: How did you familiarize with the process of investigative journalism?
DH: Reading a lot. In Chile we have the more traditional journalism, that is politically biased to the right. Recently there has been no print press opposing these, but there’s a lot of movement online. And we have a Center for Investigative Journalism, which is a digital news media outlet, that goes on really long investigative projects. Then they release a really long article. We had extensive interviews with them, both to understand the mechanics of their work, how they go around to research and investigate, and also in terms of what they thought is going to be the hottest topics.
Those are really amazing journalists in Chile, coming back from the dictatorship, doing undercover work. We didn’t want to model our character on one of them, they are too nice. I want a character that is more flawed, more of an under-hero, while these guys are real heroes.
(11/02/16 11:30pm)
Anyone who has ever taken a sociology class is all too familiar with the idea of social constructs. Conversely, anyone enrolled in a science class has likely encountered their fair share of “objective truths” -- facts so ingrained in the public consciousness that they do not even warrant questioning. These competing frameworks of knowledge collide in discourses on drug policy, forcing us to reexamine the ways in which we define “drugs” and “addiction.”
Associate Professor of Sociology Rebecca Tiger, the final speaker at the 2016 International Politics and Economics Symposium on The Global Illicit Drug Trade, explored these ideas in her speech “(Re) Imagining Drugs and Addiction: The Past, Present and Possible Future of Drug Policy” on Friday, Oct. 28.
Tiger, whose research centers on punishment, social control and critical addiction studies, began by asking, “What ideas animate drug policy?”
She challenged the audience to rethink hegemonic concepts of drugs and addiction -- that is, to unpack the human-made concepts that we have come to accept as scientific truths.
“There’s no such thing as drug in nature,” Tiger stated. “Drug is created.”
Likewise, the scientific “discovery” of addiction can be more accurately described as the invention of the idea of addiction. After all, it is no coincidence that the emergence of addiction theories coincided with growing public concerns over people’s problematic relationship with alcohol in the mid 1700s to late 1800s. The constructed definition of a “chronic relapsing brain disease” was repeated over and over again until it was simply accepted as fact. Physicians and psychiatrists adopted the addict as their newest subject, determining the standards for a “healthy” and “unhealthy” mind.
Challenging the “scientific” claims that undergird modern theories of addiction, Tiger pushed the audience to consider how “harm” is constructed. She highlighted the historical shift of the “dangers” of marijuana -- a drug once portrayed as lethal and now widely accepted as harmless -- to exemplify the social and temporal subjectivity of harm.
“An idea that we think of as natural is actually negotiated,” Tiger pointed out.
Through the pathologization of human behavior, she reasoned, the concept of the “addict” became a justification for state control. Policymakers decided that a regulatory regime was needed to reform these “fundamentally flawed” members of society. This demonization of drugs was codified into law by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration.
Yet, as Tiger emphasized, these regulatory measures did not stem entirely from a genuine concern over individuals’ well-being. Rather, the criminalization of drug use served to disproportionately target communities of color, as public narratives linked drugs to the socially ostracized “other.” African-Americans became the face of the national crack epidemic, in much the same way that Chinese laborers in the U.S. were associated with opium in the late 19th century. The “junkie” -- a word that conjures up the same, stereotyped image in most of our minds -- spread through skewed media coverage, creating the foundation for the disastrous, deeply racialized War on Drugs.
Bringing nuance to an issue that is often conceptualized in black-and-white terms, Tiger offered a critical analysis of the bifurcated model of addiction, a framework that dominates current public discourse on drug use. She pointed out the perceived distinction between “good” and “bad” junkies: those who become dependent through no fault of their own (such as Adderall users) versus those seen as “irredeemably deviant” and “dysfunctional to the core.”
This unfair and entirely constructed binary is perhaps best exemplified by Tiger’s humorous observation that “good” junkies “get to write New York Times articles, articulate their subjectivity.” Meanwhile, “bad” junkies fall victim to the criminal justice system.
“Jail has become a treatment tool to remind addict of commitment to sobriety,” Tiger said. “Coercion is framed as enticement.”
Having broken down the ways in which the media, policymakers and the medical field create and capitulate ideas of drugs, addiction and appropriate treatment, Tiger switched to a more hopeful tone. In search of “promising avenues of disruption” to the status quo, she proposed a more expansive definition of the title “expert” to include individuals with lived experience on the topic. The Urban Survivor’s Union -- a coalition of drug users who advocate for respect, dignity and social justice for themselves and their peers -- is one such group. Noting the absence of this unique expertise on Friday’s panel, Tiger recognized the limitations of the symposium itself.
Furthermore, she suggested a reconceptualization of drug usage as a new kind of consciousness rather than as a mental degradation. This call for radical open-mindedness resonated with some audience members and perhaps disquieted others. But the purpose of Tiger’s talk was likely not to indoctrinate everyone into a new worldview; it was to spark discourse on a topic riddled with misconceptions and stigma. This dilemma is best encapsulated by a poignant analysis that Tiger offered in the heart of her speech.
“Drug is the effect, not the cause, of a regulatory regime,” she stated. “The problem of drugs is actually the failure of drug policy.”
(10/27/16 8:03pm)
It is rare to find a story so relevant that it feels like it takes place on your college campus. It is rarer to find a story so relevant that makes you realize it does.
One such story is found in Wrecked, the latest novel by Maria Padian ’83. Padian, who lives in Brunswick, Maine, is also the author of Out of Nowhere (2013), Jersey Tomatoes are the Best (2011) and Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress (2008).
The story, which chronicles sexual assault on college campuses, shifts between the perspectives of Haley and Richard, two college students who see their worlds change after a fateful night of partying.
One night, Haley’s roommate, Jenny, returns from a party as a different girl, shaken and wounded. Richard’s friend, Jordan, returns from the same party telling a story about a drunken hookup with a freshman. When Jenny accuses Jordan of rape, the worlds of these four people collide and change forever.
It is a story often told in young adult literature. Wrecked, however, is different. Its story is not told by the victim but by two outsiders without all the details. Their perspectives mirror our own as readers, as we are never quite sure what really happened. Haley and Richard come together as they struggle to sort out truth from lie and memory from imagination. They are confronted with the rape culture and victim-blaming that too often affect the lives of women and men who face the realities of sexual assault.
Because the story isn’t told from the victim or the accused, the task of weeding through the many details to find the truth becomes even more complex. It underscores for the readers the toll sexual assault exacts on peoples’ lives, highlights the unhealthy relationship some college students have with the words ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and demonstrates how easy it is for doubt to creep in.
The story takes place at MacCallum College, a fictitious but eerily familiar small private school. The characters party, concern themselves with sports and grades, engage in casual sex and even occasionally recline in an Adirondack chair on the green.
Padian said that “[t]he setting is very much influenced by living in a small college town,” but she maintained that it was not actually based on Middlebury or Bowdoin College.
MacCallum College is probably based on all small private schools. It’s easy to see the similarities between its setting and characters and any liberal arts college or university in America. The very fact that the setting can take on so many real locations is why the story feels so possible and so visceral. If something like this could happen at MacCallum, it could happen at Middlebury. And it certainly does.
Padian’s characters come beautifully to life in this enthralling and powerful novel. They allow us to step into their shoes and wonder how we would act, what side we would choose and if right and wrong can be defined as sharply as the world wants them to be.
(10/26/16 8:12pm)
The Student Government Association (SGA), in partnership with the Black Student Union (BSU), unanimously passed a resolution at their Oct. 23 meeting that called for the College to raise both a banner and the flag of the Black Lives Matter movement on campus. The resolution recommended that the College hang the banner and flag for the duration of the fall semester, and provided several suggestions as to where both should be placed.
In the resolution, the SGA also officially announced their support for the endeavors of the Black Lives Matter movement and the BSU. They also recommended that President of the College Laurie L. Patton meet with representatives of the BSU at the end of the fall semester to discuss the sending of an e-mail statement that would support and endorse the Black Lives Matter movement.
The resolution also recommended the “continued effort of the Middlebury administration to consciously observe the deficit of black representation both within the student body and the faculty makeup.”
As worded in the bill, “the SGA and the BSU recommend: a careful look at where students are being recruited; how socioeconomic diversity impacts matriculation; investigating why students of color ultimately decide not to attend Middlebury College; investigating retention rates of students of color.”
They also recommended “challenging the notion that only ‘trainings’ can facilitate understanding amongst faculty members; and acknowledging the C3 program’s efforts at Middlebury College and exploring similar options for faculty diversity.”
The final recommendation made by the SGA and the BSU is for the College to create a standard procedure that would allow students to share their responses to “campus-related issues.” An example of such a procedure, as provided in the bill, would be “a go/link that invites students to express themselves to different campus-related issues.”
Members of the BSU, including BSU Co-President Nia Robinson ’19 and Treasurer Clark Lewis ’19, drafted and submitted the bill as part of an ad-hoc committee that the SGA formed three weeks prior to the approval of the bill. The ad-hoc committee also included Community Council Co-Chair David Ollin Pesqueira ’17, Senior Senator Aliza Cohen ’17 and Junior Senator Hanna Pustejovsky ’18, all of whom were the co-sponsors of the bill presented to the SGA.
According to Pesqueira, the subcommittee, prior to their first meeting, asked members of BSU to brainstorm recommendations and ideas to be included in the resolution.
“We wanted to make sure that BSU’s perspective was the priority because we did not want to lose the passion or authenticity that they brought to this bill,” he said.
This year, the SGA, according to SGA President Karina Toy ’17 is making a more concerted effort to work with student-organizations in drafting and voting on proposals.
“Right when [the SGA] knew we wanted to talk about this, David invited BSU to come [to a meeting],” said Toy. “If a student group really wants something to happen and we feel, as SGA members, ‘yes, this is something that we want to support them in,’ I think [collaborating] is completely fine.”
Both Toy and Pesqueira emphasized the desire of both the SGA and the BSU to have an open dialogue and work with the College’s administrators on this issue.
“[We] wanted to make sure that [the resolution] didn’t come off too much as a list of demands and whatnot, because we really do want to work with the administration, and, if anything, we do want to say that it is possible to work with the administration to create these effective policies,” Pesqueira said.
On Tuesday, Oct. 25, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott, after a conversation with other members of the College’s Senior Leadership Group (SLG), responded to the resolution in an email to its authors.
Abbott wrote that the SLG supports the hanging of a Black Lives Matter flag or banner on campus. “The SLG is in strong support of the BSU hanging a flag or banner in a central space on campus,” Abbott wrote. “In fact, our conversation led us to determine that we are in support of creating a permanent, central space that student groups can have access to for the purpose of raising awareness and for creating support for a major cause or concern.”
According to Abbott, members of the SLG suggest that this space or “zone of free expression” be located on the patio in front of the McCullough Student Center, otherwise known as the Wilson Terrace.
“This would resemble public spaces seen at other campuses where banners, posters, chalked pavement and others forms of expression are commonly seen,” said Bill Burger, the College’s vice president for communications and chief marketing officer, in a summary of the SLG’s response.
“The creation of such a space will take some time and can’t happen over the winter, but it is something we’re eager to see discussed and debated on campus.”
Should the space be created, the SLG suggested that the SGA, or a subcommittee of the SGA, be responsible for determining how students can petition to use the space.
“Students can discuss whether a flagpole is desired in that space, or whether it would be preferable to have a means of hanging banners from the sides of the building, creating clotheslines for banners somewhere in that area, etc.,” Abbott wrote.
In response to the resolution’s call for the College to draft an email statement in support of Black Lives Matter, Abbott said that they will do so when the “zone for free expression” is completed. “The College will include a note of support for Black Lives Matter in a message announcing the establishment of the zone for free expression,” she said.
With regard to the SGA’s recommendation that a procedure be created for students to express their thoughts about “campus-related issues,” Abbott’s email said that the SLG believes that the creation of “zone for free expression” would be a powerful and impactful way for students to express their beliefs. However, she did add that if the creation of another platform is particularly important, the SLG would be willing to have another conversation in the future.
Abbott also responded to the recommendation from the SGA and the BSU that the College continue to observe the deficit of black representation both within the student body and faculty.
“Many of these [recommendations] are actively in process, and are being overseen by various members of the college staff and administration,” Abbott said. “[Chief Diversity Officer] Miguel Fernandez and [Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty] Andi Lloyd have offered to meet with students to offer an update on hiring, and we can certainly have a member of the admissions staff discuss how we are evaluating practices of outreach/recruitment.”
When asked by The Campus for comment on the drafting and passing of the bill, as well as a reaction to the response of the SLG, the leadership of the Black Student Union chose to respond, as a board, with the following statement:
“We, the board of the Black Student Union, would like to thank the SGA, SLG, and the numerous students who came forward with support for the flag. We are eager to see how it will affect the community’s conversation and how student groups will approach activism in the future. This is a great step for BSU moving forward.”
