[Frameworks] Saul Levine - resources

[Salah Hassanpour]

Clintonite tone-policing does not have much business in academia. I hope
I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Being expected to enable and coddle dysfunctional reactions to
confrontational rhetoric (reactions that themselves seem borne of a
generalised disorder, highly-mediated by alienating technology but that
we're never meant to question) is a deplorable outcome for any person who
takes freedom of conscience seriously. To be subordinated to those whims is
to bare witness to the imposition of abusive & fundamentally dehumanizing
affectual hierarchies that must be vigilantly patrolled & regulated
against transgressors, with only a diffuse moralism and the "consumer
rights/customer satisfaction" of their "badic income units" (what a
Canadian university refers to its undergrad students as) guiding it, a.k.a.
neoliberal tripe, a barely-disguised cover to evacuate all the "troublesome
old lefties" out and replace them with centrist mediocrity.

On Mon, Apr 2, 2018, 10:23 Scott MacDonald, <smacdona at hamilton.edu> wrote:

> *Here is a message the MassArt president sent out recently:*
>
> Dear MassArt Faculty:
>
> We’re in the news, as many of you have seen and heard. Some of you have
> reached out with questions and concerns, so I wanted to send a personal
> note to all of you to unequivocally express where I stand on some important
> issues.
>
>  We all share the conviction that academic freedom and creative expression
> are essential to the identity of MassArt. Academic freedom is your right as
> faculty. One of my responsibilities as president is to help you preserve
> it. Please know that I will always stand with you in defending academic
> freedom in the classroom and in your research and creative activity.
>
> I believe we also understand that with freedom comes responsibility. We
> have responsibility to our students and to our staff and faculty
> colleagues. Among the most basic of those responsibilities is to respect
> the dignity of every person and to engage with one another in a collegial
> manner. These values are not incommensurate with one another. Freedom,
> creativity, respect, collegiality exist together at MassArt. That’s the
> kind of community that welcomed me, and that’s the kind of community I
> intend to nurture and preserve.
>
>  As a campus community aspiring to justice and equity, we grapple with
> many difficult issues. We will continue to grapple with many difficult
> issues. And as the university enterprise attests, answers are often not
> easy. Your role as faculty, engaging difficult issues in your classrooms
> and leading by example, is the heart of MassArt, and I thank you for your
> dedication to students and student learning.
>
> While I am unable to discuss the particulars of personnel matters, let me
> clarify that no faculty member has had their academic freedom abridged in a
> disciplinary action, nor has anyone been forced to retire over matters of
> academic freedom. Any reports to the contrary, in the media or on social
> media, are untrue.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> David
>
> David P. Nelson, President
>
> *Reading between the lines, I suspect that what may be at issue is not so
> much the films (of course, teaching film seriously is all about disturbance
> and always has been and should be), but Saul's tendency to--I'm quoting D.
> H. Lawrence--“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion
> moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.” Many of us who have
> known Saul for awhile have become accustomed to his saying things hot
> (something almost de rigueur for activists a generation ago), but it may be
> upsetting now to colleagues (and perhaps students). It may mean differently
> now.*
>
> *Scott*
>
> On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 9:59 AM, Scott Dorsey <kludge at panix.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Wait a minute.  Students took a class about art that was intended to be
>> disturbing and then they got angry because it disturbed them?
>>
>> This is nothing.  When I was in school, they made me take differential
>> equations _in spite of my express complaints that it made me
>> uncomfortable_
>> and refused to allow me to graduate until I had taken it.
>>
>> I thought being disturbed by things was what university was all about?
>> --scott
>>
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