Columbia to offer course credit for attending Occupy Wall Street
posted at 6:05 pm on January 2, 2012 by Tina Korbe
Hmm. I don’t seem to recall news that an Ivy League University offered a course about the Tea Party, but I’m sure I must have just missed it. The Internet is a vast and cavernous space, after all. Nevertheless, it’s true: Columbia University plans to offer a new class all about the Occupy movement — taught by Hannah Apel, an Occupy veteran. CBS New York reports:
The course begins next semester and will be divided between class work at Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus and fieldwork that will require students to become involved with the Occupy movement outside of the classroom.
The course will be called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement” it will be run by the anthropology department.
Appel is a staunch defender of the Occupy movement, in her blog she said that, ““it is important to push back against the rhetoric of ‘disorganization’ or ‘a movement without a message’ coming from left, right and center.”
Appel told the New York Post that while her involvement with the movement will color the way she teaches it will not prevent her from being an objective teacher.
Can we please dispense with the academic and journalistic pretenses of objectivity? Again and again, I ask: What not just own the bias?
At any rate, this doesn’t surprise me, but it still manages to disappoint me. Why not a class on “popular protest movements” — team taught by a Tea Partier and an Occupier? Or, better yet, why not no such nonsensical anthropological class at all? Plenty of college graduates still don’t know the basics of history, philosophy, literature, mathematics and the rest of the subjects that comprise a classically liberal education.
It’s just Jan. 2, and we already have a story to rival “The Top 10 Outrageously Dumb Campus Moments of 2011.” Looks like 2012 will be a very blog-worthy year.
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That just reminded me, I saw a bumper sticker or t-shirt in Manitou Springs last weekend that said “You call me witch like it’s a bad thing”. Pretty typical stuff for that area.
dentarthurdent on April 26, 2013 at 11:14 AM
Well… most the original neo-conservatives were disillusioned Trotskyites, so Mathews has that correct. However, they are those who rejected Trotsky Communism, and became adamant anti-communists.
Sackett on April 26, 2013 at 1:36 PM
Chrissy,
it does not matter if YOU are well read or not, (my bet is on ‘not), nobody is going to donate money to build a Chris Matthews library.
Sir Napsalot on April 26, 2013 at 1:59 PM
Yes, Irving Kristol, who is considered sort of the father of neoconservatism was, as a young man in the 20s and 30s, a Trotskyite communist. That was because he believed it was the only answer to the fascist threat that was threatening the west. Norman Podhoretz, another influential neoconservative, had a similar experience.
But they broke with communism, Trotsky-version (they were always anti-Stalinist) in the 1940s and 50s, and became anti-communist and pro-American/pro-Western advocates.
But what does this have to do with the neoconservatives in the Bush Administration? None were Trotskyites as young men and none were Straussians. Irving Kristol had a friendship with Strauss but what does that have to do with the Bush Administration?
Matthews read an article somewhere – my guess is that it was one written by Hitchens – and extrapolates from events 80 years ago to today.
It’s sophomoric, historically illiterate, and intellectually simplistic.
But those are Matthews’ best qualities.
SteveMG on April 26, 2013 at 4:20 PM
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