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3/31/2003 08:36:00 PM | Timothy Professor and student disagreement with Nick De Genova's comments during the anti-war teach-in event De Genova's speech (see my notes in the post below) ended with a call for the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine. Students hesitated before clapping, but a substantial number, I'd guess about a quarter of the room, did clap. But I did not hear any students cheer or boo. (See my post here, based on a similar letter I wrote to Andrew Sullivan). No one clapped—and no one booed—De Genova's comments about Mogadishu. I took notes on almost every speech throughout the entire six hours of the Columbia Anti-war teach-in, and De Genova's comments were not at all similar to the other speakers. My original plan was to blog on all the speeches, but press attention has wrongly focused almost exclusively on De Genova, as if his comments were representative. De Genova's name was not on the program, as he was a last minute substitution for a speaker who could not make it. In fact, several professors repudiated De Genova's sentiments and comments in the their speeches at the Columbia Anti-war Teach-in, and they received louder applause from the audience for doing so and I will detail them here. Bruce Robbins, the speaker who immediately followed De Genova, said: "I differ from Nick [De Genova], the previous speaker. There would be some version of patriotism [that would be acceptable]." The applause from the audience for his criticism of De Genova was clearly louder than the clapping De Genova received only at the end of his speech, when talking about the defeat of the U.S. war machine. Barbara Fields was the next speaker (or the speaker after next, if you count the comments of an M.C.). Fields ended her speech with a quote saying: My country right or wrong... when right to be kept right, when wrong to set right. Fields concluded by saying that 'those of us who owe our allegiance to the aggressor in this war must be patriotic enough to set our country right.' There were then loud cheers from the audience, and Fields waved and smiled from her seat as the applause went on for a long time. She did not mention De Genova, but I think it is clear that the sustained applause and cheers for Fields show that many more students agreed with her sentiments about patriotism than they did with De Genova's. (To be fair, Fields did help win the crowd over near the beginning of her speech with this joke: "Tom Ridge has faith-based civil defense, also known as praise the lord and pass the duct tape.") Later, Todd Gitlin began his speech by saying "Fellow citizens, and I would like to say patriots..." Gitlin also said that rather than just protesting, we need to work to defeat George W. Bush in 2004. He then said we should not nourish a third party, resulting in claps and some loud boos from the crowd. [Many newspaper accounts noted that 'the audience' did not boo De Genova's call for more Mogadishus, and contrasted this with how 'the audience' did boo Gitlin for implicitly dissing the Greens. But the audience was not monolithic. I have no problem saying that Greens are typically not adept at making good political distinctions; after all, they apparently bought Nader's line that there was not any difference between Gore and Bush.] Finally, Eric Foner, one of the organizers of the event, began his speech near in the last hour of the event by saying that he wanted to express some disagreement with the idea that if you are an American patriot, you support imperialism, white supremacy, etc. Foner said he refused to cede the definition of patriotism to George W. Bush; the patriot is a person who is never satisfied with his country, and he mentioned, among others, figures like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglas. These are the comments that I found in my notes of Professors repudiating De Genova's sentiments at the teach-in itself. Organizers like Prof. Foner and Prof. Cohen repudiated De Genova in even stronger terms in newspaper interviews. Imagine if the speaker De Genova replaced had not gotten sick: the press coverage, if there was any, would have been vastly different, and rightly so. That suggests to me that one speaker's comments should not define this event. perma link |
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