I came to Washington University a completely different person than I am today. I was not particularly political then, though my background in history naturally predisposed me to some interest in politics.
But two things-the Internet and global events-changed my life forever. Access to the Net enabled me to see how the rest of the world interpreted crises-the 2000 electoral coup d’etat, 9-11 and the naked aggression against Iraq, in particular. It also showed to me that I could no longer keep silent, that I had no choice but to put to use my knowledge of history in the service of life, rather than allowing the study of history to reduce life to an insipid footnote.
So with no regrets and no apologies, I’ve decided to leave Washington University. Before I do, I want to say a few things about three groups.
The first is SAKINA, the Palestinian advocacy group: keep up the good work; you’re doing an amazing job. Washington University is a ferociously racist, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian campus. Your tireless effort to unmask the lies about Israel’s terrorist occupation, about the Jewish-only ‘Jim Crow’ settlements, about the apartheid wall, IDF demolitions, IDF checkpoints and IDF attacks on civilians, media and medical workers is profoundly praiseworthy.
The mendacious liars who write on these pages calling the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem frauds, who erase from history events like Israel’s reprehensible sneak attack against Egypt in 1967, and who vilify brave people like Adam Shapiro and Allison Weir aren’t going anywhere. But their defense of the indefensible is growing shriller and less sustainable. Every day, more people see what’s happening in the Bantustans of Gaza and the West Bank; time and justice are on your side. I only wish I could have done more to help you.
Secondly, I want to address the new leadership of the CLA and the Washington Witness. Despite the Stalinist predilections of the President/Editor and his Atkins-addled sidekick, I respect the work you are doing. You are wrong about virtually everything, obviously, but I have sincerely enjoyed getting to know each of you. Thanks for keeping the left looking good by offering the diametric opposition to truth… in color!
Despite all you get wrong, at least you reject the demented ravings of that foolish ignoramus and apologist for mass murder, Ludwig von Mises! Certain of your antecedents evidently had a library consisting of this one author alone, thus replicating Mises’s own narrow-minded obliviousness as a consequence. I’m glad to see that changing. Some Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Cornell West, Arundhati Roy, Friedrich Nietzsche and Judith Butler would really do your clique some good.
The third group I want to recognize are my students. To the first group of History 101 students I ever taught during that historic semester of Fall 2001, to the amazing ‘Cracks in the Republic’ class, to the wonderful India seminar, to my ‘African-American Experience’ section, to last semester’s ‘Poverty and Progress’ class: thank you from the bottom of my heart. I entered graduate school to work with students like each of you, and I will always consider our shared experiences the high point of my time here.
Finally, I reserve special consideration for the History 102 students with whom I’m currently working because, whether you know it or not, you were instrumental in my decision (in a good way, of course!). During our best discussion of the year, a discussion about Nietzsche, you forced me to ask myself whether I cared about his work from the perspective of a disinterested historian who dispassionately surveys his writings, or whether I cared about Nietzsche from the perspective of one who takes to heart what he says in my own life.
After our discussion, I read another of his essays entitled “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.” In the opening paragraph, Nietzsche writes, “We need history . . . for reasons different from those for which the idler in the garden of knowledge needs it…. We need it for the sake of life and action, not to turn comfortably away from life and action… We want to serve history to the extent that history serves life: for it becomes possible to value the study of history to such a degree that life becomes stunted and degenerate.”
For me, degeneration set in four years ago. Now I’m escaping to New York with the woman I love to grow again – straight out of a Bruce Springsteen song!
Ciao!