General

The poem by Wilfred Owen I mentioned in class last Monday when showing pictures of the ‘aqedah (binding) of Isaac from catacombs and synagogues follows below. It was written in July 1918 as he was wounded and invalided, before being sent back to Amiens in September. He was awarded M.C. in early October and killed on Nov. 4, 1918.

The parable of the old man and the young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

An official UC-wide strike notice for May 21-22 has been issued by AFSCME. The basic reasons are spelled out in a video by Kathryn Lybarger, President of AFSCME Local 3299, and an article by Lybarger for the SF Examiner. Quote:

UC medical centers grossed $6.9 billion last year — up more than 16 percent from three years ago — and banked hundreds of millions in profits. So where is all that money going?

Since 2009, “management” payroll at UC Health Facilities has grown by $100 million. Hospital CEOs have seen raises as big as $100 an hour, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses. Debt payments for new facilities in San Francisco, San Diego and elsewhere have quadrupled, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
New UC policies have given hospital executives incentives to maximize revenues and cut costs without meaningful oversight. Too often, the cuts disproportionately impact patient care.

This includes dramatic increases in the use of undertrained temporary workers and volunteers for frontline care. It means fewer nursing aides often sharing responsibility for a larger number of patients. And for those who staff everything from surgical teams to cleaning crews, it means growing pressure to do their jobs faster and with fewer people.

UCSC maintains an information page regarding the strike.

Red bare berries inviting shoppers to wild deportments:

Please go to Google Translator, which supplies the correct translation of the German, and propose the new tasty translation. Algorithms need all the help they can in learning to wink. “A saveur de baise sauvage” [a savœr də bɛz sovaʒ] gets the shopper’s attention more than “A saveur de baies sauvages” [a savœr də bɛ sovaʒ]. Serve with cream.

Tintern Abbey de Wordsworth:

[...] For I have learned
To look on Nature not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joyces
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and the mind of man —
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Poem of the day sent by Larry Robinson:

They used to say we’re living on borrowed
time but even when young I wondered
who loaned it to us? In 1948 one grandpa
died stretched tight in a misty oxygen tent,
his four sons gathered, his papery hand
grasping mine. Only a week before, we were fishing.
Now the four sons have all run out of borrowed time
while I’m alive wondering whom I owe
for this indisputable gift of existence.
Of course time is running out. It always
has been a creek heading east, the freight
of water with its surprising heaviness
following the slant of the land, its destiny.
What is lovelier than a creek or riverine thicket?
Say it is an unknown benefactor who gave us
birds and Mozart, the mystery of trees and water
and all living things borrowing time.
Would I still love the creek if I lasted forever?

– Jim Harrison

I went this afternoon to the discussion about online courses at UCSC. I wanted to hear what people had to say about the usefulness of having commercial enterprises delivering credit units in oversubscribed courses at a public university.

It was a strange meeting, as the decision to introduce online courses via the Coursera platform has already been taken at UCSC. Without any illusions, according to the Executive Vice-Chancellor, who said it was not about saving money, but more about making available to more people new kinds of learning experience. I’m not sure what the nature of the pilot project is, only that UCSC will begin by offering three courses. One on C++, another on the (very) early automated teaching of literacy, and the third one on the Nazi concentration camps (I can’t use the word “holocaust” which to me is still attached to its Greek and churchy meaning, “a whole-burnt offering” or sacrifice). One can check the basic syllabi on Coursera’s page. Back to the discussion this afternoon which was in any case a posteriori, about “what it meant for faculty”, and how to adapt to it. “Discussion” is not the right word, actually, as the public could only ask questions via written notes. None of my four scribbled questions made it.

Koller, one of the founders of Coursera, a private company developing instruction software, argued this new “platform” was real innovation. She did this essentially by claiming that there hadn’t been any innovation since the printing press in the education field. So, in a kind of underhanded way, we were to infer that…. TADDAH! here was innovation, finally. I thought codices in the second century in Greco-Roman society, that was real innovation. While the computer often sends me madly scrolling, in a back to antiquity sort of move, in searching for example for great photos of a Dead Sea Scroll text! Books and public libraries, that was and is innovation! No matter, she sounded excited also about the possibility of offering new ways of “knowledge delivery”. To deliver knowledge, wow, this is vocabulary that sounds awfully ancient to my fatigued ears, as dated at least as the end-of-nineteenth century positivism. Not only that, but she was clearly excited by the idea we could and should provide access to all kinds of learners, at various speeds, in all places, and encourage peer interaction, etc. I believe in that too, absolutely, but I think it can and should be done freely without creating a for-profit company. Why didn’t she create a non-profit, if she believes so much in this concept? Along that line, she presented the moral argument consisting of saying that we (we in the western societies, I suppose?) have a duty to bring knowledge to poor nations and people who have been deprived so far of this human right. The missionary factor. I almost cried. Can only be good, right?

This is exactly the type of argument brought by the advocates of the green revolution in the sixties, or by Monsanto, Pioneer and other crop genetics companies when trying to impose their innovations on the market and having to convince the public and politicians these innovations would be the miracle cure for hunger. Needless to say, not only is this approach demeaning of people, it is also hypocritical. Better distribution of the plethora of existing food, or of the riches of our educational and cultural resources (beginning with those of the putative countries we have a “duty to share our knowledge with”) is first of all a political question. No question, we should share what we have (and in all directions, meaning we should learn from others, and stop being fake missionaries). But doesn’t that moral duty of sharing and openness also include open sourcing? Do we need Coursera et al for this? No we don’t, or at least UCSC doesn’t.

Everyone at UCSC is invited this Friday, April 26 2013, to a debate on online education at UCSC. I copy below the message if have received a number of times (worries about low turn out?). I note that “the big questions” listed below assume UCSC is adopting a certain type of online courses. I don’t see any questions that I consider “big” such as: cost? legal/credit aspect? process of privatization and dynamics of investment in research functions of the university versus de-investment in undergraduate teaching?

See how the amended Steinberg bill (SB520, dated Feb 21, 2013) still explicitly mandates that the three segments of higher education in California enter into associations with private online providers. The amended bill defers authority in selection and oversight of online courses to universities’ administrations and academic senates, but the basic principle remains the creation of a reserved market for private online course developers. And how will this oversight work in practice, given the budget pressures? It’s proposed as a solution for very impacted entry courses. But there are solutions for this problem that do not necessitate the creation of this kind of relationship with private companies. How much will the subscription costs eventually be for universities and (separately) for students? Universities use a lot of money already to pay for proprietary software subscriptions for record keeping, payroll, registrar, etc., and for access to information databanks. In the case of online courses, why wouldn’t the companies pay for the right to market their products to students in public universities since their marketing strategy will heavily depend on the use of the good name and reputation of universities they contract with? That reputation was built thanks to public investment. In other words, why wouldn’t the public universities levy fees on companies interested in contracting for the more profitable parts of education, and do their bit to put the breaks on the widening economic gaps between citizens? They are already taxing sizable segments of the population, but unfortunately it is a very regressive tax, by charging much higher fees to many students and their families.

April 22, 2013

To: UCSC Community
From: Joe Konopelski, Chair, UCSC Academic Senate
Re: April 26 Forum on Online Education

The Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching, in collaboration with its Committee on Educational Policy, will host the third in a series of forums on online education on Friday, April 26.

The forum — open to all faculty, staff, and students — will take place from 3:15 to 5 p.m. in the Stevenson Event Center. “Online Education & UCSC: What’s next?” will focus on the big questions surrounding online education:

• How will online education change the role of the professor?
• What are the risks to faculty in respect to intellectual property in offering online courses?
• How will online courses be assessed, and who will determine the measures for success? The panelists, below, will discuss these and many more questions.

Panelists include the following:

• Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera, professor of computer science, Stanford University
• Robert Meister, professor of history of consciousness, UCSC
• Rodney Ogawa, professor of education, UCSC
• Alison Galloway, campus provost/executive vice chancellor, UCSC
• Representative from the UCSC student organization “New School”

The discussion will be moderated by Lois Kazakoff, deputy editorial page editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and a UCSC alumna (Cowell, 1976).

The Parents Circle—Families Forum is the name of an organization of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost family members in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I paste below a letter, an appeal really, by Uri Avnery the great peace activist, about a meeting over a week ago in Tel Aviv, organized by Combatants for Peace and the Forum of Israeli and Palestinian Bereaved Parents. It was circulated by Tikkun.

Uri Avnery
April 20, 2013

In Praise of Emotion

IT WAS a moving experience. Moments that spoke not only to the mind, but also – and foremost – to the heart.

Last Sunday, on the eve of Israel’s Remembrance Day for the fallen in our wars, I was invited to an event organized by the activist group Combatants for Peace and the Forum of Israeli and Palestinian Bereaved Parents.

The first surprise was that it took place at all. In the general atmosphere of discouragement of the Israeli peace camp after the recent elections, when almost no one dared even to mention the word peace, such an event was heartening.

The second surprise was its size. It took place in one of the biggest halls in the country, Hangar 10 in Tel-Aviv’s fair grounds. It holds more than 2000 seats. A quarter of an hour before the starting time, attendance was depressingly sparse. Half an hour later, it was choke full. (Whatever the many virtues of the peace camp, punctuality is not among them.)

The third surprise was the composition of the audience. There were quite a lot of white-haired old-timers, including myself, but the great majority was composed of young people, at least half of them young women. Energetic, matter-of-fact youngsters, very Israeli.

I felt as if I was in a relay race. My generation passing the baton on to the next. The race continues.

BUT THE outstanding feature of the event was, of course, its content. Israelis and Palestinians were mourning together for their dead sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, victims of the conflict and wars, occupation and resistance (a.k.a. terror.)

An Arab villager spoke quietly of his daughter, killed by a soldier on her way to school. A Jewish mother spoke of her soldier son, killed in one of the wars. All in a subdued voice. Without pathos. Some spoke Hebrew, some Arabic.

They spoke of their first reaction after their loss, the feelings of hatred, the thirst for revenge. And then the slow change of heart. The understanding that the parents on the other side, the Enemy, felt exactly like them, that their loss, their mourning, their bereavement was exactly as their own.

For years now, bereaved parents of both sides have been meeting regularly to find solace in each other’s company. Among all the peace groups acting in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are, perhaps, the most heart-lifting.

IT WAS not easy for the Arab partners to get to this meeting. At first, they were denied permission by the army to enter Israel. Gabi Lasky, the indomitable advocate of many peace groups (including Gush Shalom), had to threaten with an application to the Supreme Court, just to obtain a limited concession: 45 Palestinians from the West Bank were allowed to attend.

(It is a routine measure of the occupation: before every Jewish holiday the West Bank is completely cut off from Israel – except for the settlers, of course. This is how most Palestinians become acquainted with Jewish holidays.)

What was so special about the event was that the Israeli-Arab fraternization took place on a purely human level, without political speeches, without the slogans which have become, frankly, a bit stale.

For two hours, we were all engulfed by human emotions, by a profound feeling for each other. And it felt good.

I AM writing this to make a point that I feel very strongly about: the importance of emotions in the struggle for peace.

I am not a very emotional person myself. But I am acutely conscious of the place of emotions in the political struggle. I am proud of having coined the phrase “In politics, it is irrational to ignore the irrational.” Or, if you prefer, “in politics, it is rational to accept the irrational.”

This is a major weakness of the Israeli peace movement. It is exceedingly rational – indeed, perhaps too rational. We can easily prove that Israel needs peace, that without peace we are doomed to become an apartheid state, if not worse.

All over the world, leftists are more sober than rightists. When the leftists are propounding a logical argument for peace, reconciliation with former enemies, social equality and help for the disadvantaged, the rightists answer with a volley of emotional and irrational slogans.

But masses of people are not moved by logic. They are moved by their feelings.

One expression of feelings – and a generator of feelings – is the language of songs. One can gauge the intensity of a movement by its melodies. Who can imagine the marches of Martin Luther King without “We shall overcome”? Who can think about the Irish struggle without its many beautiful songs? Or the October revolution without its host of rousing melodies?

The Israeli peace movement has produced one single song: a sad appeal of the dead to the living. Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated within minutes of singing it, its blood-stained text found on his body. But all the many writers and composers of the peace movement have not produced one single rousing anthem – while the hate-mongers can draw on a wealth of religious and nationalist hymns.

IT IS said that one does not have to like one’s adversary in order to make peace with them. One makes peace with the enemy, as we all have declaimed hundreds of times. The enemy is the person you hate.

I have never quite believed in that, and the older I get, the less I do.

True, one cannot expect millions of people on both sides to love each other. But the core of peace-makers, the pioneers, cannot fulfill their tasks if there is not an element of mutual sympathy between them.

A certain type of Israeli peace activist does not accept this truism. Sometimes one has the feeling that they truly want peace – but not really with the Arabs. They love peace, because they love themselves. They stand before a mirror and tell themselves: Look how wonderful I am! How humane! How moral!

I remember how much animosity I aroused in certain progressive circles when I created our peace symbol: the crossed flags of Israel and Palestine. When one of us raised this emblem at a Peace Now demonstration in the late eighties, it caused a scandal. He was rudely asked to leave, and the movement publicly apologized.

To give an impetus to a real peace movement, you have to imbue it with the spirit of empathy for the other side. You must have a feeling for their humanity, their culture, their narrative, their aspirations, their fears, their hopes. And that applies, of course, to both sides.

Nothing can be more damaging to the chances of peace than the activity of fanatical pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians abroad, who think that they are helping their preferred side by demonizing the other. You don’t make peace with demons.

FRATERNIZATION BETWEEN Palestinians and Israelis is a must. No peace movement can succeed without it.

And here we came to a painful paradox: the more this fraternization is needed, the less there is.

During the last few years, there has been a growing estrangement between the two sides. Yasser Arafat was very conscious of the need for contact, and did much to further it. (I constantly urged him to do more.) Since his death, this effort has receded.

On the Israeli side, peace efforts have become less and less popular. Fraternization takes place every week in Bil’in and on many other battlefields, but the major peace organizations are not too eager to meet.

On the Palestinian side there is a lot of resentment, a (justified) feeling that the Israeli peace movement has not delivered. Worse, that joint public meetings could be considered by the Palestinian masses as a form of “normalization” with Israel, something like collaboration with the enemy.

This must be changed. Only large-scale, public and heart-felt cooperation between the peace movements of the two sides can convince the public – on both sides – that peace is possible.

THESE THOUGHTS were running through my head as I listened to the simple words of Palestinians and Israelis in that big remembrance meeting.

It was all there: the spirit, the emotion, the empathy, the cooperation.

It was a human moment. That’s how it all starts.

Poem by Yehuda Amichai, circulated today by Larry Robinson (“A poem a day”). Hebrew provided but I haven’t been able to solve the punctuation problem.

Listen to this passionate, moving speech by Glenda Jackson on thatcherism. The kind of radical conservatism Thatcher stood for was and is a social and spiritual disaster. Let kings and processions fig-leaf it.