"Information must be free!"

Does anyone really think that Tom Petty is endorsing Michelle Bachman when she campaigns using his song American Girl? These songs have become such a part of our common culture that I don't think people make that mistake. So whatever the legal merits, I am a bit dubious of Tom Petty's claim that political candidates he does not like should stop using his song. (Of course, I find further irony in that rock music is now such a part of common culture that social conservatives even use it.)

Kant on Colonialism

In September, I attended a wonderful conference at Oxford University on Kant and Colonialism, run by Lea Ypi and Katrin Flikshuh. Here are recordings of some of the presentations.

Kant songs

When you randomly google Kant, you come across some interesting blog posts, in this case, a Kant song: "Basically Kant was right"

fernsehen

Watching the godfather II in German last night was an interesting experience.

Kant im Kontext

Oddly, the University of Frankfurt does not seem to have Kant's lectures in the classroom available in an electronic format. Quite disappointing!

"Providence Plantations" and Memory of Anti-Slavery Efforts

Josh Marshall has a fascinating post about the problem he sees with eliminating the "Providence Plantations" from the official name of "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations":

There's a proposition on the ballot this year to change the name of Rhode Island from "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" to simply "Rhode Island." The idea is that the appendage "Providence Plantations" is redolent of slavery and should go. I can't get too crazy up in arms about it. But it'll be an unfortunate change and I'll be sorry to see it go....The first and probably the most important point is that the "plantations" in Providence Plantations has nothing to do with slavery....That's a meaning of the word that only became current maybe a century or more after Roger Williams named his little colony in the early-mid 17th century...Yet that isn't the end of the story. Not by a long shot. Because Rhode Island is probably the most important slave state outside of the Old South, not only because it had a reasonably large slave population for New England but because of the pivotal role its merchant community played in sustaining the slave trade.... [B]y the 18th century there was significant plantation slavery (in the more familiar, modern meaning of the term) in Southern Rhode Island and the Rhode Island transatlantic merchant were the dominant players in the North American slave trade. 

But here's the catch. Catch or irony, take your pick. Rhode Island started as two colonies. One was Providence Plantations, the settlement Roger Williams established in modern Providence along with a couple other small towns in what is now Northern Rhode Island....The other was Rhode Island, the folks living on Aquidneck Island, the main Island in Narragansett Bay. The folks in 'Providence Plantations' were among the first principled opponents of slavery anywhere in the Americas, certainly in New England and by most measures everywhere in North America. Folks like Roger Williams, Samuel Gorton and a bunch of other guys who died more than three centuries ago whose letters and records I spent way too much time reading in my 20s. It's a fascinating legacy... But it seems unambiguously true to me that purging "Providence Plantations" from the state's name, in addition to being a strike against the state's history, would have the perverse effect of silencing the legacy of the people who were anti-slavery long, long before many people in the Western World even recognized it as a moral question. I get the reasons for trying to change the name. In modern English, 'plantation' means a southern estate with black slaves picking cotton. And the state is for the its living residents and citizens, not what someone who's got some relatively obscure historical knowledge about what these ancient names mean. Still, for all the reasons I've stated, if they trim the state's name down to just "Rhode Island" I think it will be a big mistake.

Derrida hoax

Gary Banham writes on Brian Leitner passing on a Derrida hoax (and Brian and Gary have words with each other in the comments section).

Yale Fraternities and Productive Dialogue

Following up my post below about the Yale fraternity whose pledges marched to women's dorms shouting no means yes, yes means anal sex:

The Yale Daily News has a *staff* editorial entitled "News' View: The right kind of feminism," saying: "Feminists at Yale should remember that, on a campus as progressive as ours, most of their battles are already won..." I wouldn't blame Yale's 'wrong' type of feminists if they said this editorial shows how far away the campus is from winning some important battles. Perhaps you think some rhetoric is overblown (DKE as a male-ponzi scheme) or at least counter-productive (but consider: why is it?), still, this editorial seems to downplay the problem: "And yet, as groups rushed to condemn the foolhardy DKE bros, they threw overwrought epithets, some almost as absurd as the chants themselves." Further, the editorial says: "We do not believe that a drive to inspire rape motivated the young, impressionable brothers on that cold Wednesday night. As the [women's] Center responded with histrionics, what could have been an opportunity for our campus to maturely and gracefully reprove public stupidity and affirm mutual respect turned into a daylong, private spat." A tip for the Yale Daily News: when you criticize others for overreacting with 'absurd' rhetoric, it is best not to say that women were hysterical when they should have been graceful. Yale editors: whatever you think to be true about their rhetoric, do you really think your call for productive dialogue goes along with your words? Further, even if the Women's Center did 'overreact,' many other feminists should rightly see this editorial as evidence that not people seeing the problem in the situation. It is not just the intentions of the rushed, as the editorial says. That is absurd. And the editorial's silence is unproductive. I mean, even the Feminist magazine at Yale says that while all participants deserve contempt (true), it is the rush chairs who really deserve punishment. Does the Yale Daily News editorial board sees them as the 'right' kind of feminism? I somehow doubt it.

Perhaps the YDS would respond saying that even the rush chairs did not intend to promote rape. If so, does the Yale Daily News really think that should end the conversation? I think there is a problem with just assuming 'boys will be boys', especially when organize a public march that harasses women. Yes, this is harassment or something very much like it. Remember that sexual harassment in the workplace wasn't seen as an issue. I suppose after making all these comments criticizing the YDS for not furthering dialogue, I have incurred an obligation to say my own thought-through comments, a debt I acknowledge I have not fully repayed here.

Update: "Penny Lane," The second commentator here, says much of what I wanted to say, but much clearer. Commentator "Chief" on the same thread says:

The regrettable fact is that making light of rape does lead to there being "attackers among us." This obviously does not mean that all of the DKE pledges who said the chants have committed or will commit sexual assault. However, Yale students have assaulted other Yale students sexually and will do so in the future, and to act as if that is a ridiculous or reprehensible assertion is to be dangerously blind to reality. If it weren't for the Women's Center's "histrionics," we might not even be talking about this, and DKE might never have had to face any consequences. Sometimes you have to yell about things to get people to pay attention, even if op-eds later criticize your manners. Moreover, the WC has sponsored and will continue to sponsor events that help create a productive discourse. That kind of feminism sounds just right to me. 

Another commentator points out that the YDN seems not to have paid attention to what the Women's center actually said:

This piece is incredibly disappointing. Yale clearly isn't as progressive as it claims to be. Did the members of the YDN actually read the women center's op ed. The YDN claims that the women's center is accusing DKE of intending to incite violence. Yet the women's center clearly said:

"Wednesday night’s chanting, when taken at face value, is a call to commit rape. We do not think that the fraternity brothers intended to incite violence; more likely, they neglected to consider how their words would impact our community."

They very clearly are saying that the intent might not have been to incite violence. But it's not the intent, but the effect that matters. The effect of joking about rape is that a woman (or man's) consent to sex is not taken seriously. Joking about rape is not going to turn every man in ear shot into a rapist. But it does send the message that maybe consent really isn't that important, and that what really matters is not whether your partner is enthusiastically enjoying themselves, but rather that you got them to sleep with you. It may have been a joke, but jokes are not always harmless.

Anyway, the commentators on the YDN site seem to be all over this:

To run this editorial now is, in effect, to shift the blame/responsibility for this incident to the Women's Center, for not having better handled an event that should be an expected or commonplace occurrence. This is wrong [...] In short, while it may indeed be worthwhile to examine whether the Women's Center could better represent Yale women, or more effectively advocate for feminist issues on campus, it is inappropriate to do so in this context, as an explicit response to a controversial incident of what may be termed sexual harassment.

Louis Henkin, RIP

Koh on the death of one great writers on human rights and international law (via vc).

Yale Fraternities, and when 'sorry' just does not cut it

From Salon:

Yale fraternity pledges chant about rape

A viral video shows young men marching through campus while barking, "No means yes!"

Sometimes, the post just writes itself: On Wednesday night, Delta Kappa Epsilon pledges marched through Yale's Old Campus -- where most first-year female students are housed -- chanting, "No means yes, yes means anal!" The fraternity pledges were marched blindfolded while barking like soldiers ... with marching orders of anal rape. They also threw in, "My name is Jack, I'm a necrophiliac, I fuck dead women." A video of the initiation was immediately posted on YouTube and, what do you know, it's gone viral.

Now, DKE President Jordan Forney has been forced to apologize for this blatant sexual intimidation by calling it "a serious lapse in judgment by the fraternity and in very poor taste." But this sort of hateful crap isn't a "lapse in judgment." It doesn't innocently happen that you're guiding male pledges by young women's dorms in the dark of night chanting about anal rape. It isn't a forehead-slapping slip-up, it's a sign that you need major reprogramming as a human being. Student feminist magazine Broad Recognition has it right: It's calling for Yale to take disciplinary action against DKE -- where George W. Bush got his presidential training -- "on behalf of its female students."

Here's one commentator:

But as a senior at a Princeton, a university that's culturally very similar to Yale, I have to say that although this apology seems sincere, it's indicative of a larger cultural trend that permits behavior like this - as long as the perpetrators seem really, really sorry afterward [...] This time, though, things can be different.  Yale has an opportunity to discipline the men who were responsible for this triggering, verbally violent action, and they shouldn't accept yet another "sincere" apology - their students should know better.  This is a situation where "sorry" is just not good enough. 

I am sure I could relate this to my work on reparations for past wrongs.But I'm interested for other reasons closer to home. First, I had issues with fraternities at Dartmouth, so this is an issue close to home. An yet,  I do have to say I have a hard time imagining a fraternity doing this at Dartmouth during my time there, or at least in my last two years after President Wright threatened the greek system being ended 'as we know it'. Perhaps I'm wrong. I'm not sure why I say this or why this might have been. I think some of the same impulses were present at Dartmouth, but there tended to be a lot of self-policing, at least in public. There were incidents that were rightly condemned, but this seems a whole other level. Indeed, perhaps it is because fraternities were under threat that I have a hard time imagining this for most of my time at Dartmouth. (Again, I'm thinking of at least from 1999-2001).

Here's Yale's Feminist magazine on this:

What is the significance of a moving gang of men, chanting in deep, throaty, voices for sexual assault– more specifically, for rape?  Historically, there are many precedents for this action.  A gang of men chant ing any thing is an assertion of a masculine presence.  A masculine presence declaring the invasion of female agency perpetuates an already despicable set of behaviors present in the Yale community.  To perform this action where the youngest women in the Yale community live, in their first full month of school, in the location where they are supposed to study and live, is fear-mongering.

Here's The Dartmouth:

Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Yale University issued an apology to the Yale Women’s Center Thursday for having pledges shout inappropriate phrases during an initiation ceremony on Yale’s campus Wednesday, the Yale Daily News reported. The pledges repeatedly chanted phrases such as “No means yes, yes means anal” and “My name is Jack, I’m a necrophiliac, I f*ck dead women,” which the Women’s Center called “hate speech” and “an active call for sexual violence,” according to the Daily News. Members of DKE and board members from the Women’s Center scheduled a forum for Friday, which several Yale deans plan to attend, according to the Daily News. Each group said its members hope to improve their relationship with the other organization. Representatives of the Women’s Center drew a connection to an incident that occurred in January 2008, when 12 of Yale’s Zeta Psi fraternity pledges stood outside the Women’s Center with signs that said “We Love Yale Sluts,” the Daily News reported.

Update: The national DKE organization has stopped the Yale chapter from any more pledging actions for now.