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Advocate, Fall 2015, Vol. 27, No. 2

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A genealogy of VIOLENCE Understanding the Massacre in Ankara pg.23 aadvocate Contents Opencuny.org/gcadvocate EDITOR’S NOTE FEATURES

[email protected] pg. 3 Raising the Flag of Palestine pg. 17 How to Fly High Without Moving Editor in Dadland CUNY NEWS Chief Maye Forward: The Continued Drug War Waged by Prohibitionists PSC calls for Disruptive Action and Bhargav pg. 20 Managing Strike Authorization Vote Editor Rani pg. 5 A Genealogy of Violence: Understanding the Massacre in Layout Paul L. Wake Up Chancellor Milliken!: Ankara Editor Hebert Photos from the PSC’s October pg. 23 Protest Publication Information pg. 6 The Advocate is the student pub- REVIEWS lication of the Graduate Center, What the Union Wants: PSC CUNY’s Contract Demands CUNY. It is published six times a Book Review: year. Publication is subsidized by pg. 8 student activity fees and the Doc- Agaisnt All Odds: Voices of Popular toral Students’ Council. Struggle in Iraq DEBATE pg. 28 Submissions The Advocate accepts contributions Book Review: of articles, illustrations, photos and Not a Woman’s Issue: Gender Parity Word Warrior: Richard Durham, letters to the editor. See the website in the Workplace Radio and Freedom for submission guidelines. pg. 12 pg. 32 Articles selected for publication CONVERSATIONS will be subjected to editorial revi- Theatre Review: sion. We pay for all contributions Hamilton with the exception of letters to the Two Letters to Chancellor Milliken pg. 39 editor. pg. 15 Art Review: Juan Hinojosa advocate pg. 43 Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015

Page 2 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 EDITOR’S NOTE

Dadland Maye

In the last editorial, I questioned Indeed I struggle with the speculate that the editorial does President Chase Robinson’s and questions of what diverse not prioritize their issues or that the English department’s com- themes, voice/s, and writing it is not consistent in returning to mitment to resisting institution- structure should occupy this issues previously addressed. For al and careerist strategies that privileged space. No doubt, the this issue, therefore, the limited profit from trafficking in - black editorial’s third-page position in space sheds light on a variety of ness. I mentioned the names the Advocate’s print copy and its concerns, such as the need to of the Doctoral Student Council marked placement on the web- participate in pressing political (DSC) members in order that site’s menu bar denote efforts conversations in order to locate our community recognize and to prioritize its significance. Like the Graduate Center’s successes appreciate the student laborers most other publications, the and struggles within a global in the CUNY field. I introduced Advocate understands that the framework. myself by referring to the bag- editorial, as a substantive ana- Importantly, it is the paper’s gage and beauties that cultivate lytic genre, is also a one-stop goal to regularly feature trans- my diverse identities and their information shop for some read- national conversations that usu- relationship to my editorial ers who rely on the publica- ally occupy the peripheries of US approach. I referred to a featured tion’s expertise, credibility, and media discourse. In deference article that discussed attitudes to integrity to present them with to that need, this issue features sexual harassment on campus. an astute, informed discourse. Eylul Fidan Akinci’s “A Genealogy I encouraged the submission Bearing this amazing burden of Violence in Turkey,” a report of articles rather than support that ensures that this small space on the ongoing struggles against judgmental and non-proactive provides for the needs of diverse an oppressive regime in Turkey. practices. Certainly, I would like readers, I worry whether the edi- The problematic political frame- to more deeply address some of torial choices involved in such work the article exposes reminds those issues. Yet the future has an endeavor truly align with the us to never grow overly comfort- to reflect a diversity of issues paper’s goals. Specifically, this able with those we empower to out of awareness that it appears concern emerges out of the need serve us because histories have inequitable to solely vocalize to reassure certain readers of the shown how the entrusted often concerns around a select num- consciousness and care woven erect the greatest barriers to ber of issues. into this textual production— success. In consideration of this particularly those who might recurrent subjugation of the

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 3 EDITOR’S NOTE

people’s interests by the empow- and reflect on the concerns raised within a certain timeframe has ered, I leave it you to contem- by its Executive Committee in dis- narrowly focused on the admin- plate on the reasonableness of cussions with the administration. istration’s ineffectiveness in drawing contrasts to the events These include a space for student securing economic opportuni- of 4 November, which led to the prayer and meditation and more ties. The bulk of concerns point unfair arrest of several dozen gender-neutral bathrooms, con- towards what is widely known faculty members. The protest sequences of the budget shortfall but rarely noted in open forums, responded to the demands of on academic affairs and non-aca- that students, in many cases, the Professional Staff Congress’ demic services, possible tuition face more roadblocks from the (PSC’s) 27,000 membership remissions, exploring whether to faculty mentoring process than that has been denied a con- increase the number of Master’s from the administration itself. tract since 2010. Several hun- students or the tuition for out-of- Yet, while the problem of facul- dred faculty and staff members state students, instituting a dis- ty inaccessibility is a critical one, gathered outside 205 East 42nd ability services office, and fund- many students accept that it is too Street, CUNY central office. ing issues that affect the Dean risky to engage with integrity— PSC President Barbara Bowen K. Harrison awards, GTFs, and that is, with the same strategies stood among those arrested undocumented students. used to confront the administra- with signs demanding, “Stop the In addition to the focus on tion. This is particularly the case War on CUNY,” “CUNY Needs a the role of the administration in when considering that the faculty Raise,” and “No More Excuses, enabling and disabling student names most floated around are Chancellor Milliken.” lives, it is also imperative that among the most distinguished Further addressing university we foreground the increasing at the Graduate Center. At the concerns that need the chancel- student concerns about a criti- same time, one should bear in lor’s attention, Todd Fine’s let- cal institutional problem – the mind that some of these faculty ter to Chancellor James Milliken general inaccessibility of many laborers secure their prominent condemns the surveillance faculty members. From engag- status from working like mules practices of the New York Police ing students’ emails and private for a system that penalizes those Department targeting Muslim conversations, it has become who prioritize student-service students in CUNY. The current clearer that faculty inaccessibility duties. In other words, names and past chancellors have tac- is one of the most serious issues mentioned of some of the most itly endorsed these troubling confronting students. This is also appreciated advisors and men- practices. To date, more than true of many research universi- tors included faculty members one hundred CUNY faculty mem- ties, but it doesn’t mean it should who do not boast of the most bers have supported Fine’s letter be accepted at the Graduate distinguished departmental pro- as signatories. While consider- Center. Students complain that files. As I close, I wish to encour- ing Fine’s letter, the Chancellor certain faculty members rarely age you to submit articles that should also take note of Jennifer return emails, they do not thor- further examine the problem. Tang’s letter, which calls atten- oughly read dissertation chap- While the paper doesn’t glorify tion to the learning-access dis- ters, and they are inaccessible anonymity, it will consider pub- parities between disabled and during office hours. Their failure lishing anonymous writers in able-bodied students. to effectively mentor students this case. However, such writ- Sustaining the focus on the has so often disrupted students’ ers—whether Graduate Center inner-workings of the university, graduation goals and emotional students, faculty, or staff—must it is necessary to return to the wellbeing. Yet, any discussion on identify themselves to the edito- highlights of the last DSC meeting the students’ failure to graduate rial team.

Page 4 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 CUNY NEWS

PSC calls for Disruptive Action and Strike Authorization Vote

The Professional Staff without a raise,” as they chanted, the union’s Executive Council to Congress, the union that repre- “No contract, no peace,” and call a strike if necessary. Barbara sents over 27,000 CUNY faculty “Education is a Right! Fight, Fight, Bowen, the President of the and staff, has called for a disrup- Fight!” PSC, in a letter from 15 October, tive mass action rally at CUNY’s In addition, the PSC also held a asserts that, “A strike authoriza- central office on 42nd street on series of teach-ins at its various tion vote is not a step the union 4 November to support the PSC chapters over this month to raise leadership takes lightly, even team as it sits down for another awareness of the state of CUNY though it is many steps away round of negotiations with the funding, the increases in student from actually calling a strike.” CUNY management. This rally is tuition, and the larger impact This issue, along with the details one of a series of mass actions of these austerity measures on of the Taylor Law, will be tabled planned by the PSC in its “esca- the quality of education. These for discussion in the next PSC lation” of the campaign to push teach-in sessions are a means to mass meeting on 19 November. for a fair settlement of a contract encourage faculty across the var- The disruptive action sched- that has been long overdue. ious CUNY colleges to find peda- uled for 4 November, which itself On 1 October, the morning of gogically suitable ways to discuss is legal, will be executed solely the first CUNY board meeting of the funding crisis and the need by PSC members who have been the year, hundreds of PSC mem- for a fair contract in classrooms. training in practices of “non-vio- bers gathered outside Chancellor The Graduate Center chapter lent disruptive protest,” and will Milliken’s apartment for a “wake- of the PSC, in a meeting on 20 risk arrest with their participa- up call” protest. Many profes- October, seriously discussed the tion. The PSC, however, encour- sors turned up dressed in aca- possibility of a strike authoriza- ages people to attend the rally demic robes and sounded off tion vote. A strike authorization in solidarity, to be witness to the alarm clocks, pots and pans. The vote is not a vote to strike, which protest, which in itself does not protestors held up picket signs is illegal and penalized in New entail a risk of arrest. that read “No more excuses, York state under the Taylor Law. Chancellor Milliken” and “6 years It is rather a vote to authorize

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 5 WAKE UP CHANCELLOR

MILLIKEN!By Andrew Caringi

PSC Union President Barbara Bowen leads CUNY faculty and staff at a protest this past month as they call for an end to the contract dispute that has left them without raises for six years.

After six years of no raises, CUNY professors and staff delivered a wake-up call to univer- sity chancellor James B. Milliken, protesting in the early hours of 1 October 2015 in front of his $18,000 per month apartment, paid for by the university. Over the past year CUNY pro- fessors and staff have been out in the streets protesting their five-year contract dispute with the university. With 83 percent of the city’s unions under contract, PSC-CUNY is left as the largest union without a contract, leaving 5,846 employees without sched- uled raises. In a recent email to CUNY pro- fessors and staff, PSC President Barbara Bowen told union mem- bers that they are prepared to strike if CUNY management fails to put a reasonable offer on the bargaining table. “We’re prepared to escalate, and escalate and escalate,” says Bowen, whose next protest was planned for 4 November 2015. “At this point we feel we are going to have to take an action that is more disruptive, even unpermit- ted, to produce an offer.” CUNY professors and staff hold union-made signs calling for a resloution to the five- year contract dispute

Page 6 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 LEFT, protestors take a photo with their union-made signs and alarm clocks, telling the Chancellor to wake up and end the five-year contract dispute.

BELOW, PSC Union members want an end to the Taylor Law, which makes strikes and work stoppages illegal in New York State.

BELOW, CUNY professors and staff protest in front of Chancellor Milliken’s $18,000 per month apartment, which is paid for by the university.

ABOVE, NYPD officers maintain a perimeter around the entrance to Chancellor Milliken’s apartment.

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 7 Competitive Compensation Salary Increases: All members shall receive per annum across-the-board salary increases, compounded. What Movement in Steps: For full-time employees, the five-year and seven-year steps shall be converted to one-year steps. For adjunct and hourly employees, movement from the penulti- mate and antepenultimate steps will take place after one year. the Movement toward Adjunct Salary Parity: The University shall make substantial, measur- able progress toward pay parity for part-time teaching adjuncts, based on proportional parity with the full-time Lecturer title, through one or a combination of the following measures: increased hourly pay, longevity increments, an initiative for conversion of teaching adjuncts Union who have met appropriate eligibility require- ments to full-time positions.

Regularize Salary Schedules: A schedule of salary steps shall be introduced for Research Associates, CUNY Law School full-time and Wants: part-time faculty (with the exception of Distinguished Lecturer-Law School); full-time Medical professor title employees (with the exception of Distinguished Lecturer, Medical Series), and for the Medical Lecturer position.

Salary Differential for College Laboratory Technicians and Assistants to HEO: The salary differential for College Laboratory Technician series employees and Assistants PSC to HEO who have earned Master’s or doctoral degrees from an accredited institution in a field related to their job duties shall be increased.

Nighttime, Weekend and “Stand By” CUNY’s Differentials: Employees in the Higher Education Officer series, the College Laboratory Technician series and the Registrar series who are assigned, as part of their scheduled work- week, to work on Saturday or Sunday or to work later than 5:00 p.m. on a weekday shall Contract receive a pay differential for the hours assigned outside of normal business hours. Employees in the titles above who are required to remain on standby or on-call status for hours in addition to their normal workweek shall receive appro- Demands priate additional compensation.

Page 8 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 New Full-Time Faculty: New fulltime faculty Workloads that Support Quality members whose initial appointment is on September 1 of any given year shall be placed Education on payroll on August 1 of that year in order to Full-Time Faculty Workload: The maximum enable them to complete the advance prepa- teaching load for full-time faculty at all colleges ration required for assuming a new faculty shall be reduced by three teaching contact hour position. New full-time faculty whose teaching credits annually. appointment begins on February 1 of any given year shall be placed on payroll on January 1 of Class Size: When the University violates that year. departmental class size limits without written consent of the instructor and the department Welfare Fund Enhancements and Equity in chair, full-time instructors shall be credited Adjunct Health Insurance: There shall be a equivalent to the number of teaching contact substantial increase in contributions to the PSC/ hours of the course; part-time instructors shall CUNY Welfare Fund for all active and retired receive equivalent compensation. members of the bargaining unit. Eligible part-time instructional staff members shall be Support for Student Mentoring: Full-time included in the New York City Health Benefits faculty who participate in a student-mentoring Program. program shall receive contact hour credits for mentoring five students per semester. Educational Opportunity Centers: Salary par- ity with the other units of the City University Library Faculty: All Library faculty shall have in comparable positions shall be maintained. the same number of annual leave days as other The Supplemental Agreement on Educational full-time faculty. Opportunity Centers shall be amended to Additional Support for Department Chairs: improve certain working conditions and Department chairs and, where appropriate, benefits. their deputies, shall receive additional support Hunter Campus Schools: Improvements shall through provision of one or a combination of be made in the terms and conditions of the the following: additional reassigned time, addi- employees in the bargaining unit at the Hunter tional financial compensation, and additional Campus Schools, including through enhancing access to support personnel. the salary for Assistant Teachers. Educational Technology and Distance Pension Equity: The University shall provide Learning: Instructional staff shall receive part-time instructional staff with the option compensation for the professional develop- to participate in the Optional Retirement ment, course development and additional Programs. instructional time that is required by the use of Educational Technology and Distance Learning. CLIP Instructors: Teachers in the CUNY Instructional staff shall have the right to: Language Immersion Program shall be placed Ownership of their work, Control of the in full-time positions, on the appropriate salary rebroadcast of their work, Adequate support to schedule, with all the rights and benefits of full- deliver course content, Selection of the teach- time employees. ing platform for their work. Continued and expanded use of University resources to create and support the CUNY Academic Commons and Approved by other faculty driven endeavors. Equity in Teaching Load at New York City the PSC Delegate Assemply College of Technology: The parties shall com- plete their negotiations to identify funding to Demands most likely to affect students at the reduce the fulltime professorial teaching load at New York City College of Technology to parity Graduate Center are highlighted in black. with other four-year CUNY colleges: 21 hours.

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 9 Workforce Stability and Advancement Increasing Racial, Ethnic and Gender Diversity: A Diverse Faculty Recruitment and System of Advancement for HEO Series Retention Fund of $500,000 shall be established Employees: A system enabling advancement to assist academic departments in recruiting for HEO-series employees shall be introduced. and retaining full-time faculty from under- HEO Classification and Appointment: The represented groups, bringing candidates from reclassification procedures shall be improved, such groups to campus, and undertaking other to create greater fairness and transparency. A initiatives to increase diversity. Certificate of Continual Administrative Service Improved Access to Childcare and Housing: shall be granted to HEO-series employees after A labor/management task force shall be formed the fifth year of service; the first appointment to address the urgent need to provide improved for HEO-series employees shall be a one-year access to affordable housing in the New York appointment, and the second and third reap- City area, especially for new members of the pointments shall be two-year appointments. faculty and staff, and access to high-quality, Adjunct Workforce Stability: A system of job affordable childcare for all relevant members stability for teaching adjuncts shall be intro- of the bargaining unit. duced, such that adjuncts earn a Certificate Adjunct Professional Development Fund: The of Continuous Employment after teaching an Adjunct Professional Development Fund shall average of twelve contact teaching hours a year be made permanent, supported by recurring in the same department in any five of the previ- funds; and non-teaching adjuncts who meet ous seven years, and successfully undergoing eligibility requirements agreed to by the parties a review by the department. An adjunct who shall be entitled to apply for grants from the has achieved a CCE shall be entitled to teach Fund. a minimum of six contact teaching hours per semester and would not be subject to non-reap- Health and Safety: The City University shall pointment, except for just cause. meet the following requirements: furnish each employee a place of employment free condi- Support for an Academic Community tions that interfere with teaching and learn- ing or with the ability to perform assigned Tuition Waivers: Children and stepchildren duties; and require that new construction and of full-time members of the instructional staff large renovation projects conform to ASHRAE shall be granted tuition waivers for undergrad- standards. Further the City University shall be uate courses at CUNY. The eligibility require- required to establish campus health and safety ment for tuition waivers for teaching adjuncts committees at each college, and to establish the shall be reduced from ten semesters to six, and requirement that the college president or high- may be established through service CUNY-wide. est college official with responsibility for health Non-teaching adjuncts who have worked at and safety meet twice each semester with the least six hours per week at the same college for campus committee. six consecutive semesters (not including the summer session), and who have been appoint- Bereavement Leave: All full-time instructional ed to work at least six hours per week in a fall staff members shall be entitled to five days or spring semester shall be granted tuition of paid bereavement leave for a death in the waivers for up to one course that semester. immediate family (defined as spouse, domestic partner, parent, stepparent, child, stepchild, Paid Parental Leave: The pilot program for sibling, grandparent or grandchild). In the case paid parental leave shall be established as a of bereavement leave for a death in the imme- permanent program and enhanced. diate family, the leave provided for part-time instructional staff named in Article 14.8 shall PSC-CUNY Awards: The contribution to the be available without the need for a request. PSC-CUNY Awards program shall be increased by at least $500,000.

Page 10 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 Contract demands continued...

Equity, Enhancements, Grievance and Increased Reassigned Time for Union Work: The PSC shall be granted reassigned time Discipline for negotiation of successor agreements, in Graduate Employees: The University shall addition to the reassigned time for handling support the Union’s effort to achieve improve- of grievances and implementation of this ments in the benefits available to graduate Agreement. employees under NYSSHIP. Graduate Assistants shall receive appropriate University-wide Appointment, Evaluation, Grievance credit toward movement in salary schedule and Discipline: Appointment and Non- when they are appointed to adjunct positions. A Reappointment: The following shall be added labor/management committee shall be formed to both Article 9.9 and Article 9.10: “If after to explore ways of enhancing opportunities for ten (10) calendar days, as above, the written fulltime faculty appointments for recipients statement of reasons has not been furnished of the Ph.D. degree from CUNY, especially for to the affected employee, the employee shall Ph.D. recipients from underrepresented racial, be deemed reappointed for one year.” The ethnic and gender groups. time bar to complaint regarding non-com- pliance under 18.2(b)2.b) or c) and 18.3 shall Part-Time Instructional Staff: Teaching be removed by deleting the third sentence of adjuncts who have taught for at least five of the Article 18.2(b)2.d) and the third sentence of preceding seven semesters, and non-teaching Article 18.3(d). Article 20.4 shall be amended adjuncts who have been appointed for at least to allow 60 working days to file a grievance. If six hours per week during five of the preced- the University fails to render a Step One or Step ing seven semesters, shall accrue sick leave. An Two grievance decision within the contractual employee currently serving in a Substitute title time limit, the grievance shall be deemed sus- who is subsequently appointed to an adjunct tained. A new section, 20.9, shall be added: “In title shall receive written notice of appointment all investigative circumstances and any situa- on the same schedule as an employee currently tions that could reasonably lead to future dis- serving in an adjunct title. The University shall cipline, employees must be told of their rights provide the first paycheck of the semester to union representation.” The following shall for part-time instructional staff no later than be deleted from Article 21: “staff in HEO series three weeks after the first day of the semester; titles shall be subject to discharge as provided employees for whom a paycheck is not pro- in Article 21.9,” and all of 21.9 shall be deleted. vided by the paycheck date shall receive an The following shall be added, either to 21.1, or immediate advance of 80 percent of the gross as a new section, 21.14: “Any and all actions salary due on the paycheck date and a similar resulting from any and all internal investiga- advance for any subsequent period or periods tions pursuant to any University policy must for which paychecks are not provided. The bal- proceed through Article 21, and, in all investi- ance due to the employee for each pay period gative circumstances and any situations that shall be included in the first regular paycheck. could reasonably lead to future discipline, employees must be told of their rights to union Continuing Education Teachers: The representation.” Supplemental Agreement on Continuing Education shall be amended to include: provi- sions for regular observations and evaluations of Continuing Education faculty, consistent with Articles 18 and 19 of the Agreement; provisions for a grievance/arbitration procedure consis- tent with Article 20 of the Agreement.

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 11 Not a Woman’s Issue Catherine Roberts I am tired of being told to act journalism school, this is one of like a man. many worries that plague me as I “The message to Last month, I attended a panel do my work and search for jobs. at the CUNY Graduate School The panel consisted of three women seeking of Journalism about women in women who’ve worked for some media. The event was billed as of the most venerable news- equal treatment “Power, Pay and Parity: Women rooms in the country: National Leaders Discuss Instituting Geographic, Bloomberg, The with (and by) Equality.” This is a welcome Miami Herald, People, NPR, and topic indeed. Studies show that the Takeaway, to name only a their male women are underrepresented few. I hoped to be inspired. And colleagues [is] in newsrooms and media lead- at moments, I was. The panelists ership, despite making up a spent time discussing how to hire consistant: Be majority of journalism and com- diverse talent, and the impor- munications college students. tance of a diverse staff. Their more agressive This is true of CUNY as well — stance was unequivocal: Diverse my class, which will graduate in newsrooms produce better jour- ... ‘Act like 2015, is 58 percent female. As a nalism. It was also heartening woman nearing graduation from to hear these women talking you’re a guy.’”

Page 12 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 DEBATE

about doing away with unpaid to address these systemic prob- passive and accepting less com- internships. Offering an intern- lems. Instead, the majority of pensation or success in order to ship without pay limits the appli- the conversation focused on be perceived as “likeable,” and cant pool to only those who can the confidence gap that exists being aggressive or demanding, afford to live without an income between men and women in the and thus be perceived as a bitch. in a city like New York. To nurture workplace. The panelists offered The Internet offers no shortage a generation of journalists who a lot of advice, but it mainly fell of think-pieces on the subject. come from all different races, into one category. The message To be fair to the panelists, the ethnicities, genders and orienta- to women seeking equal treat- confidence gap certainly exists. I tions, we must ensure that entry- ment with (and by) their male feel it in myself all the time. I rec- level experience is available to colleagues was consistent: Be ognize the need to grow tough all. That means paying interns. more aggressive. Demand more. skin and to set less store by what Despite these moments, I was You don’t know how to negotiate; others say about you. But this disappointed by the overall tone that’s why you get paid less. One ought not be the end of the dis- of the event. While there was of the panelists said, “Act like you cussion. People who work in an discussion of institutional sex- are a guy.” environment in which women ism and racism and the ways This is frustrating on a num- face the nice-or-bitchy paradigm in which employers react dif- ber of levels. Let’s begin with should work to change it. It can- ferently to women asking for two. First, professional women not be only women doing that raises, little was said about how face a catch-22 between being work. It cannot be only women

Source: Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media, published by the International Women’s Media Foundation in 2011. The study includes data from 10 newspapers, 3 television stations, and 1 radio station, for a total of around 3000 employees (1,703 men and 1,232 women).

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 13 DEBATE

having this discussion. Therein you were actually in class at the this discussion. Still, I have to ask lies my second frustration. At time. Outside of class time, we myself why so few men felt that this event, it was almost entirely are incredibly busy. That’s why this was an important message women who showed up to lis- in the journalism school, our that they should be in the room ten. In a room of probably more professors, especially in the first to hear. As a white woman, I real- than fifty people, fewer than five semester Craft of Reporting class, ize I am not exempt from these were men. I saw none of my should replace one of their usual responsibilities. I should certain- classmates and none of my pro- assignments with this. Make us ly attend more of the school’s fessors. These problems are not go to the event. Make us write a functions that have a racial focus. unique to media. Glass ceilings story about it. There’s an extra I also think the school should and the gender pay gap exist in advantage to this plan for jour- require anti-racism training, but many fields, including academia. nalists. When you report on an that is a subject for another arti- I would be surprised if the same event, you engage with it more cle. As I commit to better educat- types of gender differences did deeply than when you’re just an ing myself about the challenges not exist among attendees of attendee. You must pay attention of other marginalized groups other Graduate Center events. the entire time and be on the and how I can fight systemic There are ways to address lookout for the most critical tid- oppression, I hope that my col- this, at an institutional level, or bits to synthesize into an article. leagues, and my school, will do at least at the level of the class- Reporting is a job in which a pri- the same. room. During my first semester, mary side effect is that you are one of our professors required forced to learn and absorb a lot us to attend an evening panel, of fascinating information. and to write a short article based To be fair to my professors, on the ideas discussed. I suggest this event was ticketed, and so that professors, journalism or only a limited number of peo- otherwise, do something similar ple could attend. As one of my for these events, whether they’re professors pointed out to me, about gender, race, sexual orien- if this had been assigned to fif- tation, or any other underrepre- teen students of the journalism sented group or justice issue. To school, it might have prevented my fellow classmates who did not others from attending, people attend the panel: I get it. Some of who wanted and needed to hear

Page 14 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 c/o Jennifer Tang Psychology Program Chancellor James B. Milliken The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5111 205 East 42nd Street New York, NY 10017 New York, NY 10016

3 November 2015

Dear Chancellor Milliken,

It was wonderful to meet you on Friday at the University Student Senate awards dinner and have the opportunity to bring up an issue that I have been advocating for a couple of years. I am a PhD candidate in the Environmental Psychology program at the Graduate Center. I am also a stu- dent with a disability. When I matriculated at the Graduate Center, Sharon Lerner at the Student Affairs office was able to connect me with other students who showed me how to use some of the technologies available at the Graduate Center. While this has been very helpful, the technology can only be accessed and uti- lized on the computers at the Graduate Center. Students with disabili ties, especially those with mobility issues, at times find it difficult to get out of bed, let alone to get to Midtown Manhattan. When the tools that we need to do our work are anchored to the Graduate Center, this slows down our work. - I have requested and advocated for personal, home-use versions of these technologies so that students with disabilities have the tools they need to complete their degrees as an accommodation to the challenges they face in getting to the Graduate Center. When I brought this issue up to Ms. Lerner, she explained to me that there is not enough funding to be able to provide home-use versions to students, that “if we buy it for one student we would have to buy it for all students.” I do not know how many students are requesting assistive technology to be used away from the Graduate Center, as this is confidential information, but this is auxil- iary to the matter at hand. Accommodations, such as assistive technology, are a matter of equity of opportunity and social justice. We encourage students to progress dil- igently through their programs, and support all students with due regard to their capacities. Providing students with disabilities the tools that they need without hedging on whether they are able to get to the Graduate Center conforms with the spirit of supporting student success without discrimination. I ask that you look into the matter of financial resources for meeting the needs of students with disabilities, specifically at the matter of assistive technology funding for off-campus use, and see to it that the necessary funds are made available so that students with dis- abilities will be accommodated.

Best regards, Jennifer Tang Jennifer Tang, M.A., M.Phil.

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 15 c/o Todd Fine History Programc/o Todd Fine History Program The GraduateThe Graduate Center Center 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5111 365 Fifth NewAvenue, York, Room NY 100165111 New York, NY 10016

Chancellor James B. Milliken 205 East 42nd Street New York, NY 10017 Chancellor James B. Milliken 205 EastNovember 42nd 4,Street 2015 New York, NY 10017 Dear Chancellor James B. Milliken, November 4, 2015 As faculty, staff, and students of the City University of New York, Dearwe demandChancellor that Jamesyou workB. Milliken, to end the New York Police Department’s appar- ent practice of sending spies to monitor Muslims at CUNY institutions. An investigativeAs faculty, report staff, byand The students Gothamist of theof CityOctober University 29, 2015 of reveals New York, that we thisdemand practice that youmay work be continuingto end the underNew York the Policeadministration Department’s of Mayor appar Bill- entde practiceBlasio. ofCUNY sending alumni spies have todiscovered monitor Muslimsthat an at undercover CUNY institutions. officer known An as investigative“Melike Ser” reportfrequently by The attended Gothamist activities of October of the29, Islamic2015 reveals Society that stu - thisdent practice organization may beat continuingBrooklyn College under overthe administrationseveral years — ofstaging Mayor aBill false deconversion Blasio. CUNY to Islam,alumni becominghave discovered intimate that with an theundercover group’s officermembership, known and as “Melikeattempting Ser” to frequently elicit incriminating attended activities statements of theof supportIslamic forSociety terrorism. stu- dentThey organizationreport seeing at herBrooklyn at other College events over connectedseveral years to Islam— staging in thea false city conversion(including toat Islam,John Jay becoming College) intimate as recently with asthe December group’s 2014.membership, and attempting In 1992, to elicit CUNY Chancellorincriminating W. statementsAnn Richards of signedsupport a forMemorandum terrorism. of UnderstandingThey report seeing with the her NYPD at thatother allowed events theconnected police toto enterIslam CUNYin thecampuses city in(including non-emergency at John circumstances Jay College) only as recently with the as permission December 2014.of CUNY officials. The NYPD’sIn 1992, apparent CUNY practiceChancellor of W.sending Ann Richards undercover signed agents a Memorandumto gain the of trustUnderstanding of students with makes the NYPD a mockery that allowed of this the agreement. police to enterSuch CUNYsurveillance campuses chillsin non-emergency the atmosphere circumstances of free speech only andwith open the dialoguepermission that of CUNYeducational officials. institutionsThe NYPD’s apparentrequire, practiceand it violatesof sending constitutional undercover agentsprotections to gain that the requiretrust specificof students search makes warrants. a mockery of this agreement. Such surveillance chillsYou themust atmosphere formally ofstate free your speech opposition and open todialogue these operationsthat educational and workinstitutions actively to require, stop them. and Theirit violates continuation constitutional will be a protectionsgreat stain onthat the requireuniversity. specific search warrants. You must formally state your opposition to these operations and work actively to stop them. Their continuation will be a great stain on Sincerely,the university. Todd Fine Advocate’s website] [ManySincerely, persons have signed the letter] Todd Fine [Full list of signatories is available on the

Page 16 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 Raising the Flag of Palestine

Denise Rivera You can see it during the World On 10 September, 2015, the demonstrate to the Palestinians Cup games and Independence United Nations General Assembly that their plight was not invisible, Day parades—events that feature passed a resolution permitting and that the international com- people’s smiles: colors wrapped the hoisting of the Palestinian munity supported their demand around bodies; eyes and smiles flag at the UN Headquarters, with for independence and statehood. carrying the sweetness of nos- 119 countries voting in favor, To others, this incentive was a talgia; excitement reflecting the eight countries against, and meager substitute for the more pride of history as captured in forty-five abstentions. Australia, pressing Palestinian demands the insignias of a symbol—a Flag. Canada, Israel, and the United for a resolution of the rampant So imagine one with horizon- States were among the countries human rights violations and crip- tal white and blue stripes with that voted against this initiative. pling economic conditions. the Star of David in the middle, Although Palestine does not have The Palestinian flag was raised a representation of the sover- an official statehood, it received for the first time at the UN eignty and nation of Israel. This non-member observer status at Headquarters on 30 September, flag also serves as an emblem for the UN General Assembly and has 2015. This event was broad- other nations to identify Israel. been recently inducted as a vot- casted and shown at the Yasser Now imagine another beautiful ing member of the International Arafat Square in Ramallah. The flag with horizontal black, white, Criminal Court. Membership in image of Palestinian President and green stripes with a red tri- this international organization Mahmoud Abbas kissing the angle based at the hoist. At first and court gives Palestine a stron- flag prior to putting it onto the glance, one might think it is the ger platform to address inter- flagpole captured a significant flag of Jordan. But this flag is national disputes. Expectedly, moment. Palestinians cheered missing the seven-pointed white hoisting the Palestinian flag and waved flags of their own star. It is the Palestinian flag. And at the UN Headquarters has in celebration. The responding like Palestine itself, this flag is produced mixed reactions. To Palestinian excitement captured controversial. some, this was a good way to the strong love and pride in

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 17 The Palestinian flag was raised for the first time at the UN Headquarters on 30 September, 2015. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in New York, kissed the flag prior to putting it onto the flagpole. This event was broadcasted and shown at the Yasser Arafat Square in Ramallah.

Page 18 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 Although all these sovereignty histories require urgent reso- lutions, the Israeli-Palestinian sovereignty conflict has continu- ally attracted the attention of the international community. President Abbas had declared the Oslo Accords of 1993 null and void, criticizing Israel for refusing Palestinians the right to self-determination. The Oslo Accords led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, which their national identity. President or nay on raising Palestine’s flag has some jurisdiction in gov- Abbas professed his hopes of at the UN Headquarters. While erning parts of the West Bank one day raising the Palestinian France and Sweden voted in and the Gaza Strip. Without the flag in Jerusalem—“the -capi favor, other countries such as Oslo Accords, the Palestinian tal of our Palestinian state,” he Austria, Finland, Germany and Authority might be dissolved, emphasized. This statement pro- the Netherlands abstained. The and President Abbas’ right to be voked uproar from Israeli Prime abstention votes reflect a -cal in office as well. It will also affect Minister Benjamin Netanyahu culated strategy on the part of the legitimate standing of the as well as many Israelis. Given UN members worried about Palestinian Football Association that the event took place at the keeping the peace and angering as a Fédération Internationale United Nations’ Rose Garden, is allies. Although the abstention of de Football Association (FIFA) it naïve to wonder if we will ever forty-five countries might seem member, and may prevent the see Israel’s Prime Minister and insignificant, keep in mind that it Palestinian football team from Palestine’s President embracing accounts for almost a quarter of participating in the FIFA World and gracefully exchanging each the number of member states in Cup Qualifier games. Then again, other’s flags as the US president the United Nations. This reveals FIFA has enough scandals and witnesses this exchange at the that the issue of the hoisted issues of its own to handle. White House Rose Garden? Palestinian flag signified a crucial Reports from Jerusalem indi- Although much of the inter- juncture in the irrevocable asser- cate that roadblocks and check- national community supported tion of political allegiances in the points have been installed in the hoisting of Palestine’s flag Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus, the Palestinian neighborhoods at the UN Headquarters, some it made the international com- of East Jerusalem in response skeptics felt that this action was munity apprehensive and fear- to recent outbreaks of violence. overestimated in the hopes of ful of igniting another conflict Security guards have been establishing peaceful relations that could explode into global patrolling public transportation. between Israel and Palestine. warfare. More soldiers have been sent to The Vatican, one of Palestine’s Right to self-determination support the police in preventing advocates, showed support by and sovereignty is a pressing further attacks from Palestinians. sending Pope Francis’ envoy to issue in many parts of the world. In light of these developments, the ceremony. Like Palestine, the This is evident from Argentina’s the idea that the hoisting of the Vatican is a non-member observ- and England’s claim over Las Palestinian flag might pave the er state in the United Nations. Malvinas/Falkland Islands, way for peaceful measures in the Nevertheless, the Vatican’s sup- China’s and Japan’s assertion Israeli-Palestinian conflict now portive action did not provoke over the Senkaku Islands/Diaoyu seems like just naïve, wishful wide controversy in the same way Islands, Somaliland’s indepen- thinking. the hoisting of the Palestinian dence from Somalia, and the flag had. European nations were Western Sahara’s independence divided on whether to vote yea from Morocco, among others.

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 19 How to High FlyWithout Moving

Ashoka Jegroo Forward Earlier this month, a young woman woke up one morning, grabbed her schoolbag, and made her way to Wall Street on a day that felt like any other. At waiting to cross the street. Just progressive! This is all, of course, around 8:30am, as she walked as she blew out another cloud according to Bill Bratton him- through the Manhattan streets, of smoke, someone tapped on self. “We no longer seek to arrest she plugged in her headphones her shoulder. Standing behind for possession of the drug,” he and lit a joint. It was early. She her was the leader of New told the crowd at a New York was probably tired. Besides, no York City’s largest gang - NYPD Law School breakfast. “If you’re one really cares about a little Commissioner William Bratton smoking it in public, we will weed. She stopped at a red light, – accompanied by one of his potentially arrest you, although armed goons. we’re encouraging officers to use As she turned her head, she the scale that they are authorized instantly recognized Bratton. to use of warning, admonition, But this was a new day. Bratton summons, arrest if necessary.” didn’t throw this young woman But Bratton’s tales of cop com- against the wall and slap a pair passion obscure the fact that the of cuffs on her, as has been the drug war is still alive in New York norm with so many stoners of City. Small victories made on the color in the past. With a heart marijuana legalization front have brimming with magnanim- hidden the fact that the prohibi- ity, Bratton ordered his goon to tionists are still winning and tak- “politely remove the marijuana” ing many prisoners. and throw it into the sewer. How

Page 20 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 The War on Weed Synthetic Reefer The progress made in New Madness York on the issue of marijuana With their power has been superficial. Governor receding on the weed Andrew Cuomo’s “legalization” front, NYC’s prohibitionists of medical marijuana was a typi- found a new substance with cal liberal reform. Dispensaries which to scaremonger are few; licenses difficult to get. and instill their brand Really, not much has changed of modern voodoo except that Cuomo can call him- pharmacology. self “progressive” on the issue. Bratton announced in November 2014 that the NYPD would take a new approach to weed, issuing more summonses and making fewer arrests. There has indeed been an increase in summonses and a decrease in arrests, but Whereas demagogic prohibi- only in relation to Rudy Giuliani’s tionists of the past were able to and Michael Bloomberg’s terms, rely on the specter of marijuana when pot arrests were sky high and the public’s ignorance of its and cops were given free reign effects, that was no longer pos- to ruthlessly wage the drug war. sible in NYC. Too many people By the end of 2015, more than had tried marijuana, and the lies But nothing 10,000 people in New York City spurned by the drug war about can stop prohi- will have been arrested for weed. marijuana’s dangers had long bitionists’ yearning Throughout the eighties and been debunked. But as a result for power. As with real early nineties, the number of of this diffusing war on weed, a marijuana, Governor marijuana arrests for any giv- new illusory monster emerged Cuomo was at the fore- en year never exceeded even with which quixotic drug war- front of New York’s assault 6,000. Bratton and Mayor Bill riors could battle. So-called on this new substance. Back de Blasio’s police, it turns out, “synthetic cannabinoids,” in 2012, he pushed for Health aren’t progressive at all. They’re which often go under names like Department regulations that merely less reactionary than his “Spice” and “K2,” have become would ban the sale and posses- two mayoral predecessors. As widespread in recent years due sion of “synthetic marijuana” in is Bratton’s trademark Broken to their cheap price and the legal New York State, even associating Windows style, people of col- risks associated with actual mari- it with bath salts, yet another rel- or are still disproportionately juana. The label, “synthetic can- atively new drug which has been arrested for weed, and Bratton nabinoids,” is inaccurate though. unjustly demonized in the media. even raised the specter of reefer Different brands of the drug con- “Synthetic drugs are anything but madness when he suggested in sist of smokeable herbs sprayed harmless, and this rash of severe March of this year that ganja was with an ever-changing variety of health emergencies across the causing an increase in murders. obscure, psychoactive substanc- state is direct proof,” he said. Police, despite making fewer es. Sometimes they are, in fact, “We banned synthetic marijuana, arrests, still use the threat of substances that mimic cannabi- bath salts and similar substances imprisonment to impose fear on noids. Manufacturers produc- to avoid the disastrous results weed-smokers throughout the ing these drugs were specifically that occur.” city. And sadly, this substance working towards circumventing The “progressive” mayor and is where the most progress has laws criminalizing cannabis. City Council recently followed been made in the drug war. the lead of our “progressive”

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 21 governor. After allowing the that seems to have changed is and Brown people in cages for dependably-ignorant local media that dealers have found new victimless crimes. Enough with and Bratton to portray the drug ways to ship large quantities of laughing off discussions of drug as “weaponized marijuana” that cocaine, kids’ birthday gifts and legalization with references to gives its homeless addicts “super- frozen shrimp being some of Cheech and Chong. Enough with human strength” and makes the more innovative receptacles scare tactics from officials with them “impervious to pain,” for smuggling cocaine in recent little knowledge of pharmacol- the city’s liberal establishment months. ogy. Enough with cops invading helped expand the drug war into our privacy and inflicting vio- new uncharted territory. Within Call to Arms lence on us for daring to deter- the last month, synthetic canna- mine what goes on in our own The status of psychedelics like binoids have been made illegal bodies and our own minds. psilocybin mushrooms, mesca- to manufacture, sell, or possess Instead, let’s make this an line, and LSD has also not changed in New York City, and large-scale issue again in New York City. at all, with the general public just drug raids have already begun. Let’s confront these modern day as ignorant of them as they were And of course, poor people of Puritans with power. Whether when they first became illegal. In color, including many homeless they call themselves “liberals,” all, despite prevailing narratives people, have been the primary “progressives,” or “compassion- that liberal New York City has victims of this new drug war ate,” those placating labels only made great advances in the way front. hide their support for a ruthless it treats drugs and their users, status quo, an ongoing drug war the drug war has not changed all that continues to stack up casual- Coke and Dope that much. And though the legal- ties. Let’s call them out publicly Of course, little has changed ization of recreational marijuana at meetings, speeches, march- with the status of drugs like her- may be just a matter of time, es, and all their little PR stunts oin and cocaine in New York City. what then after that? One shud- throughout the city. No prohibi- These fronts in the drug war, ders at the thought of what anti- tionist propagandist should be for years, have been thoroughly prohibitionists will have to go allowed to utter a word of their controlled by the prohibitionists through when it’s time to teach pseudoscience in public without despite the total lack of success people why we have to legal- challenge. Let’s stop the relative in decreasing the use and abuse ize LSD, mushrooms, heroin, or stasis that this issue has faced for of hard drugs. Heroin, rather cocaine. Mere discussion of their so long and finally start fighting than receding, has allegedly normalization is still taboo in back in this war. We have noth- made a comeback with overdos- mainstream political discourse. ing to lose but our sobriety. We es on the rise again in NYC. Drug But something must be done. have a world of freedom war enforcement has not light- The drug war has too long been and intoxication ened up either. In May of this another excuse for the mass to win. year, NYPD made what was billed incarceration of the poor and as the “largest heroin seizure people of color. The lives of so in New York history.” The cops many New Yorkers have confiscated more than seventy been taken and kilograms of dope that day, and destroyed due to the large heroin raids have not this war on people’s stopped since. Cocaine has not bodily autonomy. made any alleged comebacks, Cops have stolen too but little-to-no progress has been much and murdered made on the issue as well. Large too many under the raids on cocaine rings in New ruse of drug enforce- York City are still common, and ment. Too many politi- the cocaine business in New York cians have made their is alive and well. The only thing careers on throwing Black

Page 22 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 A genealogy of VIOLENCE Understanding the Massacre in Ankara

Eylul Fidan Akinci Turkey saw its largest mass over the last couple of months. Republican People’s Party (CHP), murder by two synchronized sui- It also hoped to call for dialogue other left-leaning parties, politi- cide bombings at the large-scale between the Turkish state and cal organizations, civil society “Labour, Peace and Democracy” Kurdish militants before the elec- groups, students, feminists, rally held in the capital city Ankara tions, for which the Kurdistan anarchists, and socialists. on 10 October. As of this writing, Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant It was a nation-wide open there have been102 fatalities and organization fighting for Kurdish call to oppose the Justice and more than four hundred injured. liberation and self-governance, Development Party’s (AKP) “war While the international media was prepared to announce against terrorism” and the party has reported the horrifying ceasefire on 11 October. The leaders’ actions that had politi- assault, the crisis needs a deeper pro-Kurdish and the radical cally polarized the society. The examination to reveal its wider democrat Peoples’ Democratic movement was not merely to impact on the peoples of Turkey. Party (HDP), which represents a condemn the state’s infringe- Beginning with a discussion on new turn in Kurdish politics with ments of law, authority, and the immediate context around their insistence on dialogue and human rights in the southeast- the attack, I will move on to the end to violence, was amongst ern part of the country, but was larger scene of violence going the major figures in the rally’s also aimed to stand in support of back to the recent national elec- organization. Other supporters labor rights and democracy, and tions and build up to the current included the Confederation of push for a reconsideration of offi- devastation. Progressive Trade Unions, the cial peace negotiations between The mass meeting in Ankara Union of Chambers of Turkish the state and PKK. These nego- sought to condemn the attacks Engineers and Architects, the tiation issues have been recent- and curfews that the Turkish mil- Turkish Medical Association, ly swept aside by President itary and special security forces Confederation of Public Workers’ Erdoğan and the AKP on account have been inflicting in Kurdistan Unions, the social-democrat of their overwhelming defeat,

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 23 after a thirteen-year tenure, in 1. Right before the explosions, a convicted mafia leader held a ral- the recent national elections on ly in support of the President and declared, “there will be blood 7 June. and no mercy.” Nine hours before the explosions, a tweet on The peace rally represented the Internet read, “the bomb will explode in Ankara.” the coming together of almost 2. Immediately after the explosions, the police entered the area all segments of the population and attacked hundreds of injured people with teargas. In addi- that the AKP’s policies and police tion to destroying the evidence, they not only hindered the practices have marginalized for administration of first aid to the injured but also prevented the over a decade now. The bomb ambulances from reaching the area. attack sought to rupture this 3. Immediately after the explosions, the Radio and Television consolidation of oppositional Supreme Council, the state’s media censor, announced a ban voices, which consisted of figures on news coverage of the attack. frequently targeted by AKP’s and 4. Immediately after the explosions, several AKP members and Erdoğan’s aggression. At the very AKP-sponsored opinion leaders speculated on how this would outset, it must be noted that the benefit some in new elections and how it might be a tactic of significant threat this congeal- self-victimization for political gain by the Kurdish leaders. ing solidarity posed to the state 5. Immediately after the explosions, the Minister of Internal Affairs constitutes the obvious motive and the Minister of Justice announced that there was no secu- that implicates the AKP regime in rity weakness or mismanagement on their part. They scoffed the massacre, thus rendering its when a journalist asked if they would consider resignation. investigations into the bombings 6. Immediately after the explosions, Prime Minister Ahmet untrustworthy. Nevertheless, Davutoğlu stated that the bombers could be related to terror- there is more to it. Here are ist organizations, including the PKK, DAEŞ (his way of saying some terrifying details adding to ISIS), and the DHKP-C (a militant-socialist group). That is to say, the whole outrage of this attack: he ridiculously implied that the “Kurds bombed themselves,”

LEFT, Ahmet Davutoğlu at an AK Party rally on 9 May 2015.

Page 24 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 and that they “might be collaborating with ISIS.” No other State officials’ reluctance to statement condemning the ISIS terror was released. Yet, point to the actual suspects with Davutoğlu explained his refusal to pay a visit to the HDP’s precision, and their reciprocal co-chair Selahattin Demirta with the excuse that Demirtaş haste in insinuating and in some accused the state of having blood on its hands: for not pro- cases outrightly blaming the viding security of the rally; for not investigating other recent involvement of the HDP and the bomb attacks; and for silently encouraging ISIS activities Kurdish resistance movement within the borders. might tell you how these suicide 7. As people were still looking for their relatives and friends attacks cannot solely be seen as in the hospitals and morgues, social media and the AKP’s an extension of ISIS brutality to media were full of defamatory comments, almost relishing Turkey. ISIS is only part of a larg- the murders of those “damned Kurds and leftists.” An anchor er onslaught that has escalated for the official television channel of the state claimed, “There in intensity since the June elec- might be a few passer-by innocents amongst those who tion. Let’s roll back a bit to have a died.” (Regarding the media comments, I wanted to believe better sense of the violence lead- the majority of these commentators were Internet trolls. But ing up to this carnage. even if they were, they contributed to the event’s trauma as The 7 June elections was the written, posted, and circulated content.) first time the HDP entered the 8. The identities of the suicide bombers were established, only race as an official party instead of to reveal that they were part of a group from the southeast- contesting through its members ern town, Adıyaman, known and supposedly tracked by the as independent candidates. Since security forces. Furthermore, it was understood that they there is a ten percent threshold crossed to Syria, trained in ISIS camps, and returned to orga- of the vote count the parties nize suicide attacks. In fact, one of the attackers, Yunus Emre need to pass to have parliamen- Alagöz, had earlier been caught by the police and released tary representation, the HDP despite security intelligence from months earlier. It was took the risk and implemented a Alagöz’s brother who perpetrated a previous suicide attack grassroots campaign to coalesce in Suruç, which I further discuss below. Kurdish votes as well as those of 9. A confidentiality order on the judicial proceedings on the leftists, activists, workers, and massacre was issued. This means that lawyers, journalists, ethnic and religious minorities and the public have no access to the files and legal process. beyond Kurdistan. Some of these 10. When asked about the lack of security measures, Davutoğlu Kurdish votes were previously explained that they couldn’t arrest someone before they do AKP voters, especially during the criminal deed in a democratic society. Three days prior the ceasefire and peace nego- to his words, eleven people were arrested for dancing halay, tiations between the PKK and a circle dance associated with political resistance. Thousands the government. Their campaign of people have been detained and arrested by the police was a huge success, proving the without evidence of crime or criminal intent. Some were party’s immunity to the thresh- accused of allegedly “insulting the president” on twitter. old threat with a constant vote of 11. Overshadowing tactics such as Angela Merkel’s visit manipu- thirteen percent. This consisted lated the course of events and the news. In the meantime, of an overwhelming majority in AKP leaders, members, or the media issued no explanation, Kurdistan, high support in larger correction, apology, or message of unconditional sympathy cities in the west, and fairly equal and solidarity. distribution in the rest of the country. The quick interpretation of this result was that the HDP succeeded in drawing some of the AKP votes into their party as well as fulfilled their statement to represent not only Kurdistan but all peoples of Turkey.

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 25 In the interim period from the HDP’s announcement to con- test the election as a party to the day of election, AKP leaders, President Erdoğan, and the news agencies “affiliated” to the gov- ernment constantly attacked the HDP, trying to portray them as the supporters of terror and a foil for the PKK, hoping to pigeonhole the party to the Kurdish region. Considering the HDP’s success in entering the parliament and barring the AKP from gaining the overwhelming majority to hold the government, it is safe to say that the AKP’s paranoid attacks were aimed to prevent this result at all costs. Hence, the anti-Kurd rhetoric of the 1990s, Photo of Anakara bombing, courtsey of Associated Press /Burhan Ozbilici when the Turkish State’s dirty process. The support emerged It was in the midst of this war against the Kurdish popula- despite what immediately fol- political stagnation that a sui- tion was at its height, was re-cir- lowed the attack. cide bomber affiliated with ISIS culated in AKP’s political rallies, In claiming that the HDP per- attacked a group of young social- especially in regions with more petrated this to garner victim- ist students at the border town, right-wing, Turkish-nationalist sympathy that would translate Suruç, killing thirty-four people. demographics. into more votes, the AKP’s news In an effort to help the recupera- These “political” assaults did agencies and opinion leaders tion of the town and the children not have to wait long to trans- were ready to spread incredible from the war, the group was late into physical violence; HDP’s speculations as to the identity of on its way to Kobane. Without province and county represen- the bomber(s), who later turned interrogating why an ISIS mili- tatives and political rallies were out to be a member of the same tant would do such a thing, the attacked by anonymous groups ISIS-associated group mentioned Davutoğlu-led temporary gov- with stones, guns, and arson, above. But things got even more ernment that the AKP had lit- with no investigations on the terrifying and violent following erally seized agreed to join US attackers or arrests to follow. the elections. After the “surpris- operations against ISIS. But the Two days before the election, ing” election result for the AKP, Turkish air forces instead reignit- HDP’s final and biggest rally in the Erdoğan assigned Davutoğlu the ed the battle with the PKK. And largest Kurdish city, Diyarbakır/ task of presiding over coalition Davutoğlu justified the heavy air- Amed, was attacked by a bomb meetings. Deliberately delayed strike by grouping ISIS and the explosion, killing four people and by the AKP and further stag- PKK as terrorist threats to Turkish injuring more than a hundred. gered by the ultra-nationalist State security. The PKK retaliat- The Human Rights Foundation (and ultra-anti-Kurd) Nationalist ed. Violence escalated, leading to in Turkey announced that there Movement Party’s (MHP’s) curfews and combats in Kurdish have been 114 incidents of vio- unwillingness to negotiate and towns in the southeast. lence against the HDP and its vot- consider the HDP’s presence in In early September, the town ers in the pre-election period in the parliament with eighty mem- of Cizre-Şırnak was amongst the total. HDP leaders and Selahattin bers, Davutoğlu announced the brutal scenes of state violence. Demirtaş showed incredible impossibility of a coalition and Over the period of a nine-day effort and equanimity to not let called for a re-election. curfew and blockade, the “secu- these overshadow the election rity forces” killed twenty of its

Page 26 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 civilians including infants, wom- in the 1990s. The majority of the Speculations remain about en, and elderly. While Davutoğlu victims of the Ankara massacre Turkey’s undercover ammuni- announced there were no civil- feel that the AKP uses the rheto- tion transfers to ISIS and other ian casualties, the people of ric of ISIS terrorism to cloak its dissident groups in Syria, but it Cizre were keeping the bodies expanding state violence against takes no investigation to notice of their dead in refrigerators challengers of its aggressive, Davutoğlu’s general sympathy until they were allowed to get capitalist, neo-Ottomanist, sunni- towards ISIS, summed up in his out of their confinement to bury Turco, machismo engineering of explanation of the group’s emer- them. Bear in mind that the Cizre the country. 694 persons have gence as the “result of a natural population was completely dis- been killed since 7 June during reaction to religious oppression.” connected from the world from Turkey’s re-instigated war with According to their calculations, having no continuous electric- the PKK and at the three bomb- ISIS’ fight with the YPG (mainly ity, water, provisional needs, or ing attacks. the Kurdish “People’s Protection healthcare access. A couple of Although some international Units,” in alliance with the PKK) weeks later, another traumatiz- media commentators attribute in Syria would weaken the PKK ing image and subsequent video the AKP’s brutality to the after- and Kurdish politics in Turkey. was circulated by an anonymous math of the Gezi protests in June Turning a blind eye to the suicide twitter account, using the alias 2013, this extreme assumption bombers in Suruç and Ankara, “JITEM,” Turkish counter-guerilla and execution of state power can and un-marking them under force that unofficially combat- only come out of a longer invest- the “terrorist” umbrella involves ted with the Kurds from late ment in it. The AKP’s plan to such agendas that pawn citizens’ 1980s onwards. The media con- shape Turkey into a state heavily lives to the AKP’s fear of losing tent showed the dead body of controlled by neoliberal interests its overbearing power. Surely Hacı Lokman Birlik, the brother- has been in effect since the very the links between the AKP and in-law of an HDP PM, tied to a beginning of their reign. One ISIS must be much more compli- police vehicle that dragged him only needs to look at legislations cated than this. But at the heart along on the streets. The people around private investments, of it, this is what “we” see and faced more terrorism after the labor rights, privatizations, social feel: we, the peoples that resist military bombed the graveyards rights and services from their the AKP’s increasing fascism, of Kurdish militants and demol- first term. Yet, this shift towards the peoples that demand peace ished the mosque and cemevi, a more aggressive management and democracy in solidarity, the which is the Alevi believers’ of any dissention in society might peoples that get killed, arrested, house of worship in the Kurdish- be in anticipation of a threat due traumatized, targeted, reviled. In Alevi town of Varto. to the changing political climate a nauseating current of hatred In a few months after the elec- in Egypt, Syria and the larger and assault that does not even tions and the Suruç massacre, Kurdish geography. allow the space and silence for the Turkish State, led by Erdoğan It is challenging to interpret proper mourning, and in country and Davutoğlu’s AKP, returned and critically intervene on the ripped apart mentally and emo- to its well-known tactics to vio- intricate web of relations and tionally, we cannot make do with late the bodies and minds of the power dynamics in the Middle simplistic accusations that solely Kurdish population. Davutoğlu East. What is quite obvious, how- resort to the rhetoric of ISIS ”ter- himself declared at a recent AKP ever, are the AKP’s efforts to rorism.” Time has already shown rally in Van that, in the event of demonize leftists and the Kurdish us what the “war against terror- the AKP losing the government, political movement even as they ism” signifies. The peoples of the the streets will be taken over downplay ISIS, refrain from Middle East now live the conse- by terrorist mobs or the “white openly identifying them as a quences of it. We know who the Toros cars” associated with the threat, and in fact, allowing them murderers of those 102 people counter-guerilla that “disap- inside the borders to recruit are. Now, do you? peared” the Kurdish population volunteers and obtain hospital.

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 27 Listening to Iraqis Review of Ali Issa’s Against All Odds: Voices of Popular Struggle in Iraq

Tristan K. Husby “There are actual people in other countries and is unwill- these stories, they will notice Iraq… [Iraq] is not just a term ing to listen to people on the a number of similarities in the used to describe a larger impe- other side of American borders. kind of struggles that Iraqis face rialist or geopolitical project.” Habib points to the problems from the government and the So says Ahmed Habib in his with the bumper sticker “Don’t problems that arise in working interview with Ali Issa, author Iraq Iran”: only a self-centered together. In addition, the voices of Against all Odds: Voices of American voice can endorse that in the book emphatically assert Popular Struggle in Iraq. Habib slogan, rather than a voice that that the distinctive history of Iraq worries that in America, “Iraq” has incorporated the desires and demands that any estimation of has become a verb, a synonym hopes of those the American mil- the challenges it faces must be for “stuck in a quagmire that itary threatens. This kind of inter- rooted in the particularities and costs a lot of money and lives,” national American perspective politics of its location. Any truly and this usage informs a par- is not impossible, and it is des- informed American perspective ticular American perspective. perately needed. In Issa’s book, must listen to such voices. It is a perspective that prefers Iraqis in Iraq and in the diaspora While reporters frequently put non-intervention for all things tell how they are struggling to Iraq in the headlines and pictures military out of a humanitarian- make Iraq democratic, peaceful of Baghdad on television, this ism, but a humanitarianism that and equal. If those who opposed informational barrage is not the is ignorant of the histories of the US invasion of Iraq listen to same as listening to the people

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of Iraq. Furthermore, ignorance about Iraq is not limited to those for whom the voting booth is the beginning and end of their politi- cal engagement: how many peo- ple who came to Zuccotti Park to take part in Occupy Wall Street knew that the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) had written a letter of solidarity to the American move- ment? How many even knew that the Arab Spring had reached Baghdad? For Issa, these questions of awareness and cross-border connections are of personal and political significance. Born in Texas to a father from Baghdad, Issa describes his summers fly- ing from the US to visit his family that had fled from Iraq to Jordan. Informed by these frequent jour- neys as well as a political educa- tion that included frequenting anarchist book stores and agitat- ing for workers’ rights, Issa first wrote a blog titled, Iraq Left: On Iraqi Organizing and Movement Building Now, and then became a national field organizer for the War Resisters League (I should note that I volunteer with the War Resisters League). This book Americans, struggle to challenge to the period from March 2011 contains some work that Issa had patriarchal traditions and laws, to December 2011, when Iraqi previously written for his blog, to protect their water and oil opposition to a number of injus- but much of the content is here supplies, to conserve their envi- tices, ranging from the imprison- in print for the first time. ronment and to hold the Iraqi ment of activists to the unwritten Against All Odds begins with government accountable for quota system, was both acute twelve documents that range providing electricity, safety and and persistent. This quota sys- from articles to press releases to democratic control over their tem reinforces the division of Facebook posts to comic strips own fate. Iraqi society by marking sepa- to open letters, such as the one The documents primarily focus rate, but unstated, offices and from the OWFI to Occupy Wall on what could be called the powers for the Shi’a, Sunnis and Street. These sources provide Iraqi Spring. That phrase refers Kurds. Uday al-Zaidi points to the glimpses into how Iraqis, like

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 29 most explicit form of the quota even after Abadi’s election. Nadia house, where she learned about system, the unstated require- al-Baghdadi, who works on the politics and feminism, she began ments that the “prime minister Save the Tigris and Marshes to volunteer with the program must be Shi’i, the president must Campaign, explains in her inter- and ultimately joined their staff. be Kurdish, and [the] speaker of view with Issa that because of Alghezzi tells how OWFI con- the parliament must be Sunni.” the quota system, when her fronts the traditions that harm Issa interviewed al-Zaidi in June organization was attempting to Iraqi women, such as honor kill- of 2011, directly after the then find space for their offices, the ings, but also takes a stand on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al- same governmental agency first governmental policy. OWFI was Maliki was desperately negotiat- approved their space and then a leading opponent against the ing with the Iraqi parliament for rejected it. Two different blocs in Jaafari Law proposed in 2014, reforms that would both keep that agency were competing with which threatened to make it him in power and placate the each other, a consequence of the harder for women to claim prop- mass protests that had begun nepotism that shapes much of erty through either inheritance in February of that year. By the the government and business in or divorce. end of 2011, Maliki’s power Iraq. Issa conducted most of his was clearly weakened, and in Despite the quota system interviews, such as with al-Bagh- 2014, the Iraqis elected Haider obstructing people like al-Bagh- dadi and Alghezzi, in 2014, three al-Abadi, a Sunni, as president. dadi, Iraq is still the location of years after most of the collected Americans know that such great transformations. Among documents. Out of the twenty unwritten systems do not dis- Issa’s interviews, the most pow- combined interviews and docu- appear so easily, and just as erful story is that of Jannat ments, there are only four pieces Obama’s election did not herald Alghezzi, now the Media Director that are from 2012 or 2013. While the end of American racism, the of OWFI. Alghezzi first came to there may be many reasons for quota system in Iraq continues OWFI in order to flee her fam- why he clumped the documents ily. After staying in a OWFI safe and interviews the way he did, “. . . just as Obama’s election did not herald the end of American racism, the quota system in Iraq continues even after Abadi’s election.” Jannat Alghezzi, now the Media Director of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, speaking with Ali Issa. Photo Courtesy of the War Resisters League

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Issa only briefly notes the three- applause for insulting George W. “unity” can be problematic, as it year gap in his introduction. He Bush. Those who attended the reinforces the idea that the two more explicitly addresses how last days of Occupy Wall Street, groups are normally separate there is only one entry from when the police “guarded” the and only work together under Iraqi Kurdistan: an interview with entryway of Zuccotti Park, will unusual circumstances. Akram Nadir, an active member sympathize with the Iraqi protes- However, Iraq is indeed on of a number of worker organiza- tors of July 2011, who were pro- the other side of the world, and tions. While Issa does not claim hibited from entering Baghdad’s details about the frequent black- that the book represents any- Tahrir Square with posters, mark- outs and kidnappings make clear thing more than a tiny portion ers, pens or even water bottles. that Iraqis face everyday frustra- of Iraqi voices, it is hard not to The prevalent debates among tions and dangers that people in imagine him following up on the Iraqi activists might also sound America are oblivious to. A num- stories mentioned only in pass- familiar for Iraqis also struggle ber of Facebook posts describe ing, such as the prison revolt in over the effectiveness of non- how, during the summer of 2011, Tikrit of March 2011. violence and the precise impli- an anonymous group kidnapped Sometimes these stories might cations of certain words. In his Thurgham al-Zaidi, a prominent sound very familiar to activists in interview, Falah Alwan discusses critic of the American occupa- America: at a sit-in in Mosul in how even describing the Sunni tion. After enduring almost a April 2011, a poet got a round of and Shi’i as working towards week of torture, he was sud- denly released. Undeterred, he headed to the next anti- occupation protest with his son Haydar. That these protests of the Iraqi Spring were directed against the American occupa- tion is why there was so little coverage in the American press. It is only through the efforts of incredibly dedicated people like Thurgham, along with his broth- ers Uday (mentioned above) and Muntadhar (famous for throw- ing his shoes at George W. Bush) that such protests were possible. Issa’s book celebrates such resis- tance while pushing for a future solidarity that is truly interna- tional, one that is present on the streets as well as on Facebook.

Policemen and officials inspect the central prison for Salahuddin province a day after a riot within the prison in Tikrit. Courtesy of Reuters.

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 31 Biography of a Reformist Review of Sonja D. Williams’ Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio and Freedom

Rhone Fraser In her biography of Richard a paperboy for the Pittsburgh primary sources include in-depth Durham called Word Warrior: Courier, a writer for the Works interviews with artists like Oscar Richard Durham, Radio and Progress Administration (WPA), Brown Jr. In referring to Durham, Freedom, Sonja D. Williams and the top investigative report- Brown observes he “had been accomplishes her stated goal of er for the Chicago Defender. In a leftist” and “Communist, “a book-length account about 1948, he produced the legendary who explained the intricacies the totality of Durham’s contri- radio drama series, Destination of Marxism and Leninism to butions and advocacy.” Richard Freedom; was a writer for the him.” Williams writes that for Durham (1917-1984) was an NOI’s national newspaper, Durham, “Communist philoso- extraordinary journalist, dra- Muhammad Speaks; a col- phy was more in line with the matist, and speechwriter who laborator with Muhammad Ali liberation of Negroes and other used his skill of writing to chal- on his popular autobiography oppressed people than capital- lenge the racist assumptions of for Random House that Toni ism.” Throughout his life, it is the U.S. hegemony controlling Morrison edited; and a speech- clear that Durham sought to lib- the film, radio, and television writer for the pioneering Chicago erate Negroes by using historical industries of the twentieth cen- mayor, Harold Washington. His fiction to translate their heroic tury. Durham’s writing reflects a writing incorporates history stories. According to his brother reverence for historically-based in a creative way that appeals Earl, Durham firmly believed that research like none other. He was to mass audiences. Williams’ “if you want to fight injustice, you

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have to organize people to do it.” In 1923, when he turned six, Durham’s family migrated from Mississippi to the Bronzeville, Chicago. To supplement their income, he worked as a paper- boy for the Pittsburgh Courier. Part of his literary diet included editorials written by W.E.B. Du Bois. Also fundamental was the story of Richard I, England’s twelfth century monarch to whom Durham took such a liking, so much that he start- ed calling himself Richard in his teenage years despite his birth name being Isadore. King Richard was a brilliant military strategist, best known for his exploits during the so-called “Third Crusade.” This battle aimed to recapture the city of Jerusalem from Muslim control during the late 1100s. According to Williams, by the age of eigh- teen, Durham had access to Bronzeville’s first public library, and it became his “personal resource bank.” His brother Caldwell said that Durham read everything in the fiction section. Williams presents Durham as supportive of the militant exploits he writes of in his inter- poems that were published by scarce. At twenty-three, the pretations of stories. Durham’s the Chicago Defender and the Works Progress Administration’s early review of Dale Carnegie’s New Masses periodicals. The (WPA’s) Illinois Writer’s Project book, How to Win Friends and publications included “Death in hired him under bibliophile Arna Influence People, asserted that a Kitchenette,” which features Bontemps on a 1939 study called no “how-to” book could solve our a black, working protagonist, The Negro Press in Chicago. The social and business problems. He who was “cheated” out of two small study examined thirty-four resisted the vision of industrial- weeks’ rent by “pneumonia” and Black newspapers and eleven ists like Carnegie throughout his “death.” This captures Durham’s magazines from the city’s past life. He advocated for “Negro lib- dramatization of the struggle and present. In this experience, eration” through his promotion to survive in an environment Durham became critical not only of such “realistic paradigms.” where jobs became increasingly of the living conditions of Black He expressed these themes in

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 33 working people but also of the Black bourgeoisie’s support of it. While Negro presses, then, like the Chicago Bee praised Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal poli- cies such as the WPA that hired Durham, once in these positions, Durham didn’t fulfill their expec- tations. He critiqued the process that saw overwhelming masses of Negro people denied gainful employment despite the token- ism of the industrialists and their supporters. “The economic position into which [Negroes] are forced makes a mockery of American democracy,” Durham insists. This job exposed Durham to radio writing. Once exposed to this genre and opportunity, Durham never left. He free- By 1944, he was offered a full- Durham and Muhammad Ali. They col- lanced for the NBC radio drama time reporter position for the laborated on Ali’s autobiography. series called The Lone Ranger. Chicago Defender where he “had The series presented the story a knack for getting interview- of a former Texas ranger who “[Durham] ees to speak their minds, even protected his countrymen in the if their opinions were totally critiqued untamed West of the late nine- counter to his.” By the next year, teenth century. Durham noticed he was honored with a “Page the process the racist and sexist storylines in One Award” by the local chap- these scripts. Industrialists such ter of the American Newspaper that saw as William Randolph Hearst, Guild (ANG). Williams writes General Electric, RKO, Marconi overwhelming that Durham was offered a Wireless and Telegraph, and “script analyst” position at MGM Westinghouse heavily protect- masses of studios, but figured out soon ed the scripts as they opposed enough that the “analyst” part of Negro people original ideas threatening their that position would be done not rule. He probably learned from by him but by industrialist func- denied gainful this experience how to convince tionaries who only welcomed industrialists and their function- work supportive of their White employment aries to support his own original supremacist capitalist vision. She series that celebrated radical despite the points out that “no matter how thinkers. He also freelanced for tempting the opportunity to get another NBC show called Art For tokenism of into the film industry may have Our Sake that profiled artists fea- been, Durham would never cross the industialist tured in Chicago’s Art Institute. a union picket line.” This is in supporters.”

Page 34 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 BOOK REVIEW stark contrast to the writer John collective consciousness in their “Durham’s Ridley, whose actions in crossing work. This agenda destroyed the union picket line for work led the path of self-determining scripts him to winning an Oscar for Best peoples in the Jim Crow US Screenplay for Twelve Years A South and abroad: in Japan in privileged Slave, ultimately catered to the 1945, Palestine in 1948, Korea in film industry. Williams shows the 1950. Durham’s work is a testa- values of price that Durham’s bold bravery ment to the growing number of cost him. What was worth more Black workers that were becom- collective to Durham than a job in the film ing Communist because of struggle and industry was the example he was Truman’s atomic bomb; people setting to his son, and his fidel- like Augusta Strong and Esther liberation... ity to the same Marxist-Leninist Cooper Jackson. principles Oscar Brown Jr. said Unlike Truman and the indus- within the he championed. trialists, Durham’s scripts privi- A promotions manager at leged values of collective strug- capitalist the Chicago Defender, Charles gle and liberation over the kind Browning, came up with the idea of individual success within the economy” of a fifteen-minute drama series capitalist economy that indus- called Democracy USA that trialists like Truman wanted all would feature men and women Blacks to focus on. Durham’s paralysis that Durham later used who exemplified the principles script that best represents his in his own series. He co-founded of democracy through their lives commitment to Negro liberation the Du Bois Theater Guild and and accomplishments. Williams is his Destination Freedom epi- conceived of a soap opera called focuses on one of his Democracy sode on Harriet Tubman, whose Here Comes Tomorrow, which USA scripts, “Dr. Dailey and the goal was collective struggle and Durham called “the first authen- Living Human Heart.” It explored liberation of all Black people in tic radio serial of an American the life of the distinguished Negro the Confederate South. Scripts Negro family.” In 1948, NBC and surgeon Ulysses Grant Dailey. on popular television and film its affiliate WMAQ agreed to air President Truman praised CBS by Black writers like Shonda a radio series. Conceived by Radio’s Chicago affiliate-WBBM Rhimes, Tyler Perry, Mara Brock- Durham, Destination Freedom with a certificate of merit for its Akil are welcomed and propagat- was to run weekly for half an show Democracy USA written in ed by industrialists because they hour. It featured “the lives and part by Durham and produced privilege individual success over contributions of prominent by the Chicago Defender. This is collective struggle and liberation. Negro history makers.” The the same Truman, who two years Durham’s work on Destination series showed the personal and earlier, had the support of indus- Freedom focused on the latter political struggles of those Blacks trialists as he murdered hun- over the former and entered who believed in radical change. dreds of thousands of Japanese. obscurity because of it. Williams writes that Black leaders After bombing Hiroshima and Durham also worked with Irna like Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Nagasaki, Truman’s certificate Phillips, who wrote and created Banneker, Katherine Dunham praised WBBM for “inspiring the several lucrative radio dramas spoke to Richard Durham, hour youth to follow a path of citizen- now popularly known as “soap after hour, as he sifted through ship” that follows the agenda of operas.” Phillips’ stories dealt with the mounds of materials that US industrialists who discouraged postwar conditions like amnesia, Vivian G. Harsh, head of the Hall Black writers from encouraging a alcoholism, or psychosomatic

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 35 Malcolm X holds a copy of Muhammad Speaks, edited by Durham.

Branch Library, and her staff pro- connection between the “Negro’s rejected several of Durham’s vided, and wrote for Destination sharecropping experience” and script ideas, including ones on Freedom. In her appendix, she “the Jewish people struggling to Paul Robeson, and another about also included a radio log of each create the new nation of Israel in the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima episode from July 1948 to August 1948.” However, the 2014 rein- and Nagasaki. 1950. His series included epi- statement of a previously-fired While Durham was pioneering, sodes about Harriet Tubman, Palestinian Professor Steven Williams notes that his scripts Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Salaita by the board of trustees revealed the philosophy not of William Lloyd Garrison, among of the University of Illinois, which a revolutionary but of an opti- others. Williams quotes J. Fred published Williams’ book, under- mistic reformer. When the radio MacDonald as saying Destination scores a stronger connection not station hired a new director who Freedom was “one of the most “with the Jewish people” but with “massacred” Durham’s scripts, damning critiques of racial abuse the Palestinians. Durham’s sto- he decided to end the series. ever heard on U.S. radio.” The ries show a Negro people under However, he started a legal battle series received awards from racist persecution that is more with NBC because they revived the Chicago Commission on similar in 2015 to the struggle of the series without his consent or Human Relations, the National Palestinians against the Jewish input, even though he owned the Negro Museum and Historical people. Williams raises the ques- copyright to the series. Williams Foundation, and the National tion of why the WMAQ and NBC writes that records documenting Conference of Christians and allowed Destination Freedom’s the final outcome of the lawsuit Jews. Williams identified one of progressive sentiments and were conspicuously missing from the series’ abiding philosophies rebellious Negro characters on Durham’s files. He later landed as “universalism,” which appar- the air, and suggests that it could a two-month contract with the ently seemed to justify Zionism. be because the program was United Packinghouse Workers In interviews identified a aired only in Chicago. NBC also of America in which he prepared

Page 36 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 BOOK REVIEW

a twenty-one page brochure February 1970, national news Reed’s biography of Muhammad called Action Against Jim Crow: magazines Time and Newsweek Ali, Durham’s longtime friend UPWA’s Fight For Equal Rights. reported that the TV series’ half- Bennett Johnson tells Reed that He was fired after he tried to pull million viewers made it the high- Ali agreed to the autobiography together a caucus of all the key est rated local production in because Durham was collaborat- Black figures within the UPWA WTTW’s history. ing with him. Johnson also pro- and set up the election of sev- Despite this, after only twenty- vides more insight than Williams eral Black officials to the merged one episodes within two months, into Durham’s late 70s business leadership. the station terminated the foray with the NOI—of which By the next decade, Durham’s series for a number of reasons, Williams observes was “pain- reputation landed him an offer including Durham’s decision to ful” for Durham’s wife Clarice. to work as editor of the news- defy the station management’s The venture ended unsuccess- paper of the then rapidly grow- request that he change his con- fully and consequently rein- ing Nation of Islam called cluding series storyline that had forced Durham’s 1938 review of Muhammad Speaks. He devel- “police assassinating other police Carnegie’s book that no “how-to” oped a close relationship with officers.” Here again, like the book can solve our social and Elijah Muhammad and success- demands of the second direc- business problems. Williams’ last fully convinced him that “the tor of the Destination Freedom chapter, “Black Political Power,” Muslim’s best interests were series, he refused to cater to the describes Durham’s last years as served by keeping the Nation of White supremacist demands that a screenwriter for the pioneering Islam’s progress sectionalized should sanitize militant messag- Black mayor of Chicago, Harold from the rest of the paper.” This es directed at Black audiences. Washington. Williams stretches was based on Durham’s strict Williams describes Durham’s col- the definition of revolutionary journalistic policy of maintaining laboration with Muhammad Ali when she writes that Washington a strong “separation of church for his autobiography that was becoming the mayor of Chicago and state reportage between published by Random House, was “nothing short of revolution- Muhammad Speaks and the from his defeat of Sonny Liston ary.” Durham, in this capacity, Nation of Islam.” He required to his defeat of George Foreman was purely reformist. He worked Muhammad Speaks reporters in then Zaire. Random House within the electoral system fund- to research their stories compre- editor Toni Morrison said that ed by the same industrialists like hensively to avoid the impression Durham had “a theatrical eye,” Carnegie whose self-help philos- that the paper might be “mouth- enabling him to determine ophy he excoriated in 1938. His ing off conspiratorial theories.” “what to throw out and what to screenplay on Harriet Tubman According to Durham’s brother include…what was interesting portrays her as a revolution- Earl, Richard Durham worked to and what was not and how to ary against chattel slavery, and “get the Nation off King’s back.” make a scene…I found working additional scholarly research When the NOI placed its printing with him very interesting.” For could shed needed light on how press under the supervision of many reasons, Williams writes Durham’s work opposes wage the Fruit of Islam (FOI), Durham that the autobiography Durham slavery. happily left, but was soon offered collaborated on was “uneven… Like the historian Macdonald, a job writing for a WTTW TV series the tensions between the Nation Durham might have educated called Bird of the Iron Feather, of Islam’s restrictions, Random Black masses about revolu- about a detective who died in a House’s deadlines, as well as tionary thinkers, but he func- crossfire “between black reb- Ali and Durham’s storytelling tioned primarily as an optimistic els and the police during a race choices kept the book from being reformer. Durham’s work is a riot on Chicago’s West Side.” By a cohesive whole.” In Ishmael living example of Addison Gayle

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 37 BOOK REVIEW

Jr.’s 1977 article, “Blueprint for more in line with the liberation Black Criticism”: of Negroes. However the oppor- “Black people must demand tunity to practice this was erased realistic paradigms from Black when Durham sought employ- artists: they must demand ment by local radio stations that that characters be modeled wanted the theme of his work to upon such men and women celebrate democracy. This book as Sojourner Truth, Harriet did not elaborate on the way Tubman, and Martin Delany; H. Black writers like Durham had Rap Brown, Fannie Lou Hamer, to hide their belief and appre- and those countless mothers ciation for Communism during and fathers who sacrificed dig- McCarthyism. Durham’s life story nity and manhood in order to is in one way a story about the suc- prepare their young to deal with cess of McCarthyism in success- a nation which ranks among the fully silencing Communist sym- tyrannical in history.” pathy except for faithful Chicago Richard Durham’s body of fic- listeners of Durham’s work. What tional work came closest to ful- would enhance Williams’ study is filling this paradigm, perhaps a look at Durham within a theo- more than any other writer in the retical framework that celebrates twentieth century. Williams suc- collective struggle over individual ceeds in her book-length account capitalist achievement. of the totality of Durham’s contri- Special thanks to Ian butions and advocacy; however, Rocksborough-Smith for intro- her study underestimates the ducing me to the work of Richard repression of the McCarthyist Durham in 2007. climate in the United States that persecuted Communists and Communist sympathizers like Durham. Oscar Brown Jr. said that Durham believed that Communist philosophy was

Page 38 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 THEATRE REVIEW

Racializing the American Revolution Review of the Broadway Musical Hamilton

Donatella Galella The new musical Hamilton which will host a fundraiser multiracial cast paradoxically by composer-writer-star, Lin- for the Democratic Party on 2 flattens difference as the story Manuel Miranda, received rap- November. But the musical also exaggerates the significance of turous raves as the savior of attracted positive attention from abolitionism in the American the musical art form with cross- the right. That Lynne Cheney and Revolution. At the core, the musi- over potential. Based on Ron Rupert Murdoch love Hamilton, cal tells a bootstrap narrative Chernow’s biography, Hamilton we should pause and wonder insisting that if immigrants and is a hip-hop, multiracial musi- why. their descendents work hard and cal of the founding of the Artistically brilliant and appar- are worthy, they will succeed, United States, specifically about ently progressive, Hamilton much like Alexander Hamilton, its first Secretary of Treasury, largely upholds conservative or Lin-Manuel Miranda had. But Alexander Hamilton. The musi- political projects. I found myself allow me to rhapsodize upon cal opened at the Public Theater profoundly moved by the hip- Hamilton. The hip-hop-centered in February 2015. It moved to hop score, well-knit dramaturgy, score draws from Tin Pan Alley, the Richard Rodgers Theatre on dynamic staging, and cast that 60s British pop, R&B, and mega- Broadway this past summer. The resembled me (Phillipa Soo!), musicals. References range from current production is sold out New York City, and the United Rodgers and Hammerstein to for months. President Barack States. However, the musical Biggie Smalls. Miranda’s fluency Obama saw the production, also deeply troubled me. The with an array of popular musical

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 39 A scene from Hamilton, courtesty of the Public Theater.

“The multiracial cast paradoxically flattens difference as the story exaggerates the significance of genres and repeated motifs pro- that seamlessly integrate rap and duces a compelling, complex, musical composition while driv- abolitionism in and refreshing score. His previ- ing the story forward, is without ous Broadway musicals, In the question the most accomplished the American Heights and Bring It On, similar- hip-hop musical ever written. ly incorporated popular musical The storytelling of a tour de Revolution.” styles with musical theatre con- force scene early in the musical struction. Miranda is one of few when the two central women composers on Broadway whose fall madly in love with Hamilton work sounds like what one might at first sight emblematizes the Schuyler raps and remixes hear on pop radio stations. best of Miranda’s dramaturgy, “Helpless,” revealing how she too But In the Heights is by no director Thomas Kail’s stage has fallen in love with Hamilton means the first hip-hop musical. craftsmanship, and choreogra- but chose to support his roman- There are predecessors such as pher Andy Blankenbuehler’s nar- tic relationship with Elizabeth. the short-lived Tupac-inspired rative dance. In the first song, The staging replays yet readjusts musical, Holler If Ya Hear Me, “Helpless,” Phillipa Soo as a deep- the previous courtship scenes. It and the ground-breaking musi- ly sympathetic Elizabeth Schuyler uses backwards movement and calization of the violent histo- sings of feeling “Helpless” upon sampling to reveal Angelica’s ries of African-Americans, Bring meeting Hamilton one night perspective. The rotating stage in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk. and their subsequent courtship. quickens the pace and suggests a Still, Miranda’s score, with its Soo’s repetitive “I do”’s in the pop circular structure to the musical, cabinet meeting rap battles, Les song foreshadows their wedding. as the characters revisit history, Miserables-like drinking songs, In the second song, “Satisfied,” how it is told, and by whom. The and show-stopping numbers like Renée Elise Goldsberry as her beauty of these scenes left me in “The Room Where It Happens,” assertive, clever sister Angelica tears.

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Hamilton is shaped by the whitened understandings of diligence, and the acts of writ- themes of “who lives, who dies, the history of the United States ing and fighting in wars to “rise who tells your story.” Deeply con- though he tells a top-down nar- up” without acknowledging very cerned with his legacy, Hamilton rative that celebrates hard work real, material obstacles. I worry ponders upon death so much and an innate ability to achieve how this message justifies those “it feels more like a memory.” success. Additionally, that with power as deserving, and Aaron Burr, played with charm approach obscures indigenous those without as lazy. I am par- and gusto by Leslie Odom Jr., and enslaved people who did ticularly concerned about how serves as the narrator consumed not triumph as Hamilton did. In these justifications rationalize by Hamilton’s success and death some of the opening lyrics, we the oppression of immigrants, by his hand. By having three learn: people-of-color, poor and work- duels structure the musical, ing-class people, and women. Miranda builds in repetition and The ten-dollar founding father Many people in the Unites States momentum for the ultimate fight without a father/ and likely in the audience of between Hamilton and Burr, the Got a lot farther by working a Hamilton truly believe that the chief way we tend to remember lot harder/ “American dream” may be easily these founding fathers. One of By being a lot smarter/ obtained through hard work and Miranda’s chief projects with this By being a self-starter/ savvy, and the musical endorses musical is to expand upon that By fourteen, they placed him this belief. limited memory. He does so by in charge of a trading The multiracial cast paradoxi- honoring Hamilton and educat- charter. cally demonstrates fought-for ing popular audiences about progress and discourages further his history, especially to make It is no great mystery then that radical action. The performers the point that Hamilton was an this is a story that speaks to the are totally amazing, and I want immigrant of mixed-race back- Cheneys and Murdochs of the to single out Daveed Diggs who ground from the Caribbean. world. The musical repeatedly portrays Lafayette and Jefferson Futhermore, Miranda challenges encourages entrepreneurship, with incredible charisma and hilarious repartees. Moreover, seeing people of color in leading and leadership roles is inspiring and life-affirming. Considering that artists of color occupy only twenty percent of roles on and off Broadway, and that those roles tend to be small and/or stereotypical, the creative team of Hamilton should be applaud- ed. At the same time, given that Black, Latina/o, Asian, and mixed- race actors are playing almost exclusively elite White charac- ters, the casting somewhat asks spectators to forget the salience of race and racism to the actual founding of the United States. The actors do not play slaves or

A scene from Hamilton, courtesty of the Public Theater.

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indigenous people. Neither do intelligence came largely from they discuss settler colonialism. one of his slaves. Finally, it was In Hamilton, the founding of the the English who promised free- United States is the feat of great dom (though circumscribed) to men. Black slaves fighting on their side The cast also includes a couple against the colonists. of White actors whose white- I feel compelled to enumerate ness tends to go unremarked in these points because Hamilton reviews. The characters that we demands that we rejoice in the are supposed to dislike for their revolution as a multiracial tri- opposition to the colonists’ agi- umph. This demand resonates tation are Samuel Seabury and with the ways people-of-color King George, both played by are interpolated into the United white actors. On the one hand, States national project upon cer- this casting decision progressive- tain conditions of assimilation, ly overturns the typical move of celebration, and exploitation. I racializing villains as being of col- would argue that we can indeed or. On the other, it simplifies— take pleasure in the seductive even reverses—the racial poli- score, talented creative team, tics of rebels versus the English and virtuosic performers, though crown and Tory sympathizers. we must also critique the con- The casting enables a sense of tours of this revolution. Let me feel-good diversity and pride in be clear: the artistry and multi- the United States. racial cast of Hamilton brilliantly This troubles me because stage an intricate, inclusive his- Hamilton goes to great lengths to tory of the founding fathers. At portray Hamilton and the found- the same time, that artistry can- ing fathers, Thomas Jefferson not be disconnected from the aside, as passionate abolition- musical’s conservative political ists who failed to free the slaves messages. Inclusion rests on not only due to bad luck. The musi- only the erasure of dispossessed cal implies that slavery contin- and enslaved people-of-color as ued post-Revolutionary War well as the fathers’ implication in largely because John Laurens, institutionalizing slavery but also a genuine radical abolitionist, the celebration of bootstraps died. Although Hamilton was success and national patriotism. indeed part of the New York When Hamilton sings emphati- Manumission Society, he had cally, “I am not throwing away also traded in slaves. Okieriete my shot,” the musical makes it Onaodowan plays Hercules easy for us to forget who never Mulligan with machismo verve, had a shot to throw away. eliding that his undercover

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From Trash to Gold Juan Hinojosa and Transitional Consumerism

Abigail Lapin Dardashti Born and raised in cards, food wrappers, dry-clean- art material can be summarized Queens, New York, Juan Hinojosa ing labels, flattened cans, and through an anecdote. I remem- is a multimedia artist specializing various brands of soft drinks, ber once walking down the in collage—an artistic practice alcohol, household goods, and street with him near his apart- popularized by the major avant- frozen foods. Around the col- ment in Sunnyside. It was a hot garde movements, Cubism and lages, Hinojosa oftentimes incor- day in August, and each time we Dada, that incorporates found porates hand-made plastic and passed a large pile of garbage, objects, usually print forms ink cartoonish globular forms we momentarily held our breath including newspapers and pho- that resemble eyes or flattened to avoid the stench. While we tographs. Through this tech- breasts. walked past a pile of trash bags nique, Hinojosa explores the Hinojosa’s sleek and attrac- and discarded items in front multi-faceted constructions of tive work entails a complex of a red-brick apartment build- our contemporary entertain- repurposing of distributed and ing, Juan stopped to inspect the ment: fashion, pop culture, TV, popular images. While these waste. I started to get annoyed cinema, and advertisements of quotidian images are commonly as the overwhelming odor envel- make-up, jewelry, and perfume. imagined in commercial spaces, oped us. He picked up a three- He merges highly circulated the artist often finds them in the foot tall flat box that once con- imagery with objects of our dai- same place: the New York trash. tained some kind of sci-fi sword ly lives as New Yorkers: metro Hinojosa’s process for finding game, judging from the cover.

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“Great!” he said. “I’ll used this for storage for materials. The avail- work. Ranging from installation my next collage.” able objects are very diverse, and to framed altarpieces, his col- In addition to finding items range from furniture to strips of lages simultaneously embrace among trash, Hinojosa also fur. The accumulated donations and critique consumerism and “steals” objects; for example, he are arranged in endless rows of commodity distribution. In addi- takes tags from clothing stores. plastic and cardboard boxes. I tion to food networks, Hinojosa Additionally, he now finds objects think that it would probably take explores the implications of reli- at Materials for the Arts (MFTA), over a day to go through all the gion and sexuality in our daily where he is currently an artist- available materials. lives. The carefully chosen found in-residence. He told me that at In his work, Hinojosa does not objects transformed into artwork MFTA, he “feels like a diabetic in a segregate the objects found in links Hinojosa’s work to Dada, candy store,” but one who would the street from those collected at particularly Marcel Duchamp’s nonetheless eat the candy. MFTA MFTA. Because of the vastness of display of readymades, which is a not-for-profit organization the space and diversity of mate- consisted of mundane objects that makes donated materials rials at MFTA, Hinojosa uses the such as a urinal displayed as a available to art teachers and same “hunting and gathering” work of art. The bright colors and organizations with similar mis- techniques that he employs in his repetitions of commodities recall sions. It is located in an enormous street searches. He once said to Pop artworks, most famously warehouse space in Long Island me, “I like to think that whatever I Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup City, which includes the organi- find, wherever I find it, the items, cans. Through a variety of items, zation’s offices, classrooms, and once they become part of my col- Hinojosa critiques the consump- lage, are given a second chance tion of art and the superficiality of to become something else. In a the art market. With his address strange way, the discarded item of serious issues comes a degree is having a Cinderella moment.” of humor, found in the carica- This transformation of the turesque forms and medley of image’s purpose and meaning images that would otherwise not is at the center of Hinojosa’s be imagined together. Hinojosa’s

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oeuvre to date includes three The artist’s organic transi- constant devotion, creating sys- major methodological transi- tion from installation to shaped tem sof followers that ben- tions: installations, shaped frames combined both methods efit hegemonic structures. He frames, and altar-frames. in works such as Men in Spandex explained, “As someone who was Hinojosa’s early works are (Part 2), 2011, which includes a raised Catholic, I understand environmental installations that collage on a white gesso canvas devotion; this generation (more incorporate found objects con- surrounded by lines and clus- than others) seem absolutely nected by globular forms of dif- ters of globular forms and more devoted to pop culture. I wouldn’t ferent sizes and shapes. From collages, with dripping paint be surprised if someday soon we afar, the visitor is engulfed by and escaping paper clips. In his started worshipping a fictional an imagined world consisting of 2012 solo exhibition, Ready for character as a deity.” Maybe, in everyday images inspiring hope Their Stones, at Allegra LaViola some form, this has already hap- or greed. Through close analysis, Gallery (now known as Sargent’s pened, as narrated in Hinojosa’s different superheroes, advertise- Daughters), New York, Hinojosa recent work, which brings the col- ments, and inconspicuous drawn created collages on seven-feet lage back to traditional rectangu- lines are discerned. Hinojosa’s tall frames shaped as symmetri- lar canvases. Three-dimensional 2010 Battle for Gucci installa- cal triangles with another tri- objects including little dolls sur- tion at Taller Boricua, New York, angular indent at the top. Each round some of these works. This extended over two walls, the work was placed in front of its heightened and diversified visu- floor and the ceiling—where a own bright-colored velvet prayer alization of commodities trans- cut-out of Spiderman hung gen- kneelers. lates into an altar to pop culture. tly. The lines of globular forms While Ready for Stones obvi- The current artworks also include stretched out in different direc- ously critiques the obsessive and objects collected during recent tions telling different stories, devout consumption of clothing, trips to Berlin and Zurich, such as sometimes through obvious celebrity gossip, food, and pop subway tickets. While Hinojosa’s phallic symbols such as daggers culture in general, it also mirrors oeuvre always incorporated glo- and secretions of consecutive the hypocritical piety historically balized symbols of pop culture, small plastic paper clips. employed by the Catholic Church through this new integration, he Hinojosa’s environments to convert and maintain people now internationalizes the com- mirror the central strategies in the faith. This history reso- modities of everyday life. promoting consumerism: to nates highly in colonized places immerse the buyer in a world such as the Americas, where Hinojosa’s work can be of fantasy, desire, and hope. As images of the crucifixion and the viewed on his website: Hinojosa elaborates through his Virgin became as widespread as body of work, the superficial- Prada logos today. Like the pro- http://juanhinojosa.com/ ity of consumerism conceals its duction processes of contempo- consequences of oppression and rary pop culture and fast food, Hinojosa’s MFTA residency inequality. The reiterated images widespread Christian images too will culminate in Blonde in his work, such as the super- concealed pervasive inequalities Ambition, a solo show on heroes and make-up products, and oppression, such as the kill- hide people and faces that are ing of indigenous people during display from 15 December closer to our everyday existence. the early conquest. to 1 April, 2016. His work, in essence, represents Interestingly, Hinojosa equates the things we use to hide our pop culture to religion in his humanity, which, like garbage, is work. For him, they are empires gritty and full of inconsistencies. that employ strategies to elicit

Page 46 — Volume 27 Fall no. 2, 2015 Contributors to this issue

Eylul Fidan Akinci is a PhD student in Andrew Caringi is an MA student Abigail Lapin Dardashti is a Ph.D. the Theatre Program. Her interests in the Journalism Program. His student in the Art History Program. are dance and poetry. She strives to first film, Super Bronx Boys: Next Her research focuses on formations resist learned helplessness through Generation of Game Innovators, will of ethno-religious and racial identity her work. debut this December. He currently in the Americas. resides in New York City.

Donatella Galella is an Assistant Tristan K. Husby is a PhD student Ashoka Jegroo is a journalist born Professor of Theatre at the University in the Classics Program. He cur- and raised in Brooklyn, New York. of California, Riverside. Her research rently lives in New Hampshire and is He has written for the Santiago on racial politics in musical writing a dissertation on Greek and Times and the New York Times’ “The theatre has been published in Roman slavery. Local” blog. He has covered protests Theatre Journal and Continuum. in Santiago, Chile and New York City.

Dadland Maye is a political asylee Bhargav Rani is a PhD student in the Denise Rivera is a MA student from Jamaica, a queer activist, Theatre Program, a teaching fellow in the Liberal Studies program, unpublished novelist, and a PhD stu- at Hunter College, and the Managing International Studies track. dent in the English Program focusing Editor of the Advocate. on queer postcolonial movements of the Caribbean and African Diaspora. also: Rhone Fraser is a lecturer at Howard University. His 2012 Temple University dissertation was a literary and historical analysis of periodical editors Pauline Hopkins, A. Philip Randolph and Paul Robeson. Catherine Roberts is an MA student Jen Tang is a PhD Candidate in in the Journalism Program. She likes the Psychology Program. She Todd Fine is a PhD student in the to talk about gender, health and the feels in colours, thinks through History Program. He is the President environment. speech, and emotes through dance. of the Washington Street Historical She enjoys well-facilitated meet- Society, an organization dedicated to ings, progressive Doodle polls, “Little Syria” and the Arab-American and “participatory process as heritage of Downtown Manhattan. outcome-innovation-revolution.”

www.OpenCUNY.org/gcAdvocate — Page 47 Congratulations — you’ve suc- personally a big fan of preparations The most important kernel I can LIFE-HACKcessfully defended your Ph.D. But that yield leftovers — try dry roast- offer about eating your disserta- before we can rightly call you “doc- ing the dissertation with a spicy rub tion is have fun with it. There is no tor,” you still have to complete one and finishing it on the grill. formula on how to consume and more task (and I don’t mean going I would be loathe to stop at celebrate your freshly defended on the job market). I’m referring preparation; frankly, many of us diss. There are as many disserta- to the process of proofing, binding, perform the eating itself wrong. As tion preparations as there are and eating your dissertation. Michael Berube writes, “A disserta- tastes. Just remember: prepare with For many students toiling away tion should not be consumed hap- love and care, celebrate the occa- at their dissertations, preparing hazardly as though one is chowing sion, consume mindfully, and most to eat the dissertation is an after- down on a lengthy seminar paper. importantly, don’t read it. thought. But in all the time that one This is a meal to be consumed with spends combing through archives, attention and care, but also with an collecting data, interviewing sub- outlook on the future.” jects, drafting, presenting at confer- The most egregious misconcep- ences, or whatever else, it can never tion about eating the dissertation hurt to have the delicious end result comes from those who still claim You’ve been in mind. you must read it. Dissertations, deli- Faculty advisers rarely have cious though they are, are not an the pedagogical expertise to help elitist foodstuff. When I see people students turn their tomes into a flipping through a dissertation, delectable meal. To be sure, most of studying it like a well-researched eating your them have successfully eaten their book, I can’t help but think it’s going dissertations, but largely before the to waste. Perhaps foodie culture is academic jobs crisis and new media to blame. Dissertations are much turned the profession on its head. like short ribs or brussel sprouts dissertation Being able to eat one’s dissertation — time-honored, and chef-centric, and being able to support another’s they have suffered from overblown eating are different things. pretension. Too often, I’ve seen the common- sensical wisdom bandied about all wrong. that a dissertation needs nothing more than simple additions: an heirloom tomato, a good olive oil, and a sprinkle of Maldon finishing salt. Sure, this is one way to pre- pare a dissertation, but it hardly scratches the surface of culinary possibility and, further, it trades in old-fashioned, Spartan idealisms. We must keep in mind two things: the dissertation is not a monograph, nor are all dissertations finished products waiting to be served. Most require some tinkering For an overly thick dissertation riddled with fat and sinew, a slow braise followed by a char finish can whittle the dissertation down and bring out its gamey goodness. For a thin dissertation, one might boil it into stock with root vegetables. Even still, slicing a finished dis- sertation thinly can yield any number of usages: pizza toppings, charcuterie, even sashimi. I’m