do no harm:


idit dobb-weinstein: "teaching is action and thinking at once. What I try to guard against most when I teach is not speaking as if my answer were conclusive, so as to avoid (to the extent possible) any kind of dogmatic appropriation. It is understandable why students might wish to imitate their teachers, but there are different modes of imitation. I try very hard to avoid the mimetic appropriation that is immediate, passive, and occludes thinking. One other reason is that if I made clear what my views were, and my views appeared as if they were final, it would preclude the possibility of first, students challenging me and second, learning from my students. The relation between the student and teacher is, to me, a dynamic relationship . . . Teaching and learning is a movement that occurs between. In other words, we are at once both agent and patient, both teacher and learner. If we are not very careful, we can do a great deal of harm. And that, too, I have learned from my teachers, Maimonides especially.

I believe my task is to provoke students to think and to engage them in genuine dialogue and questioning. To paraphrase a rabbinic saying, 'I have learned from my teachers, and I have learned from my peers, but I have learned most from my students.' And that is a continuous process of learning."

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

unileaks


it was very nice to meet unileaks associates at the wikileaks event 2 july.
i support all methods to expose industrialized and federalized corruption, even at the university level, where at times the toil feels petty.
the larger issues of torture in guantanamo and the suppression of wikileaks i find more largely a function of systemic generational gaps as they affect moral compass and dominance heirarchies.
as the blogosphere and the internet seem to be quite confusing for the Torture Generation, who rely on racist prisons, tortureINC, for their paychecks, it seems very unreasonable that they might respect your civil rights, especially within the borders of a country which supports torture and refuses to ratify the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.
but it's a good fight, nevertheless.
i hope that all professors and war bureucrats might begin to conduct themselves in a way that stands the sunlight of transparency.
if they have conduct which embarrasses them on the blogosphere, they might take heed, before the university system becomes geriatric care.
the larger biological issue at place within such dominance heirarchies, are our elders need to be feared if not respected.
when their conduct is so unfair and discriminatory that it makes them despicable, it might be well to move towards more humble, egalitarian, and socratic methods.
cheers to unileaks and all new non-violent methods which might unseat corruption and cruelty.
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