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Two Perspectives
[illustration by Tavet Gillson]

A New Fundamentalism?
Stifling educationon Brown’s campus
by Joel Dietz

When you hear the word fundamentalism, what pops into your head? A gun-toting man in the Middle East chanting “Death to America?” A bible-thumper from Kansas with a sign emblazoned “God Hates Fags?” Though these both could be forms of fundamentalism, there is another fundamentalism afoot on this campus.

On April 1st Brown hosted a panel discussion as part of the series “A Time of Great Consequence: America and the World.” This panel included eminent scholars in the field of international relations such as Paul Kennedy, Joseph Nye, and Richard Perle. When I attended the panel, I was not surprised to see protesters outside holding signs. Even though I could not agree with most of the statements they were making, I recognized that people have a right to make them.

However, it seemed some of the protesters did not share my belief in civil discourse and the free expression of ideas. For them, free speech was only valued as long as the points made coincided with what they already believed.

For some of these people, the conversations that happen on this campus between left, far-left, and farther left are the only acceptable forms of discourse. Not only are other forms of dialogue undesirable, they should not be permitted at all. Anyone who suggests anything that could be considered on the right is a “racist” and must hate women, children, poor people and anyone who isn’t Anglo-Saxon protestant.

It seems that there are many people on this campus who have bought into this deception—that anything from the right must be full of hate, and should not be tolerated.

Compassionate conservatism?
There are two main errors in this line of thought. First, there are many bright, thoughtful and caring conservatives (even on this campus), whose primary motivation is not oppressing the downtrodden. Furthermore, one cannot only tolerate things that one likes or be open-minded about ideas that one already agrees with. Toleration, by definition, must be extended from the far left to the far right.

This includes permitting the ISO to organize protests against capitalism and allowing the few Buchananites on this campus, however much you or I disagree with their political views, to organize as well.

This also includes permitting a full expression of religious conviction, from people who believe that all religions are ultimately saying the same thing to those that believe that there is only one way to salvation, whether through meditation, the incantation of the Buddha’s name, or a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Education cannot happen any other way. A quick search on dictionary.com found that to give an education is “to provide with knowledge or training.” Similarly, to learn is “to acquire knowledge.” To acquire knowledge means that one must gain possession of things that one did not know previously, which necessarily means exposure to viewpoints other than one’s own.

This is the beauty of diversity. Every person brings their own race, ethnicity, culture, religion, class status, and political views to this campus and should be heard and appreciated. This is the purpose of amazing programs like BUAD (Building UnderstandingAcross Differences) that seek to promote dialogue without minimizing difference. This should be the beauty of this campus, promoting dialogue from all corners.

Granola thumpers?
Unfortunately, this is rarely the reality, and this is largely the fault of liberals, who—in their quest for open-mindedness—have really embraced a new fundamentalism. Though fundamentalism most often used to refer to religion, one has never had to have religious beliefs to be a fundamentalist.

Any ideology can become fundamentalist once it starts to repress others’ right to free expression. To believe in something strongly is fine. Most people have convictions about some matter: moral, political or religious. This does not, however, make one a fundamentalist.

Fundamentalism begins the moment that we close our ears. Fundamentalism begins when we start shouting instead of listening. Fundamentalism begins when we take away other’s rights to express different views, even incorrect ones.

Maybe it was the person sitting in the row behind me shouting “fascist” at Richard Perle, or maybe the rampant hisses that sounded out across the room, but I think fundamentalism is alive and well here at Brown. It is a shame because the beauty of the United States, and Brown for that matter, is in the acknowledgement that people have the freedom to express their ideas. This is the meaning of pluralism.

I was shocked and appalled by the headline in the Brown Daily Herald on April 2nd, “Antiwar activists protest Richard Perle.” The news article went on for another 225 words before even giving an inkling of what was actually said during the panel.

While there were antiwar protesters, the more important fact was that there was a panel to discuss matters of international security. It was what was said therein that was important, and that is what should have been emphasized.

Protesters can be acknowledged, but to give their behavior the focus and to ignore the ideas that were presented is only to let fundamentalists win in their attempt to stifle dialogue.

The question on this campus is one of power. The power center on this campus is to the left and allows many groups that may feel disenfranchised in the mainstream of America to have real power.

However, the possession of power, especially by people who have not had much before, often leads to its abuse. As power flourishes, respect for those with less power diminishes.

Just because you have the capability of shouting, hissing, or making rude remarks with impunity, that doesn’t mean that you should. Just because you have power, it does not mean that you should abuse it. Unfortunately, the abuse of power at the hands of fundamentalists is what seems to be in vogue at this fine institution.

Sometimes those who claim to believe strongly in the values of tolerance and open-mindedness are the ones who, on this campus, trample such values most flagrantly. And they will be able to as long as they have the power. But should they?

Don’t let fundamentalism win. Educate yourself. Acquire knowledge. Reach out beyond your boundaries and learn about what other people think. Even if you can’t do this, at the very least allow other people to speak their mind even if you disagree with them. This is the essence of freedom and democracy; anything else is fundamentalism.

Joel Dietz B’04 wishes that people had asked Perle good questions about his lack of exit strategy.

Acting Up
A glance at Brown’sactivist landscape
by Jonathan Baskin

In the last few weeks, students may have noticed signs of what is both best and worst about Brown’s much-heralded “activist” campus. On one hand, recent hot-button issues have galvanized students in significant numbers, and proved that large-scale activism at Brown is far from a thing of the past. “Affirmative action and the war have been great issues,” said Waciuma Wanjohi B’03, the opinions editor for the African Sun, “because they are issues people feel strongly about, and they’re building. You can see a worldwide movement developing.”

Activists have strategized to take advantage of stronger-than-usual student interest, and the response thus far has been encouraging to those who doubted the ability of a somewhat “fragmented” activist landscape, organized largely around identity groups and local issues, to come together when it counted. “For the walkout, we contacted basically every student group we could find,” said Shaun Joseph B’03, one of the co-founders of SAWI (Students Against the War in Iraq) “plus got the support of a bunch of sympathetic faculty. SAWI itself is an organization that appeals broadly to anyone who is opposed to the war, so in a SAWI meeting you’ll have revolutionary socialists and College Democrats working together.”

SAWI’s efforts have been effective. Two days before spring break, hundreds of Brown students found it within their capabilities to stand up from their desks, gather their things, and wander out of their 10:30s into a drizzle on the main green. Despite bad weather, the campus made a good showing, creating a Spring Weekend-esque atmosphere on the Main Green, minus the beer and the sun.

“I’ve noticed in the last three weeks that there’s a pretty united group,” said UCS president Allen Feliz B’03. “It includes groups with different ideas and that was why the rally on the green had such a huge showing.” English professor William Keach believes it is imperative for the antiwar effort to be broad-based. “What a lot of people have been saying from the beginning is that if this antiwar movement is going to do anything, mean anything at all, it’s going to have to be very broad, very inclusive, very democratically organized. Either it’s going to be that, or it’s going to remain small and inconsequential.”

Conversely, student behavior inside Salomon during last Tuesday’s Richard Perle panel discussion reminded some of what has often been discouraging about activism at Brown. Demonstrators dusted off their middle school manners, and occupied valuable seats as they lobbed leaflets, paper airplanes and wisecracks at Mr. Perle. It reminded many of similar behavior when Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed was prevented from speaking on campus two years ago.

Like the infamous paper-stealing Horowitz incident, such episodes reflect intolerance for the expression of divergent points of view on campus, and a roughly Stalinist attitude towards public debate. The issue is not whether protestors have the “right” to do such things, but whether those kinds of actions are worth it, considering they tend to drive a wedge between Brown’s “real” activists and the rest of the campus. “Someone who says ‘Yeah this war is terrible, I don’t like Bush, but activism is not gonna get it done’—it’s this disjunction that is an issue at Brown,” said Keach. “That’s to me where some serious debate is really needed.”

Bad actors?
There have been questions in recent years about whether campus activism at Brown had not become itself rather “inconsequential,” a “cult” of fake hippies engaging in self-righteous “grandstanding” and passing spinach around while screaming whatever they can think of about the evils of the American government. Of course this is hardly a fair evaluation of the wide variety of activist pursuits at Brown (even the emphasis on the “activist community” in this article surely overstates the case), but when organizers do seek to recruit a critical mass for large-scale action, perception is important.

Some argue that the response to the war has sometimes been ridiculed as overkill. “Activists at Brown are wannabes who missed out on Vietnam,” said one senior. “They don’t seem to understand,” said another, “the time to be active is during elections.” Though the two critiques are different, they represent a significant spectrum of cynicism on campus about the ability of student protest to make a meaningful difference. They also express a cynicism about the activists themselves, who sometimes give the impression of protesting for the sake of protest, or ape their ’60s predecessors on issues that most do not see as having the same moral clarity.

“There’s a need for a great cause like Vietnam or South Africa,” said the outspoken Herald columnist Alex Schulman ’B03, “but there’s no outlet. It’s so clear certain people want Iraq to be a Vietnam.” Though there is an argument for comparing Iraq to Vietnam, skeptics believe that protestors oversimplify the issues involved when they link the two.
Whether or not activists wish to transform Iraq into another Vietnam, there is no avoiding the denigrating comparisons many will make between the current student protests and those of their parents’ generation. These are judgments not so much against the activists themselves as the campus and America’s student population at large. It has become commonplace to assume that students across America have by in large joined their country and their no-longer-radical parents in what William Gaddis has aptly named the post-Vietnam “rush for second place,” settling for modest personal gains while deferring responsibility on the big issues.

Mark Boren’s recent study on student activism contrasts vibrant student movements in developing nations with the situation “in the United States [where] student activist levels are clearly not what they once were, and students…who attempt to agitate for change suffer comparisons with their historical predecessors that generally belittle their efforts, denigrate their generation, and bemoan the current political environment.”

Two Post- articles from last November (11.15.02) on activism at Brown expressed exactly these sentiments. Commenting on a small turnout for a prewar peace rally in Washington, Erica Berenstein wrote “the meager attendance at these events doesn’t exactly restore visions of an activist culture full of passion and awareness. The pathetic level of interest among members of the Brown community casts a shadow of apathy on a campus that was able to galvanize itself during the 1960s and 1970s.” In the same issue, Austin Campion’s “Not Quite the ’60s” bemoaned our Great Fall, from protests against Vietnam which were “major issues that unified students and administration in ways they have not since.”

At least they’re trying
Recent developments have problematized such a stance. Brown does feel like an activist campus these days, and it may be that non-activist critics belittle current efforts to excuse their own inertia. Student fervor does not measure up to that of the ’60s, but then again, argues Wanjohi, “we haven’t had friends sent against their will to Southeast Asia. Are we a campus of the ’60s or ’70s? Of course not. But are we activist compared to the nation? Definitely.” Furthermore, as many activists are quick to point out, there are a lot of misconceptions about how things went down in the ’60s.

The turnout for protests against the current war in Iraq, especially the diversely attended walkout on the second day of bombing, has been remarkable when compared to early gestures against the Vietnam War. Keach, a student at the University of Texas when U.S. involvement with Vietnam began, remembered the apathy of that student population at the beginning of the conflict: “People from the Johnson administration who were directly involved in implementing U.S. policy were sent to speak on the campus and in the early years—’64, ’65—you did not get huge turnouts. That came a bit later and was much slower to materialize.” Anyone who tried to get in the door when Bush policymaker Richard Perle graced Brown’s campus with his presence last Tuesday, or was on the main green for the walkout before break, will know that “huge turnouts” are exactly what we are already getting in response to a war that is less than two weeks old.

It is, of course, impossible to tell whether such protests have made a difference, or whether they will down the line. The thing that separates activists from non-activists at Brown most sharply is probably a sense of impotence on the part of the latter. Though protestors are sometimes castigated for their cynicism, they are encouraged to act because they believe they will make a difference. “If someone says they agree with me, but they don’t agree with activism, then they don’t really agree with me,” said Joseph. “To me, activism is how you get from point A to point B. I’d ask them how else they think we can get to point B. I must say I’ve never heard any other good answer.” There are many Brown students who, in Keach’s words, “don’t have any practical sense that it matters” whether they show up for a rally against the war, or march in circles for affirmative action. It is this sentiment, whether correct or not, that threatens to turn Brown into an apathetic student body.

For now, however, there are plenty on Brown’s campus who do have the “practical sense” that what they do matters, even if they sometimes express it in arguably impractical ways. Even if the long shadow cast by ’60s radicals makes only “second place” available to our current campus, plenty of students are determined nevertheless to run the race.

Jonathan Baskin B’03 promises to be activist as soon as the White Sox win the World Series.

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