What a putz. I'm not political scientist, anthropoligist, or sociolgist, but has not marxist, communist, neo-proletariat, classist literature pretty much been a circular argument of illogical objectivism?
Another Loopy Anthropologist
Actually, I'd love to see Professor McKenna get his shot here. He might be able to intellectually intimidate young people but our students would eat him alive and pick their teeth with his bones. Their first question might be, "Well, Professor McKenna, you're going to teach us about war. Do tell us about your experience with it. And reading Gramsci in a dangerous coffee shop doesn't count."
I think he's much safer staying in his academic alternative universe.
COUNTERPUNCH, May 28, 2008
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College
...As an anthropologist, I want equal time in the War College. In the February 2008 edition of the Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter, Captain Nathan K. Finney, an anthropologist with the Human Terrain System, called for informed discussion with his anthropology critics. "Let us open our minds as our anthropology professors instruct in Anth 101 and objectively discuss each other's ideas and concerns in order to find the best way forward together".
OK. I'd like to take Finney up on his offer and have access to the military and its soldiers directly. I have a ten-point curriculum.......
......A central purpose of anthropology is to help citizens recognize their ethnocentrism so that they can think more clearly about the world. So, if I had a chance to teach "Introduction to Anthropology" at the War College, here is how I might do it.
Day 1: Orientation: Discussion. Introductions. Overview of Course. Where are you from? How long have you been here? What's the best thing about the military? What's something you'd like to see changed? Film screening: In the Valley of Elah
Day 2: Smedley Butler Day. Review and discussion of War is a Racket Speech; View and discuss Eisenhower's farewell address. Read Uri Avnery's "The Military Option <http://counterpunch.com/avnery04292008.html> " in CounterPunch. Film screening and discussion: Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Day 3. NACIREMA: Discussion Where is this? What is capitalism? Discussion of Marx's labor theory of value. George Carlin on Football & Baseball. <http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml>
Day 4: Fieldtrip to US Veteran's administration hospital. Tour Guide: Wheelchair veteran Bobby Muller from Vietnam Veterans against the War <http://www.vvaw.org/>
Day 5 Iraq Veterans Against the War Day <http://ivaw.org/> ; How to file CO, information on war resisting. Film screening and discussion: Hearts and Minds
Day 6. How to keep from Dying: Are you safe? Discussion of April 17, 2008 RAND report which details 101,000 U.S. casualties a year. See "Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery. Other Readings: Grand Theft Pentagon: How they made a Killing on the war on Terrorism.
Day 7: Rod Ridenhour and the My Lai Massacre. Discussion of war hero Ridenhour who was a whistleblower against this war crime. Discussion of Geneva Convention. Film screening: In the Year of the Pig
Day 8: Hitler and Totalitarianism: Can it happen here? Film screening: Seven Days in May
Day 9: Debate on Iraq War. Two teams of four students per team will debate the question "Is the War in Iraq a Just War?" Like college debate, students will be responsible for arguing both sides of the issue in two debates.
Day 10: The Deceptions of Military Recruiters. What did they tell you? Read "Lies Military Recruiters Tell <http://counterpunch.com/jacobs03052005.html> " by Ron Jacobs....
Last edited by Jedburgh; 05-29-2008 at 01:35 PM. Reason: Added link, edited quoted content.
What a putz. I'm not political scientist, anthropoligist, or sociolgist, but has not marxist, communist, neo-proletariat, classist literature pretty much been a circular argument of illogical objectivism?
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.
Steve,
There will always be assholes in this world who enjoy safety at someone else's expense. Dr. McKenna is just another one.
He would not be worthy of your students' time.
Tom
Last edited by Tom Odom; 05-29-2008 at 06:03 PM. Reason: self-discipline
Originally Posted by selil
I'll tell you, the propensity of many academics to pretend that their latte leftism was serious scholarship was one of the things that drove me away from mainstream academia. Well, that and the fact that no school would hire me.
Wow. I am speachless.
I'm glad to see that you're rightly focusing on the latte leftists (splitters!), because we cappuccino leftists are the only true revolutionaries.
Yes, but that never stopped people from continuing to espouse that crap.
Even among academics, anthropologists (along with sociologists and English professors) have some of the looniest specimens out there...
Ionut C. Popescu
Doctoral Student, Duke University - Political Science Department
That's what happens when you wear a shoulder rig and a Glock to an interview...
Being a technologist in academia is much better. We do real stuff. We drink coffee. When somebody pisses us off we publish their browser history to the web. Us technologists are very passive aggressive. We are the only academic discipline that everybody else tries to adopt as their own. Everybody wants us, but nobody respects us. Just remember I am reading your email.
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.
When I was an undergraduate, there was a fairly sizeable contingent among historians, too. I remember my "Western Civ since 1650" professor spending most of the semester on the Marxist critique of Western colonial oppression of Africa and SW Asia.
Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught. — Sydney J. Harris
Real men drink coffee without additives.....
And on that note, WM, you are correct. There are a number of loony history types out there, concentrated in the Marxist and post-modernist areas along with some of the more fringe "special interest" focus history (which often strays into extended polemics with gender/biological overtones that with some word changes could have come from the Poison Dwarf himself).
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
By the way, I really like the phrase "latte leftism" which I just invented and I intend to copyright it. Failing that, I am at least going to lick it so that no one else will want it.
selil may be right, he may be a "putz." But I read the article, and as abrasive as it was it did bring up some points that merit serious discussion on this blog; e.g., the theoretical underpinnings to political power and military structure; the link between the military, the political, and academic departments.
gentile
Last edited by Tom Odom; 05-29-2008 at 05:56 PM. Reason: Wonk thought control
That's treading awfully close to attacking the
commenter rather than the comment. Mayhap beyond close. Your point may be germane but it could've been better stated, I think.
Disregard all before "huh" due to timely edit
Last edited by Ken White; 05-29-2008 at 05:58 PM.
Agreed and I deleted the second half. Probably get to read about it on another blog...
Of course...and that's the secret to its long-term appeal....
It would be interesting if the instructor went through a similar 10 point program designed to remove <his> ethnocentrism from the discussion, but somehow I don't think that will happen....
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
True. I guess it just set me off because of the arrogant tone--"I'd wave a few citations at the War College students and make them see the error of their ways." I also got a whiff of the notion that anyone who sees military power differently than Prof McKenna is either brainwashed or bought.
Brian McKenna
Brian McKenna was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pa., where he received a B.A. in communication arts and an M.A. in anthropology from Temple University. While in Philadelphia, he worked to shape public policy as a health analyst for the United Way's Community Services Planning Council and began a side career as a freelance journalist (City Paper, New York Guardian, University City Review). Before leaving Philadelphia for Michigan in 1991 to pursue his Ph.D. at MSU in medical anthropology, he taught political science and did a stint as development specialist for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. McKenna completed his Ph.D. in 1998 and has coordinated a groundbreaking study on Lansing-area environmental health for the Ingham County Health Department for the past three years. His study on our water will be published this summer (2001). He also taught a graduate class at MSU last fall titled, Anthropology, Health and the Environment.
Interesting anecdote is that one of the Michigan universities sociology program is known as the Michigan Mafia. Home of Tilly. From what I've seen they are horribly leftist, and extremely antagonistic and virulently anti "breakdown theorist". As a group from what I've read they basically use academic assassination to get their point across as part of the "resource mobilization" theory. Not sure it is the same University but seems like the same tactics.
I have now exhausted the three brain cells I saved from my doctoral sociology course excursions last semester.. May all three RIP.
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.
I have no problem with ardent leftists. Heck some of my favorite fellow graduate students and professors considered themselves Trotskyites. I admire their passion and, coming from a blue collar Appalachian background, understand their anger. It just gets my dander up when someone suggests that anyone who thinks differently is misguided or nefarious, or both.
That has been one of my issues too. One of my sociology professors was a break down theorist so we read several dozen papers looking at resource mobilization versus breakdown. The RM group were nasty, vindictive, and generally wrote with an evil zeal that was distasteful. The one sided nature of the nastiness was pretty obvious and not apparently selection bias.
Then I read a round robin slug fest between Anderson and LaQuant and whether "Code of the street" was an ethnography. It became apparent to me that on the other side of the science, way over there, they had a lot to say but most of it was pretty mean and useless to me. The ideas were intriguing. There was a massive amount of value to my research and opening new perspectives on how technology interacts to support some of my theoretical base. The packaging though could be pretty petty.
There is an Army Major hiding in the background of SWJ/C that took the one class with me. He has a LOT more perspective on the topic than I do since it was his core discipline. I though was left with a feeling that the social/anthropological sciences are pretty nasty to each other.
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.
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