Beloved teacher, translator, poet, scholar, and mentor, Allen Mandelbaum died on October 27th, 2011 at the age of 85. Mandelbaum is perhaps best known for his award winning translations of The Divine Comedy and the Aeneid, which won him the National Book Award in 1973, but he also published several volumes of his own poetry. He was a professor of English and Comparative literature at the Graduate Center from its founding in the 1960s until his move to Wake Forest University in 1989. During his time at the GC he deeply inspired his students, many of whom now hold academic positions at the Graduate Center and other prestigious institutions. Below are short remembrances of Professor Mandelbaum from several of his former students.

Ammiel Alcalay

Graduate Center, CUNY

It was 1980 — I’d returned to New York from two years in Jerusalem where I managed to cobble together a BA from Empire State College after dropping out of City College in 1978. I’d moved from Ancient Greek and Latin to Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish, and wondered how I might pursue these interests in some more formal way. As a classic academic underachiever (my high school years were 1969 to 1973 and there were far more interesting things to do than go to school), I wasn’t cut out for most graduate programs. I got the Columbia application and, after looking it over quickly, tore it to shreds in a combination of relief and despair. I simply didn’t know where to turn. It was then I decided to go find Allen Mandelbaum at the old Graduate Center on 42nd Street. I knew some of his poetry (Leaves of Absence, Chelmaxioms), and his early translations of Quasimodo, Ungaretti, and the Aeneid. I intuited that he might be a person to whom one could utter names like William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, Lorine Niedecker, Luis Zukofsky or Pier Paolo Pasolini without getting a blank stare. This was not a simple proposition in the academy of 1980. What I didn’t yet know but soon found out was that I could also utter names such as Ibn Arabi, Ibn Ezra or Mouloud Mammeri, and he would know what I was talking about. I never encountered anyone who knew so much but yet read like a poet, who knew that even Dante was struggling to figure out how to use words, and learned as he went along, not really understanding how to use the word “when” (“cuando”) until Canto XXVI. Through Allen I was able to pinpoint the journey of a vowel or a sound cluster across millenia in ways I could only intuit before. We spent several hours together in what would be the first of countless sessions in Allen’s office or apartment, in his characteristically conspiratorial hush that made you feel like you were in on some cosmic poetic operation, and actually an essential part of it. At a certain point, he marched me down to the Comparative Literature office and asked that they attend to the formalities of getting me into the program. It was, undoubtedly, a very different world.

Under Allen’s guidance, I feel like I was one of the last students in this country (generationally speaking), to get a certain kind of philological training. This meant working through at least three or four generations of scholarship (Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, French and English, in my case), as well as Allen’s legendary bibliographies, made not for a semester or an exam but for at least a lifetime. He made sure I had access to Saintsbury’s History of English Prosody, not in the abridged one volume version but the complete three volumes, by loaning it to me for several years. Allen’s generosity was, at times, overwhelming. He had grown up with Hebrew and when I began to further my studies in medieval Hebrew poetry I got wind of an old Jewish bookstore under the Manhattan Bridge that was going out of business. I wandered, with great longing, through stacks of coveted volumes that were extremely hard to find anywhere. When I reported this back to Allen, who was very aware of my limited financial situation, he simply gave me a signed blank check and told me to get whatever was necessary. When I was living in Jerusalem and very ready to give up on finishing my dissertation (what would become After Jews and Arabs), Allen gave me and my wife Klara an offer we couldn’t refuse: he invited us to Venice and paid for lodging at a pensione close enough to meet for coffee every morning in order to convince me I needed to finish my doctorate. I told this story to some of my students after class one night, just two days before hearing of Allen’s death, and one of them, Mariana Soto, a CUNY/BA student I’ve been working with, wrote me after seeing my posting about Allen’s death: “I was just thinking about how I was glad you finished your PhD. I keep feeling like the class you’re teaching and the space/intersections it creates have been/are really significant for all of us. There’s so much bullshit in big buildings of education. It really matters to have not just professors but teachers. What I meant to say is when I read this message I feel moved by the death of this person I never knew. Teachers matter.” I will be forever grateful that I had the good fortune to have Allen as my teacher.

Henry Weinfield

University of Notre Dame

“You taught me how man makes himself eternal”–thus Dante to his old teacher, Brunetto Latini, in Allen’s translation of the Inferno. That’s more or less what I learned from my old teacher, and it sums up how I feel about him as well. He was without question the largest, most generous, most magnanimous human being I have ever known. Wonderfully funny and completely without pomposity, he was a poet and teacher of the utmost seriousness, and when one became his student one learned, first of all, that the things of the intellect were to be taken with the utmost seriousness.

More than anyone I have ever known, Allen lived in that Republic of Letters–or (to use the metaphor he borrowed from Ungaretti) terra promessa–in which the great poets and thinkers are continually in conversation with one another. There Dante conversed with Virgil and Ovid, but also with Goethe and Mallarmé. Having once entered through the Mandelbaum Gate, they held discourse with one another in perfect freedom and without any concern for anachronism. Such was his erudition–and generosity–that everyone of any significance was included. When one entered through the Mandelbaum Gate, anything could happen. The lion could lie down with the lamb. Aquinas could find himself in dialogue with Ezra Pound or with the great Yiddish poet, Yankev Glatshteyn.

Those of us who were privileged to be his students were immediately included in the ongoing conversation he was perpetually having with himself. His range of reference was so vast and he spoke so elliptically that until one learned how to connect the dots, one was completely at sea. The first class I ever took with him (it must have been in 1974) I remember raising my hand and saying, “Professor Mandelbaum, could you please repeat the last half hour!” It was sink or swim, and if we stayed the course it was not only because of Allen’s brilliance but because we knew that in him we had found a true model of what the intellectual life could be.

In those years when there was much talk of the “anxiety of influence” and so forth, learning from Allen meant inhabiting a very different sort of intellectual universe, one in which the relations among poets and thinkers were “fraternal” rather than antagonistic. Allen was attuned to the tragic ironies of history, but he was a genuinely utopian thinker, at least as far as his understanding of the human potential afforded by the traditions of poetry, art, and thought was concerned. In the Limbo canto of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil reach “a meadow of green flowering plants” (basically the Elysian Fields that Dante has taken over from the Aeneid), and we are told: “The people here had eyes both grave and slow; / their features carried great authority; / they spoke infrequently, with gentle voices.” As the nobility of his rendering of those lines indicates, in a very real sense Allen lived there too.

When I was a young man, I came under his influence, and that changed me irrevocably. His example helped me form the image of myself that I wanted to pursue. He was a teacher in the highest sense, and I cannot separate anything I have done or tried to do from what I learned from him. I carry his image in my mind, and will until I die.

Farewell, beloved teacher and friend!

Burt Kimmelman

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Allen was Allen.

I speak of Allen Mandelbaum tautologically to avoid the ineffability inherent in describing the supernal. I also mean to impart some sense, though, of how completely sui generis Allen was.

I studied with some brilliant people at the Graduate Center in the 1980s. Allen was not brilliant. He was a genius. Yet he was not at all distant (he once wept in class over a poem).

To be around Allen was to live with depth and intensity of language, which was absolutely exhilarating—so thrilling I was addicted to it. And Allen spoke his own language. When he spoke, his subtlety and quickness of association beckoning, one had to scramble to think both critically and poetically at once. Jack Hall, who taught at the Graduate Center then, once said of him (quite enjoying the cleverness of his baseball metaphor, and in obvious admiration): “With Allen, you have to take the first pitch.”

Allen did not seek me out to work with him (though his canny insistence that I write the particular paper I did in the course I took with him set me up for a wealth of future scholarly publications, and soon thereafter he wrote the foreword for my first book of poems). After some protestation he gave in to me when I came to his office to confess my need to work with him. What ensued was one of the most cherished relationships of my life. And in time the roles of our friendship, while he remained my mentor, reversed.

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

“Who made the eyes but I?

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.”

“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”

“My dear, then I will serve.”

Once my dissertation proposal passed the English program’s committee I took the summer off to write a first draft. Trying to flesh out the plan in the proposal, I decided to begin with some background commentary (typical avoidance behavior), sort of an introduction to the introduction I was supposed to be writing. Two weeks later I said to my wife, Diane Simmons (we met at the Graduate Center), “you know, when this dissertation is done, I think I have another book here.” A week after that I realized that I was going to write that book then and there. I plunged in, saying nothing to Allen or anyone else. By the end of August I had a rough first draft (which years later became a book Allen blurbed).

I brought the draft over to Allen’s apartment. Diane was teaching so I had our baby daughter with me, who constantly smiled at Allen’s attentions. In his typical way he explained, “It’s the glasses, dear, the glint of light.”

She and I occupied his couch while Allen sat at a desk with his back to us, turning pages slowly, smoking one cigarette after another. After an hour he broke the silence: “Uh, I think we have an idea here.” He told me to clean up the draft and get it to my readers.

Allen sensed my need to go my own way and he was a hands-off adviser (though he knew that my readers, Bob Payne and Fred Goldin, would write extensive marginalia—a great team). After my dissertation defense Allen joined us for drinks. Eventually I found a job and the years passed. At odd times the phone would ring and, picking it up, I would hear that voice speaking in medeas res; it was an indescribable joy. He would call to see what I was up to and I would tell him and ask him what he was up to and he would tell me (“I the unkind, ungrateful”).

I think we all desired admittance into Allen’s bella scuola (thinking here of his great translation of the Commedia), Allen Dante’s Homer. His intellect was beyond my ken. He was a mensch, in any case. He had me play by his rules (but he let me figure out how to maneuver within them), not the rules we should have followed. I was so very lucky for that.

Joan Richardson

Graduate Center, CUNY

Early afternoon, Saturday, October 29th —howling storm, rain mixed with snow, and wild wind darkening, chilling all: “Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains,” the words kept coming up, punctuating and distracting my attention as I attempted to address the task at hand, meeting a deadline, finding source indications of lines and phrases I had quoted in an essay about William James and pragmatism. Lightning, then whistling thunder sounding like a jet passing low, whooshing branches of the huge, old sycamore lashing roof and windows: “Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains”—and then, in counterpoint, the ping of an email arriving: from Ammiel Alcalay with the news that Allen had died. Tears came up and I more than shuddered: it was from Allen that I had learned how to read and hear that line from Stevens that had, like so much else I began to learn from Allen, become part of my being, “Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains.” The reality of spirit.

On Thursday night I had dreamed I was on a stage talking about Allen—I only learned a day after Ammiel’s Saturday email that Allen had died on Thursday—about how he used to sing, or, rather, quietly intone, the Psalms in Hebrew as we worked on the page proofs for his Inferno—I was his research assistant that year, his marks in the margin in the Peacock Green ink he used for his fountain pen. Shades, shades. This dream, of course, returned as I felt what I felt on hearing he had died, and I cried and thought of how I should honor his spirit and realized, naturally, that I could do no better than continuing to do my work, and so went on paging through my heavily marked copy of James’s Pragmatism to locate page numbers for phrases, that, like all that has come to matter, I know by heart. Tears uppoured again as I came to: “To anyone who has ever looked on the face of a dead child or parent the mere fact that matter could have taken for a time that precious form, ought to make matter sacred ever after…. That beloved incarnation was among matter’s possibilities.”

“Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin!”—Emerson. Had I not learned to read Stevens and the other Modernist poets with Allen, and then back through the Romantics to Milton, Shakespeare, Chaucer, I don’t think I would have begun to hear Emerson or James in Stevens or Donne in Eliot or the Vita Nuova in Pound. Allen Mandelbaum lived, and still lives, in the shapes and sound of words he taught us, his most fortunate students, to hear, and to see through them worlds within worlds and angels falling, where in Paradise Lost there are two—otherwise thought impossible—stress maximums on the fifth syllable: Exhilarating!—“There is no wing like meaning.” He revealed to us language’s elegant mysteries. He would be thrilled, in response, by a question about the place of a comma.

On finding myself during my first semester as a graduate student in the Program of Comparative Literature in Allen’s seminar on Modern Poetry offered by the Program in English, I took notes furiously, transcribing what seemed a foreign language. I would spend days following in the dictionary and in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, translating my notes. Three or four weeks went by before I gathered courage enough to describe my quandary to one of my classmates—none of whom had said anything more than I did in seminar. But some occasionally nodded, and so did not seem uncomprehending. I had thought to myself that I was the index pointing the difference between those who had been English majors in college—those weighted down by Norton anthologies—and lesser beings. In response, then, to my voicing my ignorance to one of my classmates at the end of the meeting when I had been asked to give a “précis” on Eliot’s use of the quatrain in comparison to Theophile Gautier’s Emaux et Camees during our next session: “I don’t understand what he’s saying…!,” he replied, “Oh, don’t worry, nobody does…,” I was grateful, if still perplexed. We all had a lot to learn, and we did. Allen was my first dissertation director, when my topic was “The Difference between the Operation of Metaphor in Poetic and Ordinary Language.” Following his guidance, I began gathering all the references to metaphor from the pre-Socratics on. After many months in the library of Union Theological Seminary, when I was only up to the Church Fathers, I realized that I would never get to write that dissertation, but Allen knew I had to learn that for myself.

For some years during my graduate career, Allen was Executive Officer of the Program in English and I was one of the student representatives to the Graduate Council. Allen was passionate in arguing at meetings for giving official designation/documentation to/for candidates who had completed all requirements and who were deepening their research and writing the dissertation. Dressed in one of his exquisitely-cut Italian tweed jackets, dark shirt, thin suede or horizontally-striped raw silk tie, removing the cigarette holder with the nicotine-removing filter from his teeth—it was his habit to chew on it as he was thinking, and we all smoked then—he stood one afternoon and described how the ABD—“All But Dissertation” designation—would give candidates a “serenity platform”—a residence in time permitting the kind of learning he exemplified and valued. It was pure Allen, one of my beloved teachers.

“They will come no more/ The old men with beautiful manners.”

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Wel­come to the Occupy CUNY blog. We’ll be cov­er­ing the recent sit­u­a­tion developing at CUNY around proposed tuition hikes, the protests against them, and the unacceptably forceful response from the police and university brass. We will be report­ing on this cri­sis and related news begin­ning today. The most recent updates will appear at the top with a EST stamp.

6:30pm A second arrest now being reported, though still unconfirmed. Details forthcoming as they become available.

5:31pm Riot gear cops moving up on Baruch protest (h/t @RDevro):

5:30pm Word reaching the Advocate is that the Board of Trustees just approved three-year tuition hike.

5:15pmThe Grad Center’s own Sandor John addressing the crowd outside BoT meeting as helicopters hover above…

5:00pm The folks at http://www.livestream.com/occupynyc have gained access into Baruch and are looking to get into the Board of Trustees meeting!

4:52pm CUNY Distinguished Professor David Harvey spotted in the crowd, enjoying a cup of coffee!

4:51pm Party atmosphere inside the pen. Rude Mechanical Orchestra inside playing “Whose Side Are You On?”

4:50pm Ryan Devereuz reports that young man who burned his student loan bill has been arrested.  Still not sure if this is the same kid our reporter witnessed being hauled away.  More as it becomes available.

4:47pm City Councilperson and City College alum Ydanis Rodriguez is in the mix with protesters at Baruch.

4:45pm Chant now is “1, 2, 3, CUNY will be free.”

4:40pm Advocate’s man on the ground now reporting first arrest…Chants of “Shame!”

4:35pm Nick Pinto just now: Picketers circling on 15th in front of Baruch, but bulk of the march is clumped against barricades by the armory.”

4:30pm Penny Red reporting just now: “Two girls in crowd: ‘so this is a different movement?’ ‘No, it’s one movement with different issues.’ This gets it about right…

4:25pm Chant resounding again: “Off our campus!”

4:20pm Police giving no room whatsoever on streets for protesters to make easy forward progress. Mopeds are barricading protesters.  Advocate reporter on the ground reporting that situation tense between crowd and cops…

4:15pm Penny Red tweets: Police chasing students with motorcycles at Baruch College student walkout #ows #studentstrike

4:12pm Word now coming to the Advocate protesters are marching around the Vertical Campus Building and on up Lexington…

4:10pm Ryan Devereaux just posted this picture to his Twitter feed of protesters marching to Baruch:

4:05pm For those interested, the Village Voice‘s Steven Thrasher interviews Conor Tomas Reed, one of the five students arrested last week at Baruch.

4:00pm  John Knefel tweets just now: “Baruch is barricaded & closed @ 25th & 3rd. Able to enter via Lex. Huge police presence #ows”

3:00pm Barbara Bowen sends along this response, issued to Chancellor Matthew Godlstein, to Baruch President Mitchell Wallerstein’s notice over the weekend of class cancellations and administrative leaves granted to college employees after 3:00pm.  It reads:

Dear Chancellor Goldstein:

I write on behalf of the 25,000 CUNY employees the PSC represents to object in the strongest terms to the cancellation of classes and denial of student access to Baruch College as of 3:00 p.m. today. It is inconceivable to us as faculty and staff that a college would cancel its primary activity—teaching—on the grounds that doing so will “ensure the safety of all students, faculty and staff during the period surrounding the meeting of the CUNY Board of Trustees,” as President Wallerstein writes. What creates unsafe conditions is not the presence of peaceful protesters on a college campus, but rather the college’s approach to policing: confining student protesters to an inadequate area and limiting access to public space at this public college.

President Wallerstein’s decision sends the message that Baruch College, and by extension CUNY, puts the desire for control ahead of the interests of education. That is the wrong message for a university—especially a public university—to send. Speaking for faculty and staff who want to continue the work of education uninterrupted, I call on you to ask President Wallerstein to rescind his decision.

The lockdown of the Vertical Campus is not about our safety or the safety of our students. It is about repressing student protest, intimidating those who wish to dissent, effectively closing an open meeting, and making Baruch a campus where free speech may take place only in designated spaces. President Wallerstein apparently believes that “the right of free expression on the Baruch College campus” must await the construction of an outdoor public plaza or the designation of specific areas in which that right may be exercised.

The right of free expression does not stop at the door of the Trustees’ meeting. Free expression as a right has no meaning if it can be curtailed whenever Trustees might be inconvenienced or embarrassed by its being exercised. Students, faculty, staff and the community have a legitimate right to engage in peaceful protest, and the PSC will do everything lawfully in our power to protect it.

The decision to reschedule classes and close administrative offices was made without consultation with the PSC representative at Baruch, and, as far as I have been able to determine, without consultation with the elected faculty governance or student leaders on campus. President Wallerstein apparently fails to recognize that many of the faculty who teach after 3:00 p.m. on Mondays, particularly adjuncts but also full-time faculty, may not be available at the time he has unilaterally declared for the rescheduling of their classes. Faculty may have other professional commitments at that time. In addition, some faculty and students participate in religious observances that prevent their being available on Friday evenings. The ability of professional staff to fulfill their responsibilities is not addressed in President Wallerstein’s message. The union will not tolerate speed-up for professional staff as a result of the closing of offices early today.

It is not too late to reconsider the decision to shut down Baruch’s Vertical Campus. On behalf of the faculty and staff who make CUNY work, I call on you to ask President Wallerstein to rescind his announcement and allow work to continue. Open the campus, open the meeting, and let this university be a university again.

Sincerely,

Barbara Bowen
President

cc: President Mitchel Wallerstein
Professor Peter Hitchcock, PSC Chapter Chair, Baruch College
PSC Membership

1:00pm In response to President Kelly’s message, students and faculty began letters in answer.  A particularly good one comes from Priya Chandrasekaran, a CUNY GC doctoral student in anthropology. It follows below:

Dear President Kelly:

I am a doctoral student in Anthropology at The CUNY Graduate Center. Before I address the purpose of this letter I would like to thank you for your help with the recent commemoration for our late professor, Fernando Coronil. The event was a truly beautiful celebration of Fernando as well as to the potential depth, meaning, and joy of the academic life.

I am writing in response to your message addressing security issues at The Graduate Center. I write with both hope and a heaviness of heart. I write in response to your statement and with an honest appeal which I hope you will consider seriously. Most importantly, I write as someone of our university’s academic and political community who holds a profound sense of belonging and gratitude for this place and network we call The CUNY Graduate Center. The words that follow are shaped and inspired by my experiences here.

There are people who would admonish me for writing you such a letter. They would claim that you represent those on the other side of the blunt force that was used against us on Monday at Baruch, that this letter is wasted time, these words are wasted breath. And perhaps they are right. But unfortunately and fortunately, I am not someone inclined towards cynicism. I have my education to thank for that.

I will not go through the details of events at Baruch on Monday; for that I could direct you here: http://studentweekofaction.wordpress.com/. I can tell you that I am someone committed to nonviolence both politically and spiritually. I can also tell you I am committed to public education. I have been a public educator in some capacity for fifteen years. I was there on Monday and I saw the terror, disillusionment, anger, resolve, and defiance on student’s faces when they were assaulted with batons by CUNY security and – as substantial and reliable evidence reveals – NYPD was called into the building. I know of someone who was sexually harassed that day by CUNY security. I have heard firsthand testimonials of people who were hit and jabbed. I was grabbed roughly by my arm and I witnessed a male acquaintance being grabbed, thrown, and taken away by 2 men in uniform because he was feeling claustrophobic and leaned his body out of a packed elevator. My friend’s cell phone was smashed to bits. Another’s glasses were broken. I have colleagues who were arrested. I realize you do not know me, but I am not exaggerating. There are video and audio recordings documenting these events, which is why so many faculty – some of our most esteemed – have come forward to support us and why the petition to oust Chancellor Goldstein has already acquired over 2000 signatures. Every student I have referred to thus far is from The Graduate Center.

I am not merely being hopeful and naïve when I say the winds of change are here. As they blow – and they will blow fast – you have the opportunity to be someone who mattered to public education in a deeper, larger sense. There is much reason to believe that Matthew Goldstein’s tenure as CUNY Chancellor is over. He is not respected enough to be feared, not considered eloquent enough to be convincing or ethical enough to be trusted, and he has no credible commitment to public education. He, along with many Board members, has displayed what appears to be – deep down – terror of free thought and the racially and ethnically diverse youth and labor of this city; these are elements to be contained, if necessary with violence. But the very seclusion and elitism that has, over recent years, protected the Chancellor and the Board is now their Achilles heel. I speak for many when I say we feel no allegiance to them. It is not just that they are stirring up an atmosphere of violence and threat, but they are, simultaneously, becoming obsolete. At a historical moment when CUNY students are standing up with self-dignity, finding the right words, fueled by a sense of purpose and righteousness, and coming together in solidarity around public space and public education, neither the Chancellor’s money nor his political connections will save him. I am sure if Antonio Gramsci were alive, he’d be able to explain this better than me.

You say that you value the exchange of ideas and respect. You say you support free speech and civility. You, as much as any of us, should know that without the former the latter cannot exist. Civility in a climate of censorship and violence – economic, social, and physical – is merely a ruse that erodes the very foundation of anything that could be called an education. No step towards justice in history, recorded or unwritten, has ever been taken without deeply disrupting prevailing patterns of work and life. This is because brutality, in its most terrible form, dons the garb of normality. If those of the Civil Rights movement were concerned about enabling people to go to work and study “as usual” the institution at which you are at the helm would look far different today, and the robust intellect that fills its halls would be largely absent. My education has taught me that to be “civil” is to boldly stand up for the most humane thing, not to meekly relinquish to dehumanizing norms. With candor born of respect, I am saying that your proclamation to balance free speech and what you have called “civility” is not a substantial response to recent events ay CUNY. Regardless of the earnestness with which you may have made this call, it essentially amounts to false appeasement.

I must admit that I am deeply disappointed that – after the violence inflicted upon — NOT perpetrated by– us on Monday, you followed orders and added security on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, trying to ward off the threat of a potential “occupation.” I would have thought that your real concern, as President of our college, would have been for our safety. I would have thought you might have used that money to send security to protect us – your students – on the 28^th. I must tell you that in the eyes of the students with whom I have spoken, there is simply no good justification for this decision. I would have thought that you would have understood that the professors and students who comprise our community fundamentally believe in The Graduate Center as a place where radical thought and political discussions can and should exist. I thought The Graduate Center was a place that we, the students and faculty, did “occupy” with our minds, bodies, passions, voices, and beliefs. Isn’t that its greatest strength?

I ask that you reconsider how you respond to calls for more security to watch your students. I ask that you make a public declaration, supported by irrefutable evidence, that no NYPD will be called into our school because of a fear of “occupation.” I ask that you come out in support of your students with a commitment to protect their freedom of expression, even if that means not following orders from above. I ask, in short, that you be a leader worthy of this great institution of public higher education that I, and so many others, have grown to cherish and would risk much to defend.

Your public actions will be read as your response to issues raised in this letter.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

12:30pm The Graduate Center’s president, Bill Kelly, issued a community letter over the weekend addressing concerns about police presence on campus. It reads, in full:

Dear Friends,

I’ve received a message from the Officers of the Doctoral Students’ Council regarding security practices at The Graduate Center. I was pleased to have their thoughtful inquiry. The concerns they raised are of general import, so I take the liberty of answering in the form of a community message. I will also address security issues their letter did not raise.  I’ll begin with some specifics and then turn to broader themes.

I’ve been asked whether the size of our security staff has been increased. It has not. To the contrary, staffing has been reduced in the last year by 4.2 positions. That reduction is the consequence of an over 50% increase in contract guard billing rates. Since 1999, we are down a total of seven positions. We have had some turn-over this year, so if you see an unfamiliar face, please introduce yourself.

The greater security presence in the building last Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and again on Monday, resulted from holding officers from the 7 to 3 shift over and bringing in the 3 to 11 staff early. No external personnel were involved. The cost attendant to that action will be absorbed through savings effected in our security budget in the course of the year.

We took that action at the request of CUNY central, as did every CUNY college. The request was made in response to a number of non-specific web notices concerning college occupations.  We complied for two reasons: first, to insure the peace of our community in uncertain circumstances; and second — and more important — to guarantee that should the need for additional security staff arise, they would be members of our community, not people whom we do not know and who do not know us.

There was no intent to intimidate students, staff, or faculty; the dispersal of officers throughout the building, rather than grouping a larger than usual number of security staff at the entrance to The Graduate Center or elsewhere in the building was meant to avoid that very prospect.  I deeply regret any perception to the contrary.

Graduate Center peace officers have been trained in first amendment rights as well as the laws of arrest, search, seizure, and the lawful use of force. They have been authorized by New York State law to make arrests for violation of NYS penal code; they may use reasonable force to protect themselves and others. They are not authorized to conduct surveillance of students, staff, or faculty. This point is self-evident to me, but I make it in deference to concerns raised about such activity at other colleges.

There are no plans whatsoever for a sustained increase in security. Should occasional need arise, additional officers would be drawn from our current staff.

Security staff regularly check on all events in the building to insure compliance with NYC fire codes and to gather attendance statistics for the Office of Special Events.  They do not report on the content of those events.

Although we have only eight uniformed peace officers, our practice is to respond to Graduate Center protest activity with Graduate Center personnel.  NYPD is responsible for protecting public officials attending events at The Graduate Center and for policing the sidewalks around our building.  Only in an emergency would they be called into The Graduate Center.

*******

All of the above is nuts and bolts. Here’s what matters, my friends.  We are a university, a community of scholars. The vital exchange of ideas is the heart of our enterprise. That’s one of the two pillars that sustain a university and underwrite its very being. The other is respect, the protection of the rights of all to pursue their work and to conduct their lives.  Free speech and civility are mutually sustaining. Each is meaningless without the other.  Defending both — absolutely — is the challenge we face. Thus far, we have, together, succeeded.  Our security staff, under the direction of John Flaherty, has been — in my opinion — flawless in supporting peaceful protest and free assembly. They deserve our thanks. Similarly, faculty, students, and staff who have participated in the variety of activities associated with the Occupy movement have been both forceful in their expression and respectful in their exchange. I’ve been reminded again and again that The Graduate Center is a remarkable place and that I am very privileged to be a member of this community.

With respect and deep regard,

Bill

12:00pm The CUNY Graduate Center’s Manissa McCleave Maharawal has a piece in AlterNet with the inside scoop on the student movement.  A quick snippet:

“We are calling on our faculty to support us. We are calling on our union to support us. We are calling on students to reject the increasing privatization of what should be a public good and join us. We are rejecting the securitization of our universities, of our education, we are rejecting the commodification of our universities, of our education. We are rejecting a model that attempts to convince us that a consumer model of education, where you pay for what you get, is the best one. And in doing all this we are, again, fundamentally challenging the model of society that we are supposed to be content in. We are demanding more, we are demanding a society where education is a right, where it is free, where everyone has access to it.

“And we have learned, once again, that this is a real challenge to the state, to the powers that be, to those who want to maintain education for the elite and for only those who can afford it.  Why else would we be surrounded by cop cars when we have meeting of the People’s University in Washington Square Park? Why else would students and faculty around the country be pepper sprayed and beaten when they demand a greater voice over decisions made in these institutions, when they demand affordability and accessibility? Why else would a public meeting be in a heavily securitized building, why else would the President of Baruch cancel classes in the last weeks before finals just so that a Board meeting can occur un-interrupted? We are being met with force because we are a threat, because education as a right for everyone is a threat because we are asking for more than we have been taught to expect, because we want to stretch our imaginations about what is possible by doing so.”

11:00am From Dissent, information on an event this evening looking at OWS’s “Phase Two,” at Columbia University:

“On the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the 99 percent poured into the streets for a massive day of protest against glaring inequalities of wealth and political power. Following nationally coordinated police raids on protest camps, occupiers face new choices about the direction of OWS.  What next? On Monday, November 28, we will discuss how social movements with diverse tactics, needs, and goals grow and gain power in the face of repression.

“The conversation will feature Frances Fox Piven, an activist and scholar of social movements at The Graduate Center, City University of New York; Liza Featherstone, journalist and author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart; Nikil Saval, associate editor of n+1 and labor activist; Michael Hirsch, labor journalist and editorial board member of New Politics; and Dorian Warren, a fellow at the Roosevelt institute and professor of political science at Columbia University.

“The location is 550 W. 120th Street, Room 501, Corner of 120th and Broadway.”

10:30am NY1 has brief coverage of the protests scheduled for later this afternoon here.

10:00am Jadaliyya has run a strong statement on increased police presence on CUNY campuses penned by faculty member Anthony Alessandrini.   It concludes with a number of demands:

“So: first (and I speak here only for myself, although I suspect I am far from alone in these demands), I call for the resignation of any and all officials, whether at Baruch College or elsewhere in the CUNY system, who were responsible for ordering campus security to use violence to disperse nonviolent student protesters.

“Second, I endorse the call, first written and circulated by CUNY students, for the immediate resignation of the Chancellor of the City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein, who, in the words of the student petition, ‘sat idly by through the full three and a half hours of the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting at Baruch College, on November 21, 2011, while in the same building students, faculty, and staff of his university engaging in peaceful protest were met with a violent police response and numerous arrests.’ This petition states the case clearly and succinctly, and I simply endorse it and call upon readers to sign it, and to follow it with individual phone calls and emails to Chancellor Goldstein.

“Third, I extend this call for resignation to include the politically appointed members of the Board of Trustees, who similarly sat idly by while nonviolent student protesters faced violence from campus police. Allow me, in concluding, to address the Board directly: In calling for your resignation, all I am really doing is echoing the words and example of those students who, locked out of your sham ‘public’ hearing, declared that they would simply hold their own hearing. Being literally pushed out of their own school was just the latest example of the way that an unaccountable, unelected, and irresponsible Board of Trustees has attempted to deny students any control over or input into their own education. It’s their school; you are the ones who now have to go.

“As Robert Hass put it, regarding students who have been protesting at Berkeley:

“’Whose university?’ the students had chanted. Well, it is theirs, and it ought to be everyone else’s in California. It also belongs to the future, and to the dead who paid taxes to build one of the greatest systems of public education in the world.

“This is certainly true of CUNY, another of the world’s great public education systems. It belongs to the students, the teachers, and all the other workers who make up this university. It belongs to everyone who lives in this city, everyone who has lived here and helped to build it, and everyone who will live here in the future and will become this university. It belongs to everyone except for the ones who have seized it, the ones who now must step aside. You are the occupiers, not us.

“CUNY will be a democratic, open, inclusive, and free university, with or without you. You can resign and join us, or resign and move aside. There is, I would insist, room for you among us; there is nothing written in stone that insists that we must be antagonists. There are honorable precedents here; after all, it was not so long ago that CUNY’s then-Chancellor, Joseph S. Murphy, vigorously defended the policy of open admissions, declaring: ‘We have to give an opportunity to all our people to go as far as they as they possibly can in terms of getting an education and moving ahead or we will have a highly stratified, rigid class system and we won’t have democracy.’ Even though you have chosen to police your side of this divide between us through the use of violence, there is still room for you. Again, there is an honorable precedent: City College President Buell Gallagher, who in November 1968 called in the police to end a nonviolent student sit-in, a few months later resigned in protest rather than implement budget cuts that would have effectively ended programs like the Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge (SEEK) program intended to expand opportunities for poorer students, particularly students of color, to attend CUNY. Gallagher’s words then resonate clearly today, and you have the chance to follow his example: ‘I am now asked by officers of government to stand in the door and keep students out. I shall not accede, I will not do it.’

“So there is room for you among us. But first you must resign from your unaccountable positions, and join us in a truly democratic process; otherwise, you simply must go. As millions of people, from Tunisia to Egypt to everywhere, have been telling their brutal and unaccountable leaders: game over.

“Your time is up. Our time has begun, and we are the City University of New York.”

9:30am Here’s a brief video ad for today’s protest at Baruch posted at YouTube.

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If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains.
Every wheel in the creation, every mine and every mill;
Fleets and armies of the nation, will at their command stand still.

On November 17, I marched with hundreds of other CUNY Graduate Center students from Thirty-Fourth Street to Union Square as part of a day-long series of student walkouts and demonstrations across the nation. Armed with a large “Student Strike” banner and about a dozen “book shields”—depicting the covers of such radical classics as Emma Goldman’s My Life, Ursula K Leguin’s The Dispossessed, and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, we filled the sidewalk and the streets with our bodies and our voices. Marchers chanted “Education is a Right/ Fight Fight Fight,” and “All Day all Week/ Occupy Wall Street.” Around Eighteenth Street, as we approached Union Square, the crowd passed a group of several workers dismantling one of those ubiquitous sets of scaffolding that dot the city landscape. As we passed the workers stopped their lifting, smiled and waved, and as we waved back the chant went up through the crowd, “Students and Workers/ Shut the City Down.” The workers seemed pleased with this chant as did the students. Indeed, this particular rallying cry has become surprisingly common among student protests at CUNY and within the OWS movement. I remember feeling a little embarrassed the first time I heard it shouted at a PSC rally years ago, as if such a statement were simply wishful thinking; but the more I’ve heard it repeated and the more I’ve seen young students and faculty members embracing the chant, vigorously shaking their fists in the air, the more it has come to seem like a real possibility.

Just about two weeks earlier, on November 2, protesters at Occupy Oakland had put that very idea into practice, calling a general strike among students and workers for the entire city of Oakland. This was a bold and controversial move and many in the Oakland OWS movement and the general assembly were resistant to issue a call for a city-wide strike that they knew had little chance of actually materializing. Although the vast majority of Oaklanders went to work that day, those who came out to rally and demonstrate managed to shut down a freeway and a port for the entire day, clashing violently with police throughout the night as they first occupied and then defended more spaces throughout the city. Now Oakland is calling for another (this one likely to be much more successful) massive day-long strike of all the west coast ports on December 12. This is not an unprecedented move. The west coast ports have been shut down by longshoremen strikes several times over economic and political issues that directly affect the working class. But the longshoremen are some of the most militant union workers in the country. It will be a lot harder to convince the average worker to take such action. Overall, the idea of a serious city-wide strike, where ordinary workers such as  teachers, postal carriers, secretaries, professors, students, and bus and train drivers, all refuse to work, has not yet even begun to take shape. While workers in cities, states, and even entire nations across the globe often use the general strike as a means of achieving political ends, there has not been a city-wide general strike in the United States since a spontaneous strike erupted in Oakland in 1946 as part of an effort to unionize department store workers.  So why are Americans now so afraid of the general strike?

The reasons for this hesitancy are legion. In New York and other states, laws like the Taylor Law offer stiff penalties to public sector unions that dare to take any kind of job action. But most working class people have never even heard of such laws. The plain fact is that working class people today lead extraordinarily insecure lives, where a day’s work could be the difference between buying medicine and paying the rent or having to choose between the two. And even those workers who can afford a day off have reason to be hesitant. Calling in sick on the day of a planned strike might be seen by some private employers as sufficient grounds for termination, and few workers are in a position to take that chance with their families’ futures. So what has to change? What has to happen that would protect the economically vulnerable while still radically disrupting the normalcy of day to day alienation and exploitation that define our age?

To begin with, if we are going to talk the talk we need to start walking the walk. If students and workers are going to shut any city down, they must first come together to seriously talk about combining their power in a united front. In some places this is already happening, but not nearly at the pace needed to make sufficient gains among the rank and file of such unions as the TWU, DC37, PSC, and AFT. As I’ve argued in these pages before, it is essential that the rank and file of such unions begin to create spaces for organizing outside of the union leadership structures that have, just by virtue of their reliance upon the state for their existence, compromised the real power of their members—that is, their power to withhold their labor. Further, once these channels of communication are in place, it will probably require more than a strike call from an OWS general Assembly to get people out of their seats and into the streets. More than likely it will take a crisis of one kind or another.

In 1946, in Oakland, that crisis took the form of a police crackdown on protesting department store workers. In 2011 the options are seemingly wide-open, since crisis seems to have become the permanent state of affairs in occupied America. Some possible scenarios to watch out for include a further (potentially fatal) escalation of police brutality against students or Occupy protesters; massive austerity measures that further cut essential safety net programs like Medicare, Social Security, or veteran’s health (all already in the works); or a protracted union contract battle capable of generating sentiments of working class solidarity like those expressed in Wisconsin last year. A particularly sympathetic union, if there is still such a thing, threatened by state cuts or, better, a private union being exploited for corporate profit, might also offer a potential battleground in which to again test the mettle of the general strike. The Sotheby’s lock-out is one example that actually seems to be gaining some steam. But the PSC is also on the verge of a potentially protracted and ugly contract battle.  As the PSC moves forward there will be many opportunities to frame that battle as yet another example of the one percent’s attack on the 99 percent of New Yorkers who attend or work at public schools and universities across the nation. As the negotiations over course load, class size, adjunct parity, healthcare, and job security come to a head, it is important that we seek out allies outside our own ranks by connecting these issues to the larger problems of our current economic system which favors the already grotesquely wealthy at the expense of nearly everyone else.

Without a doubt the Occupy Wall street movement has reinvigorated the left, helping to make possible previously unimaginable acts of intelligent and creative resistance. But it has also managed to create important and vital public spaces in cities and towns across the country where electrical workers and professors, janitors and art handlers, the unionized and non-unionized, can come together across different industries and recognize their common struggle. Such solidarity across sectors will continue to make radical actions more possible and the idea of an eventual general strike a lot more plausible.

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A full day of action across CUNY campuses culminated in an ugly incident at Baruch College on Monday November 23.  It began with a series of student walkouts from classrooms throughout the city between lunchtime and the late afternoon, at which point protesters converged on Madison Square Park where they met other contingents of students before heading as a group of Baruch’s Murray Hill campus to protest the Board of Trustees meeting being held that evening to receive public feedback on, among other things, future tuition hikes for CUNY students.

College security ordered the protesters to clear the area when the meeting was convened at 5:00pm. When they refused, and attempted to move forward into the lobby, police pushed back using their billyclubs as battering rams, pushing students to the ground as protesters outside on the street pounded on the school’s glass walls and chanted “Shame! Shame!” As The Advocate goes to press, it is still not clear if any students were hit with clubs. What is clear, however, is that police used excessive force against a crowd of nonviolent student protesters in a public space.

Conor Tomas Reed, one of five students arrested on Monday, offered some details of what went down. “During the billyclub melee, a guard unzipped my backpack and emptied its contents onto the floor, including a notebook with my students’ grades and a CUNY library book. As I shielded myself and others, I was grabbed by several guards and thrown to the ground, pinned down with my shirt ripped and glasses broken, and had zip-ties placed around my wrists so tightly that I couldn’t feel my hands. Half an hour later, after I had been relocated to a room on the fourteenth floor (coincidentally, about a hundred feet from the Board hearing) with over a dozen other detainees, were my ties loosened. Many other detained CUNY students similarly experienced this tight cuffing and rough handling, and were otherwise in tremendous pain at the whim of a frighteningly disorganized and cocky security force.”

“All five of us were CUNY students of color (four men and one woman), with me also in the peculiar position of being charged with trespassing on the campus where I teach. One CUNY security officer threatened the young woman in custody—after she told him not to touch her while we were being led outside Baruch, the officer said, ‘I can do whatever I want to you…’ Alleged charges…switched around as we were brought to the NYPD’s 7th Precinct. We were told at different times that we were being held for assaulting public safety officers, trespassing, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and for one of us, attempted grand larceny (trying to ‘steal’ a billy club that was twice pummeled into the student’s ribs). I’ve now been personally charged with trespassing and resisting arrest, and would love any immediate advice on how to secure my teaching position at Baruch under these charges…”

Not surprisingly, CUNY’s chief spin doctor, Michael Arena, was quick with the fingers in punching out an official statement that basically takes the truth, bends it over, and gives it a quick swift kick in the ass.  “It is clearly evident that from beginning to end, the University’s public safety officers acted with extraordinary professionalism and with great restraint to ensure the safety of the public…The protesters created a public safety hazard. CUNY public safety on three occasions warned the protesters they would be removed if they continued to block flow and access to the lobby.” Of course, what Arena fails to mentions—probably because he was too busy putting out the raging fire consuming his pants—the easiest way to prevent the blockage of “flow” would have been to not to erect barricades and prevent people from moving into and out of the building. But Arena has never been one to allow things like details and facts get in his way while pumping out official bullshit.

The response to these events was swift and clear. Within hours, CUNY faculty released a powerful statement deploring the inappropriate use of coercion against peaceful protest on CUNY campuses and insisting that administrators “at both the CUNY-wide level and at individual campuses not call upon any outside police forces, including the New York City Police Department, or any other city, state, or federal law enforcement agencies, in order to disperse students who are engaged in nonviolent protests.” A student-issued statement was also released echoing these concerns, while a petition began circulating shortly thereafter calling for the resignation of Chancellor Matthew Goldstein.

Follow-up actions are also being taken on Monday November 28, again at Baruch College, as the Board of Trustees meets to vote on further tuition increases and a host of other issues that adversely affect students.  Organizers have announced that interested students meet at Madison Square Park (at 23^rd Street) at 3:00 for a rally. From there, students will march to Baruch.

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St. Mark’s Bookshop Saved!

The beginning of November witnessed a major victory for independent, small businesses in New York City.  St. Mark’s Bookshop, a Lower East Side institution for over thirty years, was threatened with eviction by its landlord, Cooper Union, as it struggled to scrape together monies to meet its monthly rent.  The possibility of the store’s ouster by Cooper Union sparked a massive backlash from community activists, booklovers across the nation, and even celebrity personalities like Salman Rushdie.

On November 3, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who had arbitrated the dispute, announced that a deal between the bookstore and Cooper Union had been brokered which would allow the business to remain open for at least another year, and at a reduced rent. “I congratulate both sides for agreeing to new terms,” Stringer said, “and I also want to salute the small businesses, independent bookstores, artists, and activists that have traditionally made the East Village so special.”

Under the agreed upon terms, Cooper Union will slash the monthly rent charged to St. Mark’s Bookshop by $2,500, from $20,000 per month to $17, 500, and has forgiven the entirety of a $7,500 loan made to the store.  The Huffington Post reports that the shop, in return, has agreed to work with Cooper Union students to devise a business plan that will allow for sustainable growth in the short, medium, and long terms, and has a year to begin turning larger profits or they’re out.

Cooper Union, who is facing a budgetary crisis of its own, was forced to back down on its threats to evict St. Mark’s Bookshop after a massive media campaign was launched to defend the local business.  A petition that was sent to the school demanding the bookstore not be thrown out on the street, was signed by nearly 45,000 people. But ultimately, the store will need more than signatures to survive.  St. Mark’s Bookshop has been experiencing sagging sales for years with increased competition from mega-sellers such as Barnes and Noble’s and the move by many book buyers to purchase items from online distributors like Amazon.com.

In the meantime, the store is hosting a party to celebrate both its recent victory as well as its thirty-fourth year anniversary in the neighborhood. Those interested in swinging through to grab a glass of wine (and buy a book!) can do so on Thursday, December 1 from 5:30-7:30. The bookstore is located at 31 Third Avenue (one block north of St. Mark’s Place).

DSC Issues Important Resolutions in Response to Recent Events

On October 28, the Doctoral Students’ Council released three important resolutions in response to recent events and revelations that impact CUNY students directly.  The first resolution condemns New York Police Department spying on CUNY campuses and the targeting of Muslim student organizations. It expresses, in no uncertain terms, solidarity with the Brooklyn College faculty and the CUNY School of Law faculty in opposing these surveillance activities that were clearly demonstrated to be independent of any criminal investigation. Furthermore, the DSC resolved that it calls “upon CUNY’s central administration to condemn the violation of the NYPD-CUNY Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Response to Incidents and Events Occurring at the City University of New York,” which prohibits the police from spying on CUNY campuses.  Of course, it has never been made fully clear if the spying was going on with or without the approval or awareness of CUNY brass. Thus, the DSC also demanded that if the memorandum was not violated, that CUNY administrators “account publicly for it role in this surveillance.”  The resolution also calls upon the CUNY administration to “demand publicly that the NYPD inform these groups and individuals that they have been the subject of this surveillance and the nature of the evidence gathered,” that police commissioner Ray Kelly account publicly for these actions, and that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council immediately end all spying operations targeting members of the CUNY community.

The second resolution passed that day was issued in response to proposed changes in the CUNY Board of Trustees Bylaws that would significantly reduce the power of student governance to regulate student organizations and extra-curricular activity. The proposed changes are in direct violation of Article Fifteen of those same bylaws which express commitment to “student participation, responsibility, academic freedom and due process,” and were only presented to the student representatives ten days in advance before the BoT Committee on Student Affairs and Special Programs was scheduled to meet. The resolution demands that these proposals be rejected outright, and failing that, that the vote on changes be delayed “in order to allow for adequate university-wide discussion of these changes.” Finally, in an act of defiance against the Board’s power grab, the resolution reaffirms its sovereignty over student activity funds and its authority of student activities and organizations.

Finally, the DSC issued a resolution proclaiming solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Sighting its ability to bring national attention to income inequality, social injustice and corporate influence in politics—the very issues affecting the welfare of CUNY students and the communities of New York City more broadly—the DSC registered its support for the OWS movement and reasserted the rights of students, and all citizens, “to peaceably assemble, demonstrate, and petition businesses, the government, and CUNY for a redress of grievances.” For more on recent DSC action, and the full text of resolutions discussed above, please visit http://www.cunydsc.org/resolutions

Occupy CUNY Graduate Center

On the afternoon of November 17, as New York City was in the midst of a day-long series of actions protesting the unacceptable conditions of our nation’s—and indeed the world’s—organization of power, over one hundred CUNY students gathered in the lobby of the Graduate Center in midtown to join in solidarity, share their stories, and march as a group to a gathering in Union Square. According to eyewitness accounts, the assembly was the most inspired and meaningful moment of collective action at the Graduate Center in recent memory.  Students delivered impassioned, elegant statements of hope, outrage, and solidarity as their colleagues, GC faculty and staff, and NYPD and private security officers looked on in support and approval.

“Masses of Arab youth have turned to face that ugly stereotype of the backward Arab street, and they have spit poetry in its face,” said Rayya El Zein, an Arab-American student at the Graduate Center and a faculty member at the City College of New York. “In the exact same way, in this country, you all, we all have turned and faced that sticking, that stinking accusation of apathy and we have spit in its fucking face. When we say today that ‘we are the 99%’ and that we are occupying our public spaces and our public schools, we are saying that we are individuals who think, who feel, and who know better about our societies. And that we are not too weak, that we are not too afraid, to say: This shit is wrong and it will not continue in our names. When I look at us now, at all of us—here, there, everywhere, I see an international community of engaged, aware, and conscious young people. And that is an incredible thing.”

“I have a different story,” said one woman, who described herself as having been “a member of the one percent. “I used to work for Goldman Sachs. I moved to India for them, and I relocated a lot of jobs there and I saw how racist the organization was, by making the assumption that we could re-colonize India, with our ideology, with our jobs, making [Indians] work hours we would never work….Seeing you all here gives me hope.” Faculty and staff also spoke. “You know the faculty is supporting you in large numbers here at the GC,” said one GC staff member. But I also want you to know that staff are supporting you, too.”
At 2:30, the group left the Graduate Center and marched down Fifth Avenue from 34^th Street to Union Square. As the nearly two hundred students entered the square from the north, it was met hundreds more students from New York University, the New School, and Hunter College marching from the south, joining together in the square center for a student general assembly at 3:00. Soon after, the human microphone resounded with the proclamation that “Now, as students, we march!” And march they did down to Foley Square for an extraordinary evening of music, speeches, and the seizure of the Brooklyn Bridge by some 20,000 protesters demonstrating their dissent from the status quo.

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Wel­come to the CUNY Cri­sis blog. We’ll be cov­er­ing the recent sit­u­a­tion developing at CUNY around proposed tuition hikes, the protests against them, and the unacceptably forceful response from the police and university brass. We will be report­ing on this cri­sis and related news begin­ning today. The most recent updates will appear at the top with a EST stamp.

7:30pm A general strike of students everywhere is being planned for next Monday, November 28. For more information on how to get involved, click here.

7:00pm The PSC has formally called for an investigation into the police response to nonviolent student protest at Baruch last night.  The group’s president, Barbara Bowen, had this to say: “The City University has a proud history of student activism and protest. Some of its most important advances have occurred because of collective action by students, faculty and staff. We have made it clear to the university that violent response to non-violent students protest is not acceptable. Students, faculty and staff must be allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly. We call on the university to conduct a full investigation of the police conduct last night. The results of the investigation should be immediately made public.”

6:30pm The Advocate has just received an open letter from the Doctoral Students’ Council at the Graduate Center, CUNY to the president of the school, Bill Kelly, in response to the increased presence of security personnel on campus–an increase without explanation.  It reads, in full:

November 22, 2011

Dear President Kelly,

Over the past week we have heard from students expressing their concerns and questions related to the increased presence of uniformed security guards at the CUNY Graduate Center. What has been especially disconcerting is the disproportionate increase in security forces in areas of the building devoted to student study, governance, and socialization. The large number of security personnel patrolling our hallways and outside our classrooms signals to many that you believe there is a threat to the Graduate Center. Indeed, the presence of these security forces in student spaces, not at the established building entrance checkpoints, suggests that you believe the threat is internal.

We have chosen to address this issue with you in a public letter because this is a public issue and requires a public response.

In light of recent security and police actions toward peaceful student protests on CUNY campuses and at other public universities, it has become especially difficult to believe that deploying additional security personnel without notice does anything but intimidate students and faculty and create an environment of fear. The Graduate Center community must be informed should some imminent danger require you to make the decision to mobilize security forces.

You have assured the Doctoral Students’ Council that peaceful protest and assembly will be allowed on our campus. Indeed, a number of events related to student and faculty protests have gone exceedingly well and without incident from security forces for those peacefully assembled. We thank you in advance for your continued support on this matter and hope you will join the students, faculty, and staff in participating at future events.

On behalf of the students of the CUNY Graduate Center, but for the benefit of the entire community, the faculty and staff included, we request the following information:
(1) a community notice explaining the choice to increase security presence on campus, with reference to specific safety concerns;

(2) an outline of the policies and protocols for responding to student protests, including details on the levels of force that Graduate Center and CUNY security is currently authorized to use, and an overview of how security officers have been trained in responding to these issues;

(3) a report on security actions taken, observations made, and any other pertinent information on public safety officer activity, including an open disclosure of the Graduate Center budget for additional security; and

(4) a clear timeline of when the Graduate Center will draw down the increased security presence.

We thank you for your attention to these matters and anticipate your response.

Sincerely,

Officers of the Doctoral Students’ Council

Colin P. Ashley, Officer for Funding
Annie Dell’Aria, Co-Chair for Business
Anne Donlon, University Faculty Senate Liaison
Nicole N. Hanson, Officer for Outreach
Sarah Jordan, Officer for Student Services
Eero Laine, Co-Chair for Student Affairs
Christina Nadler, University Student Senate Delegate
Jared Simard, Co-Chair for Communication
Patricia Stapleton, Officer for Technology and Library
Monique Whitaker, Officer for Health and Wellness

6:00pm Video of the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting being mic checked at Baruch last night, in two parts—here, and here.

5:30pm CUNY students have issued a statement deploring the use of coercive force to put down protests being conducted by their friends and colleagues, both last night at Baruch and moving forward.  It states in no uncertain terms that, “we condemn the use of police violence against CUNY community members who were protesting peacefully at the public Board of Trustees Public and Budget Hearing at Baruch College on November 21, 2011. We also reject the official statement released by the administration of the City University of New York regarding those events.

“Students, faculty and staff peacefully entered the Baruch lobby to attend the public meeting of the Board of Trustees and were immediately met by a line of police carrying large wooden truncheons and blocking access to the building. Students who were on the official roster of speakers were also denied access. At no time did the students, faculty, and staff attempt to push past the massed police officers, nor to confront them physically in any way. The police directed us to the first-floor overflow room where the meeting would be televised live. Knowing that our voices would not be heard in the broadcast room, we decided that we would hold an assembly in the lobby and allow people to tell their stories and testimonies of experiences as students at CUNY. Most of us sat down on the ground so that speakers could stand and be heard.

“The police attacked us shortly after we sat down and began pushing us toward the wall, responding to our peaceful, lawful protest with physical confrontation. The suggestion provided in the CUNY administration’s statement that anyone ‘surged forward toward the college’s identification turnstiles, where they were met by CUNY Public Safety officers and Baruch College officials’ is a categorical lie, and this is documented in video footage of the events. As the officers continued to push us away from the public meeting, they blocked all exits from the lobby but a single, revolving door, through which we were forced to walk one at a time. Many of the peaceful protesters were shoved violently by the campus police, jabbed and struck in their ribs with wooden truncheons, and left badly bruised. At least one student was struck in the face. It was a miracle that no one was more seriously injured. Those who refused to leave were told that they would be arrested; when one person identified himself to officers as a CUNY faculty member and asked on what charge he would be arrested, he was not given an answer. Another officer blurted, “Because it’s a riot!”

“We deplore the use of violence against peaceful protesters. We deplore the criminal charges made against peaceful protesters exercising their Constitutional rights of free speech and peaceful assembly. We also deplore the CUNY administration’s misrepresentation of the events at Baruch, devised to obscure its complicity in violent action against its own students, faculty, staff, and community.

2:00pm Boing Boing, whose been all over the student protest actions in recent days, has a piece on police bullying last night at the Board of Trustees meeting at Baruch College.

1:30pm In case you missed it, there is a petition going around calling for the resignation of CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein in the wake of last night’s confrontation at Baruch.  It reads: “The Chancellor of the City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein, sat idly by through the full three and a half hours of the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting at Baruch College, on November 21, 2011, while in the same building students, faculty, and staff of his university engaging in peaceful protest were met with a violent police response and numerous arrests. Chancellor Goldstein (who is responsible for many of the policies currently being protested, such as the ending of open admissions in 1999, and increases to student tuition costs of over 20 percent) neither offered any condemnation of this attack on his students when he was made aware of it, nor did he intervene to prevent the continuation of the violence or to ensure his students’ safety. Members of CUNY cannot have any reasonable expectation that they will be able safely to exercise their rights to free speech and protest as long as a chancellor complicit in violence against them remains in office. We thus call for his immediate resignation.”

The petition can be signed by interested parties here.

1:00pm The OWS People’s Library blog has an excellent piece on violence against students and faculty at CUNY which is well worth the read.  Among other things, it asks “why CUNY has a police force and who do they work for? I work at CUNY, inside the Mina Rees Library, (though not for the library) and I interact with CUNY Public Safety officers every day. I’ve watched them save the life of one of my colleagues. I’ve taken First Aid classes from them. In my workplace, they have been part of the CUNY family. But now, CUNY has ordered them to take up batons against students and the officers at Baruch have complied.”

It concludes that “CUNY is the nation’s largest urban public university system  and consists of 23 educational institutions here in New York City. In the past, CUNY was literally the People’s University, offering open and tuition-free education to the poor and working class. However since 1975, CUNY has charged tuition and has increasingly made admission and attendance more and more difficult. The CUNY Board of Trustees has repeatedly voted to increase tuition, making access to this public institution more difficult. Campuses that used to be open to all have installed security barriers and turnstiles, and partnerships with corporations are privatizing this public educational space. At the very first CUNY General Assembly, held at Hunter College – CUNY Public Safety officers were ordered to deny entry to CUNY and Hunter students, faculty and staff who sought to enter the building and have a peaceful meeting, even though they all had proper ID. This denial of entry was based entirely on the political character of their speech. This disturbing trend at CUNY must be stopped before the people lose their university completely.

12:30pm Another video of last night’s protest has emerged which offers clearer evidence of what went down. Students sit down after the 2:00 minute mark and police action follows shortly thereafter.  It’s hard to find a CUNY security officer that is not holding a baton with two hands but officers are aggressive with the baton’s use, shoving and sometimes striking students with them.  This is especially evident with about 15 seconds to go from the end, when an officer in the upper right of the screen hits some students especially hard.

12:00pm The Daily News published a brief report on the protests last night. Perhaps the most notable part of the piece was the interview with Hunter College student Josh Godar who said he and about 15 other students were shoved into a room when cops moved in to quash the demonstration. “I’m an Army veteran. I didn’t serve five years in the military to come here and see civilian people threatened this way,” said Godar. “This is a complete disgrace to the ideology behind this country.”

11:00pm The Occupy Wall Street site has a brief statement with video of went went down last night at CUNY.

10:30am An important statement from CUNY faculty on last night’s police response to peacefully protesting students, which is signed by a lengthy list of the university’s most prominent teachers:

“We faculty members of The City University of New York (CUNY) express our outrage at the police brutality against nonviolent student and faculty demonstrators at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-Davis.

We declare our support for the opening of spaces for protest, political dissent, and, when necessary, nonviolent civil disobedience on our campuses. We support the CUNY student movement in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, including the student strike organized by our students on November 17, along with the protests on November 21 against the prospect of tuition hikes to be decided on by the Board of Trustees, and any future non-violent protests.

We call upon the CUNY administration to look upon these student protests not as a threat that must be monitored, policed, and repressed, but as an opportunity for a discussion across our community about the future of the City University of New York as a public institution meant to serve all those who live in this city.

Therefore, we the undersigned:

1)   Deplore any use of violence against nonviolent student protesters, anywhere.

2)   Call upon the CUNY administration to support and engage respectfully with those students, educators, and community members who are working to open up spaces for protest, dissent, and discussion.

3)   Declare that the use of any violence whatsoever against nonviolent student protesters will never be tolerated at CUNY.

4)   Insist that administrators at both the CUNY-wide level and at individual campuses not call upon any outside police forces, including the New York City Police Department, or any other city, state, or federal law enforcement agencies, in order to disperse students who are engaged in nonviolent protests.”

10:00am The official statement from CUNY, issued last night, in response to the events at Baruch, reads, “While a public hearing was being conducted by the CUNY Board of Trustees at Baruch College, at which more than 95 speakers had signed up to present their views, a group of protesters entered the first-floor lobby.  Because the hearing room was filled to capacity, some of the protesters were directed to an overflow room equipped with the live video of the ongoing hearing.  Some of the protesters refused to proceed to the overflow room and instead surged forward toward the college’s identification turnstiles, where they were met by CUNY Public Safety officers and Baruch College officials.  The protesters were asked twice to exit the lobby or return to the overflow room.  They refused, creating a public safety hazard.  In order to ensure that public safety and access to the building was maintained for students who were attending classes this evening, the CUNY Public Safety officers secured the space and removed the protesters.  One Public Safety officer was transported to a hospital for chest pains and two others received minor injuries.   Fifteen protesters were arrested and processed by CUNY Public Safety officers.  Throughout this time, the public hearing as well as the college’s classes and other business functions continued.”

So, students were arrested to keep students safe?  Hmmmm….

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On Friday November 18 several dozen police officers in full riot gear were called by UC Davis Chancellor or “Chief Executive Officer” Linda Katehi to disperse a crowd of occupying students at her campus. These students were all that was left of a small occupation of the campus quad that had been set up the previous day in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street protesters. When the police arrived these students refused to disperse and chose instead to lock arms in defiance of the orders to leave. In response the police repeatedly doused the protesters with streams of pepper spray even as they continued to sit peacefully on the ground.

As video footage of the event plainly shows, police not only sprayed them in the face from close range, but literally sprayed the chemical irritant in their mouths. One student reportedly was sprayed so badly that he was still coughing up blood forty minutes later. Such treatment of peaceful demonstrators would be cause for alarm anywhere. That these demonstrators were an organized group of college students enrolled in the very university they were occupying, is especially disturbing. Student demonstrators exercising their democratic right to free assembly and free speech are not criminals and should not be treated like criminals.

Chancellor Katehi’s decision to set police in riot gear upon her own students, and her mealy-mouthed and unapologetic response to the police violence, show a lack of awareness, compassion, and leadership that is inexcusable. Katehi claimed that the police were there to protect the students of UC Davis and to ensure that the university would be able to continue to use its resources to achieve its core academic mission. Her decision, however, not only led to the injury of several students, but actively destroyed a learning environment more powerful than any classroom. Indeed, the students protesting at UC Davis are receiving perhaps the best education possible. They are learning how to think critically, how to work together in small groups, how to organize events, analyze complex information, celebrate cultural diversity, and act as independent thinkers capable of questioning the dogma of entrenched authority. They have been sorely wronged by the police and by their own Chancellor. There is no easy way to solve this problem and there is no way forward except for Chancellor Katehi to immediately resign, and for the university to call for a direct criminal investigation into the police brutality perpetrated against its students.

The Advocate urges all readers to write to the UC Board of Regents and demand that Chancellor Katehi resign or be removed from her position as chancellor.

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For those who have travelled extensively throughout South America, the astonishing majesty of the continent’s Andean mountains is surely etched in the imagination. From the lush jungles in northern Colombia and the lunar salt plains of the Bolivian heartland, to the snow-covered peaks of Argentina’s southernmost tip, the breathtaking diversity of the world’s longest, and perhaps most glorious, mountain range is as wondrous as its history is rich. The mountains have served as the backdrop for the rise and fall of great civilizations, offered scientific discoveries that changed the face of human understanding, inspired masterworks of art and literature—not to mention political revolution—and have witnessed centuries of unspeakable slaughter. Michael Jacobs’ Andes, an account of the author’s journey across South America by way of the 4, 500 mile-mountain chain, is as expansive and enthralling as the geography it covers. Beginning in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and finishing up in the heart of Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego, Andes masterfully details the history, art, geography, personalities, and politics that have defined and been given shape by life in the region. I recently spoke with Jacobs about his book and the art of writing on the road, Latin American politics, the legacy of Bruce Chatwin in Argentina, and what lies ahead for one of the truly great stylists of the modern travel memoir.

I was hoping we could begin by discussing what compelled you to undertake the arduous task of journeying across the entire length of South America’s Andean spine.

I was first drawn to the Andes by childhood tales of my English grandfather, a railway engineer who worked in Chile and Bolivia. When following in his footsteps to those countries, and experiencing the extraordinary contrasts between, say, the Atacama Desert and the ice fields of Patagonia, I thought how wonderful it would be to follow the whole length of the world’s longest mountain range, and see such an unparalleled range of extreme and spectacular landscapes. I also conceived the idea of following the mountains as if unraveling the course of a human life, beginning in the Tropics, where the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt had located the life force, and ending south of Tierra del Fuego, where Humboldt’s great pupil Darwin believed that life barely existed at all.

Talk a bit more if you would about Humboldt who serves, in many respects, as your loadstone throughout Andes.  What was his importance to you (and in general) and in what ways did his experiences in South America shaped your own?

Humboldt was certainly the guiding spirit behind the whole book. He inspired me in the same way as he inspired hundreds of other travellers in the 19th-century. Charles Darwin would probably not have taken up the offer of a job on the Beagle had it not been for a reading of Humboldt’s account of his South American travels. Nor would the great American artist Frederick Edwin Church have travelled to Ecuador to paint what are certainly some of the most ambitious landscape canvases in the history of art, notably “Heart of the Andes.” Humboldt was a pioneer in so many ways. He was the first great scientific popularizer, able to turn a book on the cosmos into one of the great nineteenth-century bestsellers. He was a pioneering ecologist who foresaw the damage to the planet caused by the felling of trees. He was an outstanding mountaineer, who, in climbing almost to the summit of Ecuador’s Chimborazo (then considered the highest mountain in the world),  climbed higher than any known human before him. He was an early supporter of indigenous rights, and was violently opposed to slavery. Above all, for a travel writer, Humboldt’s importance lies in his extraordinary ability to induce in the reader a sense of the wonder of nature. Writers like Christopher Isherwood and Paul Theroux have written funny books chronicling their grumpiness as travellers, with Theroux going even so far as to dismiss the Andes because he suffered continually from altitude sickness. But personally I prefer the relentless energy and enthusiasm of Humboldt. They kept me going throughout my hugely ambitious journey, and during the writing of the book. I began to see nature through Humboldt’s strangely innocent eyes, and to perceive as he did the “irrelevance of man in the face of the natural order.”

Despite the fact that roughly half of the Andean chain runs throughout Argentina and Chile, most of the book takes place in the north and central heartlands of the mountains with comparatively little about the Southern Cone.  Does this reflect your own geographical preferences, the exhaustion of a long journey, or something else?

In terms of the actual travelling I spent probably as much time in Argentina and Chile as I did in the rest of the Andes. But when it came to the actual writing I realized I was going to be well over length before even reaching the south! I love the southern Andes as much as I do the central and northern ones, and I was by no means exhausted when I got there. In fact I had reached that point in travelling when you feel you could continue forever. Similarly, in the writing, I had built up by then an impetus that was allowing me to write for up to eighteen hours a day. The book’s last one hundred pages were written in a frenzy of inspiration, and my own favorite section is from Mount Fitzroy southwards. I cut out an enormous part from the book’s first half, and could have cut even more in the interests of creating less of an imbalance. But ultimately the imbalance reflects my vision of the Andes as a developing human life. You begin slowly, thinking that you have all the time in the world, and then reach your middle years realizing that you still have so much to do and see but so relatively time to achieve this. The speed of the book’s last pages is intended also to convey the literal and metaphorical race to reach the continent’s southernmost tip before the winter sets in, making travel impossible.

I’m interested in picking your brain about politics, briefly. Andes, especially the first half, is very much wrapped up in the world of the Bolivarian revolution and its discontents, and yet the book is almost entirely apolitical. Is this a reflection of your own political worldview, or do you consciously remove your private political judgments and analysis form the narrative. And if so, why?

That’s an excellent question, and difficult concisely to answer. I am fascinated by South American politics, and travelled through the continent at a time of great political change, what with the recent advent of Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, and the region’s general swing to the left. I am also highly conscious of how relatively little is known (in Europe at least) about the political situation there. However, I thought that to give a proper political assessment of each of the countries I went through would detract too greatly from the book’s principal theme—the impact of the Andes on travellers. It would also have made the book become rapidly outdated, and would have been much better done by serious political commentators such as Jon Lee Anderson. A long section on Chávez is included, as well as a chapter on Morales’ Bolivia because these touch on another of the book’s uniting threads—Bolívar’s vision of a united South America. For me Bolivar becomes an increasingly interesting figure the more he turns into a hero from a Shakespearian tragedy. Though the book is apolitical, it does in a sense reflect my disillusionment with politics. The last part of the book hopefully conveys an idea of grand ilusions and ideals coming to nothing. My interest in politics ultimately boils down to an interest in  individual case histories, such as that of the tragic young Ecuadorian who is betrayed by corrupt individuals in his desperate attempt to get a visa.

Turning to the more technical side of things, I was wondering if you’d share some about your process of travel writing.  One of the things that stands out to me about your experiences is that unlike, say, a Theroux, you’re constantly on the move and often on little sleep—touring by day, indulging in the nightlife after dark. How do you find time to write while on the road? Or do you not?

Though I have written books based on long stays in a place (i.e., The Factory of Light, which is about my adopted Spanish village of Frailes), I take the Stendhalian view that you either spend a day or two in a place or several years. Often, as with judgments of a person, your immediate impressions are the ones you go back to. If you get to know somewhere too well, your judgments can become too complex and confused. And someone such as Theroux seems to spend much of his time in a place reading books, or complaining how uninteresting somewhere is! I love intense short  stays when travelling, even if it’s always sad to be constantly moving on, especially after making friends. To make the most of somewhere you need to be constantly active which is why I never write when travelling (other than notes), and only use hotels for sleeping in. I always carry lots of books with me, but invariably never read. I’m either sightseeing, being with people, or absorbing every moment of a journey, whether listening to my fellow passengers, or else enjoying the changing landscapes. I am never, ever bored. I always write up a trip when I get back, when you have a better over-view of your experiences, and can see more clearly what might be interesting to others and what is not…Fortunately I have a good memory, and can mentally reconstruct for a long time afterwards every day of a journey, however long the journey.

Bruce Chatwin comes off particularly bad in Andes, having left behind in Argentina an awful reputation with the locals he encountered in Patagonia. You note, somewhat tongue and cheek, that Chatwin basically did what travel writers do: “exploit confidences, publish material without permission, misrepresent, exaggerate for literary effect, use people, and promise to stay in touch and then go away, never to be heard from again.” Is this really how you see yourself as a travel writer? If so, did the anger of the Argentines that had known Chatwin in any way affect your own reflections on how you approach the craft of traveloguing? Or is Chatwin’s work fundamentally at odds with your own?

First, of all, for the record, I’m a huge fan of Chatwin as a writer, and he had an impact on travel writing greater than anyone else of his generation. I love his effortless fusion of past and present, and his ability to transform the ordinary into the mythical and the magical (which has always been my ambition!). But the fact that he was an immensely original stylist doesn’t mean that he was either a particularly attractive person, or particularly original in what he had to say about  Patagonia (which in no way detracts from his greatness as a writer, just as the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca is in no way diminished as a poet by having a view of his native region heavily influenced by romantic stereotypes). I never met Chatwin, but I suspect that he was one of the many Englishmen who can be absolutely charming when it served his purpose, and not so endearing in his everyday treatment of people. What I certainly learned after Andes was published was that you can’t be in the slightest bit negative about him without incurring the wrath of fans of his, such as Chatwin’s excellent biographer Nicholas Shakespeare. This is very unfair, as I clearly stated that Chatwin’s failings were those of all travel writers, myself included. One of the great drawbacks of the genre is that you’re bound to offend someone, however hard you try not to. The anger of so many Argentines towards Chatwin did not affect me in the slightest, as I have seen exactly the same reaction to other writers in whose footsteps I have followed, for instance the Nobel-Prize Winning Spanish author of the classic Journey to the Alcarria, Camilo Jose Cela who is almost universally disliked in the region. My own books on Spain have earned me law suits and death threats, even though I write about people with a fundamental love for them. The irony of my style seems often misunderstood. However, I have to add that the villagers in my adopted Frailes took, in general, remarkably well to the recent publication in Spanish of The Factory of Light. People told me that they couldn’t complain about my portrayal of them because that was exactly what they were like. If only others were so tolerant and enlightened!

Your mention of Chatwin’s ability to turn the ordinary into the magical makes me think of Gabriel Garcia Márquez and the world of Colombia more generally. I was intrigued by your experiences in the country: you entered with a certain amount of foreboding considering the country’s (now undeserved) reputation for lawlessness and insecurity, but by the time you left, I sensed that you were especially fond of it, perhaps more than the other countries on your itinerary (with Peru a close second). Is this accurate? And if so, what was so attractive to you about the place? If not, was there a place or region where you felt particularly at home, or fell in love with?

You’re absolutely right about Colombia. I went with apprehension, and fell in love with the country from the moment of crossing the frontier! I only regretted afterwards that I did not take greater risks, and visit the then more problematical parts of the Colombian Andes such as the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy, or do the overland journey from Cúcuta to Bogotá. Since that first trip I’ve been back to the country four times, and have gone almost everywhere. I spent two months in Colombia earlier this year, travelling the whole length of one of South America’s most important rivers, the Magdalena. I was researching my next book, provisionally titled The Robber of Memories, whose starting point is a chance meeting in Cartagena with García Márquez. It’s being modestly promoted as a cross between One Hundred Years of Solitude and Heart of Darkness! I certainly spent two of the best months of my travelling life doing the journey, even though I had a terrifying three day encounter with guerillas in the middle of the jungle (they were absolutely charming, and were keen that I should help them in their goal of promoting tourism to the region!). The appeal of the country? First of all the people, the friendliest in the world. Secondly, the place instantly reminded me of the Spain of my childhood, with its old-fashioned courtesies, hugely atmospheric colonial towns, and extraordinary hospitality towards foreigners. Thirdly, it’s a place that for me sums up the essence of South America, with some of the oldest ruins in the continent, some of the best preserved colonial towns, and every possible type of scenery, from desert to Amazonian jungle, to the Andean moorland. I’m convinced that it will soon become one of South America’s most important tourist destinations. Despite what happened to me on my last visit, safety is improving all the time.

Last fall Foreign Policy magazine ran an online forum of articles debating the current state of travel writing literature, with some writers pronouncing the genre the dead, others arguing that it is alive and well, and still others staking out territory somewhere in between. What’s your own feeling on the question? Do books like Eat, Pray, Love represent the decline of travel literature, or was there never a golden age as is sometimes pretended?

From 2008 to 2010 I was chairman of the only serious travel book award in Britain, the Dolman Travel Book Award. I had to read about eighty books a year, only about five of which were really worthwhile. But that doesn’t mean that travel literature is in a bad state. If you had to read eighty novels, you would probably come to a similar conclusion. People often look back to the so-called “golden age” of travel literature inspired by Bruce Chatwin—but that was essentially an invention of a group of friends at Granta magazine. I believe that travel writing today is as healthy/unhealthy as it has ever been. What has happened is that the good travel books tend now to cross genres. Some of the best travel writing of recent years has fallen into an indeterminate category between travel writing and reportage or memoir. There is also a current fashion in Britain for “nature writing,” headed by such interesting authors as Robert MacFarlane. Books such as Eat, Pray, Love are not favorites of mine, nor are “good life abroad” books, with their romantic, cliché-ridden evocations of charming Provencal peasants, and Tuscan olive farms. But there has always been a market for those books, and their success allows publishers to bring out more adventurous works. Finally, people often say that the internet will be the death of travel-writing. Access to a huge amount of information about a country obviously makes redundant that type of Victorian book full of statistics about a country’s commerce, politics etc. But good travel literature will be unaffected, because it does something a computer cannot do: give a poetic interpretation of reality.

Finally, what’s next? You mentioned in our earlier correspondence that you were working on a new book?  Any chance you’d be willing to pull the curtain back a bit and let us in on your upcoming projects?

My next book is provisionally titled The Robber of Memories. It’s going to be one of those hybrid travel books I mentioned—a mixture of a travel book tracing my journey up Colombia’s Magdalena river, from Barranquilla to the source in the Paramo de las Papas (where I had my ‘encounter’ with guerillas), and a book about memory and memory loss (my father died of Alzheimer’s and my 92-year-old mother is in an advanced state of dementia). The prologue centers on my chance meeting with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose rapidly fading memories of life are concentrated on the river. The bulk of the book takes the form of a journey by tug boat up the river, the boat eventually getting stuck on a sand bank, in the middle of territory still controlled by paramilitaries. On the way I enter Oliver Sacks territory by visiting some of the villages with the highest incidence of Early Onset Alzheimer’s in the world. A doctor who went to investigate the phenomenon got kidnapped, but then helped the kidnappers when one of their parents got affected by the disease. The ‘Robber of Memories’ is what they call the disease in rural Colombia.

That sounds fascinating. We’ll look forward to it.  Thanks so much for your time!

It’s been a pleasure.

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The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recently opened an impressive and exhaustive retrospective of the art of Willem de Kooning (1904-1997).  Born in Rotterdam, the Dutch artist immigrated to the United States as a ship’s stowaway in 1926.  He gained notoriety and success in the New York galleries by the late 1940s and became intrinsically linked to the Abstract Expressionist movement.  Despite his enormous success, de Kooning’s work still remains less familiar to viewers today than the more celebrated works by Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko hanging alongside de Kooning in the MOMA’s permanent collection.  De Kooning has not received nearly as much exhibition attention as either Pollack or Rothko, and, in fact, the current show represents the first comprehensive, all-media retrospective on the artist to date. De Kooning was a prolific artist, who produced work over the course of seven full decades and as MOMA’s show proves, one that is more than worthy of a full retrospective. 

The greatest success of this show lies in its thorough, almost painstaking tracing of the artist’s progression from teenage apprentice to veteran artist..  The seven galleries, filled with over 200 paintings, sculptures and works on paper are divided into seven corresponding periods of de Kooning’s career. The galleries are organized in chronological order, allowing viewers to appreciate the clear changes and developments in the artist’s work over the course of his life.  His methods receive ample attention in the wall texts and labels and reveal a methodical and calculated approach, despite the often spontaneous appearance of the finished paintings.  These wall texts are less helpful, however, in helping the viewer get any sense of what might have been behind de Kooning’s drive to create works full of such intense agitation and anxiety. In tracing his long career, the only thing missing from this excellent show is a sense of de Kooning as a man and an intellect, of his identity beyond the canvas. 

As de Kooning once said, “I have to change to stay the same” and in fact this aptly defines the retrospective from start to finish. Each of the seven galleries attest to this drive to change, displaying works that fall into at least one (and sometimes several) of the artist’s favorite themes.  Images of women, landscapes, and varying degrees of abstraction seem to serve as guideposts in his lifelong quest to explore new artistic techniques.  It is only in the first gallery, representing the artist’s early career, where viewers will find images of still lifes and of men. These early explorations give way in the proceeding rooms to the aforementioned themes, which the artist visited and revisited for nearly forty years. 

The earliest work, a detailed still life in bright pigment was executed when de Kooning was only twelve years old.  This and other early work display his talent as well as his commercial art training; he served as an apprentice to a decorative art and design firm in Rotterdam during his teenage years.  In fact, de Kooning’s understanding of commercial art methods would help shape his own later artistic production. Though he utilized commercial techniques such as tracing and layered collage, he used those techniques in such innovative ways that the results were always more avant garde than Madison avenue. 

De Kooning produced a series of male figures from 1937 to 1944 but never returned to the subject again.  These figures reveal a sense of melancholy and agitation that would become increasingly magnified in his later exploration of female figures.  The artist often served as his own model for the male works, but intended them to represent the everyman and more specifically, the Depression-era everyman, who had become disheartened, downtrodden and alienated.  These works convey a real feeling of anxiety that continues to color much of the later works as well. 

The first gallery also reveals the artist’s initial explorations with total abstraction in a series of paintings dating to the late 1930s.  Influenced by the works of Picasso and Mondrian, whose paintings de Kooning had seen on display at MOMA, the works from this period show a marked shift away from the limits of figuration. These works, including Father, Mother, Sister, Brother (1937) nonetheless still retain a suggestion of the figure in their abstract forms.  Indeed, in these paintings de Kooning seems always to be walking the often fuzzy line between representation and abstraction, a practice he would continue throughout his long career. 

The following three galleries trace de Kooning’s career through the 1940s and 50s, charting his innovations in technique and his intense explorations of the female form, abstraction, and landscape.  The abstract works of this period are more nuanced and original, and it is clear that the artist was slowly developing his own style and moving away from the influence of giants like Picasso and Miró. His series of black and white abstract paintings, including the enigmatic Black Friday (1948) comprised the artist’s first solo show at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York in 1948.  As the artist explained, he intended his abstract works to still contain “hints” of representation.  The paintings from this period are meant to function as a passing glimpse of something seen quickly. For de Kooning, abstraction is less about minimizing form than it is about adding an often layered and usually chaotic emotional depth to it. It is no surprise, then, that it was these works that really launched de Kooning’s reputation as one of the foremost and most influential artists in the circle of the Abstract Expressionists, and they represent a clear shift into new territory for the artist.

The true pinnacle of the entire exhibition, however, occurs at the halfway point with the impressive installation of the artist’s third series of women.  De Kooning began this series with Woman I, [HJ1] perhaps his most famous painting.  Begun in 1950, this work occupied de Kooning for two and a half years before he finally finished it in 1952.  He also executed five other paintings of women in this series, as well as dozens of preparatory works on paper.  The resulting series contains images of women portrayed in varying degrees of abstraction, flattened and at one with their colorful backgrounds.  The women, especially the figure in Woman I, appear distorted, grotesque and ferocious.  When these work were first exhibited at the Sidney Janis Gallery in the spring of 1953, they caused a considerable uproar. De Kooning was quickly labeled a misogynist and simultaneously derided for his return to the figure and retreat from abstraction, the hallmark of the current avant-garde.  Although the female figure is perhaps the most traditional subject in the history of art, de Kooning’s women are radically different than those created by, say, Titian and Rubens, whom the artist greatly admired.  Stylistically, these paintings are innovative in their merging of background and subject while maintaining a bright, wild color palette with some sense of visual order.  The chaotic, yet carefully planned execution of paint gives the works an added sense of anxiety.  And then, of course, there are those haunting, toothy grins on the faces of the women.  These works seem intentionally disturbing and yet viewers learn nothing in this show about de Kooning that might provide a clue as to how to interpret this series.  Although his two previous series of women paintings contained a decent amount of melancholy and angst, the third series takes this psychological state to a new level. The great mystery of de Kooning lies in these works and that makes them all the more fascinating.   

To say that the rest of this lengthy show could not compete with the first half would be a bit unfair. However, the stylistic nuances and evolving combinations of abstraction, figuration and landscape begin to blur together after having already been awed by roughly one hundred works of art, including the tour de force that is the aforementioned third series of women. Yet, de Kooning had another three decades of art left in him, and so, we press forward.  Fortunately, in the next gallery, de Kooning’s large, colorful “abstract parkway landscapes,” completed in 1956 and 1957 feel soothing in the simplicity of their wide brushstrokes and lack of figuration.  Critic Thomas Hess termed these works, “full arm sweeps” in reference to the broad brushstrokes that comprise the artist’s efforts to capture the roadways that lead into and out of Northeast cities.  His color-blurred canvases artfully convey the feeling of whizzing down a tree-lined highway, barely able to discern the shapes of the things passed by.   

De Kooning’s exploration of the shifting nature of abstraction continues through the remaining galleries.  In 1969, the artist began experimenting with sculpture for the first time, and over the next decade produced a range of small to large abstracted works.  These were modeled in clay and cast in bronze, giving them a unique appearance in their combination of modern sensibility and traditional medium.  While some of the works incorporate found objects, most are as inscrutable as his abstractions on canvas.

In the final gallery, visitors find de Kooning in the twilight of his career.  With his health beginning to deteriorate, the artist was forced to take a more minimalistic approach to his paintings.  F These beautiful works—pared down offerings compared to de Kooning’s earlier works—are the most serene of any of his paintings.  Here, ribbons of color float across large white canvasses, signaling the final innovative phase in de Kooning’s seventy-year quest to understand his own artistic vision while at the same moment staying true to it.  

de Kooning: A Retrospective is on view through January 9, 2012

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In 1975 Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last film, Salò, or, the 120 Days of Sodom, was screened at Italian art houses just a few months after the controversial filmmaker was murdered. By that time, Pasolini had distinguished himself as one of the great filmmakers and cultural critics of post-WW2 Italy, using his films and novels as a medium for his critique of consumer capitalism and consumer culture. Salò, which portrays acts of unspeakable violence and brutality being enacted upon helpless teenagers by a wealthy and degenerate fascist officialdom, shocked and scandalized audiences everywhere. Since then, the film has become something of a cult phenomenon amongst devotees of vintage grind-house and exploitation films. However, what its fans and detractors fail to realize is that the film was just another installment of Pasolini’s ruthless and enraged attack against what he labeled “neo-capitalism” and “consumerist civilization.” It is this that makes Salò different from the average grind-house and exploitation film. Pasolini described himself as a Marxist, and indeed, was for a time, a member of the Italian Communist Party. Yet he held a cornucopia of unorthodox and contradictory political views, views which (along with his publicly avowed homosexuality) led him to be expelled from the ICP. What were his views, then? And how are they relevant for today? What’s more, did his prediction of the 60′s hippie counter-culture degenerating into an a-political conservatism, come true?

Pasolini was, in many respects, the first critic of mass consumerism. For him, consumerism, unlike, say, Italian fascism, or German Nazism, was able to carry out the “homologation” and “anthropological transformation” of  European man in a way that was never thought possible. This is because consumerism is tied to a hedonistic ideology, an ideology that teaches us that we do not have to, nor should we, delay our own personal individualistic gratifications. Paradoxically, however, by adhering to this new type of hedonism, one does not achieve, according to Pasolini, individuation.

Rather, by defining who you are by what you possess or what you wear, as well as by what others own and wear, one loses one’s individuality and sense of personal worth. And if there should happen to be any individual who refuses to conform to this scheme of things, and refuses to let herself be defined by whether or not she owns a Play Station 2, then that individual is looked upon as “weird,” or “abnormal”;  she is someone who doesn’t know that its “human nature” to buy and consume.

In short, for Pasolini consumerism was the new fascism, the new conformism. The fascism of the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, at least, demanded that the individual sacrifice himself for the sake of the collectivity. In German National Socialism, the collectivity was represented by the German “race,” in Italian fascism, by the Italian nation. It was an ideology requiring some degree of asceticism and self-sacrifice.  Consumerism on the other hand, requires no sacrifice of the self, but rather invites a kind of self-indulgence. It is precisely this hedonistic element in consumerism that enables it to captivate the individual soul in a way that fascism was never able to do. (The infamous scenes of copraphagia  in Salò, in which the victims  and their ‘masters’  are served a gigantic meal of cooked  human feces, days old,  in a “Banquet of Shit,” were described by Pasolini as a critique of the processed and fast food industries, and of  mass production, which , according to him, produced  “useless refuse” that we then consume).

Everyone wears the same mass produced clothes; everyone buys the same mass produced furniture. In a gentrified, neo- liberal world, a world of gray skyscrapers and uniformed office workers,  a world where brand names like Prada and Gucci dominate the landscape of the city, and where reality T.V.  Has become the principal intellectual staple of the average American, Pasolini’s gloomy predictions take on a chilling reality. The French Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard famously implied that the youth of the 1960s were the children of Marx and Coca Cola. For Pasolini, they might, more appropriately, be considered the “children of Mussolini and Coca-Cola.”

Because Salò is often considered by most critics as Pasolini’s greatest film, it would be fitting to give a lengthy synopsis and history of the movie; especially since it is also the most virulent expression of his anti-consumerist views ever shown on the screen. The film is set in Italy in 1944, during the Republic of Salò, the Nazi and SS backed puppet regime of Benito Mussolini, which was established after his liberation from Allied captivity by Hitler. Whereas Mussolini had previously shared power with the Savoy monarchy and the Vatican, he was now, with the Nazis’ backing, enabled to create a true totalitarian dictatorship. This is probably why, in Pasolini’s writings, the Salò Republic is often used as a metaphor for absolute tyranny.

Four fascist officials: a duke, a bishop, the president of the local court, and a banker—the very pillars of bourgeois respectability and morality—kidnap 18 teenagers and bring them to a deserted villa near Marzabotto, in Northern Italy. (Marzabotto was, in fact, a town that was razed to the ground by the Germans in 1944 in retaliation for the murder of SS officers by Italian partisans.)  They also hire four middle-aged prostitutes whose job it is to tell arousing stories of sexual acts, which will “inflame the passions.” They then begin to torture, rape, and abuse the youngsters for three months, before finally killing them by means of mutilation, while the four officials look on at the executions through binoculars.  Among the brutal tortures and humiliations the young men and women are subjected to are: being forced to eat food laced with nails and shards of glass, being raped, having to crawl on all fours on a leash, and barking like dogs, being forced to eat and drink their own and each other’s’ feces and urine, licking the four officials’ boots, and finally, being mutilated by scalping, having their tongues cut out, etc. The film, parodying Dante’s Divine Comedy, is divided into four parts, or “circles”: The Ante-Chamber to Hell, The Circle of Manias, The Circle of Shit, and The Circle of Blood. The brutality that is shown in the movie is so extreme that it sometimes descends into the ludicrous and, in a sick way, the comic.

Salò is often looked upon as a modern transposition of the Marquis de Sade’s novel, The 120 Days of Sodom, or, The School of the Libertines. And it is. Whereas de Sade set his novel in Central Europe during the Thirty Years War, Pasolini has the events of his film take place in Fascist Italy, during the Second World War. Yet there is more to the film than just the switching of historical periods, which nevertheless was a stroke of genius. De Sades’s novel, which he wrote during his imprisonment in the Bastille in 1789, was only discovered and published in 1905. Even though he was born into the French aristocracy, de Sade was very critical of the moral degeneracy and corruption of that class, and, when the French Revolution broke out, he immediately joined the revolutionaries. Indeed, The 120 Days of Sodom was meant to be a scathing critique of the degeneracy of the aristocracy, of the silliness of their views on property rights, and an affirmation of the Enlightenment view of man’s agency trumping the Divine Will.

In Salò, Pasolini is attempting to accomplish something very similar. In one of his last interviews, Pasolini stated that by coming up with the idea of setting de Sade’s novel in the time of the Salò Republic, he finally had a real insight into the “true choreography of Fascism.” In fact, Pasolini himself lived in Salò in his early twenties.  He personally witnessed horrible acts of brutality committed against the local population by the Fascists and the S.S., particularly against the region’s Jewish inhabitants (which, before the German invasion of Italy, had always been protected by Mussolini). Pasolini, then, had a first-hand experience with the brutality of fascism.

Like de Sade, Pasolini wanted to expose the moral degeneracy of a particular class (the Italian bourgeoisie), and its collaboration with fascism. However, unlike most Italian Marxist theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci who saw fascism as a “progressive” phenomenon because it supposedly drew segments of the proletariat and petty bourgeoisie into power, Pasolini had a much more radical viewpoint. In his view, fascism is all about the transformation of the human body into an object, a commodity. Many of his critics accused Pasolini of wanting to make just another exploitation film, since the only connection Salò has to fascism is in its setting. Oppression, torture, the dehumanization of people that are looked upon as “subhuman”-all of that is in Salò.  And what was fascism, but the systematic oppression, degradation, and torture of humanity? The Nietzsche and de Sade-quoting-“masters” in the film treat their victims as things, as objects to use and abuse for their pleasure; they are things to be used, ”consumed,” and destroyed. And it was this objectification of the body that Pasolini saw as the ultimate connection between fascism and consumerism. For fascism and consumerism are not tied to each other just by the fact that they force the individual to conform to an ideology and mode of behavior. The ultimate connection between the two is the process of objectification; that just as fascism attempted to turn its victims and their bodies into dehumanized objects, mass-consumerism , in a less obvious, but even more insidious way, turns the individual into a soulless thing, always eager to conform.

It was his views on the sub-proletariat, or, as many liberal and conservative sociologists today like to call them,  “the underclass,” that scandalized Pasolini’s fellow Communists the most.  He (correctly) viewed the working class with suspicion, as capable of being infected with the middle-class mores of the Italian bourgeoisie. The real opponent of bourgeois hegemony, according to Pasolini, was the peasant and the ragazzo di vita (young man of life), the young, unemployed hustler of the Roman borgate (slums), projects, and shantytowns. These were the people who Pasolini described to the Italian journalist Furio Colombo, in his last interview, as being “poor and real people who struggled to defeat the landlord without becoming that landlord.” According to him, “Since they were excluded from everything, they remained uncolonized”). These were people who refused to accept bourgeois, middle-class values, who refused to accept the white Anglo-Saxon, Protestant work ethic. These were people who fought against their oppressors, without wanting to become like their oppressors. Like Richard Wright, who also came to the same conclusion in his struggles with the American Communist Party, Pasolini saw that what the bourgeoisie should fear the most are not the workers, but rather those “abnormal” and “bohemian” types who refuse to accept its values, norms, and work ethic.

Of course, this did not sit well with most orthodox Marxists. Pasolini’s almost Weberian emphasis on  social attitudes and lifestyle instead of on class, his love for the peasant, and his romantic idealization of the lumpenproletariat, as well as his distrust of the laboring classes, was a complete reversal of the schema presented by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. This view of his also runs counter to the goal of every social worker, anthropologist, and sociologist on the planet.  Both the liberal and the conservative sociologist view the existence of the urban underclass as a problem that should be solved. For the conservative, the answer is less government dependency. For the liberal, the answer is for government programs for the alleviation of poverty. Pasolini sees the problem those who study the city have. In his 1958 article, The Shantytowns of Rome, he writes, “Ethnologists recognize the problem (of the underclass), the difficulty of conceiving an irrational state within a rational state in such a way that it does not seem gratuitous and schematic.”

Yet he will have none of their solutions.  For him, the underclass should stay, for it is the only thing standing between the modern city and the process of total gentrification. In Italy, this process of gentrification is described by Pasolini in a 1973 interview as a “process of acculturation, of the transformation of particular and marginal cultures into a centralized culture that homogenizes everything” and that “occurred more or less simultaneously all over Italy.” And in his 1958 article, The City’s True Face, he describes the Roman underclass’s  “acculturation” as an attempt to “mutate the deep mix of anarchy and common sense of these people into a kind of American -style indifference, a ‘standardized’ type, repeated obsessively, hundreds of thousands of times,”

Pasolini’s  romantic love for the underclass, an underclass vibrant and healthy and uncorrupted by middle-class values, as well as his sympathy foe society’s outcasts, were the two ideas that dominated his literary and cinematic works. These ideas are depicted in almost every single one of his films. His first film, Accatone (Street Urchins), which came out in the 1950s was a romantic, homo-erotic glorification of the young hustlers and hoodlums of the Roman borgate. Indeed, so realistic were the scenes in the film, that there were cries for censorship, particularly from the Christian Democrats, the  CIA-backed center-right party that ruled Italy, with very few interludes, from 1946 to the late 1970s, and which, in Pasolini’s view, was mainly responsible for  destroying Italy’s peasant culture in the name of “economic development.” His second film, Ricotta Cheese, depicted a semi-proletarian who is chosen to play Christ in a passion play, and who literally dies on the cross after having eaten some bad ricotta cheese. In The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, which, of all his films, is the most widely seen in the United States,  Pasolini portrays Christ, not as the gentle Good Shepherd found in the Gospels, but rather, as an angry, dedicated revolutionary who cares about the plight of the poor and is ultimately crucified  by the governing elites.

His so-called “Trilogy of Life” films—The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and The Arabian Nights—were immensely popular and became huge hits. In fact, it was the immense popularity of these films that, at least in part, prompted Pasolini to make Salò; for one of his greatest fears was that, in producing popular entertainment for the masses, he was helping to keep them in their condition of oppression; hence the shocking brutality of Salo. Unlike Chaucer or Boccaccio, though, who centered their tales on the heroic escapades and sexual adventures of the Italian and English aristocracy, Pasolini, in his film adaptations of their stories, like a true socialist, took a different tack.  In his versions of the Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, the action is centered on the moral struggles waged by a hardy, but oppressed, peasantry, in their conflict with a dissolute aristocracy. In Porcile (Pigsty), two social outcast—a homosexual and a coprophiliac—find themselves in their fight against a society that oppresses them and views them as outsiders. And in Torema, (Theorem), which some critics say is his greatest film, we see a middle-class Italian family take in a stranger as a lodger. The “lodger” is really a bi-sexual extra-terrestrial who winds up seducing the mother, father, and the teenage son, and ultimately destroys their bourgeois susceptibilities. There is a constant theme, running like red thread, throughout almost all of Pasolini’s films. The theme of the young ragazzo and street hustler, and the social outcast and outsider who is oppressed by society and its “respectable” value—these twin loves of Pasolini’s are the very heart and soul of his films.

It is this concept of an oppositional subculture being co-opted by the culture of the establishment, that led Pasolini to formulate his critique of the beatnik and hippie counter-culture of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. For Pasolini, the hippie was the quintessential symbol of acculturation and cultural co-optation. At first glance, the hippie represented the very apex of cultural resistance to the bourgeoisie. The long hair, the drug use, the sexual promiscuity—all these things are the antithesis of bourgeois respectability. The hippie chooses a lifestyle that is contrary to the typical middle class norm. And it is precisely this emphasis on personal choice, on lifestyle, that Pasolini sees as the chief danger in the hippie’s world outlook. Many of the flower children of the 60s later became conservative. They kept the weed, but not the values. Pasolini saw that there was something inherent in the hippie counter-culture that led it, in an almost deterministic fashion, to become subsumed by the dominant establishment ideology. Why? Because of the inherent, hedonistic, consumerist character of the worldview of the hippie. The hippie of the 1960s, (who usually came from a middle-class background) emphasized the importance of the freedom to choose one’s lifestyle, one’s sexual orientation, one’s style of clothing, etc. It is a very personalized, customized ideology, an ideology that was co-opted in the late 1970s and early 80s, by the attempt of neoliberals to portray capitalism as a post-modernist utopia, where everyone is free to choose his own personal brand or style. Ultimately, it degenerated into an a-political and even anti-political, worldview. In his brilliant essay, The Hippie’s Speech, written in 1973, Pasolini commented on the middle-class snobbery of the hippie, and of the possibility of his being snatched up by a consumerist, and even fascist, culture. According to Pasolini:

That long hair (of the hippie) was hinting at right- wing ‘stuff’. The cycle is concluded. The subculture in power absorbed the subculture that was in opposition and took possession  of it with devilish ability, and passionately made of it a fashion that, if we cannot  really call it fascist in the classic sense of the word, is after all extremely right- wing….Now the long hair is saying, in its inarticulate and obsessed  language of non-verbal signs, in its vandal symbolism, the ‘things’ of T.V. and commercials, where it is now inconceivable to foresee a young person without long hair, something that nowadays would be a scandal for the power in charge….Nowadays no one could ever distinguish, from the physical presence, a revolutionary from a provocateur. Left and Right have physically merged.

In the early part of the century, one knew who was a fascist and who was not. The fascist had either a shaven head or a crew cut, he wore a black or brown uniform and armband, and raised his hand in the Roman salute. Now, one can have a short haircut, a clean shaven chin, and look like a “square,” and be on the Left, and a long-haired hipster can be on the Right, all as a result of a-political hedonism.

Pasolini may have been an unorthodox Marxist, but his views shocked those of the Left and the Right. His advocacy of what Furio Colombo called “a sort of magical paleo-Catholic and neo-Chinese monasticism” may sound a little strange, but his ruthless criticisms of a new, heartless capitalism that stultifies the intellectual life of modern man with shiny baubles, is as relevant today as when he began his crusade in what was then still an industrially backward nation. In an age of reality shows, of Entourage and America’s Next Top Model, Pasolini’s gloomy message should be hearkened to. And in a  United States with the largest underclass in the world and one of the highest poverty rates in the Western hemisphere, Pasolini’s prediction that “The core of the struggle for the Third World revolution is really America,” should be taken seriously.

So why is Pasolini’s social philosophy still relevant? Why should we read his essays and poems now, at this particular historical junction? We are living in an era of neoliberal capitalism; a capitalism that is trying to stamp out any form of cultural and political resistance. It is an insidious form of capitalism that tries to dull us with Gucci hand-bags and reality T.V. shows. By remembering Pasolini and his message, we can learn that what the bourgeois fears the most are oppositional cultural norms, rather than mass strikes. Let us hope his message will be remembered for as long as the bourgeoisie remains with us.

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