Feel my compassion, bitch!

In David Fincher's movie Seven, a psychotic killer, John Doe (Kevin Spacey) goes about torturing and killing people who are guilty of violating the Seven Sins. One of the more grotesque applications is the gluttony victim, in which an obscenely obese man is force fed just enough nutrition to barely keep him alive as he literally rots away in a stew of his own bile. Doe's explanation for this fairly reprehensible torture is rooted in a higher morality (always shades of Nietzsche, however reduced, in Fincher's films-consider Fight Club for a good example) that allows the absolute wrath of god to be visited upon those who are not righteous enough. This is real old Testament kind of mayhem (we may be reminded of the bet between god and the devil over Job's ability to endure and believe in the face of excruciating punishment).

But curiously enough, this sort of torture is still going on outside the boundaries of Hollywood (though no doubt partly imagined by it as 9/11 itself was) in Guantanamo Bay, albeit with a slight tint of new-testament thrown in. The post 9/11 indefinite imprisonment and torture of people by the United States government has been criticized from its inception by government officials and human rights groups within the US and all over the world. We used to like to think that this kind of torture was exclusively the property of nasty third world dictators who either needed to impose order, especially eliminating communism or terrorism (allies) or deserve to be eradicated from the earth (enemies/evil). But the bizarre logic of the administration's humanistic and decidely liberal war on terror is perhaps nowhere better displayed than in this week's revelation of the forced end of the hunger strike of 84 prisoners (though amazingly 4 still remain on hunger strike).


"In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into "restraint chairs," sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward. Detainees who refuse to eat have also been placed in isolation for extended periods in what the officials said was an effort to keep them from being encouraged by other hunger strikers."



According to the NY times, where the above quote was taken, less than 45% of the prison population there (actually not prisoners but enemy combatants so that they have no rights except for those granted by their magnanimous captors) have been accused or shown to have any connection with acts of violence against the US or its allies. Less than 8% have any affiliation with Al Qaeda. Temporarily bracketing the fact that we have no idea how these numbers were reached since coersion is not the most reliable means of eliciting truth (who wouldn't confess to just about anything under serious physical duress if they thought they might thereby alleviate their immediate suffering), we still have the problem of what kinds of acts were committed against the US and its allies (here is a National Journal report on the clusterfuck involved in hording the prisoners in the first place). As the report makes clear, while some indeed have sketchy records (which should call for trials), many seem to be victims of geopolitical fate, particularly in light of American pressure on Pakistan.

We do not have to pretend that the prisoners at Guantanmo Bay are all somehow clean and pure as seraphic cherubs. Many of them could potentially be thieves, wifebeaters, vigilantes, and even terrorists. Yet, we have now created a situation in which we have hundreds of people of questionable guilt locked up indefinitely without trial or even clear accusation (say for example they jaywalked-at least they would be charged with something) and being forcefed so that they can stay alive. One Colonel Martin's defense that the force-feeding was carried out "in a humane and compassionate manner" reveals how clearly the language of human rights and liberalism have been mastered by the current administration (just as it was by the previous administration). Indeed, christian based liberal notions of democratic equality and human freedom, two notions of fairly recent vintage, tinged with their utopian promise as well as the horrors of their undeniable failures, and utilized most successfully recently by the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 60s, have guided our most recent imperial endeavors (as they have historically). The decision is not between two forms of human life (we're humanists!) but rather between the human and the non-human, the enemy or evil.

The widespread permeation of the language of civil rights means that we can act as we have in the past but we cannot (explicitly) direct this against the totality of a particular group. Once this happens, the action turns towards genocide which remains by far the most brutal and inexcusable crime that could possibly be committed, particularly in the minds of those living after World War II (and not yet at the time of Turkey's genocide since it was defined as such only retroactively). Thus we are careful to make the distinction-there are good and bad muslims, good and bad arabs. This places the onus of the crime onto the act itself rather than the actor, by good liberal doctrine. We've shown our committment to this principle by locking up Westerners as well. So, once we are assured that the intentions of the administration are purely good and not racially motivated (or religiously, of course, in spite of the fact that god personally whispered into Bush's ear that he should invade Afghanistan and Iraq), then the actions that are taken can only be taken for legitimate reasons that are not political and they are taken against those who are not human but enemy combatants and always in the spirit of humaneness and compassion, even when forceful, degrading, or violent. It has long been established that the reason they are identified as ECs in the first place is so that they do not get the benefit of universal human rights, the rights that the rest of us, the universal and human against the particular and evil, have earned (or invented) and continue to cherish. They deserve what they get whether they deserve it or not because we've suffered. Acting alternately as victims of, as well as protectors against global terror, we cannot possibly be the perpetrators of unjustified violence, even when the fact is staring us in the face. The domestic version of this cynicism can be found readily in the illegal practice of the Bush administration spying on its own citizens without warrants. It can only be directed against evil so if you are caught, well, you're evil.

At the end of Seven, the audience gets to hear John Doe spew his twisted rationale for the crimes he has committed. Because he has sawed off the head of the detective's pretty and endearing pregnant wife and given it to him in a cardboard box, we are made quite aware of the limits to his possibly seductive fascistic impulses towards a higher morality. And at this point, if I haven't already, I should make it quite clear that in my opinion terrorists play by the same rules (they don't bother with the box-they just use videotape). It is okay to saw someone's head off if they are heathens. Both of our reasons are rooted in fundamentalism masking itself as righteousness in a manichean struggle against the forces of darkness. It is odd how the contradictions at the center of both seem apparent only to the other side.

The proper response therefore is not to simply draw up another manichean portrait but to point out how the logic of this sort of manicheanism is undermined by its own contradictions (like humane torture and compassionate violence). In order to be valid and consitent, criticisms and appeals must be animated by self-reflection. Then perhaps we will be horrified when greeted by images of our own animosity rather than passing it off as inevitable or necessary. This should also help if we want to accuse others. But we may want to begin by eliminating our own "humaneness" and "compassion" if this is what it looks like.

NYU NEGOTIATE!

As many of you (hopefully) know, NYU graduate students are on strike and have been since early November. At the beginning of December, a letter was issued by the administration threatening those striking grad students. The threats were that we would lose our stipends (for the labor which we don't perform because we aren't workers-see below) for one semester and then a year and be replaced if we didn't return by a specificied date. The threat was particularly egregious for international students, whose visas remain quite tenuous in post 9/11 America. Nonetheless, many students, international and otherwise, decided to remain on strike in spite of threats and now face some of the recriminations earlier threatened.

What can you do?

I have discussed my own take on the issue below.
You can also visit the Faculty Democracy webpage which contains more information or the GSOC webpage. Both sites are full of more sophisticated, knowledgeable, and eloquent information than I could hope to drum up. In the interests of fairness (yeah, right!), you can also check out the NYU page (the home page for NYU calls for active spying!)

Then...
Call or write to John Sexton, the President of NYU tell him to get with the program and start negotiating with the graduate student union, GSOC/UAW.

John Sexton
New York University
Division: President
Department: Office of the President download vcard Bobst, 70 Washington Square South, 1216
New York, New York (US) 10012
NYU Mail Code:1383
Tel: (212) 998-2345
Fax: (212) 995-4790
john.sexton@nyu.edu

What are the issues at stake in this strike?

The main issue at hand is really the contention over the meaning of "higher education" in this country right now. Do you see higher education as a stepping stone to a better job or higher pay? Is it a place that offers universal equal opportunity? Is it a place for parties and sports? Is it a place for serious independent research? Is it a corporation looking to make money by rationalizing whenever and wherever possible? Is it a place to encourage free and critical thinking? Of course, it is some of all these things but what makes the problem hazy is that the idealized space of the university and the reality of the university are two different things, though both are connected. NYU had been the only private university in the country with a unionized graduate student body, though it is increasingly common at state schools, including California's prestigious UC system, and the University of Washington campuses in Washington state. In many cases, exterior force (sympathetic senators, etc) came down and pretty much forced the anti-labor administrations to negotiate with the graduate students. In the case of private schools, the reason that NYU negotiated is that the NLRB voted in the graduate students' favor (i.e. that we are indeed workers and not strictly students). However, after the NLRB was re-organized (under the Bush administration), new rulings were issued establishing new precedents. NYU decided to take up the new rules, thereby aligning itself with the anti-labor policies of the Bush administration. For the University in the NYU case, who refused to negotiate a second contract after the first contract expired, the graduate students who teach classes, read and grade essays and exams, hold office hours, conduct labs, answer emails from anxious and inquisitive undergraduate students, prepare coursework, attend lectures and so forth, are not actually working when they do those things.

Graduate students do not deny that they are students first and foremost. That is why we came to NYU. However, this does not in any way preclude the fact that we also work. A simple analogy can clear up this point. If I were a computer science major working part time writing code for a tech firm in the city, I would expect to be paidand consider myself a worker even though the work I would be doing would ostensibly be for my own learning and future career advancement. So why is it different if I am teaching classes as a preliminary step towards a career as a professor? Again, this is related to the illusions of higher education. The administration is looking to save money so they hire TAs, more and more. Exact figures are hard to come by. They vary among schools and departments but in many cases, a large portion (20-30% and sometimes higher) of introductory courses, labs, foreign language classes, basic writing classes, and so forth are taught by TAs. This is not a bad thing at all. The university, whether private or public, would be stupid to pay full time professors to teach every lab and section. It would be a an inefficient use of resources all around and in the era of unmitigated competition and voracious rationalization, and even apart from the other "evils" of capitalism, this should be avoided. It helps students as well, who are often eager for the opportunities and the pay. In the case of NYU, the pay isn't bad-certainly by comparison to some other jobs (often adjust professors and lecturers really get screwed) but the reason the pay is OK (and not exceptional by any means-$18,000 a year) is because the pressure from the union in the first place raised it considerably from its pre-union average of $10,000 a year. Try living in NY on $10,000 a year. Even 18 is pushing it.

But on the other hand, the students working on PhDs at NYU, unlike at state schools, are already given a "guaranteed" "contract" with the university that stipulates their fellowships and work requirements in advance. (That the guarantee and contract are above in quote is due to the fact that the guarantor of said contract is none other than the administration. The boss. The recent threats enacted by the administration make perfectly clear the reason why some protection is necessary. While no one expects to lose pay while they are on strike, the threat of being fired and losing an entire year of funding [i.e. basically being kicked out of school and out of our jobs and seriously jeopardizing our futures] are serious and have already earned condemnations by nearly 10,000 intellectuals and scholars the world over). Besides the goodwill of the university itself, remuneration for grad students is paid for by MA students and undergraduate students (or their parents/guardians/scholarships) as well as the money the university earns by other means. The board of trustees at NYU is swamped in financial scandal, and the main advisors are invested in NYU obviously as a business venture, with few other credentials that indicate their interest in higher education (i.e. they are not professors or researchers with an interest in scholarship and scientific learning, etc). While many striking graduate students want to hold them accountable, they should also remember that their own fellowships are dependent both on the people below them, and on those financial scandals. We are implicated therefore in exploitation at various levels. Furthermore, to call for recognition as workers is to identify ourselves as commodities to be traded, rather than as "collegial" apprentices who stand to gain profound wisdom through our experiences that can later be applied to life. Is this a case of what some critical thinkers have called "cynicism," whereby we know what we are doing (with some disapproval or moral equivocation) and yet we do it anyhow? I think graduate students realize what they are implicated in and recognize their own positions (somewhat) with regard to privilege (let's face it, we are overwhelmingly white and middle class and headed for respectable careers of fashionable but safe radicalism) and how they fit into NYU's economic scheme. The university, meanwhile, while continuing to adhere to the ideals of the university even as it operates as the same bottom-line cut-throat economic monster that dominates the globe (and which its members are often quick to criticize as globalization) reveals itself to be the true hypocrite and liar in this whole affair.

Why does it matter?

The pressure on graduate students comes from individual departments as well as the university administration, but the line doesn't end there. The administration is being pressured by other universities, particularly ivy-league schools. NYU is the new kid on the block, with a cool location but a poor library and historically less-than-stellar academic record. It is now competing to be one of the more prestigious schools and in order to do so, must indicate its will. Its will is manifest in the hordes of money spent on crushing the strike on one level. But it goes beyond this as well. The administration had also illegally entered private course email lists to monitor them during the strike (sound familiar?). One of their main rationales for not dealing with the union is that it would interfere with the "academic" work (i.e. that key ideal word that indicates the sacred space of learning divorced from those dirty business interests that people on all sides would prefer to ignore). But firing TAs (i.e. subverting departmental autonomy) and spying on graduate students also seems like a bit of an unwelcome intervention in that sacrosanct space. If it isn't plain already, what is happening here at NYU is not unlike what is happening at national levels of power plays. We all want to pretend that United States wealth, for example, is based on freedom and equality rather than violence, war, and exploitation. The truth is of course that our freedom and equality is partially guaranteed by those dirty secrets. The establishment is in some ways more honest than the radicals in this since at least they are willing to do the dirty work, but always claim it dishonestly in the cleanest of terms that utterly disregards the damage to human life and the ecosphere. Radicals are quick to criticize those dirty secrets but often lack any self-reflection on the fact that they are often privileged and benefit from those things that they criticize so fiercely.

Within the context of brute competition (Hobbes transformed to the global market), labor has taken significant hits. With national and international attention on what will happen with NYU, the strike occuring now has serious rammifications for the direction of higher education and labor in the U.S. This may come down to values but it seems to me closer to simple issues of reality and illusion of education and the question of what is the best way to ensure economic vitality and human dignity for everyone. Will we face the reality and own up to our dirty secrets? If so, and we admit that TAs are merely tools of economic rationalization, then they also deserve the respect afforded all other workers in the country by law. Even if you don't agree with unions, it is undeniable that workers in the US have the legal right to choose their own mode of representation, however flawed (no need to idealize unions either). This is called Democracy (to invoke another idealism). And if you watch the battle between the administration and striking students at NYU right now, you will indeed see what it looks like.