And this is what America has come to

I am not white myself...


No one wants to, or dares to--hear someone like myself, even if though I myself am not white , say that African-Americans are more racist than white people.

As Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Ferraro, and others found out.

What Europeans, in particular, don't understand is the racial politics of the United States, which in many instances, is skewed in favor of African-Americans.

The New York Times, whose new chief editor, is African-American, ensures sympathetic, insistent coverage of African-Americans.   A foreigner might think that blacks accounted for 33%-50% of the U.S. population, when, in fact, they account for 12%.

The coverage of the passing of a sports, entertainment, etc. celebrity receives major headline coverage for days:  Mohammed Ali, Prince, etc.

The riots that have engulfed London and Paris in the past decade were inspired by the destructive side of the civil rights movement in the United States, something few, if any, mainstream commentators in this country have dared to observe.

The President of the United States, the Attorney General (the highest law enforcement official in the U.S.) are black, as if the president of the Academy Awards, and so on...

To challenge the notion that African-Americans live in poverty at a much proportionally higher rate than whites or Asians and that their self-defeating beliefs may play a greater role in the things that ail them is to lay oneself open to vicious attack and charges of racism.

This is not to deny that certain minorities in the world, such as the Uighur in Xinjiang in China, are victims of political repression.

But African-Americans have so disproportionately dominated sports, music, movies, and even politics (where they have become "the heart and soul" of the Democratic Party).

This passionate, fiery love affair with African-Americans and their culture is at odds with the continuing propaganda that slants news and only allows coverage of incidents where they are victims and never aggressors.

The media will never mention that the violent crime rate among blacks is several times that of other groups, only that they are incarcerated at a much higher rate (which would only make sense, as they commit astrononomically amounts of violent crime).

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IEFD_JVYd0&feature=youtu.be

Racism, Time Magazine-style in 2016

If the Academy were a cooler, hipper, smarter bunch–and let’s not even say a more diversified one, because being white is no excuse for having bad taste–Chi-Raq, Spike Lee’s timely, raucous reimagining of Lysistrata, might have been among the Best Picture nominees.   -Stephanie Sacherek in Time Magazine, February 11, 2016

I think Stephanie Sacherek is speaking of her own self in this case.

http://time.com/4217056/oscars-america/

Painful racial realities and posturing

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/crime/article/NAACP-Police-involved-shooting-a-cold-blooded-6850343.php


As a person of color who has to deal with the unpleasant racial realities every day of my life, who remembers writing an impassioned review of "To Kill a Mockingbird" in 1967 at Meany Middle School, I feel compelled to write this review.

I am wondering what Dr. King would have thought of the actions of local chapters of the NAACP in recent years such as the Seattle chapter (see link above).

Self-righteousness, arrogance, posturing, a disdain for opinions for other than one's own, a rush to judgment before all the facts are known:  these are not in accordance with the values I he believed in.

Workshops on non-violent conflict resolution and condemning machismo/no-snitching within the community would go much further than immediately exploiting for political advantage the death of a black man.


[If anything should happen to me, questions should begin to be asked of the downtown YMCA and of Yelp for direct or indirect implication.  It pains me to reflect on the fact that often within minority groups, minorities are persecuted as much or even more than in the society at large].

Updated review of YMCA February 22, 2016

Eek!  Still methinks not.

* * * * *

After having filed complaints with the Washington State Attorney General and the Better Business Bureau, this week I finally received a rather robotic response from the downtown YMCA ("the facts were documented and do not align...").

Instead of a formal apology and a reprimand, much less the dismissal, of its director Cynthia Klever, I was offered a prorated refund of a month's membership dues.

This was an egregiously insufficient response.

It took one person's refusal in the Deep South to sit at the back of the bus to change things in this country.

I refused to accept being treated as a second class citizen at the YMCA.  In the 13 years I was a member, I witnessed over and over again this YMCA (1) not living up to its own self-professed values and (2) not enforcing its rules impartially.

* * * * *

"Why is that towel there [still in the locker]?    Is it clean?  Yes?  [smarmily], YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT [put it in the tub]."

[The floor of the locker room is often or usually covered in wet, used bath towels; the lockers full of half used towels hanging down.  Yet I never observed this same staff person admonishing anyone else over taking half a dozen towels at a time or throwing their used towels right and left].

* * * * 

Me:  "This man really chewed me out at the pool."

Membership director, 1/3 my age, (raising voice, pointing, scolding):   "BUT THAT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO. ["You're being unreasonable.  You don't have the right to set your own boundaries with people.]"

Me:   "He's been stalking me ever since.  Please talk to him."

This kind of disrespect really hurt.  It still does.

Is this what the YMCA should be teaching?  

* * * * *

Carefully documenting my experiences, I pointed this out in my Yelp updates.  Pressure was placed on Yelp to have those ten years' reviews expunged from the public record.

In the end the whistle-blower was punished.

Cynthia Klever needs to be dismissed.

The last incident at the YMCA in itself warrants a lawsuit against the downtown YMCA for psychological trauma and humiliation.

Being uncomfortable--and eventually angry--about being mistreated--and going public about it (on Yelp) is not an ethical reason to terminate a membership.   

Except at the downtown Seattle YMCA.   

Thank you, YMCA, for strengthening my resolve to continue to fight racial discrimination and prejudice the rest of my life.

Even if I cannot see changes within my lifetime.


* * * * *

"J'ai assez vecu pour savoir que la difference engendre la haine." 
--Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir

May my words benefit other sentient beings.

What is political correctness? One example.

Following the lead of media, people today are reluctant to identify the skin color of someone who has assaulted them for fear of being attacked as racist.


 

Two sides of every story: Compassion and Fairness

In the parallel, dildo-inflated/infatuated universe of The Stranger, there is only violent crime committed (1) by white policemen and (2) against black people.

There are two sides to every story, and the one not told by this newspaper--my best gues--is that police get "this way" because they frequently are on the receiving end of verbal abuse:  taunts, heckles, threats, rage, hostility, disrespect, even fists or feet, from strangers/their local communities.

And there is the "fear" factor:  they're dealing with not just homeless and/or mentally ill people, but also violent criminals.  And they just don't know where or when they may be victims (think of the four Lakewood policeman killed while sitting in a coffee shop in Tacoma).

It's not easy being a policeman even for those with the toughest dispositions.  And if they make one mistake, it's either themselves or the other guy.

And they'll get blamed in any case.  No wonder they retreat into their police guilds.  No understanding from the media, too intent on a witch hunt with a predictable story-line.

They may indeed have few ways to let off their steam other than in the typical "man" ways our society has given them.

White police should not be patrolling black neighborhoods; let black people take responsibility for the safety of their communities.
I am confident in their ability to do so.

 

Diversity at the Oscars looked more closely

No Asian actor has been nominated in eight years.  Latinos do only somewhat better.   Black actors have been nominated in all but two or three of the last 25 years.  I never heard any outcry about that.

At 12% of the population, blacks have been, in other words over-represented.  In one year, they won both top acting Oscars (Halle Berry, Denzel Washington).   In fact, over the past 25 years blacks have been disproportionately overrepresented among the winners.

http://mashable.com/2016/01/20/oscars-diversity-2016/#8bebHgRPKaqs

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/01/film-and-race

http://labs.time.com/story/oscars-diversity/

Bailero ("Chants d'Auvergne") de Joseph Canteloube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxspdNcRuWk

Taking the truth out of the "Y": What do you have?

The "truth" is that you cannot make anyone tell the truth--or even, at least not lie--even if you are telling them the truth--or at least not lying.

(At best, you might be able to encourage them).

The irony of what happened on July 7, 2015 at the downtown YMCA was that Cynthia Klever tried to get me to do the opposite, i.e. she tried to make me admit to something I had not done.

(I lived in China for years and know from personal experience that they use coercion of various types to get people to admit to things they never did. When I got back to the U.S., I exclaimed to myself, "So glad to be back where we don't do things like that!").

In this cynical world, is that all that is possible:  to make people tell a lie or lies?

I remember in one e-mail saying something to the effect that "This should not be happening...We don't want Guantanamo here."

The irony is that, in a sense, she does.  Or she doesn't see the principle behind what I was saying.
Or doesn't care.

Granted, Guantanamo was/is a million times worse, but the "principle" is similar or identical: Get someone into a corner where they can't defend themselves, thereby making it easy to impute misconduct, etc.   Machiavellian in its amorality.

So do we lose our innocence or our faith in humanity because one person has harmed us and let us down terribly (I believed in her for several years up until that meeting).

This is how, at least, some people get "ahead" in our society.

This I know now.

I thought I knew when someone was telling the truth.

Now I know I do not.

It is, at best, a hunch.  Don't act on the basis of a hunch.  An invitation for a "friendly discussion" may be a trap.

Another hunch is that employees at the downtown Seattle YMCA must sign a paper that says they will not discuss "office affairs" with outsiders.  So much for openness and honesty.

Is there any incentive to tell the truth at this business or only to tell it when it is not going to set you on a collision course with your superior(s)?

Updated review of the downtown Seattle YMCA: A peek at how one non-profit civic business operates

"When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark...
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain..."
(Oscar Hammerstein, II)

"On n'arrete pas Voltaire."
(Charles de Gaulle)

“I Cannot and Will Not Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year's Fashions.”
(Lillian Hellman)

"It is also a mistake to seek to suppress speech in the name of equality. Free speech and association are tools for the minority, whoever they are at a given moment."
-David Cole, "Yale:   the Power of Speech," NY Review of Books, Jan. 16, 2016


* * * * *


"You never pick a fight you can't win.

Otherwise, you're gonna get your ass kicked."

Even you are recounting based on what happened to you when you tried to stand up for your rights as a human being:   to be treated with respect and not discriminated against.

Funny how some people will say "Well, then...you must have been picking a fight."

I believed that principles were worth standing up for.

That is what I tried to do.

I hope I will have helped in furthering a fairer, more balanced discussion of race, discrimination, responsibility, and victim-hood, even though I doubt that in my lifetime my efforts will be acknowledged.

The management of the downtown YMCA picked a fight, not me.  And they thought they won in the end.  But did they really "win"?

In America what looks like winning is losing, and vice versa.

Stifling open discussion and/or succumbing to prejudice was not what I thought Seattle was about.

This is what I learned at the downtown YMCA in Seattle.

But an individual CAN stand up, even if others remain silent because they are afraid.

I didn't realize that not all liberals were, first and foremost, interested in being kind or fair.

Thank you, downtown Seattle Y.   You taught me a lesson.








Funny how people can show very different aspects of their character depending on the situation...

Cynthia Klever undoubtedly believes that she "won" on July 7, 2015 by interrogating me to the point where I broke down.  What she doesn't know is that by lying--something most people do not realize when she is the middle of some "pretend" game she takes obvious delight in--it was she who exposed herself, to me.

What a game of truth or consequences life is.  And the downtown YMCA is complicit.  I suspect every staff member (not necessarily every volunteers--I applaud their idealism) is compromised in some way.

Try to get a peek behind the curtains and see who is pulling the strings.

Who doesn't want to be exposed.

This civic institution is as American as...





Businesses are responsible for the conduct of their employees.

A consumer has the right to know whether members use obscene, violent language or if there are security issues (theft, stalking, bullying).  Businesses should not try to block unfavorable reviews.

On July 9, 2015 I, a disabled senior citizen and a member since 2002, was bullied and verbally assaulted by Cynthia Klever, director of the downtown YMCA, a young white woman in her office.  The experience traumatized me.

The Y's core values of "respect," "caring," responsibility," and "honesty" were flagrantly violated by Ms. Klever.

The Y selectively enforces its rules of conduct, which is discriminatory.

Contempt and hostility invite the same in return.  I decline the invitation to lie.


* * * * *

If we do not speak this week, I will put your membership on hold until I return from vacation, which is Friday July 17th."   --Cynthia Klever in email dated July 8, 2015

BULLYING is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively dominate others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power, which distinguishes bullying from conflict.
(Wikipedia)

I was bullied at the downtown YMCA by several employees, including director Klever.

At the meeting of July 9, 2015, there was a power imbalance that included (1) white perogative and (2) having two people of the same race, gender, and approximately the same age against one of a different race, gender, orientation, and age in the room.   They kept saying to me, "What difference does it make?"

Ms. Klever resorted to the use of a threat and a false pretext ("to resolve an email") to get me to meet with her.

Noisily chewing a huge wad of gum in my face, she was at first "friendly."  Then she began to aggressively interrogate me.  Finally, she dropped her customary jolly facade and in an scornful, insulting tone of voice, she harrangued me blaming and accusing me of things that were patently untrue.

Through snow blizzards, shingles, ankle and toe fractures, acid reflux, and knee pain, over the past 23 years, I have swum at Evans, Colman, Garfield, Queen Anne, 24 Fitness, Meredith Matthews, Seattle U., downtown Y pools, and from Honolulu to Boston and San Francisco.

Yet Ms. Klever viciously castigated me for causing problems for other swimmers.  That is simply not the truth, as lifeguards can testify to.   In fact, for the past 2+ years I have uneventfully swum 7 miles a week at the downtown Y.

The irony is that she had admitted to me that (1) she herself had difficulty not hitting the lane dividers and (2) the lanes were narrow.

Asking the Y to abide by its own rules is not, as Ms. Klever charged, bending over backwards to accomodate my needs.

She did not allow me the time to answer her accusations.   Nor did she respond to the many points I brought up in the "offending" email.  And she dismissed out of hand my concerns about bullying by Y staff.

Several times I was provoked to the point of tears.   Stripped of defenses, I let slip out an expletive, that Ms. Klever pounced on to, in the same second, terminate my membership of 13 years.

Treated like a common criminal, I was told to get my things and leave at once.

In a shell-shocked daze, I forgot to lock my locker after I had pleaded to be able to take a shower and say good-bye to friends.

This experience left me feeling betrayed, humiliated, and demeaned.

Legal action appears to be the only recourse.

* * * * *

In the past year I had already noticed that Ms. Klever prevaricated on several occasions.  Ten months ago, for instance, in response to my dismay at staff gossip, grinning from ear to ear, her  rejoinder was:  "Gossip?  Gosh, us??  No...this is the YMCA!"

I had nothing to hide by meeting with Ms. Klever but everything to lose by doing it in her office, where what she said, and how she said it, would be shielded from scrutiny.

I believe that the Highest Judge will say, "This was a pre-meditated attack on your part, not a discussion.  I think you know this very well.  You relentlessly goaded L. past the breaking point."

Running aground with the downtown YMCA by taking it at its words ("values" and "mission"), I discovered they were not living up to them.

No, I had not spent time shooting the breeze with Ms. Klever in her office.

But, in a nutshell, I discovered that  it is personal agendas that drive this YMCA, not "mission," which--after all--is distributed in sheets and plastered on the walls, courtesy of the national organization.

But when staff tell you confidentially that they are being harassed [at this YMCA]," you know something's wrong.

Under Ms. Klever, racial disparities and stereotyping have only grown, while security has steadily worsened.

The downtown Y did not provide for me as a minority a safe environment.

As long as our civic institutions engage in and cover up such behaviors within their ranks, we will not stop bullying among our youth.

If this had been about accusations of racism by an African-American member, the downtown YMCA could not have sloughed off its responsibilities ("we've bent over backwards for you") and, instead, pummeled the victim.  Young, white heads would have been rolling, instead of eyes, if that had been the case.

I have never experienced more racism or bullying in my entire life than I did at the downtown Seattle YMCA.

* * * * *

In the past, several young lifeguards got off clean with dereliction of duty while playing fast and loose with the truth.  Naive and foolish of me to believe that this business would live up to its creed, bottom to top.

Google "Danny Chen."  Or Matthew Shepherd.  Or Bradley Manning.

"...one night dragged him out of bed and across the floor when he failed to turn off a water heater after showering."
[New York Times  ("Soldier's death raises suspicions," 10/31/11)]

The Way of the World

"You never pick a fight you can't win.

Otherwise, you're gonna get your ass kicked."



I never learned this in school.

I believed that principles were worth standing up for.

I thought that that was what America at its best was.

The reality is different.


If I had children, I would tell them this.



"Picking a fight" now means when the majority has a strong position on an issue and you as an individual express a dissenting opinion.

Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

The girl in the blue dress

Much has been made over the centuries over Leonardo's "Mona Lisa," much less has been said about del Piombo's "Salome" (1510) in the National Gallery, London.  The author has been arrested by the painting with its three-quarter profile of a contemporaneous Italian beauty with the remarkable gaze, the platter with the head of St. John the Baptist, and the window at right opening on to an expanse of sky and low cerulean mountains, matching in hue the color of Salome's dress.

The confrontational, direct gaze of this Salome is unlike any Renaissance or Baroque portrait that I know of it.  It predates Manet's "Olympia" by over three centuries. 

I would like to explore in this paper the historical background of the painting as well as offer possible interpretations of "the look," of the painting as a whole.

Outline for a memory play: The matrilinear patrimony

In psychological theme, closely related to Edvard Munch's famous "The Scream"
(1993, National Museum, Oslo) is Caravaggio's "Medusa" (1597) which I viewed in the Uffizi Gallery last spring.  Most people in the thronging crowds that day walked past it.

I cannot argue for any traditionally art-historical link between the two works of art, e.g., that Munch was inspired after having seen the earlier work or a copy of it.

But I do believe that thematically the two share a very strong link, one that transcends the absence of a traditional art-historical patrimony.

Some works of art took the artist several decades to arrive at a unfinished state, e.g., Rodin's "Gates of Hell" (Musee Rodin, Paris).   Others were apparently whipped off in a matter of hours.

The rough state of the surface of a work of art is no indicator of the quality of either the conception of or the work of art itself.

Logic, cold and often cruel.  Feeling, deeper, tempestuous.

One has been subjected to the dictates of the other, a thematic repeatedly asserted in coursework at institutions of higher learning.

To the lower depths, then...feeling...holding the hand of logic.

I was turned to stone

because I gazed into the

face of Medusa.

Unlike Perseus

I had no shield.

Unlike Perseus,

I had no sword.

Can stone be turned into water?

* * * * *

Dramatis personae:

Medusa,

Perseus,

The boy,

The mother,

The shooting stars,

The night.

academia article

"What did you learn in [graduate] school?" 

To see [what I had not been paying attention to]. To remember [what I did not want to]. "What is knowledge?" 

"How is knowledge used? Who determines how it is used? Who decides what is knowledge? Who is served by it?"

  I do know that apart from sporadic quarterly newsletters, which I have repeatedly refused, I have not announcements or any other communication from the department of art history at Kansas. I do not know why I receive the newsletter. 

 "What is academic freedom?" 

It is a deeply compromised by a system that can only be described as educational serfdom, with an entrenched hierarchy that looks out for its own interests before defending 'academic freedom' and diversity of opinion. 

As with serfdom, presumably, cases of extreme brutality have and do occur but rarely brought to light, much less punished. It has no real self-interest in taking more than a desultory self-examination of itself, its rules, written, spoken, and unspoken. Granted there must be certain individuals do not abuse the system or at least do it less than others. 

"Why are/have you been interested in 'history'--the past? What connection can something which is 'over,' 'dead,' and relegated to dusty volumes in libraries--where only pointy heads go--have with the present, or the future? What's the point of 'looking backwards' (at mostly 'dead white men') when we have to move forward?"  

This proposed article is not academic in the traditional sense but hopefully it does provide insight into one person's examination of an academic discipline as practiced by both the author and the object of his critical scrutiny at the University of Kansas, 1991-93, Kress Department of Art History. The goal is examination, self-knowledge, understanding, the dissemination of a history that has relevance to higher education as it practiced not in theory but in practice at least under the circumstances herein recounted. No, I am not providing a longitudinal study of the effects of negative professor-graduate student relationships at one or several institutions of higher learning. But I am being scrupulous and as objective as I can be in my recollection of conversations and interactions which have haunted me over the past 20+ years. I ask: What good is all the prize-winning scholarship in the world if one cannot be honest about what took place in one's classroom? If one cannot take responsibility for history as one lived and wrote it, however indirectly? As a child of the 1960s civil rights movement in the U.S. and one who lived in Beijing during the student movement in 1989, and one who personally witnessed how civic and educational institutions failed him, I am forced to confront these questions not merely on an academic but a personal level. We might be well reminded that each [living] moment passes into a moment of history, and that the living have this special responsibility to history if only because there is no way to live without having to live, construct, confront history. Each moment contains a kernel of courage, whatever the odds against it. Each moment can and should be lived with fearless honesty. ὁ ... ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ And to take responsibility for history. Sophocles in Oedipus Rex, said as much, as did Sigmund Freud centuries later.

 To cut to the chase, I would like to acknowledge that in 1992 U was used as an emotional punching bag by my professor, Marsha Weidner [now Marsha Haufler], resulting in psychological trauma for life, in hindsight, less important than the career derailment itself. Neither the University administration nor department offered any assistance, although I did visit the university health center and sought outside help as well. As I write this, I have fallen into a state of physiological depression, fevers and chills having anteceded the writing of this draft by about half a day. At the same time, I admit now they I could never have had the understanding I have now of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" without the experience(s) I had with Ms. Weidner at the University of Kansas. The scream is about one who has heard (Or more precisely, the recipient of the scream), not the one who has screamed. The painting has been misinterpreted: It is after the scream This was an interpretation no academic had clued me to. It "feels" intuitively correct. The air is set in motion from the scream though all is silent except in the soul of the receiver, who vainly and in disbelief covers his ears. The bulging eyes gap for a mouth. and the wraith-like body in sway tell us better than any words could what the subjective experience is. (No scene from "Star Wars" could ever be this more disturbing, more unreal and real at the same time). All I could say to the people I tried to tell was that "she screamed at me [in her office]. She screamed at me." Move on. Bury it. I tried to. For over 22 years. But the images, words, sounds will not die, do not die. They remain etched in memory and become our history. To recover the history which is ours and which lives every day even without our awareness or acknowledgment, that, to me, is the task of the historian of any stripe. Reclaiming the history of what was forgotten, lost, denied, unacknowledged, buried alive, buried dead, if you have it. Maybe this is the way I will move on. By sharing the strong connection between art and life. I ask myself now: Why is it that if anyone behaved the way she behaved when I was verbally and psychologically assaulted in her office one morning, I, or most people, would tell the person to "f--- off" immediately that I meekly listened to everything she screamed at me, not uttering a word in my defense? What circumstances, besides my sheer fear, hurt, and paralysis (the mouse before the python) contributed to this situation and resulted in a trauma that had unfortunate consequences for the rest of my life? By showing the underbelly of an education, I sincerely hope that this will in even a small way make it less likely that it will happen to another graduate student. It was easier to keep my silence, or so I thought. After all, it was expected of me. That is, ultimately, the coward's way out. Presumably, very few people will ever see this, much less be persuaded by what I have recounted. But even if it makes a minuscule difference, it is preferable to saying nothing. I do it for myself and at the same time for others. And perhaps for my parents as well who would have wanted me to take care of myself and who stressed the importance of an education. Having grown up in the United States and gone to a prominent liberal arts college, though, I endorse the notion that "education" is more the the recitation of facts or the ribbons of academic or professional accolades. This "confession" was not something I would have wanted to reveal. It took 22 years, nightmares, illness, and an indifference, a glaring silence from the University of Kansas, and a newsletter which followed me over that same time period, finding my new address whenever I moved, being sent against my express wishes. C'est pas vraiment mon truc...de me devoiler, ni de devoiler des autres dans un quelconque domaine publique, C'est pas mon intention. C'est d'abord de raconter l'histoire de mon education qui peut sembler invraisemblable mais qui est en rait la verite. Et c'est ca que je recherche. J'y dis ce que j'ai decouvert jusqu'ici et ce que je continue a chercher. A few years ago I wrote to Marsha Weidner aka Marsha Haufler about my experience ("Why did this happen?") but received no response. This indifference to the mental health of students may not suddenly be news, but the particularly severe circumstances of my ordeal warrant, in my opinion, much more attention from university administrators if the cycle of abuse is not to lead even worse things. What causes young people, and older people as well, to commit acts of violence, against themselves or others? My guess: The brutality of words, looks, actions, voices This should not be happening anywhere but certainly not in higher education. If Linda Nochlin can be permitted the use of a four-letter word whose use is strongly disapproved of in all but very private quarters, surely there is room for tolerance of the use of a certain five-letter word used widely to indicate disapprobation in the vernacular of the United States in 2016. Unfortunately, words--the stock-in-trade of the profession , not matter how strongly worded, are a weak stand-in for more actions which would be warranted. Assault--not just sexual or "physical"--can occur to those of a different gender, of a different skin colors than we are accustomed to hearing about, even if no one hears [about] them. Or, at least, believes, that they have, in fact, occurred. Suicides have occurred at my most liberal of alma maters because college administrators failed to provide adequate channels of support to students and, instead, implied that the students in question were at least partially to blame adn that they had done all that they could. I did not fail [at] the University of Kansas so much as the institution failed me, as it undoubtedly as has failed others. It failed to protect from the caprices and abusive behavior of one woman and from the indifference of a system that did live up to its self-laudatory ideals. Actually, two decades is only a short time in history. And dissent, including unconventional formats, is an honorable tradition within the Western Tradition. Without specifics, recounted perhaps even in numbing detail, our generalizations cannot but be shallow and unproven. Epatons la bourgeoisie, ceux qui parmi nous sont si complaisants. (Thank you, T.J. Clark).

Les saisons - petit adagio du ballet d'Alexandre Glazunov

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dum-2EKDBtY

What did you learn in [graduate] school]?

transcript of posting on academia.edu

"What did you learn in [graduate] school?" To see [what I had not been paying attention to]. To remember [what I did not want to]. "What is knowledge?" "How is knowledge used? Who determines how it is used? Who decides what is knowledge? Who is served by it?" "What is academic freedom?" It is a deeply compromised by a system that can only be described as educational serfdom, with an entrenched hierarchy that looks out for its own interests before defending 'academic freedom' and diversity of opinion. It has no real self-interest in taking more than a desultory self-examination of itself, its rules, written, spoken, and unspoken. Granted there must be certain individuals do not abuse the system or at least do it less than others. "Why are/have you been interested in 'history'--the past? What connection can something which is 'over,' 'dead,' and relegated to dusty volumes in libraries--where only pointy heads go--have with the present, or the future? What's the point of 'looking backwards' (at mostly 'dead white men') when we have to move forward?" This proposed article is not academic in the traditional sense but hopefully it does provide insight into one person's examination of an academic discipline as practiced by both the author and the object of his critical scrutiny at the University of Kansas, 1991-93, Kress Department of Art History. The goal is examination, self-knowledge, understanding, the dissemination of a history that has relevance to higher education as it practiced not in theory but in practice at least under the circumstances herein recounted. I understand that many, if not most academics, will think these disclosures inappropriate, not "scholarly." No, I am not providing a longitudinal study of the effects of negative professor-graduate student relationships at one or several institutions of higher learning. But I am being scrupulous and as objective as I can be in my recollection of conversations and interactions which have haunted me over the past 20+ years. I ask: What good is all the prize-winning scholarship in the world if one cannot be honest about what took place in one's classroom? If one cannot take responsibility for history as one lived and wrote it, however indirectly? The more footnotes, the more sheer enumerating of facts, the more quotations from people of "higher [scholarly] standing" does not make necessarily for an article or book that is "better," especially if it is passionless or has little relevance except in a very abstract way. The violence in our schools is not limited to middle schools (or elementary schools). The bullies only grow into adult bullies; they do not disappear or stop their behaviors upon graduation from college, notwithstanding popular images of cap-and-gown graduation ceremonies and ivory towers. As a child of the 1960s civil rights movement in the U.S. and one who lived in Beijing during the student movement in 1989, and one who personally witnessed how civic and educational institutions failed him, I am forced to confront these questions not merely on an academic but a personal level. We might be well reminded that each [living] moment passes into a moment of history, and that the living have this special responsibility to history if only because there is no way to live without having to live, construct, confront history. Each moment contains a kernel of courage, whatever the odds against it. Each moment can and should be lived with fearless honesty. ὁ ... ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ If no can be bothered (or is too afraid) to remember, what does this do to 'history'? {I respect very much the Tiananmen mothers for not wanting to 'let this die,' knowing that the Chinese government wants them to die off taking their memories with them). And to take responsibility for history. Sophocles in Oedipus Rex, said as much, as did Sigmund Freud centuries later. To cut to the chase, I would like to acknowledge that in 1992 U was used as an emotional punching bag by my professor, Marsha Weidner [now Marsha Haufler], resulting in psychological trauma for life, in hindsight, less important than the career derailment itself. Neither the University administration nor department offered any assistance, although I did visit the university health center and sought outside help as well. As I write this, I have fallen into a state of physiological depression, fevers and chills having anteceded the writing of this draft by about half a day. At the same time, I admit now they I could never have had the understanding I have now of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" without the experience(s) I had with Ms. Weidner at the University of Kansas. The scream is about one who has heard (Or more precisely, the recipient of the scream), not the one who has screamed. The painting has been misinterpreted: It is after the scream This was an interpretation no academic had clued me to. It "feels" intuitively correct. The air is set in motion from the scream though all is silent except in the soul of the receiver, who vainly and in disbelief covers his ears. The bulging eyes gap for a mouth. and the wraith-like body in sway tell us better than any words could what the subjective experience is. (No scene from "Star Wars" could ever be this more disturbing, more unreal and real at the same time). All I could say to the people I tried to tell was that "she screamed at me [in her office]. She screamed at me." Move on. Bury it. I tried to. For over 22 years. But the images, words, sounds will not die, do not die. They remain etched in memory and become our history. To recover the history which is ours and which lives every day even without our awareness or acknowledgment, that, to me, is the task of the historian of any stripe. Reclaiming the history of what was forgotten, lost, denied, unacknowledged, buried alive, buried dead, if you have it. Maybe this is the way I will move on. By sharing the strong connection between art and life. I ask myself now: Why is it that if anyone behaved the way she behaved when I was verbally and psychologically assaulted in her office one morning, I, or most people, would tell the person to "f--- off" immediately that I meekly listened to everything she screamed at me, not uttering a word in my defense? What circumstances, besides my sheer fear, hurt, and paralysis (the mouse before the python) contributed to this situation and resulted in a trauma that had unfortunate consequences for the rest of my life? By showing the underbelly of an education, I sincerely hope that this will in even a small way make it less likely that it will happen to another graduate student. It was easier to keep my silence, or so I thought. After all, it was expected of me. That is, ultimately, the coward's way out. Presumably, very few people will ever see this, much less be persuaded by what I have recounted. But even if it makes a minuscule difference, it is preferable to saying nothing. I do it for myself and at the same time for others. And perhaps for my parents as well who would have wanted me to take care of myself and who stressed the importance of an education. Having grown up in the United States and gone to a prominent liberal arts college, though, I endorse the notion that "education" is more the the recitation of facts or the ribbons of academic or professional accolades. This "confession" was not something I would have wanted to reveal. It took 22 years, nightmares, illness, and an indifference, a glaring silence from the University of Kansas, and a newsletter which followed me over that same time period, finding my new address whenever I moved, being sent against my express wishes. C'est pas vraiment mon truc...de me devoiler, ni de devoiler des autres dans un quelconque domaine publique, C'est pas mon intention. C'est d'abord de raconter l'histoire de mon education qui peut sembler invraisemblable mais qui est en rait la verite. Et c'est ca que je recherche. J'y dis ce que j'ai decouvert jusqu'ici et ce que je continue a chercher. A few years ago I wrote to Marsha Weidner aka Marsha Haufler about my experience ("Why did this happen?") but received no response. This indifference to the mental health of students may not suddenly be news, but the particularly severe circumstances of my ordeal warrant, in my opinion, much more attention from university administrators if the cycle of abuse is not to lead even worse things. What causes young people, and older people as well, to commit acts of violence, against themselves or others? My guess: The brutality of words, looks, actions, voices This should not be happening anywhere but certainly not in higher education. If Linda Nochlin can be permitted the use of a four-letter word whose use is strongly disapproved of in all but very private quarters, surely there is room for tolerance of the use of a certain five-letter word used widely to indicate disapprobation in the vernacular of the United States in 2016. Unfortunately, words--the stock-in-trade of the profession , not matter how strongly worded, are a weak stand-in for more actions which would be warranted. Assault--not just sexual or "physical"--can occur to those of a different gender, of a different skin colors than we are accustomed to hearing about, even if no one hears [about] them. Or, at least, believes, that they have, in fact, occurred. Suicides have occurred at my most liberal of alma maters because college administrators failed to provide adequate channels of support to students and, instead, implied that the students in question were at least partially to blame adn that they had done all that they could. I did not fail [at] the University of Kansas so much as the institution failed me, as it undoubtedly as has failed others. It failed to protect from the caprices and abusive behavior of one woman and from the indifference of a system that did live up to its self-laudatory ideals. Actually, two decades is only a short time in history. And dissent, including unconventional formats, is an honorable tradition within the Western Tradition. Without specifics, recounted perhaps even in numbing detail, our generalizations cannot but be shallow and unproven. Epatons la bourgeoisie, ceux qui parmi nous sont si complaisants. (Thanks, T.J. Clark).

Faure. Nocturne n. 13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noGIqp3pAk4

How violence spawns violence; the way out of the endless loop; the meaning of a lifetime

January 2016

The past is over, but can it ever be destroyed, enfolded as it forever is, into the atoms of the universe.  Is there an end to history?

Taking the "humanity" out of the humanities Redux.
For a better world, people need to begin telling the truth even when it feels uncomfortable to do so.
And since no one has apparently done this, out of sheer fear and/or
paralysis, I will take it upon myself to do so.

As I have asked hitherto, "What is history if not those things that have had a continuing impact on the present?  What is the role of a historian if not to document and explain that history?"


For Marsha Haufler, to whom I owe an enormous debt for having helped me over the years to understood how violence begets violence.


For the past 22 years I have never received notices of reunions, lectures, opportunities, other correspondance, etc. from the department in which I received my master's degree.

But I do keep receiving, erratically, the quarterly newsletter of the graduate department in which I received my masters degree at the University of Kansas in the early 1990's, even though (1) I have written to the department expressly requesting them to stop sending me the newsletter and (2) sent newsletters back to the University with the words "Refused--Return to Sender."

In the lingua franca of America 2016, not academese:

Someone could very possibly be excused for thinking,"Someone should have slapped that bitch* a long time ago."

* The customary word of many if not most Americans for a difficult person of the gentle sex.  In this case, it is being used, exceptionally, to indicate the egregious past behavior of the person in question.   There is no gender chauvinism, as it seems to me that most Americans will readily designate a difficult person of the other gender a "p----" in private.

I think it hypocritical to reserve in private what one does not say in public.  Gossip hurts another person more than being upfront.   I do not lie or insinuate.


Not all things should or can be forgiven, notwithstanding the adage.

The only regret is that I didn't say it 20 years ago to her face.  For myself...and for her, as well.

This needs to be said during my lifetime:  I found Marsha Weidner, whatever her scholarly accomplishments and sharp mind withstanding, to be an unprincipled person.  On repeated occasions, she did not tell the truth and, instead, demurred and/or covered it.   She knowingly, on the one hand, protected people who had committed inappropriate people and, on the other had, viciously attacked those she "had a beef with."   She did other things that were clearly contrary to what I and I believe most people would consider ethical, i.e., inflicting her own personal pain on others.

On a most basic level, she misused her authority in extraordinary ways.  I can only guess at what the effects those have had in the intervening years.

The question is:  besides myself, how many other people--students--has she reaped irreparable psychological damage on?   Has she crippled other people?  Did they defend themselves?  Did they offer any resistance?  Did they cry?   Or did they just whimper?  

What has she actually done in her lifetime to help another to grow in wisdom and compassion, not just to sprout outsized egos or to compile CD-ROM-sized stacks of historical reconstruction and passionless conceptually closed systems?

Even if she had turned into Florence Nightingale in the intervening years, her behavior during my time was egregiously wrong, not just inappropriate..

What happens when one chooses not to remember that which is actually important (to oneself, at least, if ostensibly not to others)?

How is it that the humanities produce people of her stature with such insensitivity to the needs, wants, and feelings of others?

Since when did cool condescension, insinuations, extremely violent outbursts of rage, cruelty, and verbal attacks become accepted within the terrarium?

Did she create a climate of terror in her classroom?   Is a climate of intense fear--that of searing mental pain meted out as punishment) and anxiety conducive to the pursuit of knowledge?

(I believe so).   Will any of her associates or (former) students be willing to come forward?

One which enabled her protege, An Pan-yi, was to shove me and verbally upbraid me in one instance and assault another fellow student, Diana Zhou (Zhou Yongkang) on another occasion?

The price of a piece of paper, a diploma (Ph.D.), should not have to be the sacrifice of one's self-respect and, in its stead, the grafting on of an inability to discern the difference between what is ethically acceptable and what is not.

I wrote to the present Chancellor of the University of Kansas recently on the above questions but received no response whatsoever.  I take the silence for either acquiescence or tacit approval.

If I, or another person, produced medical evidence of psychological trauma, would that change things?    

Is it power relations, not justice,  that is primarily and overwhelmingly the basis for the American way of life?  But we never tell young children this...what we know, in our guts, to be true.    Without a configuration of power relations, there is no justice, as the latter only exists in the abstract.  We reify a concept that does not exist.  A just outcome may be possible, but justice is not some eternal constituent component of the universe.  No wonder academia produces so many Marxist-leaning scholars:  academics learn first-hand that power comes out of the barrel, figurative or otherwise.  Who would deceive himself otherwise?

We're talking about the pursuit of power (whose instrument is force and which secures well-being and will presumably end in happiness), not truth, and most certainly not love (or understanding).

Even if you don't say, "If you don't do this, your going to get your ass kicked" (Mad Men), it is clear that the motivation, if not the actual language, is the same.  The stakes are different, but the Mafia has the odd virtue of at least being honest, if extreme in application of the general principles at work.

The reason Marsha Weidner never "got caught" is that no one really cares, because she was simply playing by rules that are tacitly accepted, even if she clearly brutalized (and threatened to do so even if she hadn't already) other people.  She may not even be clear that she did "anything wrong."  No one may ever have told her:  You've gone too far.  You are hurting me.

And if she can do it, why can't I?

That is the failure of the system.

She can change her hairstyle and even her name, but not history.

Whether she cares or not, I have no idea.  But even 20 years after the fact, with people saying, "It's water under the bridge, move on, get it?",  I say "the meaning of history is that it is about not forgetting what is important in order that the pain that others live not be repeated and that there be healing."

Those who remain silent with the history, with the knowledge are accomplices, as I was myself, in my own self-destruction.

No one ever cried, no one ever screamed, no one ever wept...no one dared to.

"We're waging a war against terror" is a pretty disingenuous if not outright dishonest statement. Abroad, at home, and in our minds and hearts.Those who say it is a fact of life that bosses at the workplace, and academics (in graduate school) sometimes yell or get angry at their students might reflect on my experience with that the professor in question left me 22 years thinking, "Marsha Weidner was a dictator.  She was Stalin incarnate.  I had never met anyone like her, and I still haven't.  She crushed not just dissent of any sort, she punished psychologically students, even her protege, that left students shaking--voice quavering, body shivering, or in tears.

No one dared to say anything that they feared would displease her.  Just one look, just the tone of the voice was enough to "turn someone into stone," metaphorically speaking.

I don't believe this is how any human being should treat another, much a professor towards his or her students.  It is a very poor model, and I don't see how academic freedom can exist in such an atmosphere.

What happened was a clear violation of humanity.  This was the sort of thing that happened or still happens to prisoners in Guantanamo.  No exaggeration.  The yelling in one's face, the rage, the red face, the accusations, blame, threats.

Standing up, even 22 years after the fact, enables me in some measure to (somewhat like a marriage vow) the world and myself, "I was violated.   But I know my limits now, and I will not let that happen again, short of having a gun held to my head."

 I offer this up because undoubtedly my experience will be swallowed up in indifference.  That a few people in this profession can get ahead despite this kind of behavior to me indicates that "the system of checks and balances" in graduate school emphatically leaves something to be desired.

I had a professor in my (liberal arts) college to whom I had written about an incident where I felt he had something deeply insulting and hurtful to me (and to Asian-Americans in general)--just one sentence.  I wrote him a few years ago, and I did get an apology.




What he said remained with me for almost 20 years, but it was nothing in comparison with what Marsha Weidner did.

I refuse to follow that model.  And what happened, I believe, needs to be known.









May what I say and do be of benefit to not only myself but to all sentient beings.




* * * * *

Matthew 18:3

“And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

King James Version (KJV)