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)