Lessons from Professor Wichman
This morning I got a forward... a letter wrote by Professor Wichman, a Professor at Michigan State University, where he and his group " examine problems in theoretical and experimental fire and combustion research ". The email is something he wrote in 2006 in response to the protests against the now famous danish cartoons. ...... I wonder if it was part of his combustion research... i found it so combustible, I choose not to reproduce the email. Interestingly the professor teaches us quite a bit, perhaps unwittingly.
First is about the nature of the internet. Someone once described it as the "infinite echo-chamber". Email forwards keep doing the rounds long after most websites declare them as frauds. Yet whenever we get an email about a latest virus or someone who has got sickle cell anemia, we pass it on without verifying the facts. Like a true virus, it infects my mailbox every now and then. Please dont pass on emails unless you are positive about its truth and you know what you are doing (I wish they could make the forward button a little LESS accessible).
Second is about the famous First Amendment. Where does my freedom end? How far can I take it? Can I write a book in praise of the holocaust, or in support of Bin Laden? I remember a public announcement at Houston Airport which warned people not to even make JOKES with the word BOMB in it. I remember getting singled out for searches because I was "Asian looking" and had a beard. I wonder if all terrorists HAVE to be asian looking and have beards? Perhaps its a trademark of terrorists. In india I have fretted and fumed over several books and art works that were banned in the name of religion. Among them was an adaptation of Nikos Kazantsakis' The Last Temptation of Christ and the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar".
Third learning comes from a blog comment by Carl Nelson who tells us that there is a silent majority in America, that feels angry towards muslims. Well surprise surprise.......or no surprise? This brings me to the most fundamental question of it all. Does majority approval make something right? Is ethics something that can be decided by vote? It is here that I feel sometimes deeply disturbed about democracy. Don't get me wrong, I am fiercely proud of India as the worlds biggest and ethnically diverse democracy. But that doesnt mean I have ironed out all the kinks in my mind.
Finally, the good professor issued a public statement (possibly in a state of horror about how far this has gone) saying that it was a personal email and not meant for public circulation. He said it was like something he would say to his wife and kids in the privacy of his home. Lesson: Be careful what you say at home, better still is to question your own hatred within your heart before spewing it out. Second, careful what you write in an email. Remember that forward button is always nearby. I just learnt a lesson on this myself, when my son forwarded I sent personally to him...he sent it on to another party involved in the email.
Thank you Professor for all the lessons you taught us.
First is about the nature of the internet. Someone once described it as the "infinite echo-chamber". Email forwards keep doing the rounds long after most websites declare them as frauds. Yet whenever we get an email about a latest virus or someone who has got sickle cell anemia, we pass it on without verifying the facts. Like a true virus, it infects my mailbox every now and then. Please dont pass on emails unless you are positive about its truth and you know what you are doing (I wish they could make the forward button a little LESS accessible).
Second is about the famous First Amendment. Where does my freedom end? How far can I take it? Can I write a book in praise of the holocaust, or in support of Bin Laden? I remember a public announcement at Houston Airport which warned people not to even make JOKES with the word BOMB in it. I remember getting singled out for searches because I was "Asian looking" and had a beard. I wonder if all terrorists HAVE to be asian looking and have beards? Perhaps its a trademark of terrorists. In india I have fretted and fumed over several books and art works that were banned in the name of religion. Among them was an adaptation of Nikos Kazantsakis' The Last Temptation of Christ and the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar".
Third learning comes from a blog comment by Carl Nelson who tells us that there is a silent majority in America, that feels angry towards muslims. Well surprise surprise.......or no surprise? This brings me to the most fundamental question of it all. Does majority approval make something right? Is ethics something that can be decided by vote? It is here that I feel sometimes deeply disturbed about democracy. Don't get me wrong, I am fiercely proud of India as the worlds biggest and ethnically diverse democracy. But that doesnt mean I have ironed out all the kinks in my mind.
Finally, the good professor issued a public statement (possibly in a state of horror about how far this has gone) saying that it was a personal email and not meant for public circulation. He said it was like something he would say to his wife and kids in the privacy of his home. Lesson: Be careful what you say at home, better still is to question your own hatred within your heart before spewing it out. Second, careful what you write in an email. Remember that forward button is always nearby. I just learnt a lesson on this myself, when my son forwarded I sent personally to him...he sent it on to another party involved in the email.
Thank you Professor for all the lessons you taught us.
Labels: bigotry, christian, email, islam, xenophobia
posted by mathai at 9:41 PM
3 Comments:
What part of the original e-mail do you disagree with. I, for one, think he makes very cogent arguments for how the "silent majority" feels. Also, I personally refuse to be so silent as Muslim terrorist cowardly kill innocent and defenseless people. Do I think all Muslims are terrorists? No. Do I think all terrorists or Muslims? No. But, I do think that the majority of world wide terrorism is committed by Muslims. In fact, I don't just think this, I know that the facts bear out this out to be true.
Stick to the facts of the letter and quit whining that he said it.
Something to keep in mind. This was a private e-mail that he sent, and is actually rather embarrassed about. To condemn people for exercising their freedom of speech because we’re at war with a country that they don’t live in is rather hypocritical. To say that someone can’t say what they feel in the USA is a complete affront to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which guarantee the right of every person in the country to say what they feel. If you don’t like what’s said, then you can complain as well.
A group of Muslim students were offended that their deity of choice was portrayed in a manner that was unacceptable to them. Take for account the reaction of many Christians to the movie Dogma. I thought it was hilarious, but a lot of Catholics didn’t exactly agree, going so far as to send Kevin Smith death threats for what he felt was funny.
And the I agree that the university did the right thing by not dismissing the professor, because after all, this was a private e-mail, and one of the other rights that we’re (supposedly) guaranteed by living on U.S. soil is the right to privacy. If this had been a public statement, then I wouldn’t agree at all, and would say that Michigan State should have dismissed him.
Just my $0.02
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/wichman.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma_(film)
Thanks for your comment. The problem is not with a professor who said a few things in his personal communication, I think I made that clear. The post is about (i) how our personal communications leak out and become public record and worse (ii) about people who take pride in forwarding such comments.
As for anonymous's comments... well welcome to the real world. Who spends the most on military technology? How many people die of starvation so that we can make guns? I suspect if you take sheer numbers the number of people killed in afghanistan and iraq will far, far outnumber the number of people killed in 9/11. Sorry, sanitized murder that takes place in anonymous killing fields is still murder. Isnt it interesting that supreme court finally recognized detainees as human beings and said at least establish a crime before meting out punishment?
Post a Comment
<< Home