Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Brown University and the GOP to the Rescue in New Orleans

entry-07-08-29-jindal.jpg

On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, NationalReview.com (who two years ago ran one of the three pieces I wrote on New Orleans) has posted an interview with Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal, a politician and living cultural crossroads of special interest to me for multiple reasons.

First, Jindal attended Brown while I did, and (unless my memory is way off) I was briefly his writing tutor.

Certain classes were assigned mandatory consultations with so-called Rose Faculty Writing Fellows like me, and we tutors had to train for a semester to do the job, spending an inordinate amount of time hearing about how the tutoring program was a first step toward the deconstruction of all professorial authority and its replacement with radicalized peer-based learning, one of Brown’s many hippie-era ideas that has endured, in considerably yuppiefied form, into the modern era — I recall the class being appalled that I thought George Orwell’s “On Politics and the English Language” was one of the best essays ever about writing, since circa-1989 Brown was the pinnacle of deconstructionist, politically-correct thinking, and Orwell argued against politicizing language — ironically getting labeled fascistic by at least one of my ignorant young cohorts. The one guy in the class who clearly sympathized with me was my friend Andrew Corsello, now of GQ, who wrote an essay about the class dynamics, likening the group to the robot called Nimrod on Star Trek [CORRECTION: Nomad, as noted in the Comments below], who regarded all those who thought differently than himself as a contagion to be destroyed (I’m told Corsello was still so peeved about the class a decade later that he tried to slip into a GQ piece a reference to me as one of the greatest minds of our generation, presumably out of a lust for vengeance, but it may be for the best that that bit got edited out, and I am grateful regardless).

Our instructor, English professor Rhoda Flaxman, would end even the most philosophically radical discussions of relativism and egalitarianism in the class by insisting that we had, as a group, achieved “consensus” on the issues under discussion — and in a private conference, she insisted that my continued apostasy on certain philosophical and pedagogical issues was inhibiting the ability of other class members, particularly females, to freely speak their minds — though they not only spoke their minds, they even in at least one case wrote a condemnation of me in the school paper. Imagine if they had to deal with a real reactionary, say, someone who actually believed in God or was profoundly traditionalistic instead of me, an anarchist-atheist who was a vocal admirer of the Enlightenment.

Brown was a psychotic, left-wing moron-factory, and no matter how preppie those photos in the alumni mags look, I won’t be easily convinced that much has changed in the past two decades — but more about that in October, both on this blog and at Lolita Bar, where we’ll debate the merits and demerits of the Ivy League (unlike next week, specifically Sept. 5 [8pm], when we’ll discuss the merits and demerits of Islamic immigration, and I hope you’ll join us). Now let’s get back to one of Brown’s success stories…

Jindal’s parents are from India, as are the parents of my girlfriend Koli and one of the parents of my ex-girlfriend Indrani.

Interestingly, Jindal has converted to Catholicism (I can’t recall if I knew about this at Brown, though I believe he was involved in student government or political writing and that many of his views were well known at the time) but still isn’t mainstream enough for Papist-hating northern-Louisiana Democrats, who have been running ads calling him an enemy of Protestantism, according to an earlier NationalReview.com article.

Jindal is a free-market Republican.

What is more amazing than Louisiana producing a non-white, son-of-immigrants, reformist, free-market Republican is Brown University producing a free-marketeer (some close friends and I were libertarians but were definitely not the norm despite our concerted effort to sound like 1/3 of the campus political dialogue all by ourselves — an experience not so unlike, though slightly philosophically different from, the experience of being a lonely Republican at Brown, as described with great passion and too little editing in the self-published memoir Out of Ivy by Travis Rowley [like Jindal, Catholic], which some conservative editor reading this blog really ought to snatch up and revise for a second edition; Rowley’s opening anecdote is about meeting a recent Brown grad at a bar and angering her — after she describes what she does for a living — by pointing out, accurately, that she is a pimp [or madame or pimpette or whatever the conventional term is for a female of that profession], while she insists that she is merely a provider of paid, hands-on orgasm-counselors [or something like that] to repeat customers, the former being grotesquely patriarchal and the latter solidly feminist, in keeping with Brown’s enlightened, progressive values [you don't want to know how many strippers, prostitutes, and dominatrices that ivy-covered institution has produced]).

Jindal explicitly wants to treat this troubled juncture in New Orleans’s history as a chance to rebuild in a free-market way, sweeping away decades of corruption and bureaucracy.

I can’t help thinking how inspiring it would be on multiple levels if a free-marketeer rebuilt New Orleans, simultaneously becoming a beacon of hope to despairing Republicans, stealthily politically-incorrect Brown students, non-leftist immigrants, and beleaguered New Orleans residents, while overcoming racial and religious divisions in Louisiana to boot — and helping undo the biggest domestic blunder of the Bush era. Not to put any pressure on you, Bobby.

22 comments:

Christopher said...

Felicia A. had us read Orwell’s essay in her Philosophy of Language class to teach us how she wanted us to write our papers. Of course she was also somewhat insane, but in a much more entertaining and interesting way than most at Brown.

Todd Seavey said...

Ah, Chris is one of those libertarian college pals I mentioned — and Felicia Ackerman was one of our philosophy professors, the most radical skeptic I have ever known, convinced that even believing that the sun will rise tomorrow shows a groundless, irrational faith in induction.

Oddly, I see her Brown.edu page says that she only completed her Ph.D. in 1998 [see correction below], though she completed her undergrad work in 1968 (as did several other politically or philosophically interesting people I’ve met — a tumultuous and inspiring year, apparently, even for non-hippies).

I also see that Prof. Ackerman — not to be confused with another philosophical writer, Diana F. Ackerman — has the middle name Nimue, which may be odder than Nimrod.

Ackerman is a notorious letterhack, writing pithy, grouchy letters to the editor of numerous publications on everything from epistemology to smoking laws — a habit for which she was profiled in one of the final issues of the late, lamented thinkmag _Lingua Franca_, though she at least managed to write a letter, complaining about some error they made in the article, just as the final issue appeared (around which time I recall going to a party here in NYC for the dying magazine and worrying that brainy doesn’t sell).

Jindal, by the way, could be considered something of an Anti-Chris, in that Chris converted away from Catholicism (to Buddhism, not to mention atheism and libertarianism) while at Brown, around the time I think Jindal was converting to Catholicism. (I think Jindal was converting from Hinduism, not Buddhism as I previously thought for some reason.) Chris may not think of himself as Buddhist anymore, but the important thing is both Brown alums like markets, and that’s real wisdom.

Brain said...

Speaking about your past at Brown, this is the most upset I have ever seen your writings, Todd.

And please do not let me stop you from continuing to outline, in lurid detail, if you please, the scandalous lives of sex-working Brown alumni. In fact, I fairly demand it. Consider changing names to protect the guilty. Though to be fair, it seems to me that when you have mentioned the libertine ways of some of your fellow alumni in the past, it has been in very pleased and admiring tones.

Cheers,

Sean Dougherty said...

“Brown was a psychotic, left-wing moron-factory”

Nice turn of phrase there.

Keep up the good work -

Christopher said...

There must be a typo on the Brown site you noted, Todd. Her CV reads: “Ph.D. University of Michigan 1976. Dissertation title: Proper Names, Natural Kind Terms, and Propositional Attitudes.”

I’m not sure I’d say I really “converted” to Buddhism, though I do find many of the claims about human psychology found in some sects of Buddhism to be convincing. It’s certainly true that I said goodbye to Catholicism. I frankly find it a bit disturbing that Jindal converted to Catholicism at an age at which he was capable of reasoned thought. It seems almost like deciding at age 30 that Middle Earth must be real. It’s one thing to be born into idiotic fantasy and quite another to consciously choose it.

Todd Seavey said...

Speaking of fantasies, I won’t elaborate on Brown alums working as strippers and dominatrices (at least for now), but I will note another somewhat amusing employment epilogue: Prof. Flaxman sent a letter to all former Writing Fellows just a few months ago, announcing that she’s resigning as head of the program because Brown cut the budget necessary to give her an assistant — and I don’t fault her for doing so (nor dislike her), but it is a bit ironic that a program founded on professorless egalitarianism lost its head honcho because she needs support staff. Or at least I can make it sound ironic. Meet tha new boss…same as tha old boss, etc.

Christine said...

As a medievalist, I’m obligated to point out that Felicia Ackerman (who attends my big medieval conference every year) assumed the name Nimue, one of the names for the Arthurian Lady of the Lake. It appears in Malory’s *Morte d’Arthur*, with which FA is apparently obsessed.

Todd Seavey said...

Fantastic, in several senses of the word.

Christopher said...

Christine,

Interesting. I’d always assumed it was her parents who had the obsession with things Arthurian and gave her that middle name. How did you know she chose it herself?

Laura said...

At a different Ivy League institution (which it is politically incorrect to call a “university”) I’m currently co-advising a peer tutoring program based on Brown’s Writing Fellows program (which is indeed ironic because I was not accepted to be a Writing Fellow at Brown), and I have found that peer-based learning can be implemented rationally and enhances the classroom-based professor-student relationship. Also, research in the field of composition studies strongly suggests that peer learning improves college writing at all levels (contact me directly for citations since WordPress doesn’t support footnotes). So I’d say, the problem isn’t so much inherent in peer-based learning but was a factor of the way in which it was implemented, like so many things, at Brown.

I’m looking forward to discussing the merits and demerits of the Ivy League. Now that I’ve been on the teaching side of things at the “most conservative” of the Ivies for as long as I was a student at Brown, I’m beginning to think that the differences have very little to do with campus politics but are much more strongly tied to tradition, another enduringly pervasive subject in Seaveyan discourse.

Todd Seavey said...

And I think the Writing Fellow program itself was great, I should add — it was just some of the (easily-ignored) philosophical rationale behind it that was wackier and less pragmatic. Once you’re advising real students, most of that stuff goes out the window.

In other news, I notice that leftist blogger Kos quoted another blogger as saying the following about Jindal, tying together some medieval, Catholic, and Brunonian themes and hinting that Jindal is not, alas, _merely_ a fiscal conservative:

I received an interesting article written in December 1994 by Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal (R) for the New Oxford Review, an “orthodox Catholic magazine.” The piece is titled “Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare” and is about one of Jindal’s friends from Brown University getting possessed by the devil. In the article, Jindal suggests that he too came under attack by the devil.

Christopher said...

I found the Writing Fellow very useful, but then again my only Writing Fellow at Brown was apparently one of the greatest minds of his generation.

But seriously, I do think it resulted in much improved student writing and am involved in an effort to implement something similar where I teach.

Xine said...

Ummm…someone told me FA *chose* “Nimue”…and she only started adding it to her Kalamazoo-conference listing in the past couple of years (where her copy of Malory is heat-sealed to her hand). My bad? Then again, I could also have confused her with post-modern Buddhist medievalist Louise Oranye Fradenburg, who definitely chose her middle name as an adult. Hmmm….what’s more fantastical to choose as an adult–Catholicism or an exotic middle name, like the 12-year-old girl named “Susan” who suddenly announces, “From now on I’m ‘Natasha’”?

Christopher said...

She didn’t choose the name. The name chose her.

Or perhaps it was handed to her by a hand rising out of a lake.

toddseavey said...

By the way, on the topic of religious conflict, check out my next blog entry:

http://toddseavey.com/2007/08/31/debate-at-lolita-bar-is-muslim-immigration-a-threat-to-democracy-and-what-about-miss-teen-south-carolina/

Jacob T. Levy said...

Sigh. This is the topic on which I find it hardest to reach a warm-and-fuzzy Brown consensus with my fellow Brown alumnus. I loved the place, still do, and think that the people who so agitated Todd were barely more representative of the whole student body or professoriate than we were. As he points out in our case: cranking up the volume can create the false appearance of large numbers.

Adam said...

What’s up, my columnists!

Did all you Fellows love the letter from RF a few months ago, in which she huffily resigned her post because of a humiliating budget cut? I’m thinking of organizing a bake sale.

Todd said...

See above for my reaction to it.

Ali T. Kokmen said...

I have nothing to add about the nature of Brown student politics, but in the interests of nitpicky accuracy in pop-culture references:

The robot on Star Trek that went about sterilizing everything it deemed imperfect was named Nomad, not Nimrod.

Nimrod was, however, the name of a mutant-hunting robot in the X-Men comics, so someone might have conflated the two robots somewhere along the line…

Todd Seavey said...

And that someone would be me — right you are. Maybe a piece of fan fiction in which they fight each other (and Terminator) is in order.

Todd Seavey said...

Here, by the way, is what Nomad might sound like doing stand-up comedy:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GRLsBvtdfZ0

Walter Horn said...

FWIW, When I was a philosophy grad student at Brown, “Felicia Nimue Ackerman” was named “Diana F. Ackerman.” I believe she switched to Felicia (her given middle name) to distinguish herself from the then popular essayist Diane Ackerman. Subsequently, she apparently added the “Nimue” because that character resonates with her. But don’t get too comfortable. She might decide Nimue Einstein is more to her liking and change it again.

I fondly remember her beautiful cat Xerxes.

W