Texas academics told to avoid 'sensitive topics' if gun law goes into effect

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

[kenneth harrow]

insanity.

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-- 
kenneth w. harrow 
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
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[Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso]

Absolute madness.

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Professor Falola should come home for a native bulletproof preparation, otherwise known as "odeshi".

CAO.

[Segun Ogungbemi]

May it not become law if not the institutions would become battle fields which will be like ISL, ISIS, Boko Haram etc.  Their institutions would be reputed for 'gun use campus excellence' instead of academic excellence. 

TF and his family would be bundled out the scene of danger by the god of iron, war, peace and justice and Okedaban, the traditional deity of Ibadan by a metaphysical wand. And 2017 Africa Conference will be held wherever TF finds a more conducive and academic gun free institution. 

Ogun agbe yin o. Aase Edumare. 
Segun Ogungbemi. 
Sent from my iPhone 

[Samuel Zalanga]

Exactly where this ship of modernity or advanced modernity is taking us to, I do not know. It was fascinating when I taught a course on "peoples and cultures of the United States" to note that Texas is another one country. They say, "do not mess with Texas" --  Whatever that means. 

This kind of news item makes me feel depressed frankly. I sometimes wonder whether one should return to what one social theorist described as "the tranquil nausea of bucolic life." The problem is, is such a life even possible now to a body that has already being corrupted, as Nietzsche would ask. 

Yet, moving forward, one encounters infinity of meanings and possibilities which make life meaningless even though full of things. This is what is called advanced modernity or civilization, or at least it is one example. So where are we heading to? Maybe the original idea of modernity was oversold to people especially when one remembers Rostow's fifth stage of development: "The Age of High Mass Consumption." This is the ultimate end presumably of this secular eschatological journey called modernity.

Samuel

On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 7:30 PM, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Professor Falola should come home for a native bulletproof preparation, otherwise known as "odeshi".

CAO.

[Adeshina Afolayan]

Oga Zalanga,

Modernity, as i see it (forget the periodizing conception of postmodernism), is unending. We are certain to go from one incredulity to another. Modernity will always be one huge bag of unsuspected surprises. Technologies will become hyper-sophisticated, laws will become increasingly crazy, our expectations will become unsettled and, i dare say, our sanity will likely become unhinged. 

This is a thought: If Weber were to be brought back to, say, New York in year 2080, would he recognise the modernity he helped conceptualized? I am not even sure of what the world would be that far out. I definitely would no longer be here then!

Adeshina Afolayan

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

On Sat, 27 Feb, 2016 at 5:51 AM, Samuel Zalanga

<szal...@gmail.com> wrote:

[kenneth harrow]

texas is not reallydifferent from the rest of the country. sad to say.
this i have learned. my own state michigan is debating the same issue; in some ways we are as conservative or more on some issues; gun nuts also dominate. there are huge divisions in tx as in mich over liberal/conservative issues. they tip over to republican; oklahoma is much more republican and conservative. basically, this is a divided country, and every state is marked by the division that is liberal-conservative. much that is conservative now i dislike or hate; much that is liberal, they too hate. we are divided into bitter camps on many many issues, from abortion to women's rights to gender constructions to gay rights to immigrants to guns to war. little unites us. it makes it difficult. i'd say the emotions of dislike are accompanied by scorn, resentment, anger, and at times become deadly.
ken

[Samuel Zalanga]

Yes indeed, in terms of polarization, Texas is similar to what is happening in other states. I only want to observe that such polarization is not occurring in social vacuum. In trying to understand what is going on, I always remember the term created by the renown Columbia University sociologist: "C. Wright Mills" known as "The Sociological Imagination." i.e., connecting individual biographies with societal histories or biographies, connecting the past and the present and making micro-macro connection in order to come up with a solid and holistic account or explanation.  In this respect, for those interested, this article written by Thomas Piketty, author of "Capital in the 21st Century" would be of relevance and interest --- http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2016/feb/16/thomas-piketty-bernie-sanders-us-election-2016 .

Piketty is trying to account for why Bernie Sanders is getting traction in American politics. He provides good historical data to support that.  I believe the logic of his analysis is in many respects applicable to the rise of Donald Trump. To understand Hitler, given Mexico's former president's attempt to compare Trump with Hitler, one has to look at the social, political and economic conditions that led to the emergence of Hitler. When one looks at it from this perspective, it is not surprising that Hitler got a lot of support. At least John Maynard Keynes warned the Allies during the events that led to the signing of Versailles Treaty. 

There is another article in the New Yorker Magazine that tries to equally account for the social situations and conditions that constitute fertile grounds for the emergence of persons like Donald Trump and enabling them to thrive. Indeed, without the 2008 economic crash, it would have not been easy for President Obama to win the presidential contest. From a social realist point of view, Donald Trump is not really the big issue as relevant as he is; rather the underlying social-historical forces and conditions that make his words and presence in the political scene worth listening to and embracing are the big questions. 

Indeed, this is what some scholars such as J. M. Blaut describe as the "ethnography of ideas" i.e., not focusing on whether the ideas espoused are right or wrong as such, but what conditions made people espouse those ideas at a particular time and what makes the public embrace the ideas at a particular time irrespective of the fact that the ideas maybe false and dangerous. It is a different kind of question altogether, which transcends lamenting the emergence of certain people in politics such as Donald Trump.  But it is unfortunate that the media, often avoiding long term historical analysis just focuses on the personality and the debate in this city or that city. Why is it that Donald Trump has been in the political and public domain long ago but did not get traction until now. This cannot be answered by focusing on Trump, the person, but by looking at the social and economic situations that made him to become  relevant.

 Part of me wants Trump to win the ticket for his party because it will definitely compel the party to rethink itself hopefully if such a thing will happen. I know they are terribly divided. As Piketty argues, without the world wars, the structure of inequality in Europe would not have changed as much as it has. Maybe without some serious shock within the republican party, they will never go beyond preaching the message of Milton Friedman and Von Hayek. And maybe the democratic party needs a Bernie Sanders too even if he cannot win the presidential election. 

 Ultimately, why this is going on shows that you can only have inequality widening up to a point before it begins to seriously interfere with the cohesion of a nation. Republicans condemned the government very much but now it seems many ordinary Americans are saying by their votes, that they have an expectation for their government to be relevant but it has not been because people like Paul Ryan even want to do away with social security as we know it. Even evangelicals who claimed the guidance of the Holy Spirit voted for Trump.  Is it surprising that people will embrace Trump when he talks openly about social security. Will that not resonate with many people in the U.S.? People have fears in this country about the future, and some of us academics assume it is just a simple question of rational analysis of what Trump says and the stupidity of people voting for him. But rationality is "bounded." . 

Governments and markets fail. Government failure is not enough reason to throw it away just as market failure is not enough reason to discard it. We have to continuously find a way to  make them function and operate for all the people. So after over two hundred years, the U.S. is still dealing with this basic question of the relationship between the state and markets and what is the appropriate attitude towards the issue of social inequality especially when it is widening at an alarming pace.

 But more than that, when I said that Texas is another country, it does not mean that Texas is not the U.S. as such,  but for persons tracking the social and economic realities of this country, Texas has something special. Indeed some say it is even the future of the U.S., I am sorry to say. Here is a whole Time Magazine issue that was dedicated to this kind of speculation but backed with facts: 

http://time.com/80005/why-texas-is-our-future/

Cultural polarization in the United States  became very serious especially after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In so far as communism was alive, Americans had a common enemy and they could fight that, but once it collapsed, social cannibalism started at a higher level in the country. This became worsened by Reaganomics.  Liberals in some cases became as evil as communists, and feminists became "feminazists" according to persons like  Rush Limbaugh who had a great following at one point.

The time magazine issue gave good reasons why it thought Texas is the future of the U.S. The magazine is not necessarily saying this is something good, but it is a social fact.

Samuel

[kenneth harrow]

dear samuel
good response.
the issue is always, what is it that accounts for the large support trump--or hitler, or mussilini--got, that propelled them forward. in the case of the earlier fascists, much of their conventional worlds were crumbling in the hardships of the depression, the loss of ww1, the crumbling of the social democrats, and the contestation of the communists.
the latter are now dead. the opposition to a beleagured working class that has been shoveled aside by the forces of globalization (clinton, reagan, both fostering a neoliberal economic order), the opposition to their unhappiness is no longer viable. they are the detritus of globalization: no high tech skills, no solid education, no good job prospects as working class people; they are susceptible to tea party leaders who cry that the household budget should be the model for a national budget, i.e., no debt, thus ignoring real economists like krugman who know better. they are afraid of a world whose changes they can't control, so they are susceptible to luddites and idiots and manipulating owners of factories and oil companies who get them to believe that climate change is not for real.
i could go on.
whatever is happening in texas is happening across the country; and, in one way or another, in the forms of isis, boko haram, the attacks on immigrants in europe, or in this country--it is "the people," but really a disadvantaged segment of the population, who feel the strains of a late modernity in which they can see the billionaires sitting on top, and they with no ladder any more to get off the bottom.
that's the broad outlines. it isn't trump. he calls out, he trumpets out his message of hatred, and people are hearing it, accepting it, hoping it is their way out, their salvation.
it is a new form of fascism; but the consequences of neofascism, like fascism, are very likely to entail a great deal of violence. especially since one of the tenets of neoliberal free trade includes no real restrictions on gun ownership, or on selling guns.
there maybe be an embargo on the sale of guns in east congo, or libya, or syria.
who is enforcing it? no one.
and who has stopped buying diamonds.
the sharks are still there in the blue water, as walcott has said; the heads are still on top of the spikes around the govt building, as he has said.
we only sit back, and watch,
like the spoiler, who returns for one last look when the devil gave him a 2 week pass to return to port o spain:
Tell Desperadoes when you reach the hill,
I decompose, but I composing still:
ken