IN MEMORIUM: Public Discourse at Syracuse University
A.O. Staff
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • Spring 1994 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 3, No. 3 (pp. 2) | ||
| • October 1, 2000 / 2003.09.17 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.7) from original. | ||
In this space, since the beginning of the academic year, we have printed an open invitation to all members of the faculty to articulate the underlying principles of their practices; to explain and theorize what they do in their classes and in their writings and to say, in the public space, how they situate their practices in the emerging world. Only one faculty member has responded to our call. What are we, as students at this supposedly student-centered research university, to infer? That our teachers do not know what they are doing? That this university is essentially a trade school in which intellectual and political debate has no place? That our teachers are unable to understand the consequences of their practices? This is obviously not the case. In fact, we would argue that their silence is a mark not of their ignorance but of their canny awareness of what is at stake in our call to them. And what has happened since we made our public call is incontestable evidence of such an awareness. After we issued our call, members of the “Alternative Orange” collective have been subjected to all forms of intellectual and institutional harassment. Professor James Zebroski refused to accept several of us in his classes. Professor Linda Alcoff, Professor Dympna Callaghan, Professor Felicity Nussbaum (three feminists who represent themselves as progressive teachers working to end the oppression of women and all people) carried out the most oppressive practices“a form of institutional and economic violence”against one of us, Adam Katz, who has just completed his doctoral dissertation and is seeking a teaching job. Since our public invitation, each of these three have withdrawn the highly positive and unqualified letters of recommendation they had written on behalf of Katz, replacing them with aggressive, very damaging letters that, for all practical purposes, will make it impossible for him to find employment in the academy. While these repressive tactics are used to silence us, we will continue to insist on the necessity of public discourse in this university and we will work to
BREAK THE SILENCE
