April Issue

Jim Chambers is many things: a Bard student, a gym owner and the bearded father of three. He is Bard’s baseball coach, a Russian Studies major and the goalie on Bard’s championship hockey team. Look back into his family history long enough, and you’re liable to find a former presidential candidate. We caught up with this character and asked him about the relationship between academics and athletics at Bard College.

FP: Did you really start the baseball team?

JC: Yes I did. I left [Bard] for a while, and one of the reasons I left was to go play baseball somewhere with a baseball program. So when I came back [to Bard] I started a club team.

FP: There’s a donation now for a baseball field – do you know who the donor is?

JC: The donor has requested to remain anonymous, as far as I know.

FP: How did this donation come about?

JC: When I started the [baseball] club, I had a discussion with the Athletics Department about why I was doing it and what might happen in the future, and they told me right off the bat that they would love to see baseball to become a varsity sport at Bard, that the department was behind the idea and that the school would be behind the idea, but that the big problem was that there was no facilities for it. Ever since that first year, everyone in athletics at Bard has collectively [been] trying to raise funds to get a field together, whether from one private donor or more than one,. I know the person who is making this donation thought about it, investigated it, and had a discussion with Kris [Hall]. Over a period of months, I wasn’t involved in that process other than hearing about it – but around October it was announced that it was going to happen, and [since then] I’ve been involved in a lot of the planning of what kind of field it’s going to be, about the location, and all that kind of stuff.

FP: How would you respond to those who think we don’t need a baseball field and that the funds should be directed elsewhere?
JC: From what I know of this situation, this particular money would not be going to Bard if it wasn’t for this purpose. So you can take that or not, it’s as simple as that. If a donor wants to give money for a specific project and the school approves that project then it is what it is. If someone gives me a present, I don’t start to complain and say “it should have been something else.”

On the flip side, a lot of the students may not understand the value of athletics in a college environment, especially at Bard. I don’t think anyone is trying to change Bard to a jock school, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. And I don’t think anyone is going to try to bring athletes into Bard who aren’t Bard caliber students otherwise. I think what happens is you get a more dynamic community when you have people involved in athletics, because traditionally, until the past 10 years or so, Bard was not a very athletic place.
So as we try to bring in more science students, more math students with the RKC, or as we expanded the economics program, or put in the conservatory…. we can also bring in athletes who have a whole other perspective. Something I’ll tell you about athletes, [they have] a level of responsibility and organization and commitment that comes that I think adds to their capacity as a student. If they’re playing on a full scholarship for a gigantic school that’s not a very good school, that may be a different story… they may have people doing their homework for them. At bard, it obviously doesn’t work that way. I think you have student athletes at Bard who are very likely to be committed to the work they’re doing and really responsible in their work.

I’m not a musician or an actor, but I certainly see the value in building the Fisher Center. I think when there’s a field out there and we have Friday night games against Vassar and people can come sit out in the stands and cheer on Bard and express what Bard’s all about, I think people will see that as an asset.

In March, Joseph Kony – a relatively anonymous Ugandan warlord and head of the militant Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – suddenly became a household name in the United States due to the efforts of the (supposedly) non-profit organization Invisible Children. Their viral video (known as “Kony 2012”) depicting the atrocities committed by the LRA attained over 50 million views in its first week on the Internet and now, a month later, is closing in on 100 million views.

Initially, people all over the Internet (from Kim Kardashian to Bard students) bought into the hype, feeling that they could make a difference in Africa if they simply “liked” the 30-minute video on YouTube, linked to it on their Facebook profiles, or bought Kony 2012 merchandise online. Invisible Children and its founder Jason Russell became heroes – saviors even – in the eyes of many.

And then the truth started leaking out.

As it turns out, Invisible Children spends only about 30% of its raised funds in actual aid to the areas affected by Kony and the LRA. The remaining 70% goes into the organization itself, towards items like salaries and filmmaking.

Furthermore, Invisible Children openly supports the army of the government of Uganda, one that has been said to commit the exact kind of atrocities that Kony’s army commits. And, perhaps most importantly, one of the organization’s primary goals is to convince the United States government to intervene militarily in Uganda (ignoring that fact that the African nation has been LRA-free and at peace for quite some time, as well as the American public’s likely disapproval for yet another overseas war).

But forget all of this. Forget Invisible Children’s surreptitious use of donated funds. Forget the fact that they have been accused from many sides of distorting facts in order to make money. Forget that founder Jason Russell was detained by police after having a psychotic break that involved him vandalizing cars and publically masturbating. And forget the fact that Ugandans themselves  overwhelmingly find the Kony 2012 campaign to be falsified and ridiculous.

Forget these things, because they are not the real issues at hand.

The real issue lies in the mindset that we in the West hold towards Africa. We see Africa simply. We tend to see all Africans as the same, as weak, and as needing to be saved. We hear the word Africa and automatically think of civil war, child soldiers, and social chaos. We ignore the thousands of thriving and beautiful cultures that exist on the continent. We rarely refer to different countries in Africa when discussing the affairs of the continent, let alone the many different ethnic groups that inhabit this vast swath of land. We think of Africa as a backward place.

And the hype surrounding Kony 2012 and Invisible Children indicates, unfortunately, that we believe we can send “saviors” like Jason Russell to “rescue” Africa from itself.

Certainly, this way of thinking is much more backward than Africa ever has been or ever will be.

Bard Distinguished Writer in Residence Teju Cole agrees, attributing this thought process to a “white savior industrial complex.” He correctly recognizes that Africa is not in need of the efforts of Invisible Children to arrest Kony; rather, it needs “more equitable civil society, more robust democracy, and a fairer system of justice,” something that he implies cannot be achieved by “cool American 20-something heroes” who partake in this mindset.

And he is absolutely right.

We in the West must stop thinking of Africa as homogeneous, we must stop thinking its inhabitants are uncivilized, and we must stop assuming that we can “save” Africa by means of sharing viral videos from suspicious organizations on the Internet. Indeed, such attitudes do a great disservice to the many different people and cultural groups that call this beautiful continent home.

United in their concern for Israel/Palestine, a diverse delegation of seventeen Bard students made their way to Washington D.C. from March 23 to 26 to attend the third annual J Street Conference.

J Street is an organization founded primarily by members of the Jewish community in order to fundamentally change the political dynamics around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and secure a two-state solution. J Street recognizes that legislators looks to the Jewish community for cues on Middle East policy as one of the most important and engaged constituencies. However, the message of J Street resonates beyond the American Jewish community.

The Bard group included two Muslim Students Organization (MSO) heads, one former and one current. According to senior Mujahid Sarsur, a former MSO head who attended the J Street conference for the third time after interning at the J Street office in New York City last Spring, “As a Palestinian who has been involved with J Street, a dominantly Jewish lobby for peace in the Middle East, I find that J Street is an organization that has the biggest influence, among hundreds of organizations, to affect peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

The fact that a Muslim Palestinian recognizes the importance of a group like J Street says a lot both about the centrality of its Jewish character to influence critical change, and about the importance of non-Jewish supporters. The challenge is how to create a movement that draws its political strength from the Jewish community and also remains comfortable for, and relevant to, people like Mujahid.
Junior Lorelei Trammel, head of the Jewish Students Organization (JSO) at Bard, thought that many of the presentations at the conference did not fully appreciate the non-Jews in the audience. “Most of these ‘pep talks’ were unabashedly directed to the Jews in the audience alone,” she said.

Indeed, the nature of the student session and plenary sessions were not unlike pep talks, serving as rallying cries to the main demographic of American Jews. Students’ stories were often centered on their Jewish upbringing even though a significant portion of the audience at the student session was non-Jewish.

The breakout sessions contained aspects of this tenor, but gave rise to more discussion. For example, the panel session “One-State, Two-State, Green State, Blue State” went well (despite the Dr. Seuss-themed title). It was an opportunity to showcase the central J Street argument for a two-state solution, which was especially emphasized at this year’s conference. Hundreds of J Street members met with members of Congress, urging them to sign a Congressional letter calling for a two-state solution signed by Representatives John Yarmuth (D-Ky), Steven Cohen (D-Tn) , and Gerry Connolly (D-Va). As attempts heat up by the far right to shift the American commitment away from a two-state solution, J Street is shifting the focus back.

Interestingly, the “One-State, Two-State” panel was one of only a handful featuring Palestinian voices. Mustafa Barghouti, a panelist and leading member of the Palestinian parliament, noted the large number of Jewish activists he has met standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

This is a worthwhile parallel to Mujahid’s sense of self as a Palestinian within the largely Jewish population at J Street. Mustafa and Mujahid’s voices are powerful when standing with a progressive Jewish bloc. Both find value in standing in solidarity with any group — Palestinian, American Jewish, or Israeli — when one is not part of the main constituency of that group.

J Street takes great pride in its significant growth in four short years. The organization can boast that its conference is the third largest annual gathering of Jews in America. Other groups with larger conferences, such as AIPAC, have existed for over 50 years. J Street’s growth is paralleled here at Bard, which had the largest delegation at the conference from the Mid-Atlantic region – even though we just officially recreated a J Street chapter this year.

J Street’s pace of growth, nationally and locally, is indicative of the need within our communities for a new conversation on Israel/Palestine. It is important to remember that the non-Jewish community is committed to that conversation as well, and it is in J Street’s interest to include them. At Bard, we know J Street U must reach out much further than the Jewish constituency in order bring breadth of scope and relevance to our efforts.

I can imagine walking into Manor for lunch and finding a tray of sautéed vegetables that I helped plant—a far cry from frozen vegetables shipped from hundreds of miles away. Through a farm, the Bard College community will learn how much work, rather than how much money, food really “costs.” Here at Bard, we interact with ideas and produce art, but few of us have had personal experience making “real” goods. Unlike other products we interact with, food is not just something we trade money for, it is something that has to be grown, taken care of, harvested, and distributed. We stand to learn a lot about how food is grown, but because of our collective unfamiliarity with farming, we may have taken ourselves on a honeymoon about what running a farm will be like.

Bard doesn’t have an Agriculture program like some state schools, so the farm doesn’t belong to a department. There is no single easily accessible group that can be used for labor – the farm will have to build that community from scratch. On top of this, most students are unskilled farmers and will need training to be useful.

This learning is one of the farm’s goals, but since different people may show up each day, the same tasks will need to be taught over and over again, putting an even heavier load on the farm coordinator, John-Paul Sliva. Though capable and committed, he will not be able to do everything himself, and as of now there is still no stable support system for him to operate the farm with. Sliva wants to help us learn about sustainable farming and the future of food, but the interest he has received thus far is only the beginning of the work necessary to actually operate the farm.

The student body is present on campus primarily in the spring and fall, while summer is the largest food-producing season. The likely primary consumer of the farm, Chartwells, normally operates through the global trade platform, and if it plans to use the farm’s produce, it may be a difficult adjustment. They are accustomed to ordering products as needed, which is not how farming works.

Not only are we used to produce being available regardless of season; we only see perfectly formed, blemish-free specimens in Kline, the Green Onion, or Hannaford. Before produce is distributed to stores, they weed out the three-pronged carrots, the lumpy beets, and the wrinkled, folded bell peppers. Eating food from a non-corporate farm will be a big change for most of us, and we will have a lot to learn and adjust to. Plants are living things, and living things are imperfect—not always the sanitized, eternally available, uniformly perfect products that we are used to seeing in stores.

Envisioning the scale of the farm is hard; most of us don’t think in acres. What is planned is a one acre farm, which is a “model” farm. There won’t be golden wheat fields extending off into the horizon, or tall cornfields to get lost in. The acre they had planned on has been realized, and covered with compost behind Manor house on North Campus. It is hard to imagine how much a yet-unplanted field can produce, but based on California Department of Finance numbers, this piece of land could be expected to produce around 10,000 pounds of food per year. That sounds like a lot, and it is, except that there are 2,000 students at Bard, and as the USDA estimates, Americans eat about 5 pounds of food per day. Bard could finish the entire annual output of the farm in one day—that is the kind of scale we are talking about.

The point is not, though, to supply all of Bard’s food. The goal is to educate, connect, and engage the Bard community with the food it relies on. With interest and engagement, not only will the food production be successful, but Silva’s educational goals will be within reach as well. The idea of the farm is great, which is why the online Kickstarter fundraiser was successful; it is a popular idea. It takes substantial community engagement to transform a good idea into a functioning operation, not to mention continued financial support from the college.

There is a great deal of interest now, as there surely will be through the first season. The real project will be turning the farm into a truly perennial and self-sustaining system—one that has a support structure within the college, not just a handful of volunteers.

The Bard Farm is a big idea, and a big commitment. Its success rests on the shoulders of the students, the administration, and the head farmer. I plan to volunteer as much as I can, for it will be a beautiful day when we can eat the fruits of our labor: produce harvested from our own backyard.

This year at Bard, as with the crooks on Wall Street, we have consistently failed to prevent destructive behavior. To a certain degree, such acts are inevitable. More importantly, they won’t disappear with discussion panels, security cameras, or scolding emails. The delinquency of my past has taught me that what this school needs is an attitude change.

Read the emails, Facebook responses, or even this publication, and after every single act of vandalism or hate, fingers are always pointed at “townies.” This is what my social psychology textbook calls “scapegoating,” and “modern prejudice.” Why blame ourselves for our problems when there are locals nearby that must be spiteful and envious of us? They must have been the ones to pull the fire alarms, break into buildings, and break windows. It was definitely them who vandalized cars, sprayed the fire extinguishers, and, in their ignorance, wrote bigoted epithets all over campus.

In just one comment thread on the “SOMEBODY SPRAYPAINTED ‘FAG’” event on Facebook, the following comments appeared (and were thankfully disputed):
“Townies are so dumb”
“Townies [are] homophobes”
“Anything this low can’t be the work of a Bard student. If it were, it would at least be a little bit more creative.”

Speak of supercilious! Even if 90% of the nonsense that has occurred was at the hands of locals, such statements reek of prejudice.

I have been privileged with private education for most of my life. Since middle school, though, I have always made an attempt to dissociate from class antagonisms and to befriend locals. And if there were one school liberal enough to transcend the sneers of classist self-deceit I have been subject to, I would have thought it would be Bard. Yet tragically, some of the same students who marched against the injustice on Wall St. have, in a classic double standard, expressed sentiments and assumptions about our neighbors that I would ascribe to a Koch brother before a Bardian.

Back in October, I granted that perhaps outsiders had lit that car on fire and had stolen and crashed the other. I even accepted my peers’ and security’s suggestions that locals might have stolen my bicycle. However, after witnessing firsthand countless acts of sheer and utter stupidity and disrespect, it is like the boy who cried wolf. But this is worse – this is the “progressive” liberal arts college that cried wolf.

Just last week, I found my bike with a lock on it…that wasn’t mine. What’s more, there was another lock wrapped around it, which I presume belonged to the original thief. Forget “Bard Borrows”– try “Bard Steals, Adopts, and Repeats.

I do not doubt that outsiders are responsible for some of the disgraceful behavior that has plagued our campus this year. But for the first people on whom we place blame, after all that this school has experienced in the past seven months, to be “townies”– well, that’s pathetic. As one of my peers put it, “Classism is bad unless it happens in our own backyard.”

Within an hour of creation of the aforementioned Facebook event, one student posited, “I would be willing to bet that townies have been behind most of the vandalism of the past academic year.” Those sorts of statements are akin to Herman Cain claiming that Occupy Wall St. was “planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration.” Yes, I am likening Bard students to Herman Cain. Except with less integrity, because at least Cain admitted he did not “have the facts to back it up.” We just point fingers at everyone but ourselves.

It would have required a widespread townie conspiracy to vandalize Bard in order to explain the unprecedented level of destructive behavior this year. But the population and disposition of the local community hasn’t shifted– at Bard it has (with new students etc.) It’s time to sit back and ask: WWBD (what would Botstein do)?

In explaining the purpose of Citizen Science to a stubborn Stephen Colbert, President Botstein said, “Personal choices we make ourselves are about evaluating different claims… what is evidence for a claim that’s true and a claim that isn’t.” Before evaluating the claims that bankers and journalists make on Wall St., we need to evaluate the claims made on Annandale Road.

At this point, I just wonder – how we can ever expect to move beyond the behavior that has plagued Bard recently, if we can’t even take responsibility for what has happened?

by David Dewey

Several weeks ago, at Bard, one of my favorite authors from childhood visited my literature class. When the seminar ended, the professor, the author and myself went to the men’s room. On the wall in front of our urinals was a publication from Stall Seat Journal, a sexual education campaign from the Peer Health Club. This particular pamphlet gave detailed instructions on how and why students should masturbate anally. At that moment, I felt ashamed of my school.

It began by criticizing American education: “If you are like many of us, you had very little or inadequate sexual education.” Then it informed students how to stimulate the prostate. It claimed that the prostate is a “source of male-bodied ecstasy” and “you’ll never know how good it can get until you try.” It provided graphic instructions that I do not want to recopy for this article.

Another Stall Seat Journal, recently withdrawn from circulation, advised students to use the “rhythm method” of birth control. This means “abstaining from sex during the days before and during a woman’s ovulation.” The language of the flier was unclear and appeared to promote unprotected sex: “Don’t get spooked—it can be kinda fun.”

Speaking to Peer Health heads, they told me that their goal is to spread information and to reduce the shame people feel around sex. Their mistaken logic was, I think, the opinion that over-compensation against sexual norms is an effective way to even the score against stifling sexual expectations and taboos. Going so far as to encourage (or “celebrate,” in the words of the Journals) sexual experimentation, in their line of thought, balances out the shame society places on actions it thinks are sexually deviant. I would claim that this stance is partly one of protest.

When protest takes the place of argument, it makes logic unnecessary. And when logic becomes unnecessary, so does education, and so do we.

There was an opinion article in the February issue of the Free Press claiming that Bard should be proud of its reputation as a “hippie school.” I disagree. As a college already recognized for being ultra-liberal, “hippie-ism”—liberalism condensed into fashion—is exactly what we need to get rid of. Fad politics are contradictory to academia, which is based on trimmed reason, the idea that one should only say what one can say. A fundamental assumption of polarized political groups (such as smelly hippies) is that logic, and thus academia, has failed, making protest the only alternative.  It is counterproductive for a school to adopt this role.

Bard is changing rapidly right now.  We are far more diverse than we were even a decade ago. But it is impossible to be a unified diverse campus while catering to a counter-culture. Mindless politicization does nothing but alienate students who do not conform to it. It is, moreover, a leech on real progressivism.  (Ideological polarization of this kind is what has made American politics so silly recently. If we give in to it, we do a disservice to our country on a whole). A radical sexual atmosphere falls under this category.

Peer Health is an agent of the administration—it distributes key resources (condoms and information) to peer counselors and thus to dormitories. If it follows anything other than moderate, practical sex-ed methods, then it assumes Bard is a school where all students are comfortable being told to sexually experiment. This is an assumption that cannot be made if we want our scholarship kids and student athletes and exchange students (among a great deal of others) to feel at home. I blame an atmosphere of protest for our fractured, cliquey social scene.

When I met with Peer Health, they explained these Journals. The fertility journal apparently never advised students to try unprotected sex—the adjective “fun” was, they said, only used to describe the process of keeping track of menstruation. They insisted that their fliers were not suggestive and were merely informative. Peer Health Director Amii LeGendre argued that the fliers were not trying to protect people from discomfort, but to protect them from shame. Members of the group told me that their problem with general American sex-ed is that it tends to discount and de-emphasize the pleasurable aspects of sex. They said that with sex, all information is permissible.  No information is bad information.

I think that it is delusional for Peer Health to claim that their efforts were merely geared towards information. I also think that information becomes protest if it is presented in a way that makes it unavoidable, overabundant, or suggestive.

It is fine for Bard to be ultra-liberal, but political bias should never seem a mandate. It is when liberalism is supported by the administration that it crosses the line from discourse to protest, and makes our college illegitimate. Sexual health education of the more radical type (the type that does not simply tell students how and why to use condoms as well as a couple of other necessities) must be restrained. It should exist for students who need it, or who want it. I would propose putting SSJ’s current information online, and providing counseling or anonymous email services to accomplish the same thing.

Bard administration must clean up our campus’s unreasoned, or non-academic political components before it attempts to diversify any more than it has already. Otherwise, we have no chance of being a unified, friendly community.

A PEER HEALTH EDUCATOR’S RESPONSE

by Alyssa Goldstein of Bard Peer Health

When David Dewey took issue with Peer Health’s Stall Seat Journal on the prostate, he did an admirable thing by coming to speak to us about it personally. Though we had a productive discussion, there are still some points in his article which I feel I must address. David claims that Peer Health’s “mistaken logic…was the opinion that over-compensation for sexual norms is an effective way to even the score against stifling sexual expectations and taboos.” During our conversation, Peer Heath director Amii LeGendre did indeed emphasize the importance of providing sexual health information for people who have often been ignored or under-served (queer and transgender folks, for example). This is a straightforward, common-sense decision to provide little-known but vital information for people who need it most.

David also seems uncomfortable with the fact that Peer Health focuses not only on educating about proper condom use and STIs, but also on topics like masturbation and sexual pleasure. (David’s point about material appearing above the urinals was a separate but related issue. Since most of us are women, we hadn’t considered that reading Stall Seat Journals in the mens’ room might be a more social act than it would be in the women’s room. His point was well taken.) In general, though, it simply does not make sense to educate about sex while glossing over sexual pleasure as if it doesn’t exist. Pleasure is one of the best and most basic reasons for having sex to begin with. It is one of my strongest beliefs that there is absolutely nothing wrong, dirty or shameful about seeking sexual pleasure on one’s own or in a consensual sexual encounter. The ability to feel sexual pleasure is one of the many amazing things our bodies and brains can do, and we all have the basic right to know our own bodies.

Lastly, I’d like to address David’s claim that certain types of sex education cannot exist in the Bard public sphere if “scholarship kids and student athletes and exchange students” are to feel comfortable. The ability to feel comfortable around any sort of sex education is not predicated on economic status, nationality, or choice of extracurricular activity. “Scholarship kids,” student athletes and international students are capable of making up their own minds, and do not need any “protection” (except, perhaps, the latex kind).

interview by Tekendra Parmar

Free Press: What do you hope to accomplish with Real Estate? Where is it going?

Alex Bleeker: I’m not sure where it’s going, but it’s going somewhere – it is some kind of journey that we’re on. At this point most of us live our lives off of Real Estate. I live in Brooklyn and I pay my rent from the band.

FP: A lot of your songs perpetuate a feeling of suburbia – what was it like growing up in New Jersey?

AB: Well you know, it was normal – I don’t want to use the word ‘normal’ – but it was like a classic stereotypical American dream town.

FP: All of you guys grew up there?

AB: Well, the three founding members of the band.

FP: And you guys formed during that time?

AB: We were always playing in bands, basement shows, or open mics at our high school. It wasn’t Real Estate then. We formed this band as soon as we finished college. We all have college degrees. That’s a good thing to know.

FP: How do you feel about the praise from Pitchfork?

AB: I think it’s awesome to get praised by Pitchfork. Pitchfork has such a far-reaching audience. It means, if Pitchfork likes you, you can be a band. I know that Pitchfork serves a positive purpose and has over the years been the gateway for kids who haven’t heard of any other kinds of music. I guess you have to weigh the good and the bad when it comes to Pitchfork – like they can just knight a band and that’ll be it. That’s not their fault though.

FP: Listening to your music there is a simplicity to it, is there a conscious effort to preserve the simplicity or is it more from impromptu jam?

AB: All the songs are structured written and arranged, there is often simple and cyclical riff that’s going on, but there’s a subtlety in there.

FP: How is touring going?

AB: Touring is the best of times and the worst of times. We get to go all over the world. Meet a lot of people we admire.

FP: How was playing Primavera – were the crowds different at all?

AB: A lot of British people. That was the biggest crowd we’ve played.

FP: Do you think your European audiences relate to the themes of American suburbia inherent in your music?

AB:  I don’t know how different it is. I guess there is a common Western theme that they can relate to, and lyrically or stylistically appreciate.

FP: You have a couple gigs lined up in Norway – are you big there?

AB: Yeah. Our label is European, I guess we’re growing.

FP: Are there any guys on the bill you were influenced by?

AB: Influenced by….Radiohead of course, and Greg Ginn from Blackflag is coming. I’m not exactly sure what he’s doing there. It’s at the bottom of the bill, he’s definitely a legend – and of course, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

(photo: Andrew Bao)

(photo: Teju Cole)

CORRECTION APPENDED

by J.p. Lawrence and Joey Sims            

Interview by J.p. Lawrence

Teju Cole is Bard’s Distinguished Writer-in-Residence this semester. He has earned critical acclaim for his debut novel ‘Open City,’ published by Random House.

On Twitter, Cole posts what he calls ‘Small Fates’ – condensed stories based on stories from 1912 newspapers. One recent example: “Mr Roberts, of Lawrence St, Brooklyn, who was fond of examining his revolver, did so for the last time yesterday.”

He recently authored a piece in The Atlantic entitled ‘The White Savior Industrial Complex,’ partly in critical response to Invisible Children’s ‘Kony 2012’ campaign.

Free Press: You are teaching two classes this semester – ‘Writing the Modern City’ and ‘Modern African Art.’

Teju Cole: In the literature class [‘Writing the Modern City’] we are reading a number of books set in cities of the present – Bombay, New York, Tokyo, and Johannesburg. And in the art history class [‘Modern African Art’], we’re looking at African art in a way that very few people look at it. We are not dealing with rituals and dances and masks, or anything like that.
There are a lot of young artists doing interesting work in media that people don’t necessarily associate with African art…Modern art that is as complex and provocative and interesting as modern art in the UK, or China, or Brazil.

FP: What is most important to you in teaching about Africa?
TC: I insist on African modernity, and that Africa is a space that is contemporaneous with us… Though we are dealing with problems of security and infrastructure, we are also plugged into Twitter and YouTube and Facebook. Almost nowhere in the world is truly far anymore, because we’re all participating in the same technology, and increasingly technology is a driver of ways of thinking. It means that young people in Nigeria or New Delhi or New York, are increasingly thinking in the same ways.

FP: After your Kony 2012 tweets, one commentator said that you had launched a crusade through Twitter.
TC: Unfortunate choice of words, “launching a crusade.” That is the last thing I want to do. I thought about it in terms of language that needed to be out there in the public sphere, and that hadn’t gotten out there…That the relationship non-African people have with Africa has been deeply troubled in the past – the primary encounter being that of colonialism. And that colonial encounter continues to color the way many people, especially white people, relate to Africa today. There is an inadvertent, in most cases, assumption of superiority, and an inadvertent practice of condescension.

FP: And you talked about what you termed the ‘white savior industrial complex.’
TC: I’ve seen it in movies, I’ve seen it in artwork, I’ve seen it in books. Africa is merely used as a backdrop for the ambitions of white people. This is not controversial to say. But public discourse in America has degraded to the point that if you say something that is uncontroversial, someone else will make it controversial. It’s not controversial to talk about the fact that white privilege continues to be a fact, just like male privilege continues to be a fact.
So the piece was basically a plea for caution when we are interacting with people in a situation where there is a power differential. Simple as that. I think that the Kony video mostly turned me off because of its pretense of innocence, trying to make a ‘different’ innocent – and nobody is innocent. History is not over.* (correction appended, see below)
But since then, a lot of people have asked me for commentary on Kony 2012 – to say more, to participate in symposiums, to go on the radio and all of this. If I was doing a crusade I would have said yes to any of those, and I have said yes to none of them… because the point was not to get involved in an argument, or to get involved with people who are telling me how racist I am for writing this.
The fact of the matter is that we have to be bold, but without being cruel to each other or without defaming each other. But we have to be bold about speaking truth to power when need be.
But I’m a novelist and I’d rather do creative work than do polemic.

FP: You also post your photography daily on Flickr. What informs your work in that area?
TC: I’m driven by the desire to see things in a way that no one else would. My photos are not staged, they are from real life, but I’m drawn to complicated forms.

FP: Is it the same with your writing – a quest to see things differently?
TC: Absolutely. If I wanted to just take a picture of two guys standing and talking, I would just have taken a picture of them. But what interested me was to create a narrative and see them from a different point of view.
So if I was going to write about them, I might also write about it from a different point of view. You know, a little bit of wit, some visual puns…but for the most part it is patterning that interests me. Of late I have gotten very interested in layers, broken up forms, things in front of each other, so that the layers are not very distinct. Reflections have become very, very important, because then you’re not sure what’s in front and what’s behind.
So crowds, cities, surprising use of reflections, lights, strangers – including the world. Not just the flowers, but the chain link fence.

FP: What normally would be the footnotes….
TC: ….have that be part of it. I don’t want to just take a picture of that building – I want everything that’s in my way.

FP: It’s like what Chinua Achebe wrote – he wanted to tell the story that would be the footnote.
TC: That’s right. That’s a good way of thinking about it– the part of the story that perhaps gets ignored.

*This sentence was initially mistranscribed as “History is not a war.” It has now been corrected. We apologize for the error. 

The Hannah Arendt Center For Politics and Humanities held a conference at Bard April 18, “Cuba Today and Tomorrow: The Individual Caught Between Nations.” The conference will involve Cuban Bard students speaking of their experience in the United States, panel discussions, and speakers, as well as Cuban music and dance.

Author/filmmaker Brin-Jonathan Butler showed clips of his documentary, “Split Decision.” The film follows Guillermo Rigondeaux, a Cuban boxer who came to the United States in order to box professionally – in exchange for exile from his homeland.
Butler offered to answer a few questions for the Free Press.

Free Press: You have written for sports magazines, news publications, and literary journals. You are also a boxing trainer. How did you get where you are today?

Brin-Jonathan Butler: When I was 11, an incident of bullying involving a swarming left me afraid to leave my house for a few years. Academically I collapsed and personally I imploded.
My lifeline arrived by accidentally catching an interview with Mike Tyson from prison, where he disclosed his own bullying experiences and the kind of humiliation that shook him to the core of his identity. It was the first time I’d heard someone describe how I felt.
In prison Tyson was reading an awful lot of classics that stunned his interviewer…..The following day, I stepped in the door of two places I’d never been before: a boxing gym and a library.
My grades never picked up and I flunked out of school, but I was writing and boxing every day, and continued both for the rest of my life.

FP: Guillermo Rigondeaux left behind everything in Cuba, including his wife and children, in order to pursue a potentially lucrative career in the United States. In the eyes of some, this might make him an anti-hero. What do you make of this?
BJB: This is why I feel Guillermo’s high wire act without a net is such a fascinating litmus test into anyone’s sense of values. Where does anyone sell out their family or themselves for what they want?
We all live with split decisions, but Guillermo’s involved having one of the most famous dictators in history focus the power of the Cuban state against him and his family in retaliation. And, on the other side of things, Rigondeaux in America looks, in many ways, a more tragic figure in having achieved his dream with none of the most important people in his life to share it with.