May 22, 2014--Commencement Season

During dinner, a friend who is a recent college graduate, was interested in talking about the future, her future, not the food.

"I mean, I went to all this effort and my parents spent all this money so I could go to college and now I still don't know what to do. And with the job market the way it is, even if I did, I'm not sure I'd be able to find work." She sighed, picking at her grilled fish.

"Let's begin," I suggested, "with your current goal, what you want to achieve." A typical career-advsiing kind of question.

"Above all I want to be self-supporting. I know that isn't what a liberal arts major should be saying, but since I'm not sure about anything else, this is at the top of my list. I don't want my parents to . . ." She trailed off, but we knew what she meant.

"I need a job so I can make money."

"Nothing wrong with that," Rona said. "In fact, it's impressive. So many young people seem reasonably all right living at home after college and being supported by their parents."

"That's the last thing I want to do. I mean, I love them and everything, but . . ." Again she left her thought uncompleted.

"Let me put this another way," I said, "You say you want to be able to support yourself but about what you'd really want to do you're confused." I glanced over toward her but she didn't look up, instead she continued to stare at her plate and play with her food.

"But I do . . ." She was mumbling and I couldn't make out the rest of what she was saying. Rona, with better hearing, was smiling.

"But you do what?" I asked.

She looked up. "I do know what I want to do."

"That's what I was hoping you said. What is it?"

Almost whispering, she confessed, "I want to be a writer."

I smiled as well. "That changes everything. I mean, what I want to suggest. You're not really looking for a job to launch a career, like, say, in advertising or publishing." She shook her head. "You need a job to make money, which is very different, so you can support yourself while writing. Yes?"

Now all three of us were smiling. "Yes. That's what I want. What I need. A way to make money. I only hope my family will be comfortable with that. You know, they're a little more traditional and therefore think about jobs and careers differently than . . . . They want me to be comfortable, but . . ."

"But?"

"I don't want to be comfortable. In fact I want to be uncomfortable."

"From that," I said, "I now know you in fact benefited from a fine liberal education. That's one of the things that's supposed to happen."

Glancing at me, she turned back to her halibut and began to enjoy dinner.

Since then we were able to help her find work that enabled her to support herself, and I have been thinking about the importance in some circumstances of discomfort. That it is a source of inspiration for many artists and writers, including our friend.

But then, during this college commencement season, it seems there are forces arrayed to assure that  privileged young people be made as comfortable as possible.

Graduation speakers, for example, have been be pressed to drop out if they in any way would cause grads and the faculty to be upset.

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde was to address Smith graduates but was thought by many there to have instituted regressive IMF polices in developing countries. She stepped aside.

At Brandeis, former Dutch legislator and human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali cancelled under pressure because of her criticism of radical Islam.

And at Rutgers (where two years ago Jersey Shore's Snooki was paid $32,000 to speak) Condi Rice was scheduled to deliver the commencement address, but also withdrew because she was, well, George W. Bush's National Security Advisor when he launched his preemptive war against Iraq.

In all cases, rather than challenge students, perhaps causing discomfort by their encountering individuals and ideas that do not fit a comfortable politically-correct ideology, university officials backed off to avoid any appearance of disharmony or discord during pampered graduates' special day.

Further, other efforts to provide comfort rather than challenging discourse among undergraduates are also underway, largely out of public sight.

As reported in the New York Times, until taken down recently from its website, students and faculty at Oberlin College found the following admonitions about "trigger warnings," alerts similar to the movie rating system that warn about violence, "language," nudity, and "strong sexual content."

At Oberlin, these triggers apply mainly to required readings and the content of classroom discussions--

Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to anything that might cause trauma [my italics]. Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism [bias against transgender individuals], ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression. Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.

This means, as it literally has occurred on a growing number of campuses, that Hamlet might contain a trigger warning about violence and the Merchant of Venice would include an alert to students that by reading it they would find evidence of anti-Semitism.

What to be concerned about in Huckleberry Finn or the Great Gatsby? Or anything from classic Greek literature? I think you know.

This all sounds boring and oppressive. What would our young friend think? I think you know that as well.

November 26, 2013--Roar Lion, Roar

When decades ago I arrived at Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus for freshman orientation, upper classmen devoted themselves to two things--first, to find unique ways to haze and humiliate us (a favorite was making us at all times carry a roll of toilet paper) and, second, to teach us the three essential college songs--

The alma mater, Sans Souci ("What if tomorrow brings sorrow or anything other than joy?"); and the fight songs, Who Owns New York? ( "Who beat West Point the people say") and Roar Lion, Roar (" . . . and wake the echoes in the Hudson Valley").

Though we had two fight songs, my classmates and I quickly learned that the college had forgotten one thing--to get the football team to fight. My freshman year the team went 0 and 10, losing all its games by lopsided scores.

I was reminded of this last weekend when the Lions lost to Brown 48 to 7 and ended another winless season. Again they went 0 and 10. We couldn't even beat Brown where I always assumed no one played football since all the students were busy writing poetry or organizing food banks for the homeless.

Sure, half of Columbia students were premeds who slept in the zoology labs; but the other half came from normal high schools where sports were as important as SAT scores. Maybe more important. And yet, year after year, decade after decade, we were fortunate if we managed to win two games against godforsaken teams from downscale places such as Fordham in the Bronx and Monmouth College in West Long Branch, New Jersey. This year we lost to Monmouth 37-14 and to Fordham 52-7.

In the past 50 years the Lions managed just three winning seasons and in the last 100 years, only 23. Back in the day the team somehow managed to beat Army and that improbable victory was instantly memorialized in the lyrics to Who Owns New York--"Who beat West Point?"; and in 1934 we shocked Stanford and won the Rose Bowl 7-0. The Rose Bowl. Well before it hit the big time and well before my time. But still . . .

The best thing about Columbia football was the marching band, a ragtag group of about 19 sort-of musicians. In addition to the inevitable Roar Lion, Roar, where we sang about waking the echoes of the Hudson Valley (whatever that means), each week they came up with special material. Witty stuff about politics and college life.

My favorite was when one year we made the mistake of playing Rutgers University, a big-time team and like Monmouth (and Princeton!) in New Jersey.

At halftime, as usual, we were behind by about 30 points and to have pity on us Rutgers had already taken out its starters and deployed the junior varsity. Thankfully, it was time for the marching bands.

The Rutgers band, in resplendent uniforms and numbering at least 100, engaged in well-rehearsed and intricate routines and formations. They played a medley of other colleges' fight songs--Michigan's legendary--

Hail to the victors valiant
Hail to the conquering heroes
Hail, hail to Michigan
The leaders and best.

And Notre Dame's even more famous--

Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame
Wake up the echoes cheering her name
Send the volley cheer on high,
Shake down the thunder from the sky.

What is it, I thought, about waking up all these echoes?

While having these thoughts, out sauntered the Columbia band in uniforms so rumpled that it looked as if they had been worn by their predecessors in Pasadena in 1934.

If you can believe it, the special material that day was about Columbia professors. About I. I. Rabi, a father of the atomic bomb who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1944; about Moses Hadas, the world's leading authority on Greek literature; and my favorite, world-class literary critic, Lionel Trilling.

They taunted Rutgers and the team's fans, singing about how while we listened to Trilling lecture about Kafka, Rutgers students were studying such grimy subjects as mechanical engineering and cattle raising.

Mean spirited as it was, it helped make us feel better about ourselves while our pathetic Lions were getting their asses whipped.

Looking back on this, it seems so puerile. All of it. The hazing, the toilet paper, the school songs, fraternity life, and the obsession with football. (Columbia, however, did have a strong chess team!)

Rutgers, it turns out, had an excellent English department and Columbia had quite a good engineering school. Things were more complicated than they seemed. Even our alma mater was something to think about--San Souci, to be "carefree." Yet, "what if tomorrow brings sorrow or anything other than joy?" By now we know how true that is.