Posted on 08/17/2009 7:33:00 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
ITHACA, NY Incoming students at Ithaca College will get together the day before the start of classes to discuss their summer reading assignment: Barack Obamas Dreams from My Father. The 44th presidents autobiography was chosen as the 200910 First-Year Reading Initiative selection.
President Obamas ruthlessly honest self-examination on issues of race and identity gives us an opportunity to lead students through what could be the most important conversation they will have during their freshman year, says Ithaca College President Tom Rochon.
The initiative was created in 2003 as a way to offer the incoming class a shared academic experience and bring together new students with faculty and staff to consider an important issue outside of the constraints of the classroom.
Published in 1995, Dreams from My Father tells the story of Obamas struggle to understand the forces that shaped him as the son of a black African father and white American mother a struggle that takes him from the American heartland to the ancestral home of his great-aunt in the tiny African village of Alego.
First-year students will gather on Tuesday, Aug. 25, for a presentation and question-and-answer session with Michael Smith, assistant professor of history, and Cynthia Henderson, associate professor of theatre arts. Henderson who has been a Fulbright scholar in Africa will discuss Obamas writings as they relate to his thoughts about identity and his African father. Smith will share his perspective on the cultural, social and historical connections of Obamas introspection. Students will then participate in small discussion groups led by faculty and staff facilitators.
For more information on Dreams from My Father and the First-Year Reading Initiative, visit http://www.ithaca.edu/library/fyri/.
Well, if I was required to read it and discuss it, I’d at least try to have a good time while disputing the nonsense contained in a book that wasn’t even written by obama.
Look on the bright side. All those students reading POTUS Obama’s Bio will remember what he said about his past.
IF future developments should show much of the book to be fiction or severe distortions.....it will come back to haunt him.
Who was that guy whose autobiography was required reading at German universities back in the late ‘30’s?
I wonder how they’d react to a critical comparison to it and the writing of Bill Ayers?
Agreed. If they are astute at all, they will realize that what they were forced to read was BS.
The campus of Ithaca College is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. It easily beats Cornell, which is visible about two miles to its northeast.
Tangent:
Wouldn’t the book have been better named “Dreams From Mien Fuhrer”
LOL, any mention of the words “Ayers” or “ghostwriter” in one’s discussion of the book would get an immediate F.
.....................or Birth Certificate?
Chose 1:
1. Write an essay describing the presidents exit strategy for Afghan.
2. Organize a peace demonstration.
3. Write a letter to your congress member and senators calling for the president's impeachment for lying during the campaign and carrying on an unjust war.
As long as they want to look at his biography, someone should note:
his mother and father were married on Feb. 2, 1961, but no marriage certificate, photos, residence of any kind exists from that period.
The “family” of Barack Sr and Mom supposedly lived together in HI until late 1962, when Dad had to go to Harvard and couldn’t take the family.
In fact, Mom was enrolled in classes at U of W on Aug. 19, 1961 - a short 15 days after Barack Jr. was born! It’s not even clear if Mom and Dad ever saw each other after that.
That’s just the beginning - I think one could write a book about the problems with Obama’s book....
LOL. This is the book in which every sentence about his first post-uni job has been exposed to be an outright lie!
1 neutron bomb away from being a great place.
There will, of course, be a few foolish enough to buck the party line and actually offer words of criticism, for which they will be labeled racist and roundly abused. It will serve as a valuable lesson. You want the sheepskin, you toe the line. All hail academic freedom.
“Now do I get an A?”
pre-emptive punishment has to be against the law
pure evil
Wouldn’t it be something if they read The Federalist Papers and the US Constitution? Think of all the really interesting conversations that would produce.
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