Defeat Troops, Professor Says(Freep Alert)

Newsday ^ | 3/28/03 | Ron Howell

[Sparky760]

I know what you mean......

[P-Marlowe]

From Newsday 3/29/03

Columbia Prof's Remarks Spark Furor
Callers Wish 'A Million Mogadishus' On Professor

By Ron Howell
Staff Writer

March 28, 2003, 9:35 PM EST

Angry callers flooded phone lines at Columbia University Friday, denouncing a professor who called for an Iraqi victory over U.S. troops and said he would like to see "a million Mogadishus."

The Mogadishu reference recalled the Somali city where 18 U.S. soldiers were killed 10 years ago.

University president Lee C. Bollinger called Newsday to say he was stunned by the comments made by Assistant Professor Nicholas De Genova, one of more than two dozen speakers at a "teach-in" Wednesday night.

"I am shocked that someone would make such statements," Bollinger said Friday in a telephone interview from Seattle, where he was traveling. "I am especially saddened for the families of those whose lives are now at risk."

Because of the university's tradition of academic freedom, Bollinger said he does not normally comment on statements by a faculty member. But "This one has crossed the line and I really feel a need to say something," the president said.

At De Genova's office at Columbia, where he is a professor of anthropology and Latino studies, a recording said Friday that his voice mailbox was full.

Eric Foner, a history professor and organizer of the teach-in, told Newsday Thursday that De Genova's remarks were "idiotic" and said that the other speakers offered intelligent and thoughtful arguments against the Iraqi war.

On Wednesday night, De Genova said, "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military." Newsday also quoted him as saying, "I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus."

In an especially graphic image from the 1993 Mogadishu ambush and firefight, in which Somalis shot down two U.S. helicopters, a slain American soldier was dragged through the streets. The battle was portrayed in the film "Black Hawk Down."

The crowd of hundreds Wednesday night was largely silent as De Genova made the Mogadishu comment, but a number of them applauded later when he said, "If we really that this war is criminal ... then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine."

De Genova said in a telephone interview Thursday that he intended to show his support for oppressed Iraqis and to encourage them to fight against their oppressors, whether domestic or foreign.

One caller to Newsday Friday said he would like to hurt De Genova.

"I'd like to shoot him if I could get away with it, in the knee or something, and give him a chance to think about it," said Dodfrey Mathews of the Bronx, who said he was 68 and a retired New York City paramedic. "You got all these mothers and fathers thinking about their children [in the U.S. military] and here's a sucker wishing they were dead."

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of the speakers Wednesday night, said Friday that he disagreed very much with the tone and substance of De Genova's remarks.

"What we want here is an end to the war and we want the U.S. troops back home," Ratner said. "We don't want a lot of battlefield deaths."

[WaterDragon]

The President seems intent on removing the enemies of our liberties while he is in office. After Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria, can American academia be far behind?

[atomic conspiracy]

The body in the picture is that of Army S/Sgt. Bill Cleveland, crew chief and door gunner on Michael Durant's Blackhawk helicopter. It is reproduced and identified as such in Mark Bowden's Blackhawk Down, the basis for the movie. All the bodies seen in the street were either crewmen from Durant's chopper or the two Delta snipers (Gary Gordon and Randall Shughart) who attempted to rescue them in the face of incredible odds. Durant was captured, he was the only survivor. The other dead crewmen were Tommie Field and Ray Frank. Gordon and Shughart received posthumous Medals of Honor for their almost unbelievable heroism, the first for an action after Vietnam. I will remember their names for as long as I live, doing so takes something from the savages who desecrated their lifeless bodies.

[Tancredo Fan]

Remember, these scumbags just crawl under the border fence 'looking for better lives.'

Name: NICHOLAS PAUL DE GENOVA
Title: ASST PROF
Dept: ANTHROPOLOGY
Mail Addr: DEPT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
416 Hamilton Hall, Mail Code 2880
1130 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10027
Phone: MS 4-0199 +1 212-854-0199
Fax: +1 212-854-0500
UNI: npd18
EMail: npd18@columbia.edu

ALSO...

President of Columbia
Name: LEE C BOLLINGER
Mail Addr: 202 LOW LIBRARY
mail code 4309
Phone: MS 4-9970
+1 212-854-9970
UNI: lcb50
E-mail: bollinger@columbia.edu

Also, the perp's dept. chair...
NICHOLAS B. DIRKS, Professor and Chair
Telephone: (212) 854-7785
Office: 960 Schermerhorn Ext.
E-mail: nbd7@columbia.edu

---

Nicholas de Genova's curriculum vitae

NICHOLAS DE GENOVA, Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Telephone: (212) 854-0199
office: 416 Hamilton
email: npd18@columbia.edu <mailto: npd18@columbia.edu>

The central concerns of my research and teaching include: labor and class formation, racialization, the production of urban space, nationalism, the politics of citizenship, and transnational social processes, especially migration. My ethnographic research explores the social productions of racialized and spatialized difference in the experiences of transnational Mexican migrant workers within the space of the U.S. nation-state. More specifically, I examine transnational urban conjunctural spaces that link the U.S. and Latin America as a standpoint of critique from which to interrogate U.S. nationalism, political economy, racialized citizenship, and immigration law. This work contributes to a reconceptualization of Latin American, Latino, and "American" (U.S.) Studies. Likewise, I am interested in the methodological problems of ethnographic research practice and the limits of anthropological disciplinary forms of knowledge and modes of representation.

Representative Publications:

1995 "Gangster Rap and Nihilism in Black America: Some Questions of Life and Death." Social Text 43: 89-132. 1995 "Check Your Head: The Cultural Politics of Rap Music." Transition 67: 123-37. 1996 "Split-Level Bedlam: Chicago at the End of the Twentieth Century." Public Culture 9:1: 114-25. 1997 "The Junkyard of Futures Past." Anthropology and Humanism 22:2: 171-79. 1998 "Race, Space, and the Reinvention of Latin America in Mexican Chicago." Latin American Perspectives 102: 25:5: 87-116.

[M0sby]

BTTT

[Sparky760]

Thank you for that......we should never forget any of our fallen heroes.

[FirstTomato]

As I posted on another thread on this topic, decrying the patriotism of the capitalist middle class is not new--its a tactic that Goebbels and Hitler used against the bourgeois of Germany in order to replace it with his brand of nationalism--socialism with a Goebbels flavor.

What the left doesn't want people of today to understand is that fascists and national socialists were socialists--they were the product of Marxist ideology.

Fascism, Nazism has little to do with any right-wing ideology. Hitler hated "patriotism". That's why he developed his brand of nationalistic socialism, because the German middle class had such a strong love of their country that they had to be defeated in a unique way. Hitler undermined the very basis, the foundation of community life in Germany by attacking the church and by attacking the patriotism of the middle class.

If that sounds familiar it should. Its happening today.

[Sparky760]

That is an excellent point...It is apparent in many of these protests when you look at the groups that are organizing them. Many of these groups have marxist and Stalinistic tendencies and beliefs.

[Black Agnes]

I would *love* to get a look at who he gets research funding from...Wonder if Ford Foundation appears on his list of research sponsors...HMMMMMMM.

[Tancredo Fan]

If you'd like to get a look at this moron's mug, click here, scroll down, and look for the video link to the piece on the Columbia professor. No matter how one feels about this war, this guy's remarks were outrageous. This is the kind of scum we've been importing for a couple of decades.

[Sparky760]

I was just looking at some info again about this "teach in", what an absurd name BTW. I didn't notice this comment either by a history professor there:

Using a reference to Nazi Germany, a history professor, Barbara J. Fields, said like-minded Americans should vigorously oppose Bush.
"The 'good Germans' of the Nazi era were the few who said, 'No,'" Fields declared.

We are in the process of searching for a college for one of my three sons now. Perhaps I need to go sit in on some of these so called "Teach Ins"!

[Exton1]

ping