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Campuses should be hotbeds
of ideas, not just protest
By Avi M. Speigel
from The Christian Science Monitor, November 6, 2001
Harvard University Divinity School
Student Avi M. Speigel uses the lopsided polarity he observed
on the Harvard Campus after the September 11 attacks to call
on students to "not allow disillusionment to breed disengagment."
He notes how students' abilities to produce new ideas and
dialogue "has often appeared deadlocked in invective"
at the campus' peace and patriotism rallies.
He believes, however, that students
have a vital role to play in a post-September 11th world and
that educational leaders have an obligation to help them to
fashion this role. First, he calls for an "America the
Beautiful curriculum." Contrary to calls on the right
to return to a traditional Western civilization curriculum,
however, Speigel believes that this curriculum should "teach
students about Sikhs and Muslims as well as Puritans."
Students, Speigel suggests, can
use their diverse backgrounds and specialized interests to
reinvigorate the national debate, just as well as the Pentagon
can plot military strategy. For example, he envisions advertising
and public policy students teaming up to combat heroin addiction
"using our newfound antipathy for the world's largest
opium producer as our catalyst" and cites the sweatshop
movement that has mobilized many of America's students. He
calls for more meaningful cultural exchange than Baywatch-one
of the most popular television programs in Iran.
Spiegel, a two-year veteran of the
Peace Corps in Morocco, believes "students should lobby
Congress, not for the termination of foreign-student visas…but
for their expansion." Indeed, cultural exchange can be
seen as an answer to show the face of an America he loves—"…what
makes our country stunning…[is] our religious and ethnic
diversity"—to the world.
To view the entire article, visit
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1106/p15s1-lets.html.
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