The current edition of the NEA Higher Education Advocate has a salute to the Professors of the Year. One of the honorees is Professor Pam Whitman, who teaches women’s perspectives, English and equine science at Rochester Community and Technical College in Minnesota. When asked about her award, she commented:
“Education is not a business. It’s a mission…Education is how we change the world, one person at a time. Education is how we pull people out of poverty. It is how we right the race, gender, and class imbalances in our society.”
Those of us in education who keep seeing attempts to usurp our profession by elements of corporate America, private foundations, and media outlets should use Professor Whitman’s comments as a rallying cry.
Joe Scarborough, MSNBC ‘s Morning Joe anchor and a Republican, calls conservatives and the far right “disgusting” and “fools” for politicizing the Trayvon Martin tragedy.
“On Friday, he excoriated some conservative websites for defending Zimmerman and questioning Martin’s innocence. He said that he found their behavior “disgusting.”
“Why is it that some on the right are actually taking this up as a cause?” Scarborough asked. “As National Review said almost immediately after it happened, this has nothing to do with gun rights, this has nothing to do with the Second Amendment, this has nothing to do with stand your ground laws, this has nothing to do with the NRA. This has everything to do with a guy that’s trying to play security cop, who is unhinged, who chased down and shot a 17-year-old kid armed with Skittles and iced tea.'”
Scarborough warned that conservative sites should follow the National Review and “not take this up as a cause.” He took issue with their portrayal of Martin in particular.
He said, “some racist websites, but also sadly some fairly mainstream websites are actually going into Trayvon Martin’s social media pages, be it Twitter or MySpace, and they’re trying to find ominous looking pictures while skipping over pictures of him holding up a birthday cake smiling, him fishing with his dad, him standing outside proudly of his home dressed in a tux ready to go to prom.”
“This is beneath contempt,” Scarborough railed. “These people on the far right are being fools to try to make this a political issue.”
Right on Joe – “disgusting” and “fools” are exactly what the far right has become in this country.
Tony
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