Y'all will remember recent postings regarding the Bush administration's plans to viciously destroy Talent Search and Upward Bound-- educational social programs that enable low-income and first-generation students to attend college and enter the middle class.
The Significant Other is currently attending a conference on these programs in Austin. And I'll be posting a lot more about them when she returns. But, for now, I wanted to comment on two comments made by two different academics in two different contexts.
Dr. Arnold Mitchum, President of the nonprofit Council for Opportunity in Education, raised hell-fire and brimstone in his keynote speech at the Austin conference. Mitchum commented that some advisors
say they just want to work with the kids and not get involved in politics.But the time for such compartmentalism is past. This administration is determined to destroy the educational system As We Know It. So Mitchum concluded:
It is now imperative to get involved with politics; you cannot just work with the kids.Another academic sees a similar line in the sand in the bankruptcy bill currently hurtling through Congress. Elizabeth Warren, said this (via Atrios) about the bill:
I never wanted to get involved in politics, but the bankruptcy bill now moving on a fast-track through Congress isn’t fair.Obviously there's a pattern here. The academic liberal mind, trained to see both sides and hence existing above politics, tends not to want to get involved. At least not involved in a door-knocking, phone-calling sense. We want to do the real work. We just want to "work with the kids." Leave the politics to politicians.
But we no longer have that option. If we leave politics to the politicians of this selfish greedhead administration, we will end up with a politics for the politicians alone. The rest of us will be left to shiver in the cold.
And the academic ivory towers will provide no warmth, no solace; for this administration is chopping the invory towers down. If we don't come down from those towers to fight-- now-- there will be nothing left to fight for.
SPACEDARK
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