you wrote:
"It is not required of us to finish the work, but neither are we free to
desist from it."
your words, following kathie goff's insightful post a couple of days
ago have moved me very much, they are very instructive and helpful, in
a time, where I seee the work of good people, and and the delicate
webs of good work being rapidly dismantled by the technocratic agendas of
powerful people, bent on merely extending their own territory. what is it
that they say about power in the halls of academe, all the more poisonous
because the gains are not in acutally booty, just a few more centimetres
of hallway, citation or prestige.
I still say it is worthwhile to act as a guerilla worker - if only for
the comic relief when the institutional tantrums take place, when the
"plans" are slightly dislodged.
happy new year.
kathryn
>Hi all,
>
>Having read Angel's post, I can only offer what my Russian friends call
>"sochustvuye" - not sympathy, but fellow feeling from having been in a
>similar situation, but as a student in a Ph.D. program where many of the
>less defensible values of academia were salient. I solved the problem by
>taking a terminal master's degree and bailing out. I'm moving on to an
>MPH in public health, which is more in tune with my orientation to
>behavioral medicine/cross-cultural psychology/community activism.
>
>Part of that decision was the result of seeing other people who had
>already committed themselves to academia past the point when they could
>easily make a move out. Fighting the system is virtually impossible, and
>trying to conduct guerrilla warfare will eventually exhaust almost
>anyone. The best consolation I can offer is the following quote from the
>Talmud (tractate "Ethics of the Fathers"):
>
>"It is not required of us to finish the work, but neither are we free to
>desist from it."
>
>In order to remain true to ourselves we must continue the struggle even
>when we see no victory in sight. Once one has decided to remain in the
>system, for whatever reason, the only moral course of action is to keep
>working to change it and to help those who are being victimized by it,
>even when it can only be on a personal, individual level. A religious
>person would add that you are receiving credit for your efforts on a
>spiritual level, even if you don't see that you are making progress on
>the temporal level.
>
>And after all, in the end it's the individual soldiers who make it
>possible to win the war. The Civil Rights movement in the United States
>was only made possible by the personal decisions of individuals to take
>the risk of acts of resistance. What you're doing is less dramatic, but
>in the long run it may be what makes the difference.
>
>Stay strong,
>
>Rochel Sara Heckert
>
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*****************************
Kathryn Alexander, email ...... kalexand who-is-at sfu.ca
Doctoral Candidate, FAX .........(604) 291 - 3203
Faculty of Education, SFU(message).....(604) 291- 3395
Simon Fraser University,
Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6