NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Six years ago under the guidance of Peter Onedera, the Chamorro language program at UOG held a Chamorro Language Forum, in which senatorial and gubernatorial candidates were asked questions in Chamorro about pertinent island issues. It was on one hand a great success. Students asked hundreds of questions to the candidates in the Chamorro language. But on the other hand, the format of the forum made it so that candidates didn't have to speak in Chamorro, they could just respond in English. I assisted Peter Onedera with these forums both as a student and a professor at UOG, and so I found it on the one hand inspiring to see a place where the Chamorro language was the focus for political discourse. But it was also so depressing to see so many leaders and would-be leaders not even trying to speak Chamorro, even though they were given the questions ahead of time and could have prepared answers. Fast forward six years and through my Chamoru Culture class at UOG, we have decided to br

I've been scrounging the internet looking for good articles about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the public's response. It is such a difficult things to make sense of, because while for some it is very simple, crazed terrorists attacked some cartoonists and police because of cartoons, and the end of the discussion is everyone stand tall claiming "Guahu Si Charlie lokkue'!" from their cellphones, ipads and Facebooks. But in the larger scheme of things, this generally isn't productive. You can focus in on this one instance, but such can be deceptive, it can prevent you from seeing how that may actually change or help little. It is easy to look at the relationship between societies and say this society is bad and this is good. This society allows this while the other does not. In terms of free speech there are definitely key differences between some Western and some Islamic societies. But if you are truly trying to improve things, you also have to acknowledge the

From Vicente Diaz University of Illinois, UC ***************** Some of you asked for my comments delivered before the Senate on Monday. i couldn't attach it so I paste it here: My name is Vicente M. Diaz. I am an Associate Professor in American Indian Studies and Anthropology. I am also an affiliate faculty member in History and Asian American Studies. I represent American Indian Studies; in fact, I co-chaired the search committee that recommended the hire of Steven Salaita. I’m here to express moral indignation and outrage at the BOT’s denial of Prof. Salaita’s hire. Far from over, and even further from correct, our leadership’s decision is a wrongheaded and misguided action that has tarnished our university’s reputation among academics who know and understand how academia is supposed to work. It has also put us in actual harm’s way, some of us more than others. Above all, this administration has willingly placed political expediency and possibly money over a

Opinion/Editorial The Salaita case and Cary Nelson’s use of “academic freedom” to silence dissent Vicente M. Diaz The Electronic Intifada 14 August 2014   Books and papers lie amid rubble at the Islamic University of Gaza on 2 August, after it was hit by an overnight Israeli air raid. ( Ashraf Amra / APA images )   Cary Nelson , retired University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) English professor and past president of the American Association of University Professors , has been busy. From the moment that the story broke of Chancellor Phyllis Wise’s underhanded nixing of Steven Salaita’s de facto hiring in my department, Nelson has rushed forward as the administration’s biggest cheerleader and defender against condemnations , protests and what amounts to a growing boycott of UIUC from scholars and academic associations . In the interest of disclosure, I co-chaired the search committee that recommended Salaita’s hiring. In live media and

For more info and updates head to the blog: Committee To Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB . ********************************* Dear colleagues, UCSB has become the latest front in the war against Academic Freedom. Professor William I. Robinson, a Sociology and Global Studies professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been attacked by the Anti-Defamation League and two of his former students. In January of this year, he forwarded an email condemning the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The email contained an editorial by a Jewish journalist condemning Israel's actions in Gaza as well as juxtaposed images of Nazi atrocities with congruent images of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. The email was an optional read for students, intended to spark conversation by relating contemporary events to conceptual ideas discussed in class. One week later, the ADL wrote him a letter charging him with anti-Semitism and sundry violations of the Faculty Code of Conduct (none of

I don't usually pay much attention to what happens at UCSD, since as a grad student I spend most of my time on my computer in my office, only venturing onto the campus itself for food. But my interest has been caught over the past few weeks because of a fight and protest over the basic destruction of a program on campus that has long been committed to the teaching of the need and the providing of the tools of social and racial justice. I don't know as much as I should know, and haven't been as involved as I would like to be because I've been travelling and writing the past few weeks, but here is a very instructive letter written by a TA in the program, which can give you a sense of what's going on, and how it is connected to the different ridiculous rightist pushes that are taking place across American campuses today to promote their ideas which are so marginal that they are only responsible for so much of the foreign and domestic violence in the world today. In t

I was forwarded this from the Ethnic Studies Department at Colorado University, Boulder. The letter is followed by a list of hate mail that the department has received since the Ward Churchill "controversy" erupted. If anything, what the terrible hate mail shows, and the lack of support from the university for the Ethnic Studies Department is that Ethnic Studies is very very very necessary in this country. An Open Letter from the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder to the Board of Regents, President Betsy Hoffman and Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano The University of Colorado¹s official policy on diversity states: "Diversity among students, faculty, and staff is fundamental to the University of Colorado as it fulfills its mission to provide a quality education to the citizens of the state. A vision of the University of Colorado as an institution that promotes a free flow of ideas and perspectives, values diverse viewpoints and interactions