Academic Ignorance on Parade

When Illinois played a college football game on September 11th there was a special remembrance in honor of the victims of 9/11.  Apparently one pinhead professor took exception to the display of patriotism and wrote a letter to the campus newspaper.

The vast majority of 9/11 observances in this country cannot be seen as politically neutral events. Implicit in their nature are the notions that lives lost at the World Trade Center are more valuable than lives lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere; that the motives of the 9/11 attackers had nothing to do with genuine grievances in the Islamic world regarding American imperialism; and that the U.S. has been justified in the subsequent killing of hundreds of thousands in so-called retaliation.

The observance at Saturday’s football game was no different. A moment of silence was followed by a military airplane flyover; in between, Block-I students chanted “USA, USA.” This was neither patriotism nor remembrance in any justifiable sense, but politicization, militarism, propaganda and bellicosity. The University is a public institution that encompasses the political views of all, not just the most (falsely) “patriotic.” Athletic planners should cease such exploitation for political purposes. They might at least consider how most Muslim students, American or otherwise, would respond to this nativist display; or better, Muslims and others that live their lives under the threat of our planes, drones and soldiers.

The overwhelmingly white, privileged, Block-I students should be ashamed of their obnoxious, fake-macho, chicken-hawk chant, while poverty-drafted members of their cohort fight and die in illegal and immoral wars for the control of oil. University administrators need to eliminate from all events such “patriotic” observances, which in this country cannot be separated from implicit justifications for state-sponsored killing.

David Green,

University Academic Professional

Yes, professor, the lives of the victims that died on 9/11 were more valuable than the lives of the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, and no "genuine grievance" in the Islamic world justified the killing of innocents in America.  You, Mr. Green, are a pinhead and a classic example of why we shouldn't allow academics like yourself...and our president...have leadership roles in our country.

There's nothing false about the patriotism on display that day.  It was heartfelt and offered by people who have not grown up to hate America as this dipwad Green has.