31 Comments
Responding to an uncertain statement in this hunger striker post, Bwog e-mailed political science professor Dennis Dalton–who teaches classes on nonviolence and has written a book about Gandhi–to ask whether he was really striking too. He responded thusly:
“Thanks for your message. Yes, as I announced in my class last Thurs., I am in support of the demands and I have joined what I prefer to call the fast rather than hunger strike. Gandhi, about whom I have written extensively, preferred the former term to the latter, but apart from the significant difference in language, I enthusiastically endorse the four demands and I am acting accordingly.
Best wishes, Dennis Dalton”
Et tu, Provost?
UPDATE, 11:30 PM: Dalton told Bwog that he’s drinking water and juice. Good thing his wife Sharron Dalton is a Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies at NYU.
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31 Comments
@alexw George Bluth is striking?!
@No, It's Oscar!!! DOT COM!!!
@dalton is amazing. he’s inspired so many people on this campus.
@wow is he gonna sleep out in the tents with them too?
barnard doesnt even take the core!
@... they can, if they want to. they’re just not required to.
@D.D. Dalton is amazing. He is an inspiration. Not really for this, but because of his idealistic dedication to his beliefs. I wish he weren’t retiring next year :-(
@Come on, Dalton... Don’t you have better things to protest? Why join in this?
@It Never Fails “I’m really sorry you are so inconvenienced by this hunger strike and by listening to what others who might not have had that wealthy, cushy, safe upbringing like yours.”
Wow, Daniel…that’s a heaping load of presumption on your part about someone you admit to not knowing at all. In fact, such presumptions make you sound exactly like what you are: a hypocrite.
@Anonymous Actually, Mr./Ms. This just proves, you do need half a brain to get a PhD in PoliSci. Come to think of it, you need a full brain, and a really good one. Actually, the thing one does not need half a brain to do is to make a post like most of those on this page, hiding in your comfortable ivory dorm room of anonymity as you make your snarky comments. Would you really say in real life “There’s a reason he’s at Barnard?” Also, it’s pretty easy to claim “and seriously, who are these people,” doubting even the possibility of a system of inequality at this place, when you are so damn comfy; I bet you are part of the many students who walk by the sundial and talk loudly about their McDonalds meals next to the strikers’ tents, only to scurry away and cover your faces when they invite you to have a chat. So, to Mr./Ms. wait a second, I’m really sorry you are so inconvenienced by this hunger strike and by listening to what others who might not have had that wealthy, cushy, safe upbringing like yours. Wait till you are threatened, and see who supports you. Instead of the McDonalds, try taking a bite of empathy. Thanks.
@!!! “IVORY DORM ROOM”? Okay, we’re done here. Discussion over!
@hahaha QED. A new Bwog favorite-comment, per chance?
@I lived in Wien for a year. You sir, have just been what the techies among us would refer to as PWNT.
@Post-Script... Karina Garcia says the word “racist” more than Ghouliani mentions 9-11. Eventually, neither term means anything but don’t tell them that.
@overworked Who really thinks that a class addition to the core is going to change intolerant people into culturally accepting people? If someone isn’t interested in non-Western studies they’ll dismiss the class as crap, just like everyone dismissed Frontiers of Science. I think this strike would be more effective if they just focused on one specific issue and offered a reasonable and plausible solution that doesn’t completely reform a long-standing tradition.
I don’t know why Columbia administration would really care if a Barnard professor sat out on the lawn, but I think the important thing to take away from this is that now he’s started wheels in other people’s minds who thought striking was a good idea. This might lead to a wave of new strikers, and it could prolong this whole thing.
@feh I thought that was Philip Roth from the picture.
@This just proves that you don’t need even half a brain to get a PhD in PoliSci. I can’t wait to see a grown man sitting in a tent on the South Lawn, with Christmas lights and attention-starved (get it? starved? because of the hunger strike? I know, I’m a riot) coeds running around.
@Oh and if you thought that Columbia’s core was flawed, and that Ethnic Studies at Columbia sucks, why the fuck did you come here?! If the majority of people came here knowing what the academic structure was like and chose to come anyway, then aren’t you, hunger strikers, cheating them of their tuition?
@Opportunism People seemed to have missed the fact that the strikers have used the noose incident as a pretext to force the university into complying with an unrelated agenda. The Ethnic Studies, Core Curricula, etc. stuff has been on Brian Mercer’s agenda for a while, and he seems to have picked up on the noose incidents to start a fire out of nothing and make one last push for it before he graduates. Frankly, it’s low.
I feel bad for Prezbo, and I hope the fake-petition (a majority of signatories don’t go to Columbia) doesn’t make them concede to do something the vast majority of students do not support.
@former polisci major The Barnard PoliSci department, like the Columbia Polisci department, is full of some stunningly boring people, both students and professors (although of course not all of them fit the label). The political theory faculty is by far the most interesting, particularly Dalton. He’s a Gandhian, not a Marxist; if you think those are equivalent, I guess you should have taken political theory.
@what's funny is how the same purported anti colonialists believe the can conjure up a ‘gandhian’ political philosophy (tell me how the ‘gandhian’ political scheme hands wealth redistribution versus the marxian one smart guy)
and now that stiglitz is around chavez balls
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aqop3ptj2ktg&refer=latin_america
i won’t hesitate to call them commies
and daniel kix, take your arrogant bs elsewhere. i dont respect attention whores who try to force their views upon others by coercion because they haven’t been able to convince them of their merit in the marketplace of ideas.
sds bombed things to inspire the revolution and they got tenured spots at universities–i’m pretty sure that negates your entire bs paragraph
@hero thanks for mentioning stiglitz and chavez. people are so blind, i dont understand how someone so smart is endorsing an ignorant fool who is nothing but bad news.
Venezuela is headed towards Communism people. Just because someone is anti-bush/anti-iraqi war does not mean that he’s great. People are poorer than ever and there is no industrial growth whatsoever, things have utterly collapsed.
In other news, this hunger strike is ridiculous, the core does not need another class to be added and there are too many things that they are striking about. please stick to one thing and be passionate about it, if youre really gonna participate in a hunger strike.
@off topic but venezuela’s economy has actually grown massively in the last few years. you’re confusing your talking points. the anti-chavez claim is that it’s all because of rising oil prices, denialism is too obviously silly.
@yes... What else would cause Venezuela’s economic growth except for the high oil prices? And yes, there is a lot of money coming into Venezuela but it’s certainly not going out to help people. Do you know what Chavez is doing with that money? A few social programs is not proof that hes doing a good job.
@good job refuting the ‘denialism’. I’ll remember to include ‘silly’ as one of the cogent arguments I can use to refute a hypothesis or assertion.
Either way, the impetus for the current increase in non oil gdp growth was the oil based explosion about 2/3 yrs ago. Venezuela heavily relies on natural resources and while their metals growth hadn’t been that high, the boom the oil market had provided along with currency pegging to the dollar(particularly an end to the opec price limits) provided the freedom for the subsequent growth in service sectors.
http://www.latin-focus.com/latinfocus/countries/venezuela/vengdpsector.htm
http://indexmundi.com/venezuela/gdp_real_growth_rate.html
http://indexmundi.com/venezuela/gdp_composition_by_sector.html
Of course its hard to really understand the machinations of a countries economy when everythings being nationalized and being kept in secret.
@wait a second can i hunger strike until the hunger strikers stop hunger striking? honestly, if columbia makes me take extra ethnic studies classes because these jerks want to impose it upon me, i’m not eating until they re-amend the core to remove it. this is a private university that people choose to come to. if anyone actually feels racially oppressed here (and seriously who are these people?), they are free to go elsewhere. the core’s big enough, thanks, i’d like to major in something other than ‘stuff 7 hungry people think is important-studies’.
@Joe I’d be impressed and 100% surprised if you had the compassion and courage to hunger-strike
@by the way here’s a striker supporter in the spec:
“This is not a struggle just between students and administrators, but between a racist corporate institution and the working people of New York,” Karina Garcia, CC ’07 and chair of Lucha, read from a statement. Garcia stressed the urgency of the strikers’ demand for the University to withdraw its 197-c rezoning plan. “If it’s not the progressive anti-racist students at Columbia who will stand up against this injustice, who will?”
cool guys. people who oppose the strike are racists who support a corporatist racist institution
@geoffrey Aung Kudos to Prof. Dalton – certainly an inspiration.
@Dalton has always been a windbag. There’s a reason he’s at barnard and why you’ll never find a prof who doesn’t have a pocket copy of the communist manifesto teaching in that dept.
@oh god not another damn striker!
@yay Prof. Dalton continues to be one of the most inspiring people on this campus.