32 CommentsWhile working as a professor, the Activist is forced out of his/her/non-gender- specific-pronoun’s natural habitat. Best suited for the front lines of some genre of consciousness-raising event, this experienced and opinionated speaker captures the class with what seems at the time to be an extremely relevant argument against society’s unnecessary gendering of bath products. The Activist Professor sits crisscrossed on the floor of your Philosophy and Feminism class, speaking brilliant words that, though you don’t understand, leave you feeling oddly invigorated and prepared to fight the evils of Wal-Mart. The Activist Professor’s choice to wear aggressively comfortable shoes confirms their dedication to the issues.
The younger Activist (read: T.A.) often comes equipped with a few extra piercings, tattoos written in Sanskrit, and if students are lucky, a strand of neon blue or pink hair. These all act as visual tools to help reaffirm the Activist’s strong activist-y beliefs (in what? who cares!?). Each extra piercing represents the young Activist’s growing hope to “just have a conversation, you guys” about free-range farming and the rise of evangelical Christianity in the United States.
The Activist is very serious about the issues. All of the issues. Do you share with your professor an interest in fighting for the rights of sex workers? Have you seen your professor give a speech at an event for the Human Rights Campaign? Does your professor inexplicably wear Birkenstocks to class everyday? If yes, congratulations…you have an Activist Professor. This is what college was like in 1994, we guess.
Text by Lily Icangelo, illustration by Hannah Kloepfer
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32 Comments
@have you seen her?! who doesn’t love Hannah Kloepfer?
@2011 the post was obviously written about Christia Mercer, but Elizabeth Povinelli also fits in
@Columbia ROTC rising http://advocatesforrotc.org/columbia/index.html
@haha that’s a funny picture.
@bwog please write something. spec already has it covered http://spectrum.columbiaspectator.com/spectrum/bollinger-signals-possible-lift-on-rotc-ban#comments
@By the way, I fully expect that everyone knows what I’m talking about, and that there will be some discussion about this soon, but as of today, Columbia University needs to come up with a new excuse to ban military recruiters from campus. I suspect a few people are going to be “outed” for the real reasons they opposed them in the first place.
@hmmm Columbia is like John Mccain in reverse. The university’s bluff has been called, so what’s it gonna be Columbia? Principled stand to do the right thing or knee-jerk 1960s leftover reactionism.
@hmmm Looks like I may have spoken too soon.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1210/Harvard_Yale_moving_on_ROTC.html?showall
@person Don’t ask don’t tell isn’t actually repealed. They just removed the Congressional mandate of it and left it up to the military to decide their policy. It’s gonna stay the same, guys.
@DADT on terminal life support It is not “gonna stay the same”.
DADT wasn’t a mandate, it was a law and that law has been repealed. True, DADT will stay intact while the military bosses decide how to implement post-DADT policy to reflect openly gay servicemembers, but that’s just transitional. Go to the Pentagon’s DADT page and read for yourself how the military is thinking about post-DADT policies: http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2010/0610_gatesdadt/
@Any free food on campus? seriously? im mucho hungry.
@There is some free food in my pants if you know what I mean
@Anonymous I am with a group of people studying, and this drawing is our entertainment for the hour. Those 2 hands are like one mama and one baby hand.
@Anonymous LOL I hope the marching band makes some jokes about the drawings during orgo night.
When is orgo night btw?
@... http://www.dnainfo.com/20101217/upper-west-side/investigators-release-more-details-on-columbia-drug-bust
@I wish I went to harvard samantha power
@das racialist I went to harvard for grad school and have interacted with sam power. she’s more like an almost unnecessarily modest version of “the superstar”.
@Anonymous Since when did Bwog turn into the Huffington Post.
@Anonymous speaking of activism, Bwog, no talk about the dont ask dont tell repeal?
@Anonymous there is no desiring-machine capable of being assembled without demolishing entire social sectors
@quit it you could do this same piece at any school and draw the same tepid reaction.
@SWPL This read 100% like a “Stuff White People Like” post.
And that’s not a bad thing.
@das racialist this is definitely a valid professor archetype, but I’m having a hard time thinking of examples at columbia, which is definitely more the land of “the marxist” and “the (world-saving) superstar”. seems more applicable to some liberal arts college out in the hippie countryside of the berkshires or vermont. smith, for sure. maybe bennington.
maybe I just didn’t take enough “philosophy and feminism”?
@Womp Paige West.
@das racialist ok, but we need more than one example to make it “an archetype”, right?
@anon This is cool and all, but it just reaffirms our generation’s obsession with image and irony above all else. Literally no one can have a genuine, dare I say -honest- belief without that being removed from them and reapplied as a label. Nothing means anything, everyone’s a bumper sticker, we are in a post-everything society.
/realizes this was a humorous, innocent, article, still believes point is valid on a larger level.
@Anonymous this guy needs a blog, or even better, a tangible medium for expression. If you are already a famous published poet or country musician, please disregard.
@Kenny Chesney You caught me! I am in fact multi-platinum selling recording artist Kenny Chesney
@Amen I don’t think I’ve ever agreed more with a comment in a online comment section more than right now.
That fact of society bothers me too, and I don’t have the slightest idea of how society will overcome it, if at all.
@I swooned “just have a conversation, you guys” This right here is what did it for me.
@Love these But dang if these drawings aren’t painful.
I appreciate you taking the time to do them, no one’s paying you, etc. etc…but seriously. photobucket pictures would be less offensive.
@critic I dont like this drawing
but I DO like hannah kloepfer
go gettem gurl