Palestinian Cultural Mural Inauguration: Some Thoughts

I just got back from the unveiling of the Palestinian Cultural Mural which was only made possible through the efforts of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) and those in the San Francisco State Community who supported their efforts to push for a Palestinian mural on the SF State campus. The event is still going on as I write this blog. From 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. there was a complimentary brunch in the Cesar Chavez Student Center and than from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. was the inauguration ceremony in where people from GUPS, the Student Center Governing Board, and many others (including Dr. Sonia Nimr who came here for the event all the way from Palestine), spoke. Later from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. was the closing reception with dinner and music and right now, still going on until 10 p.m. tonight is social hour and the screening of the movie “We Speak for Ourselves: Arab Voices.”

With all that though there is one thing I want to comment on in this blog. That’s on a wonderful speech given by Dr. Hatem Bezian who was a former student at SF State and who was also the president of the Associated Students board and the Student Center Governing Board. I had the pleasure of speaking with him after his speech for a moment about liberation theology and the bridging of Christian liberation theology with Islamic theology on liberation. Dr. Bezian teaches at UC Berkeley, so I will be definitely be looking for his classes next year!

What Dr. Bezian spoke on touched me, and my friends and fellow activists, very deeply on the roles of being a professor and one Edward Said’s (who the mural honors) thoughts and critiques of Western culture. Dr. Bezian talked about Said’s critique of Western society and his explanation of power throughout the world. He said that Western powers viewed people and nations as merely objects of power thereby dehumanizing entire continents of people and making them mere commodities for control of the world’s resources and for political control over the world’s regions and nations. In Said’s revolutionary book Orientalism the speaker explained how Said critiqued Western society’s view of the Near East. In the book Said stated that all literature in the West about the Near East is essentially suspect because of the West’s view of the Near East and of the Arab world. The West has a romanticized “Lawrence of Arabia” view of the Middle East which clouds their thinking and in turn romanticizes the colonization of the Near East by colonial and post-colonial powers such as Britain and America. Dr. Bezian than went on to say that in order for a society to colonize a people and to exploit and make war on a people society needs to have “intellectuals” and elites who justify the actions of that country and in turn to indoctrinate the youth (in universities and colleges) in order to buy into this way of thinking. Dr. Bezian said that by indoctrinating students the professor turns students into commodities because the professor much churn out student after student, carbon-copy after carbon-copy, and spit them out into the world in order to do the deeds of that society in question. Dr. Bezian says that professors who do this are no longer “intellectuals” but instead tools of the state and tools of imperialism and corporate slavery. In order to be a true teacher one must teach her or his students to think critically and to turn them into independent thinkers that can take action on their own without direction and in turn invest in the community and invest in trying to tear down this racist and capitalistic society in which we live in. Only then can one be really called a professor.

I was talking to my friend Jessicka who is going for her Masters in Ethnic Studies (I myself will begin studying for my Masters in Divinity next Fall at Berkeley) and we were both feeling Dr. Bezian’s words as this is our view of what a real professor should be. One who educates her or his students to think critically and to hopefully turn them on into doing activist work within his or her respected community. Professors, in our view, shouldn’t be these “objective” people with no opinions who instead just present “facts” professors should openly engage with their students and create critical dialouge as well as speak their mind and be open with their own political beliefs. We also both hold similar views on where we would want to teach as well. We wouldn’t want to teach in the ivory tower universities of Standford, Berkeley, Yale, or even (to a degree) SF State were we would be more worried about publishing our next book than teaching our (more than likely rich) students. Not only that but the students we would be teaching would be more than likely coming from privileged (in one way or another) backgrounds and in turn would leave the university upholding the status quo instead of trying to break it down.

What we both want to do is teach at community colleges. I myself would love to teach a class or two at City College of San Francisco on liberation theology and capitalism or community activism as well as work within my church congregation as a priest and engage in community work (most likely along labor lines). Community college is where the real teaching is at. I was in a conversation with one of my coworkers a few days ago at UPS, he’s a middle-aged Black man of medium height who doesn’t hesitate to start a fight with management. During this conversation we began talking about the educational system. Essentially it’s designed (we think) to intentionally set up young people of color and poor whites to fail. If these kids can survive the poor high school experience and make it to college they more than likely (especially at SF State) will be apart of a large freshman class that will overcrowd the classrooms and in turn create a backlog which will cause many first year students to not get the classes they want and than when they do get a class the teacher is so overwhelmed she or he has no time to make sure each student is actually learning. This in turn causes many students to drop out (the sophomore class at SF State is always much smaller than the previous years freshman class) and quite college all together or get spit into the underfunded community college system. Being viewed as fuck ups by their high school teachers and drop outs or students who “couldn’t take a real course load” by their community college professors they in turn get discouraged further by teachers who judged them just by looking at them.

My view is that if you really want to make a difference teaching than community college is where to teach. This is where the proletariat goes to learn as State and Universities and private colleges are too expensive. This is also maybe their last chance at receiving a higher education and degree. If it’s wasted than they are spit back out into society as, what Marx calls, the “reserve army of labor” and as low skilled workers devoid of any “class” and “racial consciousness.” Yet if some good professors are able to reach out to these kids in the community college and teach them to be aware of themselves, their backgrounds, history, this exploitative society, to be critically aware of class and racial issues, than you’ve created a weapon far more powerful than you could of by “educating” privileged students at an ivory tower university; for real change will come from the underclass and not from the top.