Comments on: more on MIT and visualizing cultures

By: popxp.com

popxp.com — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 13:21:08 +0000

I suppose the most obvious disagreement one might have about this entire issue is the extent to which it should be narrowly construed as pertaining to a single issue (the editing and layout of one particular website), or broadly construed as involving wider and more fundamental topics (the state of academic freedom and the influence of forces hostile to it). How one sees this probably depends on one’s personal experience (recent and long-term), sympathies in this case, and general worldview. Time will reveal how justified these different perspectives are. Personally, I am quite curious about whether this is a single blip or the start of a trend on other campuses. One could make the argument that MIT is a somewhat unusual campus, and that this is therefore not to be expected elsewhere. I’m not sure I agree, but I will wait and see.

By: Frog in a Well - The Japan History Group Blog

Frog in a Well - The Japan History Group Blog — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:44:49 +0000

[...] Finally, I would be deeply remiss if I didn’t note the historical brouhaha in which I had a small hand: the protests and controversy over Sino-Japanese War Art at MIT. Even within the confines of our own little blogfamily here, we had some sharp disagreements. While Alan Baumler and I (linked above) tended to side strongly with Dower/Miyagawa, Winnie Wong made a case that — from her perspective as an art historian — the exhibit was indeed flawed. [...]

By: Aqueduct » Carnival!

Aqueduct » Carnival! — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 02:21:15 +0000

[...] When preaching to the converted, I’ll be sure to show off a post that Alan Baumler presented more on MIT and visualizing cultures posted at Frog In A Well ~ China, and another that Sharon nominated, Subsidizing Public/State Education posted at crooked timber. Both comment threads define the type of collaborative learning community instructional designers dream of. [...]

By: Matthew Mosca

Matthew Mosca — Wed, 24 May 2006 13:18:41 +0000

Hi, Winnie,
I suppose the most obvious disagreement one might have about this entire issue is the extent to which it should be narrowly construed as pertaining to a single issue (the editing and layout of one particular website), or broadly construed as involving wider and more fundamental topics (the state of academic freedom and the influence of forces hostile to it). How one sees this probably depends on one’s personal experience (recent and long-term), sympathies in this case, and general worldview. Time will reveal how justified these different perspectives are. Personally, I am quite curious about whether this is a single blip or the start of a trend on other campuses. One could make the argument that MIT is a somewhat unusual campus, and that this is therefore not to be expected elsewhere. I’m not sure I agree, but I will wait and see.

By: Winnie Wong

Winnie Wong — Tue, 23 May 2006 20:57:40 +0000

Matt, [this is in response to your comment #8 which I have just read now] thank you for sending that link. It is very useful to know, and I agree with you that Professors Dower and Miyagawa should absolutely be commended for their response to the protests. I was proud to be associated with MIT when I learned of how the administration and these two professors in particular responded to what was an emotional event for so many. Gross generalizations such as some comments expressed by posters on this tianya forum are indeed dangerous. Just this week, another article taking the MIT events to an extreme were published in The Chronicle for Higher Education. In summing up the MIT events, it says:

Culture clashes can occur between scholars and students of any nationality, several observers noted, but Chinese students who have been schooled in extreme nationalist sentiment are likely to present special challenges.

Mr. Perdue has recommended to the MIT administration that it set up orientation programs for foreign students who arrive on a campus where they may “have to face difficult, painful questions about their history.”

Full article is here: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i37/37a01401.htm
The prospect of institutions rounding up anyone with non-American passports for acculturation classes is now being recommended as a broad institutional response to some students shouting irrationally. I hope that you will join me in condemning this kind of overreaction to the incident we have been discussing.

By: Winnie Wong

Winnie Wong — Mon, 22 May 2006 13:11:43 +0000

Matthew – Though I have failed to convince you or Alan of my ‘art historical’ critique of the text, I am still not ready to assume that my critique is not one of an open minded student with the interest in learning or understanding Japanese visual culture. Speaking of the protest in general (as opposed to just my response), without any information about who did/did not use the Visualizing Cultures site, nor the content of their individual responses to Dower and Miyagawa (eg web-comments might help with that), I have a hard time making generalizations about the protesting audience as a whole, how ‘open-minded’ they were, how ‘respectful’ etc. None of the initial response has been made available to us to evaluate, and the original use of the image as advertisement (as opposed to a teaching product) has been excised from the debate as well. We do know from reports on both sides that there were ‘irrational’ and ‘abusive’ attacks, and that one decontextualizing email was sent by one unnamed student. We also know that there were ‘hundred’ of responses from all over the world. Many have told us that the irrational few stands for the whole, but I personally have no evidence of that. Two different MIT professors attended the Open Forum with the Chancellor and Dower and Miyagawa, but both came away with opposing impressions. At the forum I was at, the discussion was very thought-provoking, and brilliant points about visual culture in general were raised by both professors and students. The only written evidence of protest I have to go on is the CSSA letter, which, in my reading, respectfully asks for historical contextualization and disclaimers. You and I can disagree on its tone or the fairness of its demands, but neither do I think the CSSA letter represents all protestors of the site. Without a chance myself to evaluate the actual content of messages sent to Dower and Miyagawa (aside from the CSSA letter), I don’t know how I can get inside the minds of the protesters. In such a situation, I tend to naively err on the side of caution, and not guess as to the mindsets of “certain segments” of the public.

Your comments makes me wonder than, for the future, when attempting to perform public pedagogy through the internet, whether we as teachers should adopt the position of increased caution (vs. classroom) or not. This, I think, is where we might agree to disagree, and I’d submit, as long as it’s a matter of choice for the scholar, and so long as criticism as aired respectfully, we can let our own publics judge our writing.

By: Matthew Mosca

Matthew Mosca — Mon, 22 May 2006 09:03:19 +0000

As an addendum, a friend of mine has passed on to me the following link:
http://www.tianya.cn/new/publicforum/content.asp?stritem=no04&flag=1&idarticle=540251&idwriter=0&key=0
It is essentially a series of pictures of the meeting between Profs. Dower and Miyagawa and interested MIT students, with annotated ‘commentary’ (peppered with personal abuse). It seems to give a particularly good insight into the attitudes of at least a segment of the protestors. Note that the suggestion of a moderated comment board seems to have been shouted down. There’s a lot that could be said about this, but I will leave it to the reader to form their own impression. My own immediate response is that Profs. Dower, Miyagawa and Perdue are endowed with a degree of patience and a self-sacrificing commitment to education that borders on the heroic.

By: lirelou

lirelou — Mon, 22 May 2006 05:27:10 +0000

I greatly enjoyed the exhibit and downloaded many of the images for use in future classes. At the same time, reviewing many of the comments, I am thankful that I did not become an art historian. It must be painfully tiring work.