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To universities “choosing to stay neutral”, despise, abhor, and spew out all neutralities!
March 11, 2025 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
According to a headline in today’s New York Times, “More Universities Are Choosing to Stay Neutral on the Biggest Issues”. According to the report, “148 colleges had adopted “institutional neutrality” policies by the end of 2024”. There is no neutrality here, there is, at best, compromising of values foundational to the liberal arts. In the immortal words of Rastaman, played by Amiri Baraka in the film Bulworth, universities have chosen to be ghosts in a time when we need spirits.
Neutrality: not taking sides in a controversy, dispute, disagreement, impartial, unbiased. Neutrality: In relation to war or armed conflict: not assisting, or actively taking the side of, any belligerent party, state, etc.; remaining inactive in relation to belligerent powers. Neutrality: Not belonging to or controlled by any belligerent party, state, etc.; belonging to a power which remains inactive during hostilities; exempted or excluded from the sphere of warlike operations.
Universities who “choose to stay neutral” have chosen sides, and not only in the matter of Palestine and Israel. They have chosen to be the property of major donors. They have chosen to forsake inquiry, debate, difficulty for … for what? Survival? As what? As ghosts of their former selves. They have chosen the elephant, and the mouse will not thank them.
In the twentieth century, thinker after thinker decried the claim of neutrality in periods of crisis, especially those of mounting state violence. Desmond Tutu stands in a crowd of righteous survivors and martyrs who faced injustice and oppression and warned against the neutral stand. In the seventeenth century, Robert Herrick wrote Neutrality Loathsome.
Neutrality Loathsome
God will have all, or none; serve Him, or fall
Down before Baal, Bel, or Belial:
Either be hot, or cold: God doth despise,
Abhorre, and spew out all Neutralities.
From Herrick in the 1600s to the Rastaman today and beyond, spew out all neutralities! You can’t be no ghost! Be a spirit!
(By Dan Moshenberg)

The New Delhi railway “stampede” was a planned massacre of women and children
February 21, 2025 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
“how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster” W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts“ “The stampede at New Delhi Railway station on February 15 that resulted in 18 deaths and left many injured was caused by a lethal combination of factors.” Of the 18 deaths reported thus far, 14 were women. Once […]

For it is a mournful truth that devastation is incomparably an easier work than production
February 6, 2025 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
The abandonment of all principle of right enables the soul to choose and act upon a principle of wrong, and to subordinate to this one principle all the various vices of human nature. For it is a mournful truth, that as devastation is incomparably an easier work than production, so may all its means […]

Eviction Watch: Who builds the city up each time? A (construction) worker reads history
January 9, 2025 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
“And Babylon, so many times destroyed. Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses, That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it? In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up?” […]

Eviction Watch: In the warehouse of evictions, our “need” for misery and torture
January 7, 2025 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
“And she had learned from experience that Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty.” Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 2025 began as 2024 ended, skyrocketing eviction filings, soaring evictions, mounting homelessness amid calls from many quarters to “address homelessness” by evicting the unhoused from their encampments, from […]

“Our worsening national affordable housing crisis” caused record levels of homelessness
December 28, 2024 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
This week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research released its 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report. The report takes a one-day image of homelessness on a day in January 2024, a so-called Point-in-Time, or PIT, count. The picture is predictably grim. From 2023’s count to this one, homelessness […]

Eviction Watch: In a land of melting watches, what is time?
December 26, 2024 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” It’s the end of another year, and, for many reasons, many wonder, “Where has the time gone?” What is time? When it comes to housing, affordable housing, eviction, not to mention any sense of justice or humanity, time is crucial, […]

Prison population in England and Wales set to exceed 100,000 by 2029. Where are the women? Still in prison
December 5, 2024 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
Despite programs that ostensibly were designed to reduce prison populations, The Guardian today reports, “The prison population could top 100,000 within five years in England and Wales …. The justice department acknowledged that a perfect storm of rising prosecutions, politicians bringing in higher maximum sentences, and soaring numbers of people on remand – meaning they […]

On “real suffering”: The heartless cruelty of eviction in India and beyond
October 28, 2024 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
“… the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering…. the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right According to a recent report, “Over 17 million people across India live under the constant threat of […]

Diary Entry: For Those Who Claim to be Pro-life — for Emmanuel Littlejohn and Many Others
September 29, 2024 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
Diary Entry: For Those Who Claim to be Pro-life — for Emmanuel Littlejohn and Many Others For those who claim to be pro-life For a justice system with as bad aim as two would be assassins. More evidence against Donald Trump than against Emanuel Littlejohn (But, the Lord is with us.) Now He’s dead […]

Oregon: If working people can’t afford to stay in the housing, it’s not affordable housing
September 27, 2024 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment
What exactly is affordable housing? There’s much discussion these days, and finally, concerning an affordable housing crisis, the lack of affordable housing, the vast and growing numbers of households, families, individuals and communities living and struggling with housing insecurity, paying more than 30% of monthly income on household expenses and/or expecting to be evicted or […]