An important essay by an honored student on the hypocrisies of inclusion in higher ed

Sung Yim with shaved head
Source: Sung Yim, courtesy of lutherxhughes.com

Sung Yim wrote an essay to Columbia University after essays the Korean poet was asked to submit as a student representative of Columbia College Chicago’s Nonfiction writing department were twice rejected and the last essay, cut down to almost nothing to eliminate any controversial bits. The author writes about the author’s own work:

It’s important to keep in mind that my work has always been scathingly political. That is, I would think, part of why the writing faculty nominated my work. It’s also important to keep in mind that they were soliciting short work of a long-form artist. I was clipping and revising each piece I was submitting to them, which took hours of free labor. read more

Bernie Sanders’ race activism earned him University of Chicago censure, bad grades & arrest

bernie arrest
Source: Chicago Tribune
This is fun. Details about Bernie Sanders years as an activist in college, who was invited by a University of Chicago dean to take some time off from studies because his grades suffered from the intense anti-racism activism activities he engaged in.

Bernie began his fight against racism with a housing equity battle in 1961: a group of students learned that the university did not rent off-campus apartments it owned to black students and formed a coalition to change that, which Bernie Sanders helped lead. A couple of years later, in 1963, Sanders was arrested for protesting segregation at a Chicago South Side school. read more

I can’t stop crying, thinking about police brutalizing girls in classrooms. We must vote.

SC police officer brutalizes student
From video on CNN website
I just read José Luis Vilson’s piece giving his opinion on why adult complicity through inaction – sitting quietly by while big, strong, heavily armed policemen brutalize girls in school classrooms – is inexcusable. And I started crying again. This time I haven’t been able to stop, tears are running down my face as I’m writing.

Edited to add: I just learned that the assault victim is a girl who was recently orphaned.

Where did we go wrong, my friends and neighbors? I want to ask, to scream, to demand answers. How did we get to the point where we not only allow armed law enforcement officers into our children’s schools to serve as para-security guards … but beyond that point, to where we are today: where the same men who shoot pudgy grown men in the back because they failed to pay child support and band together to choke the life right out of a New Yorker for selling loose cigarettes, are let loose in our babies’ classrooms to brutalize, terrorize and humiliate them and after they do haul them off, no doubt, to lock them up in jails or detention schools or juvenile halls – to make them look the wrongdoers. read more

PBS & TED review the state of education today

Malcolm London at TED

Malcolm London at TEDThe Chicago Tribune has a fabulous article on PBS’ TED Talks Education hour long show on May 8 2013, which brought

… together a diverse group of teachers and education advocates delivering short, high-impact talks on the theme of teaching and learning. You’ll also see Chicago’s Malcolm Xavier London performing a spoken word poem about the racial and class tensions he experienced … London, who just turned 20, is a terrific fit for TED — which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. The nonprofit organization bills itself as being devoted to ideas worth spreading and often features people who have taken unorthodox paths giving talks about what they’ve learned read more