Power in Academia

I wrote a piece on power in academia for the Jewish Journal as a response to the Avital Ronell scandal (and the equally offensive defense of her actions by celebrity scholars like Judith Butler and others). The original piece was 800 words over the length limit, and I still was not finished saying what needed to be said. But brevity rules in the world of soundbite journalism. At any rate, you can read my piece here.

Coincidentally, my original draft contained personal anecdotes, including a story from 2008 about a film professor named Lance Duerfahrd. Just days after I published my piece at the Jewish Journal, I happened to read this story about a student from Purdue University who is suing him and accusing him of sexual assault. There were multiple complaints of this nature against this man (who was also, I should add, a very poor scholar with a heavily padded CV) as early as 2008, but the English Department chose not to treat them seriously. I wonder what they think of those complaints now? I hope those who were complicit in burying them will have to answer for what they have done.

Making Absence Visible: Remembering Claude Lanzmann

Upon hearing about his death, I wrote a piece about Claude Lanzmann. I didn't realize it was going to be called an obituary, but here it is. His film Shoah was one of the most important works with regard to my own thinking about what it means to talk about trauma in the most ethical and authentic way. I once taught a college freshman writing class in which I had the students watch all of the more than 8-hour film for the first two weeks of class. And then when we had finished, I said, "Okay, now write about something traumatic you experienced in your own lives. Or about something you witnessed."

I know, it sounds crazy. I had done so at the suggestion of my former dissertation advisor, Sandor Goodhart, whom I had called to complain about having to teach a freshman writing course. He suggested I turn it into something that fit my expertise. He said it would work, and he was right. It was one of the best and most real teaching experiences I ever had.

Philip Roth: Literary King of the Jews

My tribute to Philip Roth, Literary King, over at the Jewish Journal.

There Are Still Jews in Russia?

I recently read and reviewed Maxim Shrayer's new book, With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today's Russia, for the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. You can read it here. It's a really interesting study, particularly because ever since the success of the Free Soviet Jewry movement of the 1960-1980s, we have heard less and less about the situation of Jews remaining in Russia.

I think we sometimes forget that not everyone left.

I used to live in the Russian Jewish area of West Hollywood, and certainly living there made it feel like all of Russia's Jews had moved to LA at some point. And then there's all of the amazing new fiction being written by Russian Jews like Boris Fishman, Lara Vapnyar, Anya Ulinich, and David Bezmozgis (some of whose works are reproduced in part in a book I co-edited with two of my favorite colleagues). The works of these writers comprise some of the best and newest American/Canadian immigrant fiction, and we hear more of these stories than those of the ones who did not, for one reason or another, leave Russia for a so-called better place. At any rate, I really enjoyed Shrayer's study because it raises some questions I hadn't thought to ask, let alone answer.