What is Wrong with Arizona?

Republicans in the Arizona legislature are at war with the state’s universities. Last year the legislature attempted to limit professors’ ability to assign texts that might make students “uncomfortable.” Basically, the end result of that measure would have meant that students could opt out of having to read anything at all. It also included a provision that would have forbidden professors from taking any action that might “endorse, support or oppose any pending, proposed or enacted local, state or federal legislation, regulation or rule.” Yeah, because why would we want universities to be places where people think and discuss legislation? Apparently Arizona Republicans have taken a look at higher education in their state and said to themselves, “You know, I would really like higher education to be less educational.”

This year, the Republican legislature has proposed an even more insidious bill. SB 1108 would forbid students from participating in groups organized around racial solidarity. So, for instance, students could not join the Black Business Students Association, Native Americans United or MEChA (Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán). Whether one agrees with these groups or not, one would have thought they would be protected by freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Arizona Republicans say "No!" You can sign a petition against this measure here.

Moreover, the measure would also forbid courses to be organized around race. Latino/a Studies, African American studies, and Asian American studies would all be illegal. Note to self: Never take an academic job in Arizona. Note to current Arizona Professors: Get out, if you can.

Republicans have called this measure part of “Homeland Security.” They promise to cut state funding to Arizona schools whose courses “denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization.” SB 1108 also would bar teachers from “overtly encouraging dissent” from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration. All teaching materials would have to be approved by the school superintendent for review.

We can set aside the stuff that is just plain confusing or nonsensical (How exactly has Mexico not participated in “Western Civilization?” Why is participating in the Black Business Students Association against capitalism?). We can focus, instead, on the ways that this measure combines Republicans' favorite forms of disinformation.

First, of course, it upholds the myth that we live in a “color-blind” society. It ignores that African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately poor, excluded from higher education, and earn less than their white counterparts. Whites remain the majority of university students (even in states (like Texas) with a non-white majority) at most flagship institutions. Yet, these measures place the blame for racist institutional practices onto minorities. MEChA emerged forty years ago to combat racism in the United States. In a classic Orwellian move, however, Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) and other supporters of the bill have declared that it is groups like MEChA that are “real” racists.



Republicans and other conservatives get testy when notions of race move beyond their control. Clearly MEChA doesn’t understand that racial categories are only supposed to be used to oppress people. Using race as a means to organize for social justice is so missing the point.

This isn’t to say, obviously, that every member of MEChA or similar left-leaning organizations is automatically a saint. Both individually and collectively, they make mistakes. A few members of the left on university campuses, for instance, have wrongly tried to silence people on the right. They must also be educated about the importance of universities being sites of free speech and intellectual engagement.

Don’t be fooled, though. People on the right are not interested in “academic freedom.” They are interested in crushing any person who dares to say they are wrong.

For over a decade, members of the right have been attacking universities and attempting to control their curriculum. A former - liberal - turned - neoconservative named David Horowitz led the charge starting in the 1990s. In essence, Horowitz claimed that university-level humanities departments had become secret havens for Democrats. He put forward (without any real evidence) the outlandish claim that these same faculty keep conservatives out, deprive them of funding, and openly indoctrinate their students to blindly vote Democrat. In an unexpected twist, Horowitz and crew claim that their own Academic Freedom is being impinged.

The notion that college humanities departments are hotbeds of radicalism seems fairly laughable. From my vantage point, these departments are pretty darn conservative. The faculty is not racially diverse (not even coming close to representing the general population of the nation); they loathe change; and they maintain the status quo more than they rock the ship of state.



Moreover, Republicans give faculty way too much credit while giving university students none at all. If, as a professor, I had the power to “indoctrinate” my students, do you think that Bush would still be sitting in the White House? I have no special power to brainwash my students into being radicals. Heck, I can’t even convince my students to use the spell checker on their wordprocessor before submitting a paper. Just imagine how little power I have to foment revolution.

This is not to say that my politics don’t inform my research and my research doesn’t inform my politics. It would be impossible for me, as a Latino historian, to disentangle those two components. I own and make explicit my political perspective to my students and suggest that it does, indeed, influence my teaching.

Being explicit about my perspective does not mean that I am trying to dazzle or trick students into sharing my political ideas. Instead, I believe that students are smart enough to grapple with the information presented in my class. They always decide what to think on their own (as they should). Trust me, students can be asked to question social relations of power, government authority, imperialism, and resistance without having a single one fly off to Cuba the next morning.



Unlike those on the right, moreover, my own political ideology is not threatened knowing that other professors express viewpoints counter to mine in their classrooms. Students should hear as many ideas as possible.

Universities are supposed to be places where students encounter a wide-range of ideas and perspectives. Students learn how to reconcile those ideas for themselves – that is the point of an education – Learning to think independently and stuff.

What the right wants to do with these measures is silence dissent. The right’s vision of “not indoctrinating” really means that we should never hear or learn from people different from themselves. Apparently people on the right imagine that their own intellectual positions are so fragile that they won’t survive a confrontation with alternative epistemologies. Ironically, by shutting down university professors who propose radical ideas about the nation, the right implies that those ideas are more attractive than the status quo.



Finally, it is not surprising that this effort would occur around the time that Arizona is projecting a massive budget deficit for 2009. In a classic move, Republicans look to distract Arizona from their economic mismanagement of the state. Instead, they claim that they are in an ideological war with the “left” to “preserve” the nation. If they really want to preserve the nation, they might look into the collapsing value of the U.S. dollar. That will destroy this nation much faster than a prof who dares to suggest that Mexican migrants have basic human rights.

Not Gay, But Queer

Ann Coulter’s grade-school intelligence and vocabulary has suddenly taken second-stage to another queer event at the CPAC. Who knew that this relatively unknown extremist right-wing convention would result in so much queer fodder?

During the CPAC conference, for those who aren’t plugged in, the far right fell over themselves to honor a Marine, Matt Sánchez, who cried foul at Columbia University. Well, if there is one thing that we gay boys like to do, it’s to play Angela Lansbury. After some digging, gay sleuths deduced that Sánchez had starred in some well-known gay porn. When that didn’t pay his bills, he also worked as a prostitute (As an aside, why does the media always refer to male prostitutes as “escorts” but women prostitutes as “prostitutes?”) The exact history of how these revelations came to light are a bit murky to me, but Joe.My.God put a spotlight on it. He also caught an interview with Sánchez.

This news certainly has me upset. Next time I hire a male prostitute, I am going to ask to see his voter registration card. Porn? Prostitution? Why are these conservatives infiltrating our most basic cultural institutions? Won’t somebody think of the non-children? Do Republicans hold nothing sacred?

When the hypocrisy of any queer is exposed, it always brings up some unsettled issues about outing, politics, and individual desire. As Atari points out, though, this isn’t about a former lover selling his tell-all story about the Marine. Sánchez produced images where he had sex with other men. He knew that they would circulate as a matter of public record. That’s not really an “outing” as much as it is a video rental.

One interesting element about the whole debate is the way that Sánchez’s racial identity has been subsumed or now lacks comment in relation to the porn issue. Yet, in the initial confrontation at Columbia, race played a critical factor in Sánchez’s rise to [minor] fame.

Sánchez, who identifies as Puerto Rican, stated that his racial identity became a salient issue in his conflict with other students at Columbia. According to Sánchez, an Anglo student at Columbia accused the military of using “minorities as cannon fodder” and told Sánchez, “You're too stupid to know that you're being used.” Sánchez and another Marine officer candidate, Marx Xue, stated explicitly that they believed racism to be an instrumental factor and felt harassed. "They were telling him that he was stupid and ignorant, that he was being brainwashed and used for being a minority in the military," Xue said, "Regardless of what you think about military recruiters, those comments were racially motivated."



It’s a forgone conclusion that I would probably not agree with Sánchez on any major political issue; however, I think his circumstances did suggest certain racist presumptions that exist among some people on the left (and right). I have little doubt that the lefty Anglo student in question probably did not have a sophisticated or complicated way of imagining race in the United States. To presume that any minority who serves in the military is simply “stupid” shows a serious lack of understanding about the motivations that individual people of color have for joining the armed forces.

One can argue that complicated economic and institutional structures exist in the U.S. that leave few other options for minorities (and many poor whites). That should not, however, discount that individuals are making conscious and clear choices. Some see it as their only means to improve their economic standing. Others see it as a genuine sense of patriotic duty (or a combination of the two). Only white middle-class privilege would presume to know better than the actual people in that situation.


In this way, Sánchez had an opportunity to create a real dialogue about race, nation and military service. Goddess knows that the nation is starved for such a discussion. Unfortunately, Sánchez decided not to pursue that route. Rather than calling for a deeper discourse, Sánchez called for an end to discussion. He wanted those who held a contrary view to him to be silenced, even punished. A position that ironically won him a “Free Speech” award from the right-wing CPAC.

Certainly there is not the same discussion about people on the left being harassed on conservative college campuses. At my former institution in Texas, for example, faculty (including myself) received many jeers and condemnation for opposing the poorly planned and executed military action in Iraq. Guess what, kiddies, that’s life in an open society. Rather than seeking some sort of retribution from those who disagree, our job is to refocus the discussion and debate. We can point out the foibles in their thinking, but telling them to simply shut-up is a mistake.

Sánchez, however, used convoluted arguments about “diversity” in an effort to make his own voice dominant. Sánchez never really engaged with Columbia’s institutional notions of diversity (which are probably not serving the interests of minority students, but not in the ways that Sánchez imagines). Instead, Sánchez mocked viewpoints different from his own. In an op-ed piece for the New York Post, Sánchez wrote, “ The university has chalked it up to free speech. All points of view are welcome at Columbia, from Venezuelan presidents to voices from vaginas. Unless you're in the military.” Yet, Sánchez has given little or no evidence that the administration has refused his right to voice his opinion. I have not seen or read anything where Sánchez’s right to free speech has been impugned. Instead, the subtext of his argument is that he has deemed viewpoints other than his own as less valuable and worthy of scorn. His argument seems to be that he expects the university to silence people who disagree with him.

Now Sánchez is feeling harassed again. Or he is building buzz for his book deal. I can’t really tell.

To his credit, he has not shied away from the discussion or entered re-hab to avoid the press. Still, he has allowed his own political ideology and individual ambition to short-cut another real potential for discussion about sex-workers in the United States. There is probably a great deal that we can learn from Sánchez’s experiences in the porn world. Sánchez makes a gesture to the bad circumstances that porn workers face. In the end, though, he made the issue more about justifying his own political ideology and decisions than critically examining the exploitation of sex workers.

In a clumsy political gesture, Sánchez made the bizarre claim that he didn’t like porn because of its “liberalism.” Both Republicans and Democrats purchase porn, as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force pointed out in response to Sánchez. In the United States, it is estimated that porn is a $10 billion per year business. That’s a lot of porn and I don’t think it’s just us lefties who are buying it up. The right, however, undercuts sexual freedom and keeps sex-workers unprotected and at the lowest rungs of society.

Sánchez’s efforts to explain his involvement in porn felt disingenuous. He frames those past activities as part of an alleged “progressive” growth in his personal character. Moreover, he disassociates himself from other queer people. Joe.My.God. asked Sánchez if he considered himself gay. “Boyfriends: 0 Fiancé: 2 Wife: 1,” Sánchez responded, “I'd say I'm pretty bad at being gay.” Pretty bad? I would say he was down-right lousy at being gay. Clearly he just isn’t trying hard enough.

Whatever the case, doing gay porn doesn’t necessarily make Sánchez “gay.” However, it sure as hell means that he can’t claim to be straight either. Face it, buddy, you are firmly in the queer camp even if you never touch another man’s penis until the day you die. Neo-cons might be nice to you as an individual, but they are kicking the shit out of us as a group.



Sánchez faces scrutiny because his political choices betray people like himself. He used an accusation of racist harassment at Columbia as means to promote his individual ambition. Yet, he supports a racist political system that keeps Puerto Ricans from attaining full equality (It’s probably not necessary to point out, but Puerto Ricans on the island are still administered as basically a U.S. colony (with the sanitized title of “commonwealth”). Puerto Ricans, though U.S. citizens, are unable to vote in national elections unless they move to the mainland).

Likewise, the Marine made a living off of gay men’s lust, but now aligns himself with a party that wants to deprive those same men of their rights. While I respect his right to hold whatever political view he desires, he should not be surprised that such views will be seen as self-serving and hypocritical.