A good dunking

I recently participated in a "dunk tank" for the United Way at the University.

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Waiting!

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Falling!

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After!

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Even though I was wearing my wet suit, I got chilly, to say the least. It reminded me that I certainly don't want to fall in the water while kayaking -- hypothermia is a very real threat within a very short period of time.

Obsessed with human rights

I have a subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education at the office. Inside a recent issue was something that other subscribers in the US had already been talking about on some academic discussion lists I follow: the "free" DVD of a "pre-release Special One Hour Edition" of a "special Advertising Insert" called Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. Most of the discussions I have read about this video have focused on who is behind this incredibly expensive campaign and its links to the US election. In the US it is now being distributed directly to university students through their on-campus mailboxes on certain campuses.

For me, this video links into two other topic of recent concern to me, both related to Islamophobia. One relates to Barack Obama and the idea that he might secretly be a Muslim (and clearly links to Obsession). The other has to do with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT) hearing regarding Mark Steyn, Macleans Magazine, Roger's Publishing and the Canadian Islamic Congress. The former topic is only of "academic" concern to me but the underlying issue is the same as the essence of the BCHRT matter with which I was involved as an "expert witness". I have wanted to write about this topic for a while and I plan to have a chapter in the forthcoming new edition of a book of mine dealing with it -- and the widespread distribution of Obsession proves the need for it even more.

On Saturday I learned that the BCHRT had issued its decision in the Macleans case, rejecting the complaint. The decision, available here, is, to me as a non-lawyer, interesting and well-reasoned. The decision is justified through a fine balancing of "rights" and "freedoms" and also based clearly (to me) on legal precedents. Given the many misgivings I had about my "performance" on the occasion of being an "expert witness" (primarily provoked by reading too many right-wing bloggers probably whose abusive approach both to the tribunal members and to me personally is not something I am accustomed to), I was glad to read that the members of tribunal heard what I said and took it seriously. That they gave me the "last word" in their summary is satisfying but it does leave me with the feeling that I failed to express a crucial follow-up to my observation. The Tribunal comments (in paragraph 157) "We think that Dr. Rippin put it best when he said that the Article is a rallying cry to the 'West'. The Article may attempt to rally public opinion by exaggeration and causing the reader to fear Muslims, but fear is not synonymous with hatred and contempt." What I suggested is that Mark Steyn is attempting to reform Euro-American society towards a structure of minimal government interference (claiming that we have lost "our" strength due to governmental over-protection) and in which traditional (patriarchal) power structures remain intact. In order to "scare" Euro-American society into action on these issues, he raises the "threat" of Islam. The issue is not Islam, as such, but rather, it is a rallying point to provoke a change in the nature of Euro-American government and society. The point is, from my perspective and why I was willing to be a part of the hearing, that Muslims are the innocent victims caught in the middle of this political battle over the nature of US society and government. That's what "Islamophobia" is all about.

As it happens, the Tribunal lamented not hearing a definition of "Islamophobia". The best definition comes from a British report done by the Runnymede Trust. Details may be found in Wikipedia. The summary is as follows:

The Runnymede report identified eight perceptions related to Islamophobia:

1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
2) It is seen as separate and "other." It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
3) It is seen as inferior to the West.
4) It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist.
5) It is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism, and engaged in a clash of civilizations.
6) It is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.
7) Criticisms made of "the West" by Muslims are rejected out of hand.
8) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society. Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural and normal.

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Sunday October 19: As a follow-up to this the following text from Colin Powell is relevant to the remark above about Obama:

"I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists'."

And on Steyn and his ilk, see now http://www.smearcasting.com/index.html compiled by FAIR, an American media watch group.

Setting goals

My son Lucas has a school project that stretches over a full year. He had to come up with a meaningful personal goal and work on it over the course of the year. He chose to write a sports blog. You can see it at http://mcsportsblog.blogspot.com/ -- in fact, he'd be delighted if you would leave some comments.

When Lucas brought this project home, Beth and I decided that we would also establish year-long goals so we would all being doing something together. Beth decided to take piano lessons. That worked well until the (electronic) piano stopped working properly (hey, Duncan, want to buy a used piano?). She's into photography now.

My goal was to run a marathon. I've been a runner for a number years; my first participation in an organized run must have been 20 years ago or so -- the Run, Wall and Roll in Calgary, as I recall, and I ran in a number of others during those early years, especially in Banff --Melissa's, Winter Start etc. When I moved to Victoria I kept it up but starting in about 2005 I seem to have stopped. I had many excuses (pressures of work, you know, that sort of thing) but they all disappeared with my new goal.

Today I ran my second half-marathon. I thought I might run in the Royal Victoria Marathon next month but after running the Land's End half today, I realize that I'm not ready for it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't finish. (Beth and Lucas seem willing to accept that two halves equal a whole.) It was a great run today but it was blisteringly hot especially towards the end and, as in my first (ever) half (the Oak Bay one), I started to fade badly at the 18k mark. My time today was about the same as my previous attempt: 2:02, 2:03. I may be getting older but at least I'm not getting any slower! True, there are lots of runners my age who do it much faster though, so age is not really an excuse. Okay, so at least I finished.

I'm too exhausted right now to contemplate signing up for another run. Probably in a week's time I'll gain some motivating perspective. We'll see. But I do like setting goals.

Blogging

I was reading a short article in the most recent issue of Wired that surveyed the slew of books and articles which have appeared recently on the negative impact of the Internet and all associated technology (as in The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future and "Is Google Making us Stupid?"). One author suggests that the Web makes us "both moronic and narcissistic."

Writing a blog is a perfect example of what is meant. Blogs are used for jottings of random pieces of information which those who post them presumably think are important and worth others reading. Blogs are, when you come down to it, the contemporary form of a diary, something that always used to be private and often kept under lock and key. Today, blogs reveal all to the world; things which in the past would have been between myself and my pen are now between the world and my keyboard. Blogs suggest we think ourselves to be of such individual significance that we should share our thoughts and lives. Moronic and narcissistic.

But there's another view: blogs, and things like Facebook, personal domain names (I own three names: rippin.org, rippin.ca and islamicworld.ca) and all those other manifestations of the Internet, are a part of an emerging arena for the construction of social relations. Facebook, it strikes me, is like going to a party except it's online: it's an opportunity to meet new people through other people you already know. Our personal networks are expanding tremendously. Blogs are a way to provide communciation to friends and colleagues, and perhaps gain some new friends in the process.

I've always said that if I had to do my career over again I would choose to be a rock star (sometimes I even say that's what I'll do when I retire -- not that I have any musical talent though). I've been thinking about that. While that fantasy aspiration would be fine if I could be a rock star of the late sixties/early seventies and stay in the that time period for ever, I fear the reality would be that I'd have to keep up with the musical times or sell myself as an aging rocker, Mick Jagger style. Both of those seem pretty dismal outcomes that I don't think I'm up for. So, I think I'll change what I would have liked to have been: I'd be an academic but I would have taken up cultural studies so that I could really understand things like blogs and what they mean.

A Weighty Tome

I recently found a weighty tome in my mailbox-- a most impressive book by John Lutz of the History department with the title Makuk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations, published by UBC Press in 2008. The topic is one none of us can ignore, living where we do, and a quick glance at the table of contents reveals that this will be a work that will reward a close reading -- something I hope to do before too long (although I won't be taking it backpacking with me, given its dimensions!).

But what really attracted my attention to John's book were the physical qualities of the book. It's more than simply asserting that UBC Press did a nice job of the binding and the paper. This is a book with design features that we don't often see in scholarly works (I should point out that the book stems from John's dissertation from a number of years back and that it has over 55 pages of notes and a bibliography of over 20 pages). First impressions are those of thinking that it is something of a textbook, even for high school classes maybe, and it could well be that it will find an audience there. But overall, I think that a misleading characterization and a reflection of my (and I suspect other people's) low expectations of the design of academic books these days. It's more than just the presence of illustrations (I have finally published an edited work that contains some pictures so I know what impact they alone can have) but it's to be seen in the use of multiple typefaces and font sizes, the use of quotes in outside margins, of boxed-text extracts, of detailed maps, of tables and charts -- things that simply makes this book a delight to contemplate and provide so many places to dip into the subject matter. O that all publishers would take such pride in their work and that we as authors would not feel the pressures of needing to publish quickly and the publisher's need to recap their investment in us ever sooner so that the joys of the physical properties of the book could be experienced more often!

The Dean's First Blog

It all seems so easy -- sign up on blogger.com and start blogging. I'm going to give it a try for a bit to see if I can really find the time to write things with regularity. It will, at least, serve as an alternative to the longish emails I send once in a while telling a story.

A colleague -- Judith Mitchell in English to be precise -- gave me a book just before Lucas (my son) and I went off backpacking this past week. The Academic Community: A Manual for Change by Donald Hall looked to be just what I needed: a book to invigorate me and make sure that the less-than-two-years I have left as Dean are a period in which I can really say I accomplished some things. I quickly read the first chapter and saw that this was going to valuable: the basis of Hall's book is found in Gadamer's ideas on dialogue and hermeneutics, a perspective I find appealing. So, into the backpack it went.

Unfortunately things did not work out quite they way I hoped. The hike in to Circlet Lake in Strathcona Park was easy and pleasant but it got cold and started to rain shortly after we arrived. For the next three days the weather was not such as to encourage sitting around reading (my ability to read lying in my sleeping bag is limited these days, I find, given the difficulties of determining just the right "spot" in my glasses to focus on a book while holding it in front of my nose).

What made it worse was that I took a second book with me and I just happened to start reading that too (always a bad idea): Mieke Bal's Loving Yusuf: Conceptual Travels from Present to Past. This work develops the notions of "cultural memory" as related to the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife in the Bible, the Qur'an, Rembrandt and Thomas Mann, as well as through the author's autobiographical memories of a Dutch Catholic education. I was enthralled again for the first chapter but made little progress beyond that. Those of you who know Bal's work will realize that while she shares some theoretical perspectives found in Hall's frame of reference, she writes in a more theoretical way and I found that the two works together did not necessarily make good companions -- and that didn't encourage me to endure the cold and read on.

O well. My summer reading adventure won't result in a full report to the Faculty this year as I was hoping (and as I managed last year with Williams' Stoner, read while hiking Nootka Island). But at least I have a picture to share. Here's me on Mt. Frink with Moat Lake and Mt Washington in the background. Gorgeous weather, you'll note: two hours later, it started to rain, hail and snow (lightly).

Andrew