I think Matt Langione '05 misses the point a bit when he declares that "The Passion" is not anti-Semitic. My first thought after seeing Mel Gibson's blockbuster was not just that Jews should be offended by this movie, but Jews and Christians alike. I spent several hours leafing through the Gospels looking for something to contradict Gibson's portrayal of the last days of Jesus' life. Depressingly, I found very little. But what I did find was a story of Christ's life almost completely antithetical to the way he is portrayed in the movie. The Christ in the Gospels is dedicated to social justice, healing and helping the living, whereas Gibson's movie is a life-renouncing panegyric to blood and gore. How will Christians raised in the tradition of a benevolent God who values human life react to a movie in which the only redeeming characteristic of the Christ seems to be how much pain he can sustain? 

The only person who would find anything Godly in Gibson's Christ would be a sadist. Christ in the movie is not the dedicated social reformer that today is universally respected among both Christians and Jews; rather, he is a punching bag for the evil, self-indulgent Jews. Pontius Pilate comes off almost rosy compared to the blood-thirsty high priests. Pilate at first tries to resist the execution and gives in only to protect himself from the rioting Jewish mob. Snapshots of Christ's gory, mutilated body intermesh with frames of the stern-looking, unsympathetic head rabbi looking on. Scenes like these remind us that the original Passion play was indeed a product of pre-war Germany, meant to harden Christian attitudes towards the Jewish people. But it isn't just Jews who should be outraged by Gibson's homage to violence-laden religious frenzy; all believers who celebrate the healing powers of religion should come together to reject Gibson's destructive cult of death-worship.

Take time to appreciate Verdi

Amherst College is a critical and conscientious place in which teachers complain about students, students about teachers and both claim Justice Scalia should definitely or definitely not have been invited. But if you had been in Buckley Recital Hall last Sunday afternoon and had heard Verdi's "Requiem" as performed by the College orchestra and choral society, you must have decided that Amherst College is an extraordinary place indeed. Or such was my experience.

Kornblith lacks good arguments

Russell Kornblith '06 has finally produced something worth responding to, but just barely. In his most recent article, Kornblith did a fine job of pointing out the issues that will be debated before the fall elections. For this service to the Amherst community, we should all be indebted. Yet his contributions stop here, for the rest of his piece relies on flagrant misconceptions and generalizations.

Kornblith would have readers of The Student believe that opponents of affirmative action wish for a return to segregation. Absent from his piece is any response to the principled argument against affirmative action: Making assumptions about the character of a person from his ethnic background can only be grounded in generalizations. If discrimination based on race is wrong, as anyone even remotely familiar with basic human morality can tell you, then how can we justify affirmative action? Kornblith paints conservatives as opponents of racial diversity, but he should practice what he preaches. The group in attendance of last Sunday's "Colorblind" discussion on race relations at Amherst, for example, was not large, nor was it diverse. In fact there were more conservatives there than liberals. Kornblith was conspicuously absent.

Kornblith then explains his reasons for supporting abortion-as a form of birth control. A ban on abortion, Kornblith declares, would increase the chances that one "unlucky hookup could terminate your Amherst career." Is he serious? He goes further, arguing that a ban on abortion "takes ownership of the bodies and the sex lives of every woman." This unabashed appeal to slogans and individual self-interest is truly disgusting. Apparently, Kornblith believes that abortion provides a license for sexual promiscuity. It would be hard to find a large group of people who support abortion because of this unrestricted "sexual freedom" that Kornblith advocates.

Russell Kornblith has managed to articulate, in one concise article, all that is revolting about this College.

Faculty can't attack students

With the passing of generations at the College, there is a need to state certain things anew. And so, might I convey to Brian Stout '04 an understanding long settled among many older members of the faculty: Professors should not permit themselves to cross swords with students in the pages of The Amherst Student. These usually turn out to be markedly uneven contests and unedifying spectacles. They are as unflattering to the professors as they are embittering to the students. In Stout's account of the lecture by Scalia and of my own letter, I regret to say that I found serious misstatements or false constructions, and indictments quite unwarranted. But I forbear from laying it all out again in this space. If Stout would truly like to have me set these things out for him, I would gladly receive him in my office for a conversation. 

On this matter of professors tangling with students, one corollary needs to be added. And here I wish to be clear that what I say has no necessary bearing on Stout. Of him, I know little and cannot speak. But this needs saying, based on things I've recently seen: The same understanding that enjoins professors from picking on students in the College newspaper should also enjoin them from making students spokesmen for the things they would not say in public themselves. To students, then, I would offer these maxims: Pause for sober reflection before you allow yourself to become the mouthpiece for someone else. But if the lure is overpowering, try at least to find yourself a smart ventriloquist.

Stout failed to defend protest

I hate to prolong the Scalia issue, but Brian Stout '04's latest creation warrants a brief rejoinder.

In a column in last week's issue of The Student, Stout declared that "even a cursory examination of the professors' protest letter reveals that the objection is not to the content of Justice Scalia's opinions, but rather to the manner in which he expresses them." Stout's "cursory examination" of the professors' letter of protest apparently did not include its latter half, when the professors took issue with Scalia's belief that "the reaction of people of faith to the tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible."

Nor does Stout explain Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science Austin Sarat's (who signed the protest letter) comments at the "debriefing" following Scalia's lecture. In words that ought to confound Stout, Sarat argued that "the scope of legitimate debate is narrower on a college campus than in the world at large." Addressing Scalia's arguments about the reach of the Equal Protection Clause, Sarat declared that whether or not homosexuals can be protected from discrimination is not a debatable subject at Amherst College. It would seem that not even the professors would deny that part of their complaint lay with Scalia's viewpoints.

Finally, Stout does not explain why the faculty signatories were curiously silent when Barbara Ehrenreich, in a speech at Amherst on Sept. 11, 2001, called President Bush a "moron" and expressed her fear that the president was going to "bomb a bunch of brown people." Also, if the professors were truly concerned with "vitriolic name-calling" and not with those who disagree with them, we would have seen a condemnation of Russell Kornblith '06's recent comparison of Scalia to Adolf Hitler.

Like most of Kornblith's productions, Stout's vitriolic assault on Professor Arkes at the end of his piece does not merit a response. But it is enlightening to point out the ultimate irony: Stout's call for Arkes to "[respect] the independent opinions of [his] colleagues." If only the 16 signatories of the boycott letter would follow that advice.

Stout's critique unwarranted

I find I must write in response to Brian Stout '04's article in the March 3 edition of The Student because he states that I have failed to grasp the distinctions in the letter to which I originally responded. I must differ with Stout on this. I feel he has failed, rather, to understand the points I made.

In the letter, a group of professors at Amherst publicly stated that they would not attend the lecture by Justice Scalia. As is appropriate, they included in this letter their reasons for this refusal and presented evidence to support these positions. I found on reading the letter that the evidence present was fatally flawed. That is, first, that quotations provided were presented out of context and when present in context were clearly interpretable as evidencing exactly the opposite position the letter presented them as supporting. And second, that quotations provided were asserted as making statements that they did not make. After looking at all the evidence presented I found that none of it supported the opinions expressed. This does not invalidate the opinions; they may be true. I was careful in my letter to not address the issue of these opinions and to address only the evidence presented to support these opinions. My conclusion was that the signatories had not presented any valid evidence to support a position that would make a public refusal appear appropriate.

I will concede that a certain respect for the Justice and a general agreement with his mechanisms for judicial analysis inspired my original letter. But also I saw this letter as an example of an attitude that I see much of here in Berkeley, Calif., and that I hoped would not infect my alma mater. The professors' letter is an example of a rigidity of attitude that sees all who disagree with it as guilty of heresy. I find discussion with such people impossible. They know the correct answer and disagreement with this is seen as a moral fault that reduces its holder in their eyes. I would have expected the authors to have presented their best evidence for their position and what I found was that they presented the worst possible evidence-not just misinterpreted or misjudged, but outright deceptive. This I find to be the tactic of the decided, who believe so deeply in their opinion that they see no need for evidence. I would hope that the fairest college would not fall to such.

Professors should have engaged

Let us accept, for argument's sake, the allegations made against Justice Scalia in the protest letter issued by members of the Amherst faculty. Scalia engages in "vitriolic name-calling." His decisions betray bigotry and intolerance. He is an ideologue.

This should not shock us to the core. It is a time-honored fact that people in power are not always philosophers. They will often be committed to power above truth, to ideology above intellect. So, then: How should the philosopher (or teacher) respond to such a sophist?

We have an obvious model to follow. When an ideologue has power, and he lands in your neighborhood, think WWSD: What Would Socrates Do?

Even a quick survey of Plato's corpus tells us that we must engage. We must ask questions. In the "Republic", Socrates didn't refuse to speak to Polemarchus or Thrasymachus after each defined justice in different, disturbing ways. In the "Euthyphro", Socrates didn't scoff when Euthyphro defined piety as "what is dear to the gods." And so on.

Socrates knew he was dealing with fools-or, at least, unreflective men. But not only does Socrates refuse to bar the door to them; he also resisted the urge to accuse them of idiocy or demagoguery.

Instead, Socrates inquires. He conversed with the non-philosophical man. This doesn't mean that he changed his interlocutors' minds. This doesn't mean that they didn't walk out the door. Socrates is not, obviously, a short-term political success.

But his life had broader intellectual success. Today, we know Socrates because his students found his commitment to a life of the mind, and to real justice, worth preserving. Socrates' life and death remind us that philosophical inquiry-confronting power with truth-is marginalizing and dangerous. But from Socrates we also learn the importance of philosophy; we see that asking questions shows the deepest reverence for truth.

I fly far on the left, and I am devoted to visions of social justice which Scalia rejects. Like the signatories of the letter, I find many of Scalia's opinions to be morally and logically dubious.

Even so, I wish those 16 well-honed minds had taken on Scalia in person. I would have loved to hear about it, to take a vicarious pride in the incisiveness of their questions. What might they have asked, and how might Scalia have answered? We can only wonder, but I suspect that could have been a dialogue for the ages.

Professors failed to confront Scalia

I recently received a copy of the Feb. 4 Amherst Student, and read in the letters to the editor section a protest by a few members of the Amherst College faculty over the then upcoming visit of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The actual writing lacked the fundamental rigor of English 1. The argument of the "scholars" seemed disjointed, distracted and anything but compelling.

I wonder why these few professors would create such bad examples for their students in both the democratic process and the discipline of good Socratic debate. Why didn't these members of the Amherst faculty present their case in a manner consistent with the high tradition of intellectual liberalism and the academic pursuit that has been identified with Amherst College for so long?

To protest by not participating is a weak-kneed attempt at best! The kids deserve better!