By Kathy Witkowsky
St. Paul, Minnesota
Last fall, as a favor to a journalist
looking for a September 11
follow-up story, Macalester College
history professor Emily Rosenberg
asked students in her U.S.Foreign Policy in
the 20th Century class how they felt about
being at the forefront of a new, post-
September 11 generation. The students
gave a collective groan, she recalled.
“That whole question,” one of them
said,“ignores history.”
Rosenberg tells that story with pride.
She loves teaching at Macalester, a liberal
arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota, that
emphasizes internationalism, community
service and critical thinking for its 1,800
students. Even though Rosenberg has not
changed her course to deal directly with
the terrorist attacks or the U.S. response to
them (“You have a very limited amount of
time. Are you going to skip the Cold
War?”), she is hoping students begin to
connect some of the history they are learning
in class to the issues brought up by
September 11, instead of swallowing an
overly simplistic version of the attacks and
their aftermath.
“Students understand that you don’t
just start the narrative at September 11,”
she said. “I think it makes sense to resist
that framework.”
She would prefer that her students ask
good questions rather than look for pat
answers. So she—and Macalester—plan to
stay their course.
While many colleges and universities
across the country have felt compelled to
develop new classes and new policies in
response to September 11, the attacks and
the resulting debates over U.S. foreign
policy have simply highlighted Macalester’s
strengths, said college president Michael
McPherson. “A huge lesson we have
to draw from this horrible stuff is that
there simply is not a separation between
the U.S. and the rest of the world,” Mc-
Pherson said.
That’s a concept that has always been
emphasized at Macalester, which is known
for its international studies and large foreign-
student contingent. “We do think
we’re on the right track,” said McPherson,
who said he does not expect to implement
any major changes in reaction to the attacks.
“It will reaffirm our commitment to
internationalism at a time when too many
Americans think we can withdraw from
the world.That’s just not an option.”
It also reaffirms Macalester’s commitment
to its educational mission, said
McPherson, who cancelled classes on September
11 but refused a student’s request
to cancel them again on the national day
of mourning the following Friday. Doing
so would have interrupted and undermined
the significance of the work going
on at the college. “I don’t believe we
should ever think of what we’re doing
here as business as usual,” said
McPherson. “The ‘same old, same old’ at
Macalester is one of the most important
things we can do.”
But if the attacks highlighted
Macalester’s strengths, they also arguably
shone a spotlight on one of its weaknesses:
an intellectual and philosophical isolation
and self-absorption, often referred to
colloquially as the “Mac bubble.”
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Macalester College President Michael McPherson
thinks the September 11 attacks and their aftermath
“will reaffirm our commitment to internationalism,”
a major emphasis at the college. |
Underneath the American flag that
flies on Macalester’s 53-acre campus
waves the United Nations flag—a visible
symbol of the school’s commitment to
internationalism and diversity, as well as a
reminder of one of the school’s most
famous alumni, U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan. Even the menu at the
school’s bright and airy cafeteria reflects a
global sensibility: Students fill their plates
with Indonesian and Thai curries, Asian
stir-fries, Italian pastas, pizza, Latin
American cuisine like Cuban pork and
fried bananas, or northern European fare
like chicken and spaetzle soup or corned
beef and cabbage.
A look at the students gathered in the
cafeteria seems to further support the
notion that Macalester is a bastion of
diversity. Consider: Its students come from
all 50 states plus the District of Columbia
and 78 countries. Fourteen percent of the
students are, in fact, international students.
Thirteen percent of U.S. students are
minorities. Seventy-three percent of the
student body receives financial aid, a
reflection of Macalester’s need-blind
admissions policy and $500 million
endowment.
But when it comes to politics,
Macalester’s students generally run the
gamut “from left to far left,” as one
observer put it. The terrorist attacks and
the U.S. response only served to
underscore the school’s political
homogeneity. “Macalester likes to take a
collective stand on things,” said Nora Main,
21, a senior from Milwaukee. “In general,
it’s hard not to be PC on this campus,” she
said. “[September 11] has made it more
so.” But, added Main, inadvertently
underscoring her own point, “I don’t know
that’s necessarily a bad thing.”
But it is a bad thing, according to
Ahmed Samatar, dean of international
studies and programming. “One of the
great challenges at Macalester is how to
counter ‘unthinking liberalism,’” said
Samatar. He tries to do so by introducing
his students to well-constructed liberal and
conservative arguments. There’s not much
of the latter on campus, he said.
Unlike most of their peers at other
colleges and universities, students at
Macalester generally were not in favor of
the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.While 60
percent of undergraduate students polled
nationwide in mid-October by Harvard
University’s Institute of Politics said they
trusted the federal government to do the
right thing, Macalester students expressed
skepticism about the rhetoric
coming from the White
House and the media, and the
patriotism embraced by much
of the country in the weeks
following the terrorist attacks.
“There’s a sense here that
Americans are failing to
examine what we did to make
everyone around the world
hate us so much,” said student
government president Nick
Berning, 21, a senior from
Vienna,Virginia.
Within hours of the terrorist
attacks, two Macalester
students stood on a nearby
street with a sign urging “No
Violent Retaliation” and “No
Hypocritical Retaliation.” An
op-ed piece that ran in the
September 21 issue of the
Mac Weekly, the school newspaper,
suggested that Macalester
fly an Afghan flag along
with the American flag, to
“re-assert that our
commitment is to the
people of the world, and
not to the military
interests of their governments.”
A Mac Weekly editorial
in the same issue
warned that calls for
national unity could wind
up silencing dissent.
“‘Unity,’ in the sense it
is being used by the media,
politicians and a lot of
Americans waving the
stars and stripes, sounds
like one dumb politician
with a lot of innocent
lives—or deaths?—on his
hands,” the editorial
opined.
When the U.S. began
bombing Afghanistan last October, about
200 Macalester students staged a class
walk-out in protest; many of them went to
the federal building in downtown St. Paul,
where they joined other anti-war
protesters.
Amelia Goodyear, 20, a sophomore
from Auburn, California, carried a protest
banner with American flags and the words,
“Evil Empire,” duct-taped over them.
In a separate response to what she perceived
as unthinking nationalistic fervor,
senior Kristin Lawson, 21, an art major
from Albany, New York, organized a “9-11
fashion show” in front of the campus
center. Models wore patches advertising
various political causes often advocated by
Macalester students: Stop the WTO; Anti-
Sweatshop Labor; Free Mumia. The
models walked along a red carpet that had
a timeline on it; when they reached
September 11, they stopped, apparently
confused. Then they glanced over at a
photograph of President Bush that was
taped to a television, grabbed an American
flag to cover up their patch, and
walked on with a decidedly blank look.
Lawson, a self-described “anarchist,”
also wanted to print up peace signs and
ask her St. Paul neighbors to display them
instead of their American flags, which she
said were a symbol not only of the United
States but of the government as well.
None of this was considered at all
uncommon. Macalester staff and faculty
have become accustomed to student sit-ins
and protests for all manner of liberal causes.
If anything, the reaction to the attacks
and the U.S. military response was more
understated than usual. But at least some
students were frustrated and even angered
by what they saw as the typical Macalester
knee-jerk liberal response.
“I can’t take it anymore.What the fuck
is wrong with you people?” one student
wrote in an op-ed piece. “I simply can’t
comprehend why Macalester insists on
vilifying the United States.”
“I felt (and still feel) an overwhelming
urge for justice, for vengeance and for
retribution for all the innocent lives taken
by these deluded psychopaths,” the student,
senior Brad Salmen, wrote, as he
urged a military response to the attacks. “I
vehemently disagree with most of the
socialist, leftist propaganda so rampant on
this campus, but I will die fighting to
defend your right to say it.”
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| History professor Emily Rosenberg hopes students in
her foreign policy course will connect what they have learned in class with the events of September 11. |
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Other students took a less strident
approach. A group of them folded more
than 3,000 origami cranes, which they
hung in the atrium of the student center in
honor of the victims of the attacks. And in
response to both the attacks and the
subsequent crimes committed against
people of Arab descent, a group of student
athletes organized a “Walk for a Unified
Macalester,” around the campus perimeter;
the idea was for faculty, staff and
students to indicate their commitment
to promoting a safe and respectful
community.
Just two days earlier, the Mac bubble
temporarily burst when two Jordanian
students received hate letters that had
been sent through intercampus mail. An
investigation to determine the identity of
the letter writer was unsuccessful, but the
administration remains convinced it was
one of Macalester’s own—and that was
extremely unsettling.
“It was like Julius Caesar getting
stabbed in the back by his closest friend,”
one of the Jordanian students told the Mac
Weekly after he received the first letter.He
said he came forward publicly “because I
want people to know that Mac is not the
lovey-dovey utopia that people think it is.”
The student government responded by
organizing a giveaway of orange ribbons
as a symbol of support for Arab and
Muslim students; a total of 900 ribbons
were distributed within a matter of hours.
“It was shocking to a lot of people
because Macalester is perceived as such a
liberal place,” said student government
president Berning. Nonetheless, he was
heartened by the collective response.
“It’s brought out some insecurities in
our own,” said Rania Suidan, 20, a sophomore
from New Canaan, Connecticut.
“We pride ourselves on multiculturalism
and diversity.” But when Suidan told her
father, a Palestinian Arab from Israel,
about the hate letters, he told her she
should be thankful that was the only incident
that had occurred.
About 60 international students attended
a meeting following the hate-mail
incident. They were nervous about venturing
off campus, but indicated they still
felt safe at Macalester, said Dean of Students
Laurie Hamre.
In fact, if anyone felt marginalized at
Macalester, it was students who supported
the eventual U.S. military actions: Fliers
appeared around campus expressing solidarity
with those who supported the war,
assuring them that they were not alone.
Some of the fliers were apparently torn
down, an action that was unanimously
condemned by Macalester’s student government
representatives.
Nonetheless, there’s a reluctance to go
against the political grain.
“Most everyone I know is pretty much
in agreement with the (Bush) Administration,
but I wouldn’t advertise it publicly,”
said Erik Hoffman, 21, a senior from
Potomac, Maryland. “I feel I could, but I
wouldn’t want the trouble that could bring
on,” he said, adding that Macalester had
changed the way he perceived his politics.
When he first arrived, he thought of himself
as a liberal Democrat. But not now.
“I’m definitely not a Republican,” said
Hoffman. “But I wouldn’t call myself a
liberal anymore.”
Of the 26 students in Emily Rosenberg’s
foreign policy class, only two said
they supported the U.S. bombing of
Afghanistan. However, only two said they
opposed it. The rest apparently weren’t
sure what to think. “There’s a fair amount
of fence-sitting,” observed Rosenberg.
“It has forced students to step back and
question some of their beliefs,” said William
Sentell, a 21-year-old senior from
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who serves as
associate managing editor of the Mac
Weekly. It was one thing to oppose U.S.
bombing of Kosovo or sanctions against
Iraq. It’s another thing to oppose a response
to the terrorist attacks, he said.
“There is a sense that the radical leftwing
students on campus are reduced to
advocating peace. It’s harder to use the old
rhetoric—‘Look what the U.S. is doing’—
because we’re bleeding,” said Sentell.
No students, faculty or staff lost any
family members, and only one alumnus
was apparently killed in the attacks. But
like the rest of the country, Macalester
students were initially shaken by the
events, which many of them watched on
televisions that the administration set up in
the campus center and in the dormitories.
In the weeks following, many of them
attended prayer services, memorials and
peace vigils. They also showed up at
numerous “teach-ins,” forums and other
public and campus events. In part, they
wanted information, but mostly, said
Laurie Hamre, they wanted reassurance.
“Students dropped in for hugs,” Hamre
said. “They just wanted an adult.They felt
vulnerable.”
They weren’t the only ones.
“Some of the faculty were struck
speechless by this,” said Hamre. “In the
classroom I think they didn’t know how to
handle it.” Faculty weren’t given any specific
instruction from the administration
after September 11, so professors handled
the situation in different ways. Some have
used the events to feed into their discussions.
But others have ignored it altogether.
That frustrated students like William
Sentell, who expected his professors
to provide guidance and wisdom.
“I do feel very young and naive, and if
anyone is going to be able to offer me
some perspective, it’s going to be these
professors,” said Sentell.
But that may be expecting too much,
Hamre said. “Faculty are drawn to their
positions because they’re experts—but
generally not experts on the Middle East
or terrorism, or emotions,” she pointed out.
Parents, too, turned to Macalester for
reassurance that the school could only
partly provide. Some wanted to know
whether Macalester would be able to protect
their children in case of attack. Did
the school have a crisis plan, gas masks
and vaccines? (Answers: yes, no and no.)
Half a dozen families of foreign students
wanted them to come home, until Hamre
managed to persuade them that Macalester
was as safe or safer than anywhere else
in the world.
Their parents may be worried, but most
Macalester students said their day-to-day
lives remarkably are now much the same
as they were before the attacks. “At times,
I even forget that it happened,” admitted
Sarah McKearnan, 20, a sophomore from
Portland, Oregon. “I’m involved in my
education.We don’t watch TV or listen to
the radio much. I tend to forget that the
outside world is going on.”
“You get so inundated in college,” said
Gaurav Ahluwalia, 20, a sophomore from
New Delhi.“It’s hard to sustain an interest
in anything other than your studies.”
Indeed, the irony of Macalester is that
although students engage in rigorous discussions
during their classes, few have
time—and sometimes desire—to pay
much attention to current affairs. Students
in Adrienne Christiansen’s argumentation
course didn’t have a choice last fall semester:
She focused the class solely on
questions of domestic terrorism and public
policy that have come up as a result of the
attacks. But by the middle of the semester,
Christiansen was beginning to have doubts
about her choice of curriculum. “I don’t
know whether the students in this class are
getting sick of this question,” she acknowledged.
On the other hand, she said,
it would be an injustice not to use the
wealth of material that has resulted from
the events of September 11.
When students do happen to discuss
current affairs outside the classroom, there
is very little dissension. “It’s like, ‘I think
that.’ ‘Oh, so do I!’” said McKearnan.
“Because the college community is so
contained, it’s hard to be engaged in world
events,” said Amelia Goodyear, who was
getting most of her news from her mother
after she became frustrated with the mainstream
media’s coverage of events, including
the persistent use of the word
“attack” to describe the events. She apparently
thought it was a loaded term
designed to provoke a response.
“Their impulses are good, but they
don’t always have the intellectual rigor to
follow through,” said Political Science
professor Andrew Latham.They also may
be too young and good-hearted to recognize
the enormity of the threats facing
the world. “I’m not sure how real it is for
them,” Latham said.
The 16 students in Latham’s International
Conflict class, for instance, are wellversed
in world treaties and the various
weapons they address. In class, they
offered up a variety of reasons that states
or individuals might want to acquire weapons
of mass destruction:
• The U.S. wanted them in order to
counter the conventional weapons of
the Soviets;
• They level the playing field between
large and small nations;
• They reduce reliance on conventional
armies.
But it took professor Latham to point
out that some people might want to use
those weapons of mass destruction—“as
events have shown,” he said.
“I don’t mean to scare anybody,” Latham
said, “but this time it was 767’s; next
time it will be something else.”
He needn’t have been concerned. Call
it naivete, call it chutzpah or call it common
sense, Macalester students do not see
any reason to readjust their lives as a result
of the attacks. About half of the 26
students in Rosenberg’s class, for instance,
plan to study abroad next year.Most, if not
all, of the rest of the students already have
done so. None of the students have
changed their plans.
Campuswide, more than half of Macalester
students study abroad. “I’m not
going to let this scare me,” said Michelle
Hartung, a 20-year-old sophomore from
Tucson who plans to study in Egypt next
year.“I have my life to live.”
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Janna Cuneo holds some of the 3,000 paper origami cranes that students hung in
the Macalester student center to honor those killed on September 11. |
That seems to sum up the attitude at
Macalester, where students appear to have
a great deal of confidence in their futures.
Even the prospect of an economic slowdown
didn’t seem to faze them. “It doesn’t
really affect you because you’re not in the
job market,” said Gaurav Ahluwalia. “And
some people think it’s good that [the
economy] tanks now, because by the time
we get out it’ll come back up again.”
“I’m not graduating this year,” said
Dessi Vassilev, 20, a junior from Bulgaria.
“So I’m hoping the economy will turn
around by next year!”
As for Macalester’s administration, it
still is waiting to see what effect this has on
admissions and on foreign student visas.
“Right now I think a lot of parents want
their kids to be within an easy drive,” said
president McPherson. Nonetheless, he
said,“We are confident that students from
around the world will still want to come to
Macalester.”
For better or worse, the school that
they arrive at in fall 2002 is likely to be
much the same place that it was in fall 2001.
That’s frustrating to International Studies
Dean Ahmed Samatar, who would like the
school’s curriculum to address Islamic culture.
“There could and ought to be changes,”
said Samatar. But for both the college
and the students, September 11 likely will
wind up just being “an event,” he said.
“That’s the tragedy, “ he added,
“because it will dry up tomorrow as an
event.”
