This seems to be my day for posts with an educational theme. I’ve long admired the work of the folks at The Duck of Minerva and have frequently thought of putting the blog on my highly selective blogroll. But this post brought me up short. Associate blogger and professor of political science Rodger Payne is showing the John Milius cult film Red Dawn as part of a course on politics in film. The merits of the film aside I had a small problem with his explanation:
Those who have seen it know that “Red Dawn” is not an especially good movie. So why did I select it? Well, I wanted a film that highlights the great difficulty of counterinsurgency warfare — and I wanted a movie that would make students sympathize with the insurgents.
Emphasis mine.
I’m going to restrain myself and not launch into a tirade in which I express my real feelings on this. Instead I’ll give the floor to the mayor of Tall ‘Afar in Iraq in a letter he wrote after his city was cleared of insurgents:
Our city was the main base of operations for Abu Mousab Al Zarqawi. The city was completely held hostage in the hands of his henchmen. Our schools, governmental services, businesses and offices were closed. Our streets were silent, and no one dared to walk them. Our people were barricaded in their homes out of fear; death awaited them around every corner. Terrorists occupied and controlled the only hospital in the city. Their savagery reached such a level that they stuffed the corpses of children with explosives and tossed them into the streets in order to kill grieving parents attempting to retrieve the bodies of their young. This was the situation of our city until God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who liberated this city, ridding it of Zarqawi’s followers after harsh fighting, killing many terrorists, and forcing the remaining butchers to flee the city like rats to the surrounding areas, where the bravery of other 3d ACR soldiers in Sinjar, Rabiah, Zumar and Avgani finally destroyed them.
I recognize that the Iraqi insurgency is diverse and includes Ba’athists, al-Qaeda, plain old thugs, and, probably, some Iraqi nationalists. All of these kill Americans when they can. Most of their efforts these days are devoted to killing their fellow Iraqis. But there’s an old proverb: lie down with dogs and you get up with fleas. Even the most benign in the Iraqi insurgency are tarred by the atrocities of, frankly, most of the insurgency.
So, here’s my question:Â what is the pedagogical purpose of evoking sympathy for the Iraqi insurgency in American college students?
Are you going to challenge him on his home turf?
I’ve tracked back. And I’m organizing a minor blogburst. We’ll see if it elicits a response.
There is an extensive literature, including many first-hand accounts, on the French Resistance and other European WWII resistance movements. I would think someone teaching a serious class would want to draw on these rather than using a mediocre film.
The idea that because one sympathizes with the participants in a (fictional or real) insurgency, one should also sympathize with the particpants in a very different insurgency is, of course, silly. Would he also generalize the sympathy-with-insurgents meme to, say, Quantrill’s Raiders in the American Civil War?
Dave: I won’t claim to speak for Rodger on this (I am sure he will provide his thoughts at some point), but one reason I can see would be to try and get across to students how Iraqis who are not militant islamists or Saddam loyalists would still take up arms against the US–in a word (as you note above), nationalism.
It’s probably easier for American students to understand that motivation if they are watching a film that portrays insurgents with whom they share an identity and a homeland. The nationalist impulse is one that the administration seriously underestimated when guesstimating how difficult post-war stabilization efforts would be. While I don’t think we need to sympathize with the insurgents we might need to empathize with them for no other reason than to be able to think clearly about what is motivating some (certainly not all) of the insurgents so that proper strategies can be employed. Empathy is not the same thing as excusing behavior–it is necessary if one is to “know their enemy”. Just my own take on it.
Thanks, Bill. And you’re right: I bristled at the word sympathize.
bp32–I’ve had the honor of spending time with two individuals who were deeply involved in the French Resistance, and I can’t imagine either one of them participating in the kind of atrocities perpetrated by our enemies in Iraq. I think it’s important to point out the moral differences that can exist under a blanket term like “insurgency.”
The Quantrill’s Raiders case that I mentioned above might be an interesting one for study, because of the involvement of this insurgency with crime and atrocity.
The pedegogical purpose of this excersise is to indoctrinate students with the fundamental marxist folkore of class inequality as the material source of all geopolitical conflict. There is no such thing as morality or free will amongst individuals in societies, only groups of haves-vs-have nots. Since equality is the goal of justice (as in social justice) then it is imperitive on students to realize that the groups percieved as poor and rebellious (i.e. the insurgents) are always virtuous according to this paradigm, whereas the wealthy hegemonic forces (i.e. the American military) are villians. David vs Goliath except this time David is the Philistine and Goliath is the Jew.
In other words, to feed them bullshit.
@ david: I’m sure you are right, but I think you assuming that the actors and characters in the film are supposed to be perfect representatives for some (not all) of the insurgents in Iraq. My impression was that is not the case–they are not ‘ideal types’. There are certainly different ‘types’ of insurgents, soldiers, militias, etc who utilize different tactics in different contexts–I don’t think this is necessarily lost by the execercise above (unless the students are unthinking automatons).
My, such reactions to the word ‘sympathise.’
Reading the post I rather thought the pedagogical value was clearly aimed at getting the students to step out of easy nationalist posturing (see the frothy comment by Jimmy supra) and think about drivers /causation etc of insurgency.
Denouncing and other cheap little moralisms doesn’t teach very much from an analytical point of view.
Strikes me the shrieking is a little bit of Right political correctness.
Bloody well should grow a spine, you’re as bad as the whinging Left moralisers.
As I said, I have little problem with understand or even empathize but I do have something of a problem with sympathize which connotes agreement or support.
I can see the pedagogical point without much difficulty.
A Clockwork Orange pulls off the neat trick of making us sympathize with a rapist and murderer. It doesn’t mean Burgess (or Kubrick) was hoping we’d all grow into little Alexes. It made us think about all sorts of interesting things but I’m pretty sure the readers/viewers did not generally grow up to sympathize with anti-social thugs. Or for that matter with police state tactics.
By the way, the ability to “sympathize” with bad people is a basic job requirement for fiction writers and actors. It’s also a useful ability to cultivate in political leaders and soldiers who had damned well better be able to understand what’s going on in an enemy’s head.
Dictionary definitions.
Sympathize: to be in keeping, accord, or harmony
Empathize: to experience empathy which is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
Well, there are dictionary definitions, and then there’s language as commonly used. I actually think that in common usage “empathy” is seen as more sympathetic and “sympathy.” If I were writing a scene I’d probably use “sympathy” as the less intense word rather than “empathy.” “Sympathy” reads as cool, “empathy” as warmer.
Dave requested a comment on Rodger’s pedagogy:
For the record, I have not dealt much with undergraduates, except for small groups or individuals for a quarter or a semester at a time, here and there over the years. OTOH, I have a fair number of former students currently enrolled right now at, to name just a few schools, Yale, Stanford, U. of Chicago and Columbia, so I’m quite familiar with preparing students to succeed at first tier universities.
First, in terms of properly conveying the difficulties counterinsurgency there’s a number of better articles and books available that are within the reach of undergraduates. The Small Wars Journal Reference Library is a wonderful resource in this regard which includes both “classic” experts like Bernard Fall as well those who are currently cutting edge like the Australian COIN specialist Col. David Kilcullen. Dave Dilegge, the editor of SWJ could provide further recommendations better than could I, though here’s an example of Kilcullen:
http://www.smallwarsjournal.com/documents/28articles.pdf
IMHO, undergraduate level education exists for two purposes: to convey a certain body of knowledge and to challenge students to think and reflect critically and independently. Obviously, if a prof uses the classroom solely to inculcate a particular point of view with ideologically monochromatic source material, then they are failing in the second task even if they are accomplishing the first.
If provocative positions are used with at least some nod to alternative viewpoints and methodologies over the course of the semester, then I would say that is an appropriate way to stimulate discussion and critical examination. Rodger’s students are adults after all, and they should learn to argue their points properly and effectively if they disagree with his take on Iraq. Were Rodger teaching on a secondary level in the public school system, his obligation to provide ideological balance would be far greater given the students impressionability and captive audience status, than as a university professor.
While I read Duck of Minerva posts with some frequency, I have not followed Rodger’s prior posts closely enough to know whether he meant ” sympathize” as ” I want my students to sympathize with the Iraqi insurgency” or ” I want my students to understand the motivations of insurgents, generically”. The former position is, in my view, asinine and petulantly juvenile in it’s nihilistic anti-Americanism and the latter is not.
I used the word I wanted, but the sentence and/or paragraph could have been clearer.
This is a film class and I wanted to pick a film that (a) highlighted the power of nationalist impulses; (b) illustrated the difficulty of defeating insurgency; and (c) made the students sympathize with the insurgents IN THE MOVIE. In previous weeks, the students have viewed films like “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Quiet American,” and “Black Hawk Down” to address other themes. I’ve blogged about all these films.
I agree that there’s a broader literature for the first two points, but this is a film class and the reading load just isn’t that high. The Krepinevich selection is genuinely good and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a short primer on some key issues.
In any case, my students would tell you that the discussion included no indoctrination, certainly no Marxist rhetoric, and lots of talk about points a & b. We spent a fair amount of classtime addressing Machiavelli’s advice to the prince, after all, which means that we discussed the strategic problems facing the US in Iraq. How can the US hope to win both hearts and minds when the insurgents only have to provoke fear? Yes, the insurgents in Iraq often attack civilians — and we assessed the risk that this might trigger broader civil war.
Finally, and this seems to be the main criticism, I picked a film with American insurgents because I wanted the students to challenge some of the assumptions they may have about Iraq and the “war on terror” and to think about how occupying forces might be viewed by local populations regardless of the (stated) intentions of the occupiers. The readings note, and I mention, that the number of insurgents in Iraq is actually fairly low. Yet, they are able to create a climate of fear and frustrate the strongest military in the world.
Do you want professors to provoke thought or to “indoctrinate”?
To think that I was somehow telling the students to support the Iraq insurgents is simply an absurd knee-jerk reaction to my post.
Understood and much appreciated, Rodger. And you’re right: the paragraph in your post could have used a little clarification. Obviously, I have no problem with your provoking thought among your students. For some of them it may be a novel experience. 😉
Rather what I thought mate, To think that I was somehow telling the students to support the Iraq insurgents is simply an absurd knee-jerk reaction to my post.
So we’ve come full circle? First, in a University setting pretty much anything should be fair game and if the professor wants to invoke sympathy for the Iraqi insurgents then so be it. I think the wee ones can analyze the arguements for themselves. So it’s not really worth the verbiage but since we are on the topic…You specifically pick a movie that the (presumably) American students could identify and sympathize with the insurgents. You then apply this to the current Iraq situation. From this we are to conclude that you were not trying to iduce sympathy for the Iraqi insurgents? There is a difference between support and sympathy but it seems the intent was to head in that direction. I hope you also discussed the religious aspect of the insurgency in addition to, as Dave has pointed out, the fact that alot of the fighting right now is not directed at the brutal occupiers but is of a sectarian nature.
P.S. that is really one bad movie.
Rodger’s reply is fine until he gets to:
“Finally, and this seems to be the main criticism, I picked a film with American insurgents because I wanted the students to challenge some of the assumptions they may have about Iraq and the “war on terror†and to think about how occupying forces might be viewed by local populations”
And there we have indoctrination. Iraq, or how students feel about Iraq, has nothing to do with this class. But leftist faculty just can’t keep from injecting their politics in the classroom.
That’s the major difference between them and us.
He chose Red Dawn to encourage his students to identify with the insurgents? Apparently this professor has little or no experience in literary or film criticism. Red Dawn is the story of an unprovoked communist invasion of America. It is unabashedly patriotic and supportive of American values. The teenaged “insurgent”/heroes of the film are local high school kids who parents and friends and wantonly slaughtered and who are forced to take to the mountains to survive. It is their uniquely American courage and hope that forces them to take up arms against the communist troops.
Audiences relate to these kids because they stand for uniquely American values and because they can easily see each and every one of them as, literally, the kids next door, just as our current generation of teenagers is answering the call to protect freedom, just as every generation before them.
That this “professor” sees any moral equivalence between the kids as portrayed in the film and crazed islamic barbarians who live to commit the most vile atrocities imaginable is an eloquent indictment of not only him, but the liberal mindset, such as it is.
Rodger writes…
“US troops are the foreign fighters responsible for killing the largest number of innocent Iraqis. Until everyone realizes this, then American foreign policy toward Iraq will fail”
at my blog Red Stater, where I take him to task. The statement about “sympathize with the insurgents” illustrates how Rodger Payne is unable to restrain himself from teaching (in the classroom) what he is preaching (on his blog).
I do believe that many liberal professors (like Rodger) may not even realize that they DO in fact teach their politics in class.
(the unkown- unknown)
Or else they just don’t care. (like Ward Churchill)
-red