Winfield Myers emailed me to let me know about this post of his on Democracy Project. Harvard will be paying for six Iraqis to attend its institution for the weekend. A fantastic idea, in theory, until the curriculum became available:

Getting full exposure to the typically busy life of a Harvard student, the Iraqi visitors will have a jam-packed schedule during their time in Cambridge.

The students will attend the conference course Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1203, ???????Gender and the Cultures of US Imperialism,??????? appear at a variety of luncheons and receptions, and participate in a panel discussion open to the entire Harvard community.

Myers looks up the professor of this course, as any teacher who is going to teach about sexism, homophobia, and U.S. imperialism all in one big seminar is an obvious wacko. A little bit moreso than assumed, though:

Robin Bernstein, the Assistant Director of Studies and Lecturer on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, is an interdisciplinary scholar of American culture whose areas of specialization include performance studies, literature, queer theory, racial formation, and the history of childhood. A former member of the editorial board of Bridges, a journal of Jewish feminist culture and politics, Bernstein is the co-editor of Generation Q, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and author of a children’s book entitled Terrible, Terrible! Her third book, an anthology entitled Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theatre, is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press. Bernstein’s current book project, entitled “Racial Innocence: White Supremacy and the Performance of American Childhood,” uses performance theory to analyze the ways in which white supremacists of the nineteenth century deployed ideologies of childhood to structure and power large-scale racist projects, including slavery and the post-Reconstruction disenfranchisement of African Americans.

Her upcoming book, Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater, contains an essay by a person who describes “itself” as such:

Through her many experiences, including growing up first generation of Haitian parents , being seen as a woman and perceived as a Black man on the streets of NY and all over the world, transsexual, drag queen, gay man, gender-illusioning woman, and more, she continues to explore how society????????s conventional gender roles, sexual norms, and concepts of beauty are repressive and oppressive and have caused needless suffering.

He also posts the syllabus of the course:

We will use the methods of Cultural Studies to consider US imperialism not only as a military venture, but as a cultural project. Cultural Studies is (to offer a very condensed definition) an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the creation and flow of power and resistance, especially through ordinary people????????s uses of mass-marketed products. The field of Cultural Studies enables us to consider imperialism not as a narrowly defined governmental venture, but rather as a sprawling set of practices in which many, if not all, people participate. These practices include performances on stage and screen, tourism, holiday rituals, and the writing and reading of literature (both ???????high??????? and ???????popular???????). One may look for imperialist practices not only in military units, but in World Fairs, museums, and schools.

Cultural Studies opens unique avenues by which to consider issues of gender. Analyses of imperialism based in military history or international relations often focus on men as colonizers and conquerors, women as victims. In contrast, this course????????s focus on culture opens the following questions:

1. How has gender affected the experiences of colonized people (and how has the experience of being colonized affected those people????????s genders)?
2. How has gender affected the experiences of colonizers (and how has the experience of colonizing affected those people????????s genders)?
3. How has gender functioned as part of the ideologies and strategies of American imperialism?
4. How has gender functioned as part of the ideologies and strategies of anti-imperialist activism and resistance?

These four questions constitute the heart of this course.

There is more to the post, so read it all.

Myers comes to the same conclusions about what will happen, but let me pose to you all a question. What is the purpose? Why are they bringing these Iraqi students to one of America’s oldest, most prestigious universities and telling — not teaching — them such things that are not only blatantly warped, but serve no distinct benefit? It seems to me that they could just as easily have given them courses in American Government, democratic republicanism, the drafting of the Constitution, and real classic American literature; all things that would teach them the principles necessary to run an uncorrupt and functioning society.

But no. As easy as that would have been, there is an agenda here, and the blame does not rest solely on Robin Bernstein. This event is unprecedented for Harvard, as Myers notes, “It’ll be the first visit of Iraqis to HNMUN in its fifty-one year history, and the first time in thirty-five years that Iraqi students have participated in a “formal academic conference.” The $20,000 bill for the visits is being picked up by Harvard, something it normally doesn’t do.” The school’s administration did not leave such an important event in the hands of a radical feminist or any other professor without any oversight. This curriculum was deliberately drafted for fulfill an unspecified means. But there were no good intentions about these means.

Oh, did I mention that Harvard’s president has an email address located at lawrence_summersÉharvard.edu, and an office phone number at +1 617 495 1502? His name is Lawrence H. Summers, and I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. He’s also an economics teacher, so a good question might be, “Why didn’t you volunteer to teach the Iraqi students a seminar on free market economics over bigot literature?” Just a suggestion!

EDIT: I updated the personal information of Miss Bernstein and the essayist. I got them mixed up, though it is nice to know Harvard is not employing a drag queen as one of its professors.

UPDATE: More comments at Chrenkoff.