The Justice

A few years ago, Brandeis threatened to end the teaching of ancient Greek and ramp up the study of non-Western cultures. As a former Latin language student at Brandeis, I bristled at such a proposal and made my opposition clearly known to Dean Jaffe, even contributing a small amount of money to the Classics Department in memory of my late Brandeis Latin professor to make the point. Now, in this most "global" hour in the history of education, the University again seeks to water down a vital aspect of study, by hobbling the foreign language requirement itself!

I share the shock of Brandeis' language department heads at the notion of English "culture" courses satisfying the foreign language requirement. The purpose of a foreign language education is to introduce new forms of language expression, and thus introduce new cultures in a far more effective, more intimate way than any native-language instruction could possibly achieve. Different language involves exposure to different forms of thought. I could almost say that this is the essence of a liberal education. It puts the "universal" in "university."

I hope that the Brandeis community will not allow itself to be cheated out of its education rights in a major way, by letting this proposal see the light of day.

On the importance of languages (from Latin, Greek, Russian and to English itself), my own experience, especially in the field of publishing and computer systems development, couldn?t be clearer in support of the proposition that unless language-users (which is most of us, I think, though I grow less certain as I peruse each passing paragraph I encounter--and write) have learned, and practiced, noticing the meanings and context (never mind the orthography) of every word they write and/or utter, and are keenly aware of the contribution such meanings make to communication between individuals, publications & people, organizations, even nations, then communication fails, frequently with disastrous results.

And this ain?t about ?Words That Work ? to confuse, obfuscate, mislead, manipulate folks into supporting things that are against their own, and oft-times mankind?s, best interest.? [I always add my own sub-title to Frank Luntz? little gem#.] Latin, particularly, is important because it?s the radix, dare I say, of so many languages and of so much of the vocabulary in English--however much that vocabulary is now? afflicted by, like, y?know, malign, creeping desuetude.

In that regard, I noticed a June 08 ?The Justice? poll on Bill Schneider's commencement "keynote" address that showed an 84% negative ("I thought it was horrible") response, so I looked up the report on the speech (didn't notice whether the full text was posted, as well. If you coulda, you shoulda, IMHO).

The report contained no clue that I could detect of content that would have elicited what Statistics-Meister Schneider might call "an overwhelming show of disapproval among those scientifically surveyed, and well beyond the statistical margin of error of 3.87765%."

So why the disconnect? Another example of "The Fourth Estate" "not getting it" or living inside a BMOC bubble, the Chatterati detached from hoi polloi? Of language (and reporting) not managing to create even a simulacrum of ?what?s so? in the ?reality-based world??

(Actually, I was going to suggest that the survey pie-chart instruction ?hover over the pie piece" should instead say "pie slice," but got distracted. I acknowledge that, back in the day, "we," whoever "we" were, distinguished between a "slice of pie," the dessert, and "a piece of ∏ (pi), as in 3.147. "We" also carried slip-sticks (slide rules) in a leather holster on our belts, no doubt to demonstrate that we counted for something, despite the fact that we also carried our guitars, slung over our shoulders on their tie-died or Zunsi-embroidered shoulder-straps, adjusted with a Comanche silver-and turquoise buckle.

Further, I wanted to comment on Pres. Reinharz remark that "creating Brandeis was so out of the box."* First, for Justice ebitors and pruffreeders, out-of-the-box is a hyphenated construct--not quite a portmanteau word, but getting there (at which time the hyphens will be removed, outofthebox will be used, which, if it follows normal philological history (or just orthographical archaeological experience), will be apocopated -- think of it as a bris for words -- to "outatheb," pron OUTA-theb, with the ox left for dead).

And as Joe The Biden might say, "That was number one. Number two:"
I wanted to mark the degradation of the phrase "out-of-the-box" into yet one more misused and ambiguous clich?. The president, I believe, meant to say "so OUTSIDE-the-box," a concept that is often illustrated with the puzzle of connecting the five dots (is it five? can't find the puzzle. didn't look, either) without lifting the pencil--to do so, you have to draw one line "outside the box," or beyond the confines of "conventional thinking (surely not wisdom, as we've learned; in fact, one could use "conventional thinking" as an updated example of the oxymoron, rather than stick with the old, yet still oh-so-very-true oxymoron, "military intelligence" -- or "governmental competence" or "political honesty").

What the president meant to describe as unconventional thinking about founding Brandeis in the late 1940s when he said "out-of-the-box" (or at least, as he was quoted as having said--one can't be at all certain these days, can one, of whether the person quoted by the press has been quoted at all accurately, or, if quoted accurately, whether they won't recant, not recall, etc., such, such are the times in which we live) was to use the mercantilistic marketing term for describing "the-end-user-opening-a-box-containing-a-complicated-but-meant-to-be-plug-and-play-easy-to-use-world-wide-compatible-computer-and-getting-it-set-up-so-that-it-will-help-its-new-owner-perform-the-useful-tasks-he/she-has-spent-so-much-money-on-in-a-spasm-of-hope-conquers-experience-and-common-sense gestalt," or user experience, from box-cutter to e-mail.

Which is exactly the opposite of what he intended to convey. Seems to me, anyway. I disremember whether it was Gates' or Jobs' outfit what done coined that them thar phrase, but then I'm senescing evermore rapidly as the retrograde orbit of earth moves us into the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the water-bearer, as the musical foretold though it didn't mention anything about the melting of the world's glaciers.

Come to think of it, in what 'astrological oige' (that's Australian for "age") are we now? Pisces, isn't it? Which should mean that there will be no "apocalypse," as in "destruction of the earth," (personally, I see no 'Rapture' in THAT, for heaven's aches) at the changeover occurs in the precession of of the zodiac (that sun, moon & stars, or "son," moon and stars thing). In other words, if the clich? "...like a fish to water" bears any meaning, the transition should be as easy as, say, the US government morphing from a militaristic, oligarchic, hegemonistic government to one which REALLY seeks to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence [sic], promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to its citizens and their offspring, like, say, for what we allegedly "did ordain and establish" the Constitution of the United States of America, for every citizen--now that we've finally included women and slaves--though not yet the First Americans, the initial owners of the continent. Who "we" slaughtered. (I'm just sayin'.) (see also, Howard Zinn's "The People's History of the United States." What a humdinger THAT tome is (but pretty depressing, especially as to Zinn's theory that the US Constitution, as "supported and defended" by The Framers and our current crop of politicos, was/is mostly a shuck, intending to give none but the rich, powerful oligarchs--the 55 "white guys" we call The Framers-- the ability to control their own lives and livelihoods, but offering token words to the poor, landless and disenfranchised to stave off greater an more successful popular revolts against government than we actually have had throughout our history.

----notes---
# Luntz, who is fond of characterizing himself as a fellow seeker of accuracy and truth(iness?) in language "like George Orwell," got the title of Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" wrong on the first page of his book. Luntz' had it printed "Politics IN the English Language [my emphasis]." I take Luntz' mis-titling as a Freudian schlep (on black ice) into his secret truth--a propagandist's parapraxis of some importance. That Luntz should so characterize himself is, IMHO, but another example of his Mephistophelian (also Mephistophelean) mindset.

? I like to remind writers and speakers that "now" is a really fine, brief, useful substitute for "at this point in time," just as "then" is OK to use instead of "at that point in time." The phrases infected our speech, and concomitant attitudes about accountability, as they were uttered, under oath, by the miscreants of Nixon's Watergate and the Plumbers' capers. As I recall, from then, not much was made of the fact that E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy's first initials, taken together, were "e.g.," for "exempli gratia" and thus it was most fit that they be offered "for the sake of an example," though it wasn't as chilling an example as might have been set--dunking stools (an early, completely lethal American form of waterboarding) and/or the stocks come to mind as better choices.

* Quoting The Justice: 'University President Jehuda Reinharz, who apologized for having to leave the ceremony early in order to attend his own daughter's graduation [What?! She didn't attend Brandeis? Was there an uncovered story here? Or a hyperlink to a previous column, editorial or story?], also spoke about defying norms.

'Reinharz gave a brief history of the creation of the University and said that "creating Brandeis was so out of the box." Five consultants advised the founders of the University against establishing Brandeis, he said. But building the institution, he said, was a grand and bold idea.'