Here in New York foreign students compose most of the students
in architecture and planning schools, some classes at Columbia
are almost wholly foreign students. A fair number of the other
students are politely classified as minorities, including, may
Allah forgive us dying white males, a large proportion of women.
Though professors remain predominantly American white
males, as with the alumni and professions at large.
Indeed, without foreign and minority students, the first often
financially assisted by their governments, and the latter by
government-sponsored scholarships, the design schools around
here would die, or wither to a few (maybe only one) tiny enclaves
as they once were.
Columbia is exhorbitantly expensive and should die for that reason
if no other, but it, too, receives a substantial amount of its income
from foreign and minority students -- as directed by the board of
trustees ever looking for ways to fleece governments to protect
their stolen wealth.
An unfortunate consequence of the cultural gap between the
school's privileged white male culure (or its tweedy simulacra)
is an embarassing suicide and behavioral pathology rate among
students who are penalized for being what they are and not
understanding why that has to happen -- in America where
it was promised that caste and class would be escaped.
To be sure architecture education suffers from promising more
than the profession can deliver, but it is far from being the
only profession (or religion or culture) that does that in order
to seduce new adherents into serving the tops of the heaps.
It is no wonder that many people inside and outside America
hate it for failing to live up to what it promises in education,
in religion, in business, in foreign policy, in neighborliness
and tolerance. Whether it should be hated more than those
countries for which it was invented and marketed as a
superior alternative, is a fair question.
But for now I think it is absolutely essential that the US
have its feet held to the fire and live up to the dreams it
promises or it will soon become like the countries and
cultures which rightly remind the gap is growing greater
abroad and at home, especially at home where it is only
a matter of timing that 911 was not domestically
originated by immigrants, minorities and others who
are lied and exploited as a matter of winner take all
behavior, increasingly vile, self-indulgent, exculpatory
and unapologetic.
No doubt this bitter view is due to living in New York,
the rest of the homeland is surely the wonderland it
is advertised relentlessly to be by all the government
subsidized programs boosting the American way all
around the world (nicely enforced by the most grotesquely
overgrown military machine history has ever seen -- and
one which is kept carefully hidden from Americans except
in its gloriously designed manifestation, figure-8ing bombers,
Mr. Clean high tech slaughter, burbling complicitous news
commentators and that fatuous grandfatherly idiot gloating
and lying at DoD as if the murderous campaign is only
a pr-camouflage issue conducted in the Enron corporate
manner.)
It is fair to assume that internal attacks on the US homeland
will come from its estranged student bodies, and that appears
to be what Justice and Defense and the Intel Community
expect, perhaps even desire so sure are they that might
makes right.
in architecture and planning schools, some classes at Columbia
are almost wholly foreign students. A fair number of the other
students are politely classified as minorities, including, may
Allah forgive us dying white males, a large proportion of women.
Though professors remain predominantly American white
males, as with the alumni and professions at large.
Indeed, without foreign and minority students, the first often
financially assisted by their governments, and the latter by
government-sponsored scholarships, the design schools around
here would die, or wither to a few (maybe only one) tiny enclaves
as they once were.
Columbia is exhorbitantly expensive and should die for that reason
if no other, but it, too, receives a substantial amount of its income
from foreign and minority students -- as directed by the board of
trustees ever looking for ways to fleece governments to protect
their stolen wealth.
An unfortunate consequence of the cultural gap between the
school's privileged white male culure (or its tweedy simulacra)
is an embarassing suicide and behavioral pathology rate among
students who are penalized for being what they are and not
understanding why that has to happen -- in America where
it was promised that caste and class would be escaped.
To be sure architecture education suffers from promising more
than the profession can deliver, but it is far from being the
only profession (or religion or culture) that does that in order
to seduce new adherents into serving the tops of the heaps.
It is no wonder that many people inside and outside America
hate it for failing to live up to what it promises in education,
in religion, in business, in foreign policy, in neighborliness
and tolerance. Whether it should be hated more than those
countries for which it was invented and marketed as a
superior alternative, is a fair question.
But for now I think it is absolutely essential that the US
have its feet held to the fire and live up to the dreams it
promises or it will soon become like the countries and
cultures which rightly remind the gap is growing greater
abroad and at home, especially at home where it is only
a matter of timing that 911 was not domestically
originated by immigrants, minorities and others who
are lied and exploited as a matter of winner take all
behavior, increasingly vile, self-indulgent, exculpatory
and unapologetic.
No doubt this bitter view is due to living in New York,
the rest of the homeland is surely the wonderland it
is advertised relentlessly to be by all the government
subsidized programs boosting the American way all
around the world (nicely enforced by the most grotesquely
overgrown military machine history has ever seen -- and
one which is kept carefully hidden from Americans except
in its gloriously designed manifestation, figure-8ing bombers,
Mr. Clean high tech slaughter, burbling complicitous news
commentators and that fatuous grandfatherly idiot gloating
and lying at DoD as if the murderous campaign is only
a pr-camouflage issue conducted in the Enron corporate
manner.)
It is fair to assume that internal attacks on the US homeland
will come from its estranged student bodies, and that appears
to be what Justice and Defense and the Intel Community
expect, perhaps even desire so sure are they that might
makes right.