A reply
February 27th, 2010 at 11:58 am by David FarrarFrom Stuff:
OPINION: Mohsen al Attar responds to criticism by Chris Trotter of his Auckland University law course.
Last week, Chris Trotter dedicated his column to assailing an advanced international law course – Colonialism to Globalisation: International Law and the Making of the Third World – I teach at the University of Auckland law faculty.
Trotter was springboarding off a recent blogpost on the same topic.
That would be me!
Anyway good to see a response.
I conclude with a word of thanks. As the debate about my course (and my person) has gone viral, so too has enrolment. At this stage, I am pleased to report we have doubled our numbers from last year – and, at this rate, may even reach maximum enrolment by week’s end – meaning that far more students will be exposed to a Third World perspective on the relationship between colonialism and international law.
I should get a share of the capitalist profits from the course!
Related posts:
- Trotter on that interesting course
- An interesting course
- Trotter on Cunliffe
- 40 year plan beats 20 year plan
February 27th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
the bloke GRAVY (comments) doesn’t like me .. or Ted. His comments hurt me deeply
Vote:February 27th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Hope the hard-working parents of China, India etc who save hard to get their children a Western tertiary education are aware of the drift left of Auckland University.
Marxists, Trotskyists, a rusty horde of fossil leftists, and now third world propapandists.
Better keep the kids at home in China or India and send them to a local university than send them to Auckland Uni for submersion in dated, leftist, revolutionary garbage.
Foreign parents might also check out the assessment of Mohsen al Attmar’s general academic level as outlined by an Auckland academic in an earlier Kiwiblog thread.
Why would anyone from overseas send their kids to Hickland University to study under this chip-on-shoulder leftist when they can get the same garbage at home for a fraction of the price?
Vote:February 27th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Colonialism is a dead duck and is being used as a scape goat to justify corrupt and ineffective post-colonial Government. Zimbabwe is a classic example of a bad leader justifying massive economic failure on “colonialism”.
Vote:February 27th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
DPF:
“I should get a share of the capitalist profits from the course!”
Which would amount to zero. Auckland Law School has a capped enrolment, with students required to take a set number of papers to graduate, each of which cost the same in terms of fees and funding. Hence, students’ decisions to take this paper come at the expense of taking another within the law school – the whole exercise is fiscally neutral.
Perhaps, though, you could get a share of the credit for exposing students to different ways of viewing the world? What was it Mill said about how truth and error? Oh yes, “But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
Vote:February 27th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
AG uses a Mills quote about silencing opinion.
We don’t have censorship of political views in NZ. Discredited, biased views like those of Mohsen al Attar can be found in books, magazines, and above all, on the internet. No-one stops students from accessing these, so the opinion isn’t silenced.
Nor is there any moral requirement for taxpayers to finance, in NZ institutions, the ragbag teaching of every dissident group in the world.
Your argument, AG, could as easily be used to justify paying Nazi lecturers to “expose” students to the errors of fascist ideology and laws. Or to having Taleban lecturers give rationale for suicide bombings.
Foreign parents ought to think twice before exposing their teenage children to Auckland University’s burgeoning radicalism.
Vote:February 27th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
There is nothing wrong with presenting a course outlining a variety of viewpoints and then critiquing those viewpoints. The problem with this course is that it appears lopsided towards one viewpoint only without considering opposing views. The course should aim to present the facts as we know them and the interpretation of those facts from both viewpoints – those of the left and those of the right.
A good course will not just expose students to the viewpoints but enable them to dispassionately argue from either angle and critique each argument for or against colonialisms effects on a case by case basis. Critical minds is what they should be developing at our universities, not lopsided ones that just feed the lecturer his own opinions back to him in the course essays and exams.
Perhaps the smart students of Auckland uni have identified this as an easy course to pick up points towards their degrees – just tell this lecturer what he wants to hear in each of the assignments for easy A+ grades!
Vote:February 27th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
The innocence of Mr Attar:
Obviously, the man is a heads-down academic, unaware of the breadth of the political internet. And Kiwiblog. It would be great to see him engage here. Maybe DPF could offer him some guest posts.
It’s certainly disappointing to see Trotter descend the same downward spiral as Christopher Hitchens but then, as is often pointed out here, socialists are naturally inclined to authoritarianism anyway. And ex-socialists are even worse.
jack5, of course, epitomises just why this course is necessary, and his suggestions re Nazis and Taleban ideology and practices should be taken seriously and addressed by universities with additional courses.
But ad hominems is always easier than serious discussion.
tvb – just you carry on inhabiting that fantasy land known as Fox News.
Those interested in a Middle Eastern perspective, from the view of an American academic who has spent most of his life in the Middle East, can listen and watch “Leonard on the Middle East” on itunes U, an internet presentation of his classes at the University of Tennessee.
I wonder if Mr Attar could be prevailed upon to do something similar?
Vote:February 27th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
The good news is that Mr al Attar will only be preaching to the converted. The types of people who sign up to such obviously biased and radical courses already possess the same negative views of the West. So while course numbers may have doubled, he certainly won’t increase anti-West sentiment.
Interestingly I took a left-leaning law course at Otago Uni last year, and really enjoyed it, because the lecturer provided both sides of the argument, while making no secret of his own opinions. And thus I actually listened to what he had to say with an open mind.
Vote:February 27th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
The march of Marxism continues, and it’s nice to see that Turd Worlder show some appreciation for the Tory that allowed it.
Fuck AU law students, they’re all pricks anyway. And I get that supremely nuanced view from knowing two people who do it.
Vote:February 28th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Auckland law school is hardly the light of extreme left ideology, its got a couple of lecturers like Jane Kelsey and the late Mike Taggart who were that way (although Taggart was one of my favourite lecturers very interesting) on the other hand there are people like Littlewood who have relatively right ideologies (like traditional Act not this bs Garret crap).
And since when has pointing out that a massive proportion of the indigenous population in South America was systematically wiped out equate with fucking maxism for crying out loud.
Vote:February 28th, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Re Jeff83′s 4.43…
There was mass murder and mayhem by the Conquistadores, but a vast number of the indigenous folk were wiped out by diseases for which they had no immunity. They would have died out even if the only folk that arrived had been UN do-gooders like H1 transported by science fiction back in time. The indigenous had some revenge when the Conquistadores took some of the South American diseases back to Europe. Syphilis is a likely example.
One reason there are so many fewer pure-blood indigenous people in South America now is because of intermarriage with colonisers and with Africans brought in as slaves. Intermarriage is inevitable except under apartheid-type systems.
You are right it’s incorrect to say the view that Spanish and Portuguese colonisers killed vast numbers of South American Indians is always Marxist.
The criticism is not that. It is that al Attar preaches the leftist-Marxist, time-warped Third Worlders-as-victims ideology which blames all problems of the Third World, past and present, on colonialists and imperialists – like us.
However, what’s Attar doing in the country, let alone drawing a taxpayer salary to preach his anti-Western hate? This country, with a continuing trade deficit, is struggling to survive as a developed society. It’s not rich enough to allow in every foreign leftist hater-stirrer that a taxpayer-funded university wants to saddle society with.
As for Auckland University’s drive to attract foreign students, let’s ensure the parents of China and India etc who want a Western-capitalist style education for their children know what’s going on at the university.
Vote:March 1st, 2010 at 12:13 am
Jackie
Have you ever thought that the victims may have a different perspective?
I guess not…
Vote:March 1st, 2010 at 11:23 am
Luc, Jack is right, more indigenous people were killed by simple diseases than by military conquest. And this would always have happened no matter what. As soon as the population was big enough and technology was advanced enough, people would have moved around the world and come into contact with new people and new diseases. It was inevitable.
Vote: