She's more than a woman to me.

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She says exactly what I'm thinking! Gives me hope.. maybe my next promotion will be to president of the university! (kidding, of course)

Well, hopefully she will be less inclined to make idiotic statements than Larry Summers.

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Three times a lady?

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... and I wouldn't have done that. :>)

It's the first reasonable-sounding explanation I've seen yet. Maybe I'm just wired wrong or something - I didn't get it at the time, and I still don't, not emotionally. When they said "Saudis", I immediately thought, "Aha! It's those damned Wahabis!" I knew they were the tiger's tail the House of Saud had hold of, and thought maybe we could help them let go - by means of amputation if necessary. Instead - well, you know the story from here. Afghanistan? Well, they were essentially the same group, and I remembered them from Carter's presidency, so okay - I guess. But then Hussein? That made no sense at ALL. Did somebody forget to pay the rent on him or what?

Had to learn about the neocons, and then figure out their peculiar sideways thinking to figure that one out. Now Iran makes perfect sense - if you're the "right kind" of insane...

Ian

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I hope she went on to denounce this "sense of agency" for the psychosis that it is. Does she mean to approve of the US launching two or three wars just so we can have a sense that we control the world, regardless of any connection with 9-11? I'm suspicions that she is using a fancy phrase to give a pseudopsychological justification to a series of senseless and criminal wars. Unfortunatley, that's the type of thing we have come to expect of Harvard.

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When the USA put the Philippines under our boot in 1900 -- well, we did need that incredible naval base at Manila -- it was university presidents and religious leaders who led the fight against turning our republic into an empire.

The republic isn't dead yet, and perhaps moral leadership from academic leaders is coming into its own again, and from women. The first generations of women had to prove they could be like the guys; now perhaps, pray god, they can bring their whole identity to their public roles.

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I wish her good luck, and I hope she can provide some real leadership by calling for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq!

Otherwise, she'll be just another waffling, highly intelligent but indecisive, "politically correct" disappointment like Hillary Clinton, who voted for the illegal Iraq war and refuses to apologize for her stupid mistake, and for her continued support of US war crimes...Hillary will fail to win the Presidency because of her stubborn support for the illegal, immoral, Iraq war. At least John Edwards had the decency to apologize strongly and admit his mistake in voting for the invasion, there's still hope for him...

IMHO, the Democrats in Congress who support this war, and who keep voting for money to pay for more death and killings, are just as bad as George W. and Dick Cheney, in some ways worse because they are dishonest hypocrites who pretend to be humane and kind but support murder and death of men, women, and children in foreign lands....but maybe they think it's OK, because Iraqis can't vote for US President!

Gary

Gary J. Minter
http://aidsvillagechina.blog.sohu.com
www.healthchina.org

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I'm not so sure that Harvard's new president gets an exceptional grade for writing that the meaninglessness of life leaves Americans vulnerable to an appetite for war. That is a very old idea (see Sigmond Freud on agression). Add to which, I suppose based on that theory, the viernam War should have engaged youth in it's support, rather than the war (in Viet Nam) having spawned the greatest anti-war movement in history. Americans got into this current war because we have lost our backbone and our democracy to corporate and fundamentalist forces that are funded by the financial aristocracy, the oil industry etc. Everyone who thinks knows that. And furthermore, Harvard has been a bastion of such families for a very long time. Talk about aristocracy. I am pleased that Harvard has a female President, and I hope that she is good, but her writing on the unconscious desires for war are not exactly evidence of a brilliant mind. Plus those ideas are old and dangerous, and it avoids the real problem.

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Sorry for the hastily written post! I do not mean that Americans have no backbone. What I meant is that to say that Americans, in their search for meaning do not go to war in that search. That is demeaning and psychobabbling to the point of being sophomoric, trivializing and reductive. For academics to invoke the classics, and reference Faustian mechanics, as an explanation for war, is what many academics do best. That is to not get involved, and to think something to death while the world turns to cinder and ash. We did not have a civil war ourselves because we lacked a sense of meaning. Academics may become academics in search of meaning and that is fine. But let us call a spade a spade. During the vietnam War, academics by the thousands became involved in the anti war movement. And Many of them put their tenure and indeed their jobs on the line. This is not the time for esoteric references to Faust. This is the time for Universities and bright minds to take a stand and to protest in meaningful ways. And to the extent that great Universities are run on the finances of Corporate America, I think that the evidence of a great University President, a woman indeed, would be to speak to the working class about the potential for their underinsured youth to end up a name on a great memorial, not to speak of Faust and the unconscious. That can be left to mental health professionals such as myself. We are not sheep, we are sending our youth to war, killing Iraquis by the tens of thousands in effect of our involvement. We can think and still have an unconscious. And meaning to most people is to stay alive and have the opportunity to participate in a working democracy, to earn a living wage, to have health insurance, and to impeacj both Democrats and Republicans who lie and who betray our trust, all at the hands of politics and lobbyists and the oil industry. I am certain that many people at Harvard understand this well.
Bob Friedman Chicago

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Going to war witih Iraq was the moral equivalent of bitch-slapping the neighborhood bully's kid sister. If that is the kind of country we need to be, then kindly count me out of the census.

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Did your child go off to war as a tough, patriotic defender of freedom, only to return in a box, unhearalded, unnoticed and ignored by his government?? Was his ultimate sacrifice filled with meaning...to anyone but his immediate family? Did the war criminals Bush or Cheney give one healthy bowl movement or a moment of regret for the loss of one precious human life in their quest for world domination? Do any of these elitest, power hungry "leaders" in Washington give a damn about anything other than protecting the status quo and teaching the world that we are the only"Superpower"? The alarm is sounding. The time is here. Throw these assholes out of their nests, clean up the shit they leave behind, and rebuild our country under our constitution with tolerance for all and acceptance of the differences in all cultures. Or the country will perish.

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