Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Printable Version

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Printable Version

+- Forums (http://india-forum.com)
+-- Forum: Indian Politics, Business & Economy (http://india-forum.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=6)
+--- Forum: Indian Politics (http://india-forum.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=17)
+--- Thread: Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron (/showthread.php?tid=606)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Amber G. - 03-03-2006

QUOTE(Kaushal @ Mar 2 2006, 09:29 PM)My letter to Ms.Ruth Green fwiw

http://kosal.us/lettergreen.htm
[right][snapback]47562[/snapback][/right]

And sincere thanks for sharing this letter here.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-03-2006

QUOTEhttp://www.outlookindia.com/rantsmag.asp?f...e=witzel&sid=1#
"Daily Letters | 3 Mar, 2006
Cool!

This discussion reminds me of sitting in one of Witzel's Vedic Sanskrit classes. You know, the one where, on Feb.10, seven "Rating" messages appeared miraculously at the site "Rate-a-Prof" with identical sycophantic writing styles clearly stamped "Steven Alan Farmer". Minutes before Professor Witzel, equally coincidentally, happened to check the same website - to his great delight, and accepted without question, he being a star linguist and experienced professor and all.

This is JUST like Witzel's class at Harvard. There's "Old Mac" over there, spitting on the floor and declaring from time to time that he's interested in "academic Screw-tinny", there's NitWits over there farting loudly, there's Sandhu chattering away to himself, and then there are these serious-looking types like Chitra who think this is actually a university classroom, not a zoo.

And of course there's Witzel droning on in a mixture of Sanskrit, Latin and German, mostly about how great his 8 books are, according to all 3 Indologists who are the only people to have tried to read them. And how bad Hindutva is.

And there's a picture of a Baboon posted prominently on the right side of the board, and Witzel referring to her as "India's Most Famous Historian".

NOW I remember. This is what the Harvard Crimson reported in 1995, when the students went on strike in the department and stuffed Witzel's course notes down the Faculty Latrine, stopping it up, and forcing Witzel and his cohorts to walk all the way to the School of Divinity to "go".

ARI SAJA
LONG BEACH, CAÂ Â UNITED STATES"
 <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-04-2006

QUOTEON THE INTELLECTUAL HONESTY OF SOUTH ASIA EXPERTS AND WITZEL-SUPPORTERS.. PART XVIIILCXIV

Another Witzel Admirer steps on his own Little Cheney:

The oxgyen level in the high rise above Danube most be preeeetttyy looow I guess - turns Fullbright people to Halfbright

QUOTEhttp://www.indiawest.com/view.php?subactio...ive=11412\
57855&start_from=&ucat=9&

Plight of 'Dalits' In Favorable Light?
Dear Editor,

One of the objections of nationalist Hindu Americans to the description of
Hinduism in California textbooks for middle schools (I-W, Jan. 13) is the
mention of the plight of "dalits," formerly known as "untouchables" in the Hindu
caste system. They want this three millenia-old practice presented in a
favorable light. How?

They have pilloried Michael Witzel, professor of Sanskrit and Indology at
Harvard University, for preventing changes on this and other Hindu practices in
the textbooks. On the other hand, they have prevented American evangelical
missionaries from converting dalits to Christianity in India in the past.

These Hindus claim that conversions threaten the dalits' traditional way of
life. What life did the dalits have under Hinduism for the last 3,000 years?
They were made to live the most oppressed, degraded, humiliating life; much
worse than the 200-year-old practice of slavery in America.

Hindu nationalists do not care about dalits as human beings. Their plight was
alleviated by Hindu secularists such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi,
whom they now despise. Liberal and tolerant Hindus who oppose the Hindu
nationalist agenda are declared pseudo-secularists, leftists and Marxists. The
nationalists may help dalits now only to prevent conversions by American
missionaries. Otherwise, the dalits would have been left in their degraded
state.

The plight of the dalits still continues in many parts of India. The upper caste
mentality towards them has not changed even if they have been liberated by
Indian legislation. If 300 million dalits had converted to Christianity 100 years ago, we would have had 300 million educated and productive Indians today.But if the dalits converted to Christianity today, they will continue to be oppressed as both dalits and Christians. Indian Christians are viewed by Hindu nationalists as converts of low castes who abandoned Hinduism for material gain.
This image has led to Hindu antagonism and contempt for Christians that has
caused apprehension among Indian Christians.

Raju George C. Thomas
Visiting U.S. Fulbright Professor
Belgrade University
Belgrade, Serbia Montenegro

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-04-2006

Do Hindu American Edits Whitewash Untouchability in California School Textbooks? FOSA spreads False Propaganda.

by Vishal Agarwal

Tiny URL is http://tinyurl.com/hdse8

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-04-2006

Many poor former converts are returning to their roots and embracing
Hinduism. Christianity has deceived them. Those still trapped in
the sickhouse of Christianity are suing churches. Their social and
economic status hardly improved after conversion. In fact, they
suffered even more discrimination in the church, alienation and confusion.
Education and economic uplift and similar claims accruing from
conversion are a myth. In the Northeast, for example, Christianity
has given rise to widespread alcoholism, AIDS, crime and terrorism.
In Kerala where three foreign ideologies - Islam, Communism and
Christianity - have found a home, there has been a steady increase
in lawlessness over the past several decades and the state is now
referred to by some as Bihar of the South.

Other than a weird, incongruous alien name, converts to Christianity
acquire nothing except self-hatred, loss of self-identity, isolation from
the mainstream, contempt for their ancestry, allegiance to foreign
adversaries and antinational behavior.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-04-2006

For a little truth about Christianity, visit these sites:

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical...eally_live.html
http://www.truthbeknown.com/josephus.htm
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim...radictions.html
http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=jesuit

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-05-2006

To paraphrase Dr. Winchester of M*A*S*H*4077:

Even in the Danube, the sewage rises to the top

From the Slobo fan:

QUOTEThis is why I am proud to be an Indian from
India, and why I am also proud to be an American."
Raju

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20060303-5.html


Evidently the slob needs someone to read to him the whole speech, esp. the section:

QUOTEIndia has a Hindu majority, and one of the world's
largest Muslim populations. India is also home to
millions of Sikhs and Christians and other religious
groups. All worship freely in temples and mosques and
churches all across this great land. Indians of
diverse backgrounds attend school together and work
together and govern your nation together. As a
multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy, India is
showing the world that the best way to ensure fairness
and tolerance is to establish the rule of law.
(Applause.) The best way to counter resentment is to
allow peaceful _expression. The best way to honor
human dignity is to protect human rights. For every
nation divided by race, religion or culture, India
offers a hopeful path: If justice is the goal, then
democracy is the way. 

That's not what Raju and Witzel want in the textbooks on India, is it? How low can these low-life get?

I hope someone emails this discussion to him - should go well with his resume, that he is so famous...

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-05-2006

Arun,

This nitwit blaming Hindus for everything is really silly. Only analogy I can think is a guy in highrise above Danube wanting to blaming Hustler or Penthouse for his carpal tunnel wrist.

Look how liberally he's using M K Gandhi's name. It'll be a cold shower to him if he ever gets to read Gandhi's opinion on missionary activities in India.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-06-2006

Can you believe it? This Slobo-mofo Raju Thomas claims that Serbian mass-murdering rapists are GOOD because they killed

QUOTE*******ONLY 80,000******** innocents not 300,000 as UN is claiming?

Qualifies as a Paki.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-06-2006

abdul_bin_mao,

Check this from Raju Thomas,

Link
QUOTEBack in the early days of the Yugoslav wars, I was keeping count. American news reports began with 17,000 killed in Bosnia in early January 1993 after 9 months of civil war, then 20,000 at the end of the month. In early February 1993, the number was 145,000 "dead or missing" which by the end of the month became 200,000 "dead or missing. " And then in early March 1993, the words "or missing" were dropped and the number was established at 200,000 killed which has been repeated like a mantra ever since. General Satish Nambiar of India, who was the commander of the U.N. Protection Forces (UNPROFOR) during the period of March 1992 to March 1993, told me that he, his deputy General Lewis McKenzie, and his forces, did not witness any such level of killing. Former U.S. State Department official and head of the Yugoslav desk, George Kenney, assessed the total dead in Bosnia as somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000.
I think he did some math 30,000+50,000 = 80,000
<!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />
QUOTETo further understand the nature of such propaganda figures conjured up during the conduct of war, the West Pakistani army was declared to have killed 3 million Bengali civilians in East Pakistan during the struggle for independence, a propaganda figure that has entered some almanacs and books of facts. Back then the U.S. prevented a war crimes tribunal being set up, despite the fact that India had captured and detained all of the 92,000 West Pakistani forces at the end of the December 1971 Indo-Pakistani war

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-06-2006

But to this Inquisition moron, **80,000 dead** is ***ONLY*** 80,000. As long it's minorities being murdered by "Christians". He doesn't give a sh!t about 3 million, mostly HINDUS, being killed in East Pakistan, or the genocide continuing there today.

Mudy, let's see what this twerp said about Godhra riots. Did he parrot the "Hooman Rites" lies or not? My bet is that he did - he has that congenital weaselness and hypocrisy.

What a pathetic specimen for college students in Wisconsin to learn how to be adults!

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-07-2006

Report on SBE hearing in Sacramento
By Vishal Agarwal

TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/zaayy

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-08-2006

Enjoy:

--- In IndianCivilization@yahoogroups.com, Sridhar Mohan
<sirsrimohan@...> wrote:

Here's a letter that was sent to SF Chronicle.

----------------------------------------
Editor,

SFChronicle Editors would do well to check the internet site of the Indian magazine "OUTLOOK" to see the same article by Witzel and Thapar posted there (you are a secondary publisher, aren't you?) Enjoy the 30 pages of reader comments there - and let me know if you find one positive about Thapar or Witzel.
http://www.outlookindia.com/rantsmag.asp?f...e=witzel&sid=1#

Authors M. Witzel and R. Thapar win the chutzpah prize for March 2006 with their declaration that Thapar is "India's Most Famous Historian". Yes, like Saddam Hussen in Iraq's Most Famous General.Yes, they do have a "different agenda".

Let's see. For starters, Witzel is known to run an internet hate
group, lobby for Communists and far-right Conversionists (see
[Ref1], from a Harvard acaddemic discussion list), fake his own
Teaching Rating on Rate-A-Professor.com, and just plain tell lies
under the Harvard letterhead.

Next, it is a blatant conflict of interest for Harvard Corporation
Board Member Alan Bersin to abuse his position as California
Secretary of Education and pitchfork Harvard Professor Witzel as
an "Expert", over the heads of the duly-apppointed Content Review
Panel of the Dept. of Education, to grab for the lucrative textbook
market and set Witzel up as a "Consultant" [ Ref.8]. Bersin's
disastrous 7-year record of creating conflict [Ref9] as school
superintendent, matches Witzel's career specialty of abusive
behavior. Together they have managed to tear apart Indian-American
Hindu community - one of the most prosperous and law abiding
communities in California, at the cost of their kids' education.

Harvard's own magazine 'The Crimson' [Ref2] listed Witzel's dismal
record of repression and favoritism, resulting in his being fired
as Department Chair. An online petiton [Ref3] signed by over 3000+
Hindus (including over 150 academics with impeccable credentials)
has expressed community disgust and outrage against Witzel's racist
comments and anti-Hindu pogrom [Ref5].

More recently Prof Witzel bullied his way at the
ratemyprofessor.com website to remove the adverse comments by his
students (see the Harvard CRIMSON article for a realistic assessment
of Witzel's notoriously poor teaching) and successfully replaced
them with transparently bogus glowing comments. Witzel, the "world-
class linguist", bragged about these on his internet hate site as if
they were genuine, a day after 10 such comments mysteriously
appeared. [Ref7] In most universities, this would be grounds for
tenure revocation (moral turpitude).

Recently, he has been campaigning (and has succeeded on his IER) to
get abusive and demeaning pictures included in textbooks for 6th-
grade kids, in order to humiliate and degrade Hindu children. For
example, he has got his sidekick on the IER to post and propagate
videos of people cleaning latrines in India, as graphics to be
included under the "Hinduism" section!

This is the real story of the "different agenda". Someone needs to
expose them. Apparently not San Fransico Chronicle which not too
long ago published an article by Jon Carroll which stated that
Hindus use rape for punishing women and has yet to issue an official
word of apology (though Mr Carroll did in a private email notify
that he had got facts from his collegue Jehangir Poccha - a known
FOSA stooge, who admits that when he came to the Land of the Free,
he missed the understanding and religious tolerance that he enjoyed
as a Farsi in "Hindu-majority" India. Farsis came to Hindu India as
refugees from the Islamists in Persia, whom the same California
Texts describe as the gentle people who have never tried
to "convert" anyone by force. Poccha, like all the FOSA Comrades,
shows his gratitude by slandering Hindus at every opportunity.)

As boobs who are suckered into re-publishing recycled trash from
OUTLOOK, you deserve what you publish.

Thanks!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Reference (if you care):
[Ref1] http://lists.hcs.harvard.edu/pipermail/dharma-open/2006-
February/000269.html
[Ref2] http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=500579
[Ref3] http://www.petitiononline.com/stopIER/petition.html
[Ref4] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-
Eurasian_research/message/2300
[Ref5] http://www.india-forum.com/articles/55/1/Harvard-professor-
launches-anti-Hindu-Crusade
[Ref6] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-
Eurasian_research/message/2973
[Ref7] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-
Eurasian_research/message/3037
[Ref8] http://www.india-forum.com/articles/93/1/C...n-Sense-should-
help-avoid-California-links-with-Ivy-League-Hate-groups
[Ref9] http://www.cta.org/News/2005/20050429_1.htm

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-08-2006

SF is far-left newspaper, Every traitor gets his day in SF or san jose mercury.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - agnivayu - 03-08-2006

Both are White liberal racist newspapers, we need to crush these pigs with money. Hindu financial power is rising.

Individual Hindu California parents need to sue, and stir the pot @ the school district level.

QUOTE(Mudy @ Mar 8 2006, 04:09 AM)SF is far-left newspaper, Every traitor gets his day in SF or san jose mercury.
[right][snapback]48091[/snapback][/right]

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-08-2006

QUOTEBoth are White liberal racist newspapers, we need to crush these pigs with money. Hindu financial power is rising. 
I did my share, cancelled subscription last year, now when every marketing/sale guys calls me, they have to hear my lecture on racism etc. <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-08-2006

Stanford scholar takes creationists to task. Can somebody start a long-distance training class for harvard profs to take basic logic classes from Stanford ?

http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=conte...ry=0001_article

QUOTEOppose creationism

By J. Sreedhar
Guest Columnist
Friday, February 17, 2006
last updated February 26, 2006 9:23 PM

An issue has been quietly brewing in California regarding the contents of school textbooks. In the past few months, there have been repeated clashes between scientists and creationists in Sacramentoâs corridors of power, which are likely to spill over into the mainstream. In particular, creationists have managed to influence decisions made by Californiaâs State Board of Education.

It is well known that proponents of biblical creationism object to scientific ideas like evolution and regularly clamor for equal treatment of their beliefs in school textbooks.

In the scientific method, one makes observations and comes up with a hypothesis that makes accurate predictions. The results obtained by the scientific method are repeatable and the hypotheses themselves are potentially falsifiable by new evidence. On the other hand, pseudo-scientific theories make assumptions that can neither be proved nor disproved, but are taken as truth. They do not follow the rules of logic, discard scientific evidence and are based on faith.

A field that qualifies as a pseudo-science and is based on creationism is philology, which was developed in the 19th century. By cloaking its arguments in academic language and claiming to reconstruct human history by analyzing the roots of words in various languages, it passes off biblical descriptions as historical events. One of the pioneers of philology, Max Muller, was a self-admitted believer in the historical foundation of the description given in Genesis and asserted that âwe still speak the language of the first ancestors of our race.â He went so far as to write to Charles Darwin that evolution is false because the languages of animals do not resemble those of humans.

Although todayâs scientists do not consider philology to be a legitimate science, believers in the literal interpretation of the Bible insist on using philology to promote their views. One such view, which has been repeatedly discredited by science, but is still being pushed for inclusion in Californiaâs textbooks without mentioning its biblical aspects, is a theory known as the Aryan Migration Theory. According to this theory, descendants of the biblical character Japheth invaded India after the deluge and populated it. Inclusion of this theory in school textbooks would indirectly give sanction to creationism and open the doors for future frontal assaults on science.

A recent paper co-authored by Peter Underhill in our Genetics Department analyzed genetic evidence and concluded that there is no such thing as Aryan migration into India. This is consistent with evidence from other fields such as carbon dating, fossil studies, archaeology, geophysics, linguistics, metallurgy and satellite imaging. However, in a letter to the California State Board of Education, Vinay Lal â a humanities professor at UCLA and believer in philology â dismisses such scientific conclusions as âpalpable falsehoodsâ and âalleged evidence of some unknown geneticist.â He avers that science has no role to play in overturning âthe long established view on this matter.â

It is incumbent upon us at Stanford to stand up for science and oppose creationism. We should do our part to help California public schools improve their ranking, which is almost the lowest in the country.

J. Sreedhar is a research scholar at Stanford University. He can be reached at jsreedhar@gmail.com.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-09-2006

check out http://www.indicethos.org for historical and other facts to rebut dubious statments made in support of the text book issue. please suggest topics to be tackled for inclusion among the subjects to be investigated

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-09-2006

Do California State Textbooks Discriminate Against Hindus? Part I: How do they describe the Role of Women?

Tiny URL is http://tinyurl.com/z3l4q

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-09-2006

A classic case of Harvard Ethics. In his latest victory message that reminded me of the Iraqi Information Minister

<img src='http://prodtn.cafepress.com/0/17853550_F_tn.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Witzel says (the spin)..

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasia...ch/message/3227

QUOTEThe California State Board of Education (SBE) voted unanimously to
overturn the sectarian and politically motivated distortions pushed
through by the two obscurant Hindutva foundations during an earlier
phase of the review process for history textbooks. On February 27, a
sub-committee of the SBE had also voted unanimously to overturn a
majority of the disputed changes.

The reality..

http://www.india-forum.com/articles/95/1/R...ramento-hearing

QUOTEIn summary, Witzel accepted only 46% of HEF edits whereas SBE has accepted 80%. Witzel accepted only 27% of VF edits whereas SBE has accepted 62%. Overall, Witzel accepted 37% Hindu American edits, but SBE has accepted 71%.