589. V is for Visibility

For the month of April I am participating for the ninth time in the annual A-to-Z blogging challenge, writing a post for every letter of the alphabet. My theme this year is the world, the world that is always with us, that we must not keep out and cannot do without.

A thing becomes visible not only when it is in sight, but also when it is seen. Or conversely, something is invisible either because it is hidden or because it is not looked at. Let me elaborate.

In the summer of 1996 I happened to be in England with my husband and our son, then eleven, during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S.A.). It was there that I was first struck by the difference between the British and the U.S. coverage of the Games. Britain certainly covered the relatively few events in which one of its athletes had a chance of winning a medal (I refuse to use the horrible verb “medaling”), but it also covered plenty of other events of interest to its viewers. By contrast, the U.S. coverage of the Olympics is obsessed with the U.S. winning the maximum number of medals, and with besting its competitors, particularly those in the political arena. If there is a sport in which another country, however small, is pre-eminent, the U.S. is determined to beat it, despite the fact that it already takes home the most medals by far of any other country.

In an interesting study, Framing the Olympic Games (2008), authors Caroline Walters and Sheila Murphy investigated this very subject—the way that the U.S. television coverage of the Games presents them in an ultra-competitive and nationalistic frame. They write: “While media outlets from all countries are guilty of reporting on the Olympics (as well as other international events) from their own perspective, the American media have been routinely criticized for their overly nationalistic coverage (78). Given this skewed coverage, which the authors amply demonstrate, they asked whether and how it had an impact on the way American viewers see the Games.

Could the American media’s nationalistic portrayal of the Olympic Games ultimately undercut the very purpose of the event? . . .[W]e examined whether—far from promoting world peace—adopting a competitive and nationalistically-centered frame for Olympic coverage actually serves to reinforce international rivalry and undercuts the intended objectives of the IOC.” (84)

Walters and Murphy’s results suggested that “nationalistically framed Olympic broadcasts may encourage viewers to be less engaged and open to cooperation with other countries” (99). They concluded:

This research exposes a contradiction between how the modern Olympics Games are currently being presented to the American public and the official mission of the IOC. Our results reveal important and potentially alarming consequences of the use of highly nationalistic framing with respect to the Olympic Games, and perhaps international events more generally. These findings make a strong argument for the need to reframe or at least soften American television coverage of the Olympic Games. (100)

If the U.S. media’s framing of the Olympic Games may predispose American viewers to see their relationship with the rest of the world as one of competition rather than cooperation, what about the visibility of the rest of world in U.S. news coverage?

In its story, The world, according to the U.S. news, 1 Point 21 Interactive, a company that creates web content to increase awareness of particular brands or social issues, analyzes 94,000 U.S. news headlines from three news outlets, the New York Times, USA Today, and Fox News, between January 2019 and May 2023 to see which countries were mentioned the most and the least, and in what regard, and then they mapped the data visually.

The piece began with the simple statement, “Our understanding of the word is shaped by the information we encounter – and the information we don’t.” It found that the countries that were mentioned the most were those that were most important to U.S. foreign policy and that “just 10 countries, including the U.S., accounted for 80% of all headlines that name a country”, with China, Russia, Iran, and Mexico in the top ten every year. Of the countries that were rarely mentioned, they found that they tended to make the headlines only if they had a war, a political crisis, or a natural disaster. Even so, if the country was small, or if it was in Sub-Saharan Africa, it was unlikely to get a mention.

It find it sad that U.S. news media rarely cover news from the rest of the world and even then, only in terms of how that news affects the United States. As a result, Americans are presented with a skewed and incomplete picture of the world. Funnily enough, it may be the people in the smaller, less powerful nations who have a more accurate view of the world. They certainly have to know much more about the United States than it knows about them.

These two examples of what the U.S. news media covers and on what basis demonstrate that we see what we are shown, what is made visible. The fact that so much is rendered invisible requires us to do more work to uncover and reveal it (Williams).

What about the case in which the news item is there, but we don’t see it, either because we have been given to understand that it is not important, or because our attention is directed elsewhere? How many times have you become interested in a subject—prisons, for example—and suddenly started seeing articles about it everywhere? It was there all along, hidden in plain sight, only you didn’t have the eyes to see it. Or perhaps society’s messaging about prisons and prisoners had taught you to avert your eyes when faced with the subject.

                  (ABC News)

These reflections have been sparked in part by the Catch and Kill phenomenon brought to light by former president Donald Trump’s latest trial, in which his campaign paid the National Enquirer to buy a story about him (David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer called in “checkbook journalism”) and then to kill it—to withhold publication. Of course this is an extreme case of visibility—or rather, invisibility. Although the story is true, it will not see the light of day.

                           postcard, Bread and Puppet Theater

What does this question of visibility have to do with the world? Well, what we see depends on where we stand, what we want to see, and how much digging we are prepared to do. There is much that is obscured, hidden between the lines and beneath the surface. Why should we want to see the world whole, and not blinkered by our nation’s perceived strategic interests? Well, that’s a question akin to “Why would we want to seek enlightenment?”

Perhaps it is enough to go back to the Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee’s concept of the Olympic Truce, “which encourages all participating countries to lay down their weapons during the Games in an effort to create a window for dialogue, reconciliation, and diplomatic conflict resolution” (Walters & Murphy 77). 

Making the effort to create a window lets in light and opens up new possibilities where there was once a wall.

Let’s take off our blinkers and see the world whole. Our very survival may depend on it.

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588. Universities

For the month of April I am participating for the ninth time in the annual A-to-Z blogging challenge, writing a post for every letter of the alphabet. My theme this year is the world, the world that is always with us, that we must not keep out and cannot do without.

The university has been a fraught space in recent years, in the midst of conflict and controversy. Far from being seen as an ivory tower, where scholars talk to each other in a language no one else could understand, it now seems to be regarded as a hotbed of the radical left, where faculty plant dangerous ideas in the minds of impressionable students. A university education, even at public institutions, has got so expensive that many students emerge heavily in debt. Also in the United States, admissions programs that sought to redress the legacy of racism that has denied so many students a university education have been overturned by the Supreme Court. But I’m going to talk about something else altogether: the way universities open up the world, both to their students and to the surrounding community.

A university education is often evaluated on its ability to secure higher-paid jobs for its graduates. And at an average of $26,000/per year for public institutions and nearly $56,000/year for private ones, students and their parents are certainly entitled to demand tangible results. However, most people who have been to college or university know that it brings as many intangible benefits as it does measurable ones. One inestimable benefit of a university education is the way it opens up the world to the student. While narrower vocational and professional programs may prepare the student for a particular job, a university education prepares the student for life in its broadest sense. I can personally attest to this. 



As a Harvard undergraduate in the early 1970s majoring in English and American literature and language, most of my classes focused on literature and culture from Britain and the U.S. However, I also had the rare opportunity to study the Sanskrit language and Vedanta philosophy. Ironically, our family had just immigrated from India, where I had not had been able to study Sanskrit in high school, but my U.S. university education allowed me to fill that gap.

Outside the classroom the university gave me the opportunity to learn about struggles for freedom unfolding around the world. In the Spring of 1972 a group of African American students occupied a building on campus calling for Harvard to divest stocks in Gulf Oil, which was providing important foreign exchange dollars for the Portuguese government in Angola. I joined other students who rallied outside the building in support of the same cause and of my courageous fellow-students.

      (photo: CBS Boston)

Fifty years later, as another U.S.-funded war rages, college campuses are again engaged in divestment campaigns. On April 5th, 2024, The Harvard Divinity School Student Association passed a resolution urging the Harvard Management Company — which oversees Harvard’s $50.7 billion endowment — to divest from “weapons manufacturers, firms, academic programs, corporations, and all other institutions that aid the ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine and the genocide of Palestinians.” The previous week, on March 29, 2024, Harvard Law School’s Student Government passed a similar resolution. Today, on university campuses around the U.S.,  students are again calling for their institutions to divest their endowments from corporations that profit from the war in Gaza. 

                       Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, c. 1974-5

I remember Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden speaking on campus back in 1974 or 1975 on behalf of their newly-formed Indochina Peace Campaign. They had both traveled to Vietnam, were strongly opposed to the Vietnam War, and had taken the decision to lobby Congress to deny military funding to then-President Nixon. To this end, Tom Hayden delivered a series of six lectures on American imperialism in the Capitol building itself. In April 1974, the House voted 177-154 to deny the President’s request for funding, and the Senate followed suit.

Chinua Achebe address a group at UMass Amherst, March 1988

In the late 1980 and early 1990s, the University of Massachusetts brought the world to me. As a graduate student in postcolonial literature I had the extraordinary good fortune to study the African novel with the Nigerian “father of African literature” Chinua Achebe, while he was a visiting professor. During that time I was also able to hear the great Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene, South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, South African writer Miriam Tlali, just to name a few world writers and artists who came to this large public university in our small New England town. The South African writers taught me a great deal about the system of apartheid and were active in the struggle against it.

For years I taught at Worcester State in Central Massachusetts, a public university which had less funding available for bringing luminaries to campus. Nevertheless, we found ways to bring the wider world to our students, both in and out of the classroom. By this time I was a faculty member teaching world literature, postcolonial literature, and global studies. Our library housed the Dennis Brutus Collection, an archive of personal papers donated to the university by the South African poet-in-exile who came to campus more than once during my time there. Other campus visitors included the spokesperson for an indigenous tribe in Ecuador trying to save their forests and way of life, speakers on the root causes and prevention of genocide, learning from the tragedy of Rwanda, on favelas in Brazil, and on the global conflicts sparked by climate crisis. In addition to the more popular English-speaking destinations of Britain and Australia, faculty-led study abroad opportunities for our students included trips to India and to Central and South America—Ecuador, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua.

          Sona Jobarteh and her band

It is not only the students who benefit from a university’s portal to the wider world; the surrounding community does as well. In retirement, we live in walking distance from the university campus, and the wealth of international events—lectures, musical performances, film series, plays—is staggering. Just two weeks ago, for instance we attended a free outdoor concert by the Gambian artist Sona Jobarteh, and over the years we have also attended concerts on campus by sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, sarod virtuoso Ali Akbar Khan, the great qawaali singer and composer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and the late great reggae singer Toots Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals. The UMass faculty includes eminent scholars and public intellectuals  from around the world who give book talks and lectures, all of which are open to the public. Our own lives are enriched by the many graduate students from the Indian subcontinent.

According to 2022 campus data provided by UMass Amherst, in 2022, 7% of the 24,000 enrolled undergraduates come from outside the U.S.–1680 students; and, as of Fall 2023, 34% of the approximately 8000 graduate students—2,677 students from 101 different countries. If, in the current nativist political climate, some may balk at these figures, know that in many cases it is these students who help keep the university going. According to NAFSA: Association of International Educators, “Over one million international students contributed $40.1 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2022-2023 academic year,” and their economic activity supported 368,333 U.S. jobs. Beyond numbers, the engaged presence of these students helps to create a vibrant society, infusing the communities around the country with their ideas, inventions, and expertise.

On a personal level, international students and faculty whom I have met at UMass or at other universities over the years are now my dearest friends. They mean the world to me.

 

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T is for Time Zones

For the month of April I am participating for the ninth time in the annual A-to-Z blogging challenge, writing a post for every letter of the alphabet. My theme this year is the world, the world that is always with us, that we must not keep out and cannot do without.

Forgive me, but time constraints—and serendipity—have led me to re-use an old post that fits with my theme.

173. Multi-Timing

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candlelight.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
from Bed in Summer, Robert Louis Stevenson

As my day is winding down, a new one is beginning for our family in India, as they carry out the morning rituals of teeth-cleaning, tea-drinking, poha, and private prayers at the kitchen shrine. As I get ready for bed, too late as usual, my California friends still have their evening ahead of them and are ready for long phone chats. Of a morning I wake in anticipation of news from England, since by the time I am sitting up in bed with my first cup of tea my English family and friends are well into their workdays and their fourth or fifth cuppas. With childhood friends in Australia and New Zealand and dear Alysha in South Africa this year, as I brace for a February nor’easter I am aware that the Antipodeans in my life are enjoying fresh garden vegetables and harvesting early summer fruit (all the more tormenting because they will keep posting photographs of them on Facebook). The diurnal and seasonal rhythms of yesteryear, each in its own time gradually and gracefully giving way to the next,  are now overlaid with the contrapuntal motions of multiple time zones, all competing simultaneously for space in my crowded consciousness.

      (from redlegsinsoho.blogspot)

This is my constant condition, now delightful, now dizzying. How much more so when my loved ones are on the move; waiting for the email or text message announcing their safe arrival, I am keenly aware, in every moment, of what time it is there. I read nineteenth, even twentieth-century novels in which travelers or family members working or studying abroad must of necessity remain incommunicado for months, sometimes unable to make a visit home for years on end. Those left behind at home, most of them women, sit down at their writing desks and immerse their whole selves in long, beautifully handwritten, artfully composed letters, pausing periodically to dip their pens into the inkwell and gaze into the middle distance.  In their position, I turn to my laptop, and Tell Me Another.

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