November 3, 2006

Academia and Halloween

Wonderful.

From the Ivory Towers.

    University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann threw her annual Halloween costume party at her home Tuesday night. Among the guests was Saad Saadi, who came dressed as a suicide bomber, complete with plastic dynamite strapped to his chest and a toy automatic rifle. Worse, Gutmann posed with Saadi!

    An obvious question: would Gutmann have posed with a guest--or even allowed him into her house--if he'd dressed as Adolf Hitler or a Nazi SS officer? A KKK member?


Follow the link for pictures.

From the other side Posted by AlexC at November 3, 2006 12:23 AM

I dunno, maybe it’s my turn to defend the tower inhabitants. The guy has MidEastern features. He's in college. He came dressed as a terrorist. All the things wrong with academia, I have to say this doesn't bother me very much.

I'll concede the point of a double standard but the terrorist is topical and relevant. A Nazi or a Klansman or a Senior Senator from West Virginia would be importune but irrelevant.

Posted by: jk at November 3, 2006 12:11 PM

JK has a point that the costumes (there was more than one) were topical, but they were certainly in bad taste. The interesting observation being made is that they're not in bad taste to ALL Americans, only to those who think the enemy is a danger to us. Not coincidentally, a vast majority of people on college campii are not in that camp.

Last week's episode of the CBS (of all places) soldier drama "The Unit" included some scenes of an army wife interacting with war protesters. I'll blog it shortly, but the relevant passage was when she was asked by a dirty hippie, "What side are you on?" She replied, "I'm on the American side."

Posted by: johngalt at November 4, 2006 12:15 PM | What do you think? [2]