Vijay Prashad's Visit

I saw Vijay Prashad speak the other day. He basically presented his critique of liberal multiculturalism. He sees the whole emphasis on affirmative action as a debate that doesn't even question the basic framework which we should be critiquing: mainly, the fact that not everyone is priveleged enough to go to college so we must pick candidates by favoring some ethnic groups over others (in order to enhance campus diversity). His deal was that all education needs to be free so that we need not worry about things like affirmative action.

The next morning I went to a "student-activist workshop" with him and he talked about movements on campus and restructuring the unversity. I had to sit next to him and his foul-smelling cologne (well, I enjoyed it, actually). He hinted at self-management of the dorms and other such things, and talked about how active students need to focus their energies on constructive issues while at the same time recognizing that our problems are part of a totality. He also attacked the idea of coalition building as too much of a fragmented approach to activism, and suggested that students who just work to increase campus diversity are wasting their time and doing the administration's reformist job for them. Among other things. It was interesting, and he is a very funny man. I don't know how much I actually learned from him, though.