AT list of remarkable professional persons

I want to start a list of outstanding persons who have used their professional status to fight injustice, who have thus disturbed power and suffered significant consequences.

Here is my first attempt at a short list, based on living professionals that I know about. These folks stand for what they believe, in the face of powerful and organized opposition.

Bradley Manning

Cynthia McKinney

Desmond Tutu

George Galloway

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Lynne Stewart

Norman Finkelstein

Ralph Nader

Ramsey Clark

Ward Churchill

I welcome your suggestions (in comment below!) of those who should be prominently added to such a list.

And, from recent history:

Che Guevara

Malcolm X

Mary Mother Jones

Oscar Romero

Help me build the list.

US politico-legal establishment's vicious treatment of Lynne Stewart

 

(part of an email received from a supporter of Lynne Stewart)

 

In 1995, Lynne Stewart was appointed by a federal court to represent the blind Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was accused of conspiring to blow up New York landmarks. She became co-counsel  with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and renowned civil liberties attorney Abdeen Jabaar.

Despite Lynne Stewart having marshaled evidence demonstrating the innocence of her client, and pointing indisputably to the hand of the government in the plots attributed to her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 65 years!

Special Administrative Measures (SAMS) were imposed, violating first, fifth and sixth amendment rights of defendants and attorneys alike.

These measures placed severe restrictions on any communication of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman communication with the outside world.

On April 9, 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft made an unprecedented appearance on the Late Night Show of David Letterman, a nationally viewed entertainment talk-show, to announce that the Justice Department was prosecutIng Lynne Stewart for providing "material aid to a terrorist organization."

 

This "material aid" was her own person and her function as defense attorney. The "material aid" consisted of a Press Release conveying the views of the Sheikh and given to a Reuter's correspondent - an action protected by the first amendment and the free speech rights of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and Lynne Stewart alike.

The Justice Department of George Bush and of Barack Obama prosecuted Lynne Stewart and demanded 30 years in prison. This attack upon due process and basic democratic rights was aimed at every attorney in the United States. The intent was and remains to destroy democratic rights and protections that date to Magna Carta.

Lynne Stewart was railroaded to prison in a show trial evocative of the era of Joseph Stalin. Broad public protest caused presiding Judge John Koetl to declare Lynne Stewart  "an asset to the nation" while sentencing her to 28 months in federal prison.

 

Pressed by the Justice Department, the Appellate Court, breaking precedent, directed Judge Koetl to increase her sentence drastically, to revoke her bail and remand her to prison despite the fact that Lynne Stewart had the right to appeal her conviction to the Supreme Court.

Judge Koetl, yielding to this immense pressure, increased his original 28 month sentence to ten years. This has become, effectively, a death sentence for Lynne Stewart. Urgent surgery was delayed 18 months by the prison authorities. Her breast cancer, in remission before imprisonment, metastasized and spread to her lymph nodes, bones and lungs.
 

... We must mobilize world opinion to stop the judicial and political murder of Lynne Stewart ...

The campaign to save the life of Lynne Stewart is a first line of defense against a ruling class rapidly destroying the rights obtained through generations of struggle as a ruthless system prepares to subjugate us all.

 

WE CALL UPON ALL TO SIGN THE PETITION NOW TO SAVE LYNNE STEWART

 

Click on this url link to sign the petition:

 

http://www.change.org/petitions/petition-to-free-lynne-stewart-save-her-life-release-her-now-2

 

Radical teaching philosophy of Denis Rancourt -- interview with The Times of India

 "A man against grading"

-- interview with Poonam Jain, The Times of India, 

Expert Eye, March 19, 2013

Beyond Critical Thinking -- a book review by author Jeff Schmidt

Beyond Critical Thinking

Review of Denis Rancourt's Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism

By Jeff Schmidt
Author of Disciplined Minds
jeffschmidt@alumni.uci.edu


To understand Denis Rancourt and his book, Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism, you have to know the difference between critical thinking and independent thinking.

Critical thinking is nothing special.  Every college student is taught to do it, to prepare for employment fielding matters for employers.  On the job, critical thinking amounts to little more than the ability to say, "The boss isn't going to like this."  You don't need your own ideology to say that.  You need only understand the boss's ideology and use it to guide your work.

The safest way to avoid making a fatal mistake in such work, and to advance through the ranks, is to adopt the assigned way of thinking as your own.  Your life becomes routine and you vanish from history, but you get a roof over your head and more than enough food for your pie hole.  It's the Devil's bargain for survival in hierarchical organizations.

Rancourt is having none of it.  Having become an activist and thereby having experienced the excitement, exhilaration and fulfillment of helping to shape the society he lives in, Rancourt sees cog-in-the-wheel life as a living death.

As a tenured professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Rancourt noticed that students were emerging from physics courses without truly grasping the concepts behind the techniques that they were learning.  The instruction was more indoctrination than education.  Grades reflected obedience and memorization more than real understanding.  The system prepared students to be obedient critical thinkers but did not arm them with the understanding required to be independent thinkers.  That served employers, who want technically trained employees who don't have their own agendas.

Rancourt became an outspoken critic of the university.  (And I was fortunate enough to get to know him at that time.)  He blogged about how the institution's undemocratic structure and corporate orientation led to malfeasance at all levels, from the president's office to the classroom.  And he worked to promote student activism.  In response, the university repeatedly tried to discipline him for various contrived infractions, but the repressive measures didn't hold up upon review.  Finally, the university fired Rancourt under the pretext that an unconventional grading system that he used in one class wasn't permitted by the rules, despite its success in getting students to grasp concepts.  His dismissal led to one of the biggest academic freedom cases in Canada.

The university continued to try to silence Rancourt even after it fired him.  As I describe below, the university used public money to finance a private lawsuit against Rancourt for refusing to withdraw his stinging criticism of one of the university's "service intellectuals" (a term that Rancourt uses incisively).

Rancourt's book is more wide-ranging than its title implies, as it covers much more than the fight against racism.  Rancourt argues for student liberation, tries to use biology to explain social hierarchy, discusses how workplace hierarchy is a source of stress and a health hazard, criticizes establishment medicine, describes how the social system works to keep individuals powerless, and discusses the role of collaborators in maintaining the status quo.  He brings independent thinking to each topic, often opening up new lines of thinking about long-standing social problems.  In this way his book is seminal, and one hopes that he and others will follow through on his ideas and see where they lead.

In a theme that pervades the book, Rancourt argues that the structure of society reflects the state of an ongoing battle between oppressive hierarchy and the individual's impulse for freedom and influence.  He says that the hierarchical system needs to disorient and incapacitate us.  It uses brutal methods that exploit the dependence of our self-identities on our social status, over which the bosses exercise much control.

In another theme, Rancourt is highly critical of critical race theory.  He argues that suppressing the expression of racist opinions prevents real, enlightening debate and thereby undermines the individual's political development and the struggle against racism.

The racism issue that Rancourt addresses arose after the student union on his campus publicly reported a pattern of discrimination by the university.  To the embarrassment of the university, the report received much media attention.  In response, the president of the university asked a black assistant professor to publicly "evaluate" the student report.  In just a few days' time, and with university guidance behind the scenes, the professor produced an "independent" public report, which the university posted on its website, questioning the validity of the student findings.

To present as "independent" an evaluation produced in this way would be considered unethical in science, journalism, government, and even advertising.  It would be seen as a gussied-up version of:  "I'm not a racist, am I?"  "Of course not, boss."[1,2]  However, when Rancourt criticized the relationship between the professor and her employer in terms that Malcolm X used to describe similar situations, the university moved to silence him.  It hired a top corporate lawyer to pursue a million dollar lawsuit against Rancourt, in the name of the black professor.

But that effort to silence Rancourt backfired.  Lawyers usually advise litigants to shut up, but Rancourt repeatedly spoke out about the lawsuit and made its details public; the media reported on it.  In the book, Rancourt discusses the suit and critiques the philosophy behind it.

I don't agree with Rancourt on every issue.  For example, he says that it is "self-evident" that social hierarchy is natural, a product of human biology.  If such biological determinism hadn't been discredited by 20th century history, then I would respond by asserting that the ongoing fight for democracy is natural.  And in this I would quote Rancourt himself, for the main thrust of his book is that social hierarchy has to be forced upon people.

But Rancourt's main goal isn't to get you to agree with him on the issues.  Rather, his goal is to provoke you to reject the boring, worn-out framework within which the issues are debated in the mass media and academe, and think independently.  His book worked for me, as I ended up thinking about important issues in new ways.


1.  http://studentseyeview.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/author-jeff-schmidt-campaigns-for-just-treatment-of-professor-joanne-st-lewis/

2.  http://studentseyeview.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/author-jeff-schmidt-apologizes-to-professor-joanne-st-lewis/

U of O president Allan Rock and law professor Joanne St. Lewis must not sue student Hazel Gashoka

Threat of lawsuit against YouTube video

By Denis Rancourt

Hazel Gashoka earned an Honours B.A. in psychology from the University of Ottawa in 2012 and is now a graduate student in Community Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University.  As an undergraduate at the U of O, she was an activist for social justice, and in her graduating year was elected to represent students on the University Senate.

In 2008, while Gashoka was an undergraduate, the student union reported systemic racism at the University of Ottawa.  The report drew a lot of public attention and was an embarrassment to the university.  In response, the university asked U of O law professor Joanne St. Lewis to publicly "assess" the student report.  In just a few days' time, St. Lewis issued a public report questioning the validity of the student charges.

Gashoka recently made a six-minute YouTube video (imbedded below) analyzing St. Lewis's role in helping the university deflect the students' charge of racism.  (St. Lewis and Gashoka are black, and this writer is white.)

After the video was posted, St. Lewis, through a big-name lawyer hired for her by the university, sent Gashoka a notice of libel, which is a threat to sue for defamation.

 

St. Lewis is already suing former U of O physics professor Denis Rancourt for $1 million for expressing a similar view on his “U of O Watch” blog.  That defamation lawsuit, which began in 2011, is funded by the university and pursued by the same lawyer who is threatening Gashoka -- Richard Dearden of the large corporate law firm Gowlings.  University president Allan Rock testified under oath that his funding of the lawsuit against Rancourt is without a spending limit, “without a cap.”

Gashoka made public the threat that she received, and she publicly called upon Rock to “Please confirm that the University of Ottawa will not be funding a defamation lawsuit against me [her].”

In this writer’s opinion, it is morally wrong for the University of Ottawa and St. Lewis to try to silence Gashoka.  Using public funds and student tuition money to fund repressive litigation against her would be ironic, as the university claims to promote discourse and debate on matters of public interest.

Gashoka has the right to interpret the facts any way that she wants in this or any other matter of public importance.  Public controversy and debate on societal issues can be a rough trade and can involve terms that sting, but the law accommodates its requirements.  St. Lewis should not expect to be immune from criticism for the role that she played.

I call on president Allan Rock to state publicly, without further delay, that the university will not fund a lawsuit against Hazel Gashoka for her video, and to clarify the university’s criteria for funding lawsuits against its critics.

See all related posts HERE.

Review of Rancourt's book "Fight Against Racism"

"Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism" by Denis G. Rancourt, Stairway Press, 2013, pp. 180.

Book review by Prof. Anatole French [1]


As a legal academic, I have been asked by the author to review his book "Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism". Specifically, I was asked to succinctly describe what is the animal in question. What is this book mainly about?

I struggled with this book because it is densely packed with radical ideas that often sound crazy on first reading. And these ideas often conflicted with my own positions on things. But, in the end, the ideas are explained well enough that I managed to convince myself that I mostly understand what this book is about.

In a nutshell, Rancourt has taken on the dominant paradigm of how a multicultural society can best fight racism. Rancourt's book is a challenge against the policy and legal analysis framework generally known as "critical race theory". Rancourt goes so far as to propose that the legal, policy, and proscriptive instruments which stem from "critical race theory" do more harm than good in fighting racism.

To achieve this, Rancourt places his entire societal analysis within a meta-framework wherein all social interactions, institutions, and struggles are understood to be intercalated within dominance hierarchies. Rancourt explains the biochemical and physiological driving forces which spontaneous create and stabilize societal dominance hierarchies, which in turn determine and are challenged by the individual.

Rancourt shows us that the dominant struggle in society, regarding oppression, is the perpetual struggle between the dominance hierarchy, naturally driven towards fascism, and the individual seeking freedom and meaning. In this struggle, the dominance hierarchy must atomize and destroy the individual, and organizes to do precisely that. Meanwhile some individuals are constantly fighting back. The result is history itself.

Rancourt explains that racism is a most powerful tool in the hierarchy's arsenal, and that to maintain its racist exploitation and domination, the hierarchy needs to select and nurture a class of service intellectuals who play an essential role -- to convince us that things are as good as they can be, or are moving forward, that justice is increasing.

Rancourt dares to advance the blasphemous position that critical race theorists are, for the most part, a facet of the service intellectual class. His argument rests in the nature of the human spirit which must express itself freely or be stifled and die. Rancourt steadfastly argues that absolute freedom of expression always works in favour of more freedom and against dominance; and illustrates the dumbing effect of hierarchy with stunning examples from science and medicine.

The book draws on the ideas of a few key figures, including Malcolm X, Mary Mother Jones, and Paulo Freire. [2]

Enjoy the read!


Endnotes

[1] Guest blogger Professor Anatole French is Professor of Laws, Law Society of Up Canada University, Capital City, Ontario

[2] Although Rancourt never mentions the work of "antiracist essayist" Tim Wise, I felt throughout that if Rancourt met the man in person, they would probably come to blows, or that Rancourt would simply melt into a puddle of depression?

On the theory and practice of free expression

By Denis G. Rancourt

The legal theory of "competing rights" is repugnant. It is a construct born of power's need to hide the true function of the so-called "justice system". Society's dominance hierarchy imposes itself via a self-organizing integration of brute force, coercion, stealth, and "cooling the mark out" [1]. The competing rights paradigm is a self-serving false justification for power to be an arbiter of "rights". Is such a paradigm necessary or unavoidable in a modern society?

The purpose of the present essay is to provide an analytical framework to resolve what one might call "the free expression paradox". The paradox can be explained as follows. If free expression is a human right then, by definition, it must be absolute. Momentarily leaving aside all the "words that wound" nonsense, words are words, and are the instrument of social participation and influence, such that no person can ever legitimately be silenced. However, is not a general's order to commit a war crime an authentic expression? Is not an attendee's "Fire!" cry in a crowded cinema an authentic expression?

The establishment's answer is that "competing rights must be balanced", and that the justice system will do the balancing. This answer drives home two points: (i) rights compete and can be balanced, and (ii) the courts are impartial and are capable of delivering justice. Within this framework, "words that wound" can be accommodated by postulating a "right to not be emotionally hurt" or a "right to not be defamed", and so on into the downward spiral.

The paradox can be solved by what physicists such as Einstein have called "a thought experiment". In a thought experiment, one mind-creates any desired experimental conditions in order to thought-observe the consequences of the imagined conditions. The relevant thought experiment is to imagine a society entirely absent of any dominance hierarchy. In this society, individuals are actually free to associate and to organize as they choose, and to join or leave associations whenever they choose.

In such a society, the right to freedom of expression is absolute because no one has hierarchical power over another. Therefore, expression is an individual's attempt at influence or persuasion, without being amplified by hierarchical dominance. In such a society, the individuals are independent thinkers, and are use to a barrage of differing messages from other individuals, because there are no power structures to align thought or impose rules. 

In this society, screaming "Fire!" in a crowded cinema will not cause a stampede because the independent thinkers present will ascertain for themselves whether there is an actual danger. Having been raised in a society without dominance hierarchies, the individuals are more secure and less easily subject to irrational fears that stem from exposure to indiscriminate applications of authority. The individuals are use to negotiation and are not subject to frantic "every man for himself" reactions which have no purpose. Such reactions make sense in a society where wars can erupt, but have no evolutionary use in a world without dominance.

In this society, individuals are free to efficiently learn about themselves via dialogue, and therefore quickly come to understand their emotional reactions as useful internal messaging, as physiological reactions to their circumstances, rather than as positive or negative states caused by others. These individuals own and interpret their own emotions rather than blame others for "causing" one's emotions. Sticks and stones, yes, but names can never hurt them. Anyway, the "names" usually speak to hierarchical status and lose their meaning in this society without hierarchy.

Regarding the army general, he is free to give his "order", but these soldiers are free to decide if they want to follow the order. The general becomes constrained to only proposing orders that are likely to be received... Each individual has the same societal power potential. Consequently, the "general" has absolute freedom of expression, as does each "soldier". This army is self-organized and self-run.

In such a society without dominance hierarchies, therefore, the right to free expression is absolute. The problem with free expression arises when society is not free, when society is burdened by dominance hierarchies.

As soon as the general has hierarchical power, then his order constitutes a crime, and cannot be viewed as protected pursuant to the general's right to free expression. Likewise, as soon as individuals are made unnaturally irrational and prone to stampedes or mobbing by long-term oppression from a dominance hierarchy, then screaming "Fire!" is not protected by an absolute and unqualified right to free expression. 

Of course, society could in theory choose to make the general's order and the screamer's "Fire!" protected by an absolute right to free expression, as part of shifting the onus entirely on the soldier's responsibility and entirely on the attendee's irrational and dangerous stampede reaction. And one can reasonably argue that this would be a more correct assignment of responsibility, consistent with personal responsibility for one's own actions, while leaving the right of free expression as a true right. This would push the army to allow a larger degree of soldier dissent, and the individual citizen to make more rational evaluations of danger warnings (which would be more frequent).

But institutional power is such that merely imposing an absolute right to free expression would not resolve the problem of harm done by some expression in a hierarchical society. Thus, "balancing opposing rights" is born.

In this way, once we understand the "balancing opposing rights" paradigm as a mechanism to justify and stabilize society's dominance hierarchy, we are brought to a careful examination of who will do the balancing and how will the balancing be achieved.

It is a fundamental law of hierarchies that a hierarchy will always act to strengthen itself. Likewise, it is a law of nature that individual freedoms threaten hierarchy, and that hierarchies always act to suppress individual freedoms [2].

"How the balancing will be achieved" depends on whether we want to move towards more hierarchical control, towards corporate fascism, or towards more individual freedom. In practice, an absolute right to free expression is not an allowed option in a dominance hierarchy. It is especially not allowed by the hierarchy itself. The only option is the on-going give-and-take battle regarding how the "balancing" is achieved.

We must understand this battle as a battle between increasing fascism, which is the natural tendency of dominance hierarchies [2], and increasing individual freedoms. The two are incompatible end points. Increasing one, diminishes the other. It is society's constant battle between hierarchical control and individual freedom. All the institutions are engaged in this battle.

The above understanding leads us to a clear view of how to fight for individual freedom and against advancing fascism, within the "balancing of rights" battle.

When should the right to free expression trump other rights? I propose the following rule. If the individual's free expression weakens the dominance hierarchy's control (employer, institution, etc.) then this freedom is "up freedom" (up the hierarchy) and trumps the other "rights", including contractual rights, employer control, etc. If, on the other hand, the expression, such as corporate propaganda, illegitimate orders, etc., acts against individual freedom, then this "down freedom" (down the hierarchy) is trumped by the interests of the individuals.

In the language of physics, the presence of hierarchy "breaks the symmetry of the system", such that we must define two kinds of freedom, "up" and "down" freedoms. Freedoms must be allowed differently, depending on whether they act up or down the hierarchy.

As one consequence, whistleblowing becomes absolutely protected.

Of course, the justice system argues that it is already achieving the optimum balance to "protect" individual rights within a strong hierarchical (institutional) framework. And so the battle goes.

On the other hand, if I had the power to do so, I would make free expression an absolute right for all immediately, and let the pieces fall where they may. As a thought experiment, there is no doubt in my mind that an absolute right to free expression would overwhelmingly work in favor of increasing individual freedom and towards pushing back corporate/government fascism. It would make for a happier place.


References

[1] Goffman, Erving, "On Cooling the Mark Out: Some Aspects of Adaptation to Failure", Psychiatry, 1952.

[2] Rancourt, Denis G., "Hierarchy and free expression in the Fight Against Racism", Stairway Press, 2013.

Other essays by Denis Rancourt are HERE.