Alas, our recent Columbia teach-in on the war, which included some of the university’s leading luminaries in all departments, was singlehandedly derailed by the asinine comments of one anthro prof, Nicholas De Genova. Said De Genova, “The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military…I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus.” He also argued that all self-proclaimed patriots are in fact white supremacists. Sigh…it’s freak show guys like this who give the entire anti-war movement a bad name. As you can see, Eric Foner calls the guy idiotic in the article, and Alan Brinkley has also declared his comments “abhorrent” and “immoral.” (In fact, even Columbia’s President has now distanced himself from De Genova.) The point is, this joker in no way speaks for the majority of Americans against the war, although he’s already getting a lot of run in the warblogger nation regardless. And, while I don’t want to disparage an entire department, I’m not entirely surprised he emerged from anthropology – I’ve heard similar rants from other radical post-structuralist and post-colonialist-enamored students over in Schermerhorn.