"Language and Linguistics for Decolonization and Liberation and for Peace and Community Building — From the River to the Sea in Palestine and Israel to the Mountaintops of Haiti and Beyond."

That's the name of the class discussed in "The Controversial Class That M.I.T. Is Paying a Professor Not to Teach/Michel DeGraff, a vocal pro-Palestinian activist, can’t be easily fired because he has tenure. But he has been kicked out of his department" (NYT).

"An M.I.T. panel rejected the course over questions about whether Dr. DeGraff, a Haitian scholar and expert in the study of Creole languages, had the expertise to teach it. That was supposed to finish the matter.... He disagreed that he lacked the ability to teach the course.... 'M.I.T. should not be repressing my teaching in this way,' Dr. DeGraff said in an interview. He called the decision a 'violation of my professional rights.'..."

Architect of the Universe.

With all this blabber about Jonathan Gruber as the "Architect of Obamacare," we got to talking about the "architect" metaphor and the idea of God as the "Architect of the Universe."



I got that image from Wikipedia, where there is an entry for "Great Architect of the Universe." Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote: "God, Who is the first principle of all things, may be compared to things created as the architect is to things designed (ut artifex ad artificiata)."And John Calvin repeatedly calls God "the Architect of the Universe." The Masons use the initials "G.A.O.T.U., meaning the Great Architect of the Universe."And the term appears in Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and Gnosticism.

I'm calling this to your attention not only because it's interesting on its own, but because it helps us think about the arrogance that oozes from the designation "architect." Gruber is an academic, whose work was useful in whatever way it was, either because he designed plausibly workable structures or because he mobilized the reputation of M.I.T. to be exploited to lull and soothe us. Calling him an "architect" is part of the propaganda. It's a powerful word, and when we become aware of its association with God, we may wake up to the magnitude of the flimflammery.

"When I was at M.I.T., if someone went to hack the system, say by downloading databases to play with them, might be called a hero..."

"... get a degree, and start a company. But they called the cops on him. Cops."

From "How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture."