A Disorientation Guide: The Cornell corporation and mental colonialism

High above the waters of Cayuga Lake on a hill stolen from the Cayuga people sits our beloved Cornell University, a high caliber institution, held in the highest esteem, respected throughout civil society in general and in the economic sector of knowledge production specifically. It is the University which “educates” and “enlightens” us (for no small fee). The other side of this proverbial coin: Cornell is also a highly effective, highly insidious agent of mental colonization. To spin off the title of this past Sunday’s ’08 Class Council organized political event called Diversity Kills Me, let me explain how Cornell kills us, condemning us to living the death of mental bondage.

The Cornell Corporation, not to be confused with the hard-working and good-hearted people of Cornell who in another world would be productive agents of societal betterment, is a slave master. No, I’m not referring to the many unemployed and working poor persons negatively affected by the Cornell Corporation (although let’s not forget them); rather, I’m referring to the social hierarchies that Cornell reproduces and makes seem natural. To the best of my understanding, this is how it works: Cornell creams the crop, accepting the young men and women of the immorally wealthy class, the TV-doped middle classes, and even a few trailer park and ghetto dwellers before tokenizing them and brainwashing away all organic (and by definition, subversive) knowledge they’ve been taught to shun. Cornell aborts our humanity while patting us on the back, whispering in our ears, “The world is yours to rule; you have earned it.” It patronizes us and tempts us with the fruits of domination in hopes that we abandon our solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world (if we were ever so fortunate to know love) and become the colonial administrators of a down-trodden planet. Domination is humanity, they preach.

But this is a lie. Domination is not humanity. Liberation is. Domination confines us not only in concrete systems of oppression, but also in silent, invisible, and tasteless ideologies of dehumanization. Rarely is it discussed, but white supremacy oppresses white folks, patriarchy oppresses men, and heterosexism oppresses “straight” persons. In addition, nativism oppresses U.S. citizens and able-ism oppresses those without “handicaps.” We white persons are taught that we are not supposed to partake in the self-affirmation of dance, that we must convert the world to our “Enlightened” European ways of thinking, and that we should be distrusting of people of color. We “real men” are not supposed to have emotions and are kept from finding solace in public spaces while the tender persons behind our façades are silenced. We U.S. citizens are taught that we must have all the answers for a backwards and blighted “third world,” which is why so many of us are sent to die in racist imperial wars; we have been taught that U.S. civilization is morally superior to the “savagery” of other peoples (hence the pervasive imperialist language of human rights and the lack of honest self-criticism).

We heterosexuals (as defined in the false gender binary) are kept from intimate non-sexual same-sex relationships. You’ve heard the phrase “no homo” so often that you now can’t keep yourself from fixating on the subconscious messages that you’re putting out to your friends about your sexuality (pun intended). Take a long, hard minute to think about that (pun intended). “Real men” shouldn’t love other men; “real men” speak softly and carry a big stick (pun intended). Are you gay or are you paranoid? Or are you just made to feel neurotic by one of the many systems of oppression? My neuroses exist, but I will not submit myself to the pseudo-scientists in psychology who think they can heal me because my neuroses are not rooted in my brain. They are not my fault. They are the carcinogenic residues of exploitation under the aforementioned systems of oppression, the very ones the Cornell Corporation conditions us to believe don’t exist as systems, but rather as isolated incidents.

Thus Cornell names the world on my behalf. It names me, it names my relationships to the other beings of the world, and it does so with the false pretense of academic integrity and objective scholarship. It tells me who I am allowed to become, what I can choose as my purpose, and how I can choose to exist. It is a more clandestine colonizing power than even the United States government precisely because it, along with its peer institutions, has monopolized the right to produce valid knowledge. In 2008, one must have bestowed upon them the holy college degree if they are to have intelligent opinions and nuanced perspectives. It is not enough to survive and reflect in order to be an intelligent subject; no, we must be “educated” in the university. If, as Brazilian educator Paolo Freire wrote, “to be fully human is to name the world,” then the Cornell Corporation functions to prevent the realization of my full humanity.

Unilaterally declaring that only its language is valid, a language produced and reproduced in and for oppressive power structures, the Cornell Corporation has tried to castrate my tongue and neuter my ability to even think about dreaming about planting the seeds of an egalitarian tomorrow. The “peace” and “order” of the hierarchies Cornell covers up are tyrannies. The egalitarian “chaos” of undoing them is liberation, humanity, beauty.

To the Class of 2008, as graduation quickly approaches, let us begin the healing process to recover the possibility of realizing our full humanity. Let us learn the virtue of humility by holding our tongues and opening our ears to those who have cried out so loudly against the system for so long that they have lost their voices. They will forgive us when we begin to act in solidarity. They will love us when we speak of how we’ve wept so lonely for so long that we’ve forgotten how to love. And they will teach us how to create and survive in a more beautiful world, one worth raising children in.

To the Class of 2008: fuck the racist, classist, and sexist pig power structure that dehumanizes both the oppressors and oppressed. You are beautiful.

Evan Baker Smith is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at ebsmith@cornellsun.com [1]. Praxis Makes Perfect appeared alternate Tuesdays this semester.