The University’s longstanding, disturbing refusal to investigate labor conditions at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar has fallen out of the discussion as of late. It is past time to bring the discussion back to light. Some context for the uninitiated. Human rights groups charge that Qatar’s foreign labor sponsorship system enables exploitation bordering on slavery. Migrant laborers come to the Gulf nation seeking work, but are quickly funneled into involuntary servitude.
“It’s not an issue of U.S.-Mexico borders,” he said. “It’s an issue of migrants and human rights. Love has no borders … We need to demonstrate that only love will overcome hate.”
Morones’s two-day visit, sponsored by the Latino/a studies program, American studies program, the Cornell Farmworkers program, among other departments, will include classroom visits and meetings with students.
Raad Rahman, a Bangladeshi freelance journalist, novelist and human rights activist, will stay in Ithaca for a month as a writer-in-residence with Ithaca City of Asylum, an organization that provides sanctuary for repressed writers, according to the Cornell Chronicle, which is run by The University. Rahman told The Sun that Ithaca caught her interest because of its vibrant environment as a college town and said that she “likes being surrounded by students and intellectuals for the next generation.”
During her time in town, in addition to writing, Rahman will address the South Asia program at Cornell in a seminar titled, “Sex, Blasphemy and Terrorism: Bangladesh’s Systematic Repression of its LGBTQ Communities” on April 23. She will also give speeches at the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival’s literary showcase and hold public readings of her work. Rahman, who graduated from Bard College with a degree in anthropology and literature in 2006, has been active in human rights advocacy and journalism. She recalled receiving a number of death threats when writing about the first and only LGBT magazine Roopbaan in Bangladesh, where her fellow journalist and founder of the magazine, Xulhaz Mannan, was murdered for defending gay rights.
“We would hope, in an ideal world, that after this event, Cornell students would feel inspired to speak out and to write to lawmakers to end mass incarceration as we know it in the United States,” said Chris Elliott ’20.
“The chief failing of the day with some of our well-meaning philanthropists is their absolute refusal to face inevitable facts, if such facts appear cruel.” -Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race
As a prelude to his article, the second of my series on tumult and upheaval in 1916, I must warn any potential reader that the content may be distressing to those sensitive to racism and violence. I would advise discretion. The controlled use of violence as spectacle has been a social glue since time immemorial: the Romans handpicked slaves to fight to the death over the graves of their patrician masters, and the despots of feudal Europe relished the drawing, quartering and parading of ghettoized pariahs and their ilk, be they Jewish, Huguenot, or Cathar. These previous blood-shows of Antiquity and the Middle Ages were the concerted efforts of knightly orders to, as they saw it, cut off gangrenous social limbs from the corpus politicum. D.H. Lawrence, in his compendium of critical analysis on the growth and stagnation of American literature, once wrote that a white man would never be at ease on American soil: the dust and mud and bronzed ochre itself would forever reject him, the usurper of one native population and the enslaver of a another he had imported.
Clarification appended
Mohammed al-Ajami, a student at the University of Cairo who was arrested by Qatari security forces in 2011, was pardoned and released by the Emir of Qatar following a letter written by Amnesty International Cornell and Cornell Organization for Labor Action earlier this month. Christopher Hanna ’18, the co-president of Amnesty International Cornell, said that while he considers the letter drop just one part of a larger movement, it speaks to the power of collective action on matters of international justice. “Our letter-drop served a small but important role in rapidly ramping up press attention and public pressure for al-Ajami’s release, ultimately resulting in the Emir of Qatar’s decision to issue a pardon,” he said. “Altogether, this testifies to the power of coalition-building and human rights activism.” The letter was given to acting President Michael Kotlikoff, requesting that he pressure the Qatari government to release poet Ajami from prison.
With an open mind and two sides of the story, you’re bound to learn something new. Welcome to the zoo! This is a blog where both the Republican and Democrat viewpoints are represented. The blog is not meant to sway you either way necessarily, just present both sides of the story. You may not agree with the whole article, but hey, you’re likely to agree with half!
