How to Cite These Archived Letters
Dear Colleague Archive 1993
| Date of Letter | Topic Summary | ID |
|---|---|---|
| 1993-January-01 | "Institutional racism takes a number of forms, one of which causes--by subtle and not-so-subtle means--a lowering of the expectations of the targeted group." | 134 |
| 1993-January-15 | On a childhood in China during the war: "We might be half-starved, our young lives could be wiped out by a bomb anytime; yet, subtly, we were given to understand that we were potentially citizens of the world, cosmopolites, inheritors of not only Chinese culture but world culture." | 135 |
| 1993-February-01 | "I suggest that the Africans and the Asians switch goals. Africans should now storm the Ivory Tower and take over, in particular, science and technology...Asians, by contrast, should storm the political arena..." | 136 |
| 1993-February-15 | Recollections of teachers John Leighly, Clarence Glacken, and Carl Sauer | 137 |
| 1993-March-01 | "One of the most damaging educational myths in America is that of learning from one's age-peers. It is a pernicious form of egalitarianism which gives rise to the comforting idea that adults don't have to be around their offspring much..." | 138 |
| 1993-March-15 | "In the midst of the hostility of the universe (of which Antarctica is a tiny part), human beings have created warmth and civility." and Apsley Cherry-Garrard's book The Worst Journey in the World (1922) | 139 |
| 1993-April-01 | On chaos and orderliness: "At no time in recent history has the rabbit foot dangling on the car's rear mirror seem so reasonable--so rational--rather than superstitious..." | 140 |
| 1993-April-15 | On Denis Donoghue and memories of Vick's Vapo-Rub | 141 |
| 1993-May-01 | "A source of unease in this country--among older people and conservatives in particular, but surely not limited to them--is the feeling that the entire United States is about to become New York." | 142 |
| 1993-May-15 | "Under certain circumstances, slurs may bring about inclusion; without doubt, an excess of politeness excludes, and, I would add, the same applies to an excess of sensitivity." | 143 |
| 1993-June-01 | On perhaps forgiving the West for exploitation but not for its scientific-technological achievement |
144 |
| 1993-September-01 | Joshua: "At some stage, [a] child becomes a part of the public domain and is no longer fully copyrighted." | 145 |
| 1993-September-15 | If Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice was written today: "young people nowadays are more likely to look down than up. They no longer consider the sky, the stars, a part of nature. Nature, for them, has shrunk to the earth's biosphere." | 146 |
| 1993-October-01 | Puzzling over "the way the educational establishment and mainstream society support the seemingly radical position of downplaying the classics of Western literature--the 'canon'--replacing some of the items with Eastern classics such as the Koran and the Analects of Confucius and contemporary ethnic literature." | 147 |
| 1993-October-15 | About the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Aldous Huxley, and C. S. Lewis | 148 |
| 1993-November-01 | On suicide: "...quite a few people are unwilling to let the curve of life follow its own graceful course. They kill themselves." | 149 |
| 1993-November-15 | "Unlike my enlightened Chinese educators, American educators emphasize precisely the wrapping--the cultural garb--at the expense of the human excellence it might (or might not) clothe. The garb itself, American children are told, must be the source of pride. I find this both perverse and unendurably sad." | 150 |
| 1993-December-01 | On minorities in science: "Asian students are grinds." | 151 |
| 1993-December-15 | About Bill Clinton, Oxford, Rhodes, and French science | 152 |
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