I was watching an interview with Terrence Roberts, part of the Harvard\/EdX class on Civic Engagement and he mentioned that when he received hate mail, his standard response was to correct the grammar and send it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Terrence Roberts was one of the Little Rock Nine, the group of black students who were the first to attend Little Rock Central High School during desegregation. They were initially denied entry, twice. The first time a local mob plus National Guard, under orders from the Governor, prevented their entry. The second time, an even larger mob prevented them from entering. For them to enter the high school, it took President Eisenhower removing the National Guard from the Governor\u2019s control, and sending U.S. Military troops to the school, where soldiers had to be paired with each student and accompany them throughout the school day just to attend classes and minimise the violence that they were subjected to. Even with those guards, there were acts of violence and aggression against them, and Arkansas closed the high schools completely the following school year to prevent their return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. Roberts was moved to Los Angeles by his family and he was able to complete his High School education there, which he followed with time at UCLA and CSC and SIU, ultimately getting degrees in Social Welfare and a PhD in Psychology.
Anyway, what struck me about his response to hate mail, reminded me of how Harvard supposedly responded to a letter from the Trump Administration\u2014 specifically Linda McMahon\u2019s pugilistic letter that told Harvard it shouldn\u2019t bother seeking grant money. The response that was posted to social media and quickly became viral showed a red-pen markup of the message, in the fashion of a teacher\u2019s response to a poorly written essay. The meme was fake, as they tend to be, crafted by a clever grad student at MIT, but the online response to it was overwhelmingly positive by people assuming it was, in fact, from Harvard, as it was seen as a quite fitting response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also reminded me of an even earlier response in the same vein, in the movie Monty Python\u2019s Life of Brian, the classic movie satirising the beginnings of Christianity. The scene I\u2019m reminded of, is the one in which Brian, a new member of the People\u2019s Front of Judea, is tasked with writing \u201cRomans Go Home\u201d on Pontius Pilate\u2019s Palace. Brian, portrayed by Graham Chapman, is caught in the act by a Roman Centurion, portrayed by John Cleese. The Centurion is dismayed by the incorrect Latin scrawled on the wall by Brian, who wrote \u201cRomanes Eunt Domus\u201d, and proceeds to walk him through Latin grammar for the correct term for \u201cRomans\u201d (Romani), and the verb conjugations for \u201cgo\u201d (ite), and \u201chome\u201d (Domum) ending with the phrase \u201cRomani ite Domum\u201d. The Centurion then orders Brian to write it 100 times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was watching an interview with Terrence Roberts, part of the Harvard\/EdX class on Civic Engagement and he mentioned that when he received hate mail, his standard response was to correct the grammar and send it back. Terrence Roberts was one of the Little Rock Nine, the group of black students who were the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokeyama.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}