<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Dear Micha,</div><div>I was very moved by your outrage and frustration. I can't speak for UCSD, but I think UC Santa Cruz was also established in an isolated and beautiful area on a hill and given architecture without a center. It might well have a few friendly spots in it for trannies, judging from a couple of my students. The campus generates microclimates that can support difference, but then it takes a conscious effort and dedication to overcome an often unconscious apartheid that creates seams and paths that keep people apart even when they are together throughout daily life, in town, in dorms and in the classroom. I am glad the Chancellor has established an initiative this year to work on this problem. </div><div><br></div><div> I met a retired diplomat (Middle East, Balkan war) two years ago who developed literature and a method of student run "sustained dialog". The method indicates that this dialogue between the races (in this case) takes sustained effort over a longer time frame. His name is Harold Saunders, <a href="http://www.sustaineddialogue.org">www.sustaineddialogue.org</a>. He mentioned that it was in use at Stanford and a few other campuses. Perhaps someone knows if it has achieved any successes and if it is still being supported by students. The guidebook is built using diplomatic techniques and experiences and possibly South African truth and reconciliation methods so we know it can have ghastly failures as well heartening successes. I personally walk across the seams whenever I can, but I'm thinking about how I can join an initiative to work toward widespread and lasting results of inclusion. </div><div><br></div><div>RE dialogue, I think it gets longer term results than protest, but protest has to be there to draw attention and resources (hopefully) to the problem. Thinking about Obama's faith in dialogue, however, when the "other side" would llke to take over and abolish the US government it gives me pause. There has to be a necessity for and commitment to dialogue for it to really happen. There has to be a more complex strategy for the coming dreadful years in US politics and economic policy. (It occurs to me that the war in Afghanistan has become a strange mixture of entry level dialogue, drones and IEDs for our soldiers. It is certainly a new kind of fighting compared to Vietnam and Gulf Wars I and II.) A rethink or "concept work" is probably in order for me to sort out what might be productive to do now rather than relying solely on traditional understandings of dialogue. </div><div><br></div><div>Thinking about those who are excluded from the university as teachers--including yourself--requires even greater consideration and long term effort since it involves redesigning a system that relies on cheap, disposble labor. I was a disposable "gypsy scholar" fo many years and was often told that my work record was "not real." Nothing counted and the longer I was in that status the worse my chances were of getting out. I wrote my way of it. Now the "gysies" are being shed from an educational system fighting for economic survival. What to do? Especially if this shedding results in less diverse faculty and teaching pools.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks for sharing your anguish with us! I hope that people who are far more practiced in dealing with the seams directly will weigh in. I could use some help and ideas for when I return to teaching in 2011. </div><div><br></div><div>Margaret Morse</div><div><br></div><div>U of California Santa Cruz on sabbatical in Berlin</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div>On Dec 9, 2010, at 3:17 AM, micha cárdenas wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://occupyeverything.com/features/it-doesnt-just-get-better-this-is-political/">http://occupyeverything.com/features/it-doesnt-just-get-better-this-is-political/</a><br><p>Last week was the first Queering the Campus Mixer at UCSD, organized by SPACES and the Transnational Queer & Transgender Studies Research and Curriculum Group, including a large effort from Sarah Shim. I wanted to add a comment to the discussion in the open forum, but I left the event crying and didn’t really feel like talking to people at that point.</p><p>Early in the conversation, the group was discussing the need they feel for more queer and trans spaces on campus. One person in the circle, to paraphrase, said that they feel that this campus is the most homophobic environment they’ve ever been in. This person went on to say that they don’t know how the rest of us manage to do it, to come here day to day and face the coldness, the hostility, the feeling that everyone here is against you. Going on, they said that they feel like this campus is so cold that it goes beyond just homophobia, that everyone ignores each other, that the buildings feel like they are against you, the air, the cement. It’s like death, they said, this place is like death.</p>...<br><br>The question I want us to ask is: who feels welcome here? And why? Certainly some people feel very welcome on this campus, from the looks of how they walk around. I’m sure you have someone in mind who you’ve seen on campus recently. Since the mixer, I’ve been haunted by this question, reconsidering what I see at this school.<p>Read the rest at:</p><p><a href="http://occupyeverything.com/features/it-doesnt-just-get-better-this-is-political/">http://occupyeverything.com/features/it-doesnt-just-get-better-this-is-political/</a></p> <br>-- <br>micha cárdenas<br><br>Co-Author, Trans Desire / Affective Cyborgs, Atropos Press, <a href="http://is.gd/daO00" target="_blank">http://is.gd/daO00</a><br>Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego<br> Lecturer, Critical Gender Studies Program, University of California, San Diego<br>Artist/Researcher, UCSD School of Medicine<br>Artist/Theorist, bang.lab, <a href="http://bang.calit2.net" target="_blank">http://bang.calit2.net</a><br> <br>blog: <a href="http://transreal.org" target="_blank">http://transreal.org</a><br><br>gpg: <a href="http://is.gd/ebWx9" target="_blank">http://is.gd/ebWx9</a><br><br> _______________________________________________<br>iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org)<br><a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br>https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc<br><br>List Archive:<br>http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/<br><br>iDC Photo Stream:<br>http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/<br><br>RSS feed:<br>http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc<br><br>iDC Chat on Facebook:<br>http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647<br><br>Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref</blockquote></div><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div> </div></div></span></div></span> </div><br></body></html>