Don't stand so close to me

We've all done it when we were awkward and fourteen.  The teacher was probably not even young or good looking.  But we did it for approval, for love, for a better grade, to be admired.  A student of mine alerted me to an interested phenomenon recently.  There was this girl who was most sober in my class, did her work,  took copious notes, wrote at college level, her glasses high on her nose, she looked like she had just stepped out of Hajj.  She told me, "you should see her in the Eco teacher's class.  She is so hyper; you have to pull her down from the top of desks.  She can't shut up with the "Sir Sir Sir Sir...But Sir when is our treat?"

Why do girls act cute around older men?  I doubt they just want to be fed pizza because they need the calories.  Usually the flirting is more heavily between female students and male teachers.  Of-course some young women teachers may become fantasy figures.   But most female teachers, at least the older ones, are more like mother figures to be feared, revered, lied to; they are distant and seem to regard the youth with suspicion.

How does this flirting happen?

Do the girls notice the teacher's propensity and try to capitalize on it because they want to do get better grades, they are are insecure and need validation?  Is it important to allow such dynamics to develop because there is emotional growth in every experience.  As long as girls are shielded from overt abuse, this is a chance for them to learn how relationships work, explore their own longings and desires, however risky, for an attractive teacher, and be able to access them in a more engaged manner.  The problem with that theory is that most such relationships always carry the danger of turning predatory.  A few months ago, I heard the story of a certain teacher at one of the DHA schools who has come close to sexually molesting female high school students and he advises his colleagues to do the same and treats it like a job perk.  But even if they are not predatory per se, the teacher is usually more confident, smarter, has figured more in life, has definite desires, and is using the young person in the process to impress them with a certain ideology, or educate and dominate them in some other way.  Also, he's at this gig every year on repeat mode.  How jaded does it get in ten years.

Students on the other hand have not studied politics and are not yet able to reference their experiences within a feminist framework.  Years from now some of the girls may question memories and encounters even if they were willing and enthusiastic participants and realize that their teachers were unnecessarily reciprocative to flirtatious overtures from them.  Some may feel taken advantage of and carry with them shame, and guilt for appearing coy and being vulnerable.  Can totally imagine Kangna Ranaut playing the grown up distraught and distorted version.  Some, of-course, may think the whole thing was hilarious, and dismiss the teacher as pathetic, and feel empowered.  Think Samantha from Sex and the City.  Its not that uncomplicated.

Needs help

Gives Advice

I remember we once had a recent college graduate come and teach us math and all the girls had crushes on him.  He once asked me, amidst all the bubbling hormones in the physics class, to sit next to him.  He was perched on a steel desk, and he went "pat pat pat"  at the spot smack next to him.  I know I did not learn anything about anodes and cathodes - but it was an elevating, edifying moment.  Did he not know?  Did he know and was this a conscious and manipulative act?  In hindsight, definitely the latter.

I  once asked an even older male teacher what his first name was.  Now if I had a teen-aged daughter who did that, I would be mortified and provide her with life affirming lessons.  And the teacher thinking, all of 45, smiled back and entertained the query even though it was, at the time, not the road to go on.  I did not feel exploited, and the situation needn't be at least not in the immediate sense.  But how should a teacher respond if he (or she) is wholesome, compassionate, and has good gender politics?

Discourage without disparaging,  maintain a distance without being mean, disallow boundaries from being transgressed inappropriately, check in class if anyone is feeling uncomfortable, transform flirtatious moments into teachable ones, and generally not make a big deal out of much.

What if the age gap is less troubling - a 20 year old college student and a 30 year old teacher?  A 24 year old student and a 50 year old professor?  A story that circulated when I was at law school was that of the "blonde who tumbled out of a teacher's office in a disheveled state."  I had no reason to believe the story to be true, but I did lose a little respect for the teacher. This was a solid leftist, his partner was a hard working American, he never patronized Starbucks, and believed in community parenting.  I can understand the terrible temptation -- a woman who is capable of consent thrusts herself upon a teacher in a country where free willed sexual encounters are not criminalized, the age difference kosher, and in some sense, the teacher is not infantilizing her or being paternalistic by making the choice for her that nothing should transpire.  The only thing holding him back is  accountability to the partner who during that moment maybe mopping vomit from an oncology floor at the local hospital, and oblivious.

No to Starbucks.  Yes to Blondes.

Even more unclear is the case of the teacher who talks explicitly in class.  I had an English teacher who was teaching us Gothic Fiction.  He invited the students to his house to watch the film "BladeRunner" and then in class said that the character had to have strong legs as being a prostitute it was inevitable.  An American student was so disturbed, she confronted him and called him out in class as being unnecessarily sexual.  It was an awkward moment and to my relief, he defended it.  How can you teach Dracula and the Exorcist without talking about sex and sexuality?  There is no point supporting a puritanical position by mistaking it for feminism.

Mom, it was my period...and you had to send in these priests.

But Still.  Regardless of the age differential and subject matter, the onus should be upon the teacher to ensure that he does not tacitly or expressly encourage flirtation or be kinky otherwise.  I know that makes life very boring and bereft of the exciting possibilities in the riskiest of human relationships -- but think regulatory

Some relationships can turn abusive and the weakest must be protected from behavior that amounts to harassment, incitement, or other offences.  There is a power dynamic in a student teacher relationship regardless.  Teacher is empowered.  Students are unemployed, younger, "wet bus stop, she's waiting, his car is warm and dry, notwithstanding."

So here's the drill.

Don't flirt back because there is potential for abuse.  When in a meeting , leave doors open.  Always make sure someone else is always present when you meet with a student.  Don't always treat the students to pizzas and burgers.  Avoid all meetings in cafes and restaurants.  Cordial and polite, not demeaning and negative.  If you can't help the urges, seek help, get out of teaching and go to a call center.

shut down wall street

In the mid nineties I found myself in a wall street job because of a lack of really knowing what to do. It had its perks; it allowed me to live in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Park slope area for two years of my life, dine on sushi, and later take only the bare minimum loans for law school.  So much in the world has changed since then.  I remember an chilly October lunch date with a girl who worked at Lehman.  She was in a black suit and we both had a lunch of steamed rolls.  She wanted to know how she could get a job at my bank, and I, being the useless analyst there could ever be, was simply plotting my exit, and developing a deep seated hatred for all the bankers, and how they sneered at the rest of the world.  She died later.  She was on the 94th flood of the world trade center when the planes crashed on September 11th.  She was a sweet girl, and I was very sad when I heard the news.  I was sad also when a banker who looked like Al Pacino died.  He was good looking, and good to his secretary and often that was enough to like someone in this despicable place where people played games within a deranged hierarchy.  And specially this secretary, an aspiring, aging actor-- who I once found crying in a stall.

There was this one ape of a pink man, who liked burgers and french fries and turkey cheese sandwiches for lunch every day.  He walked around the floor insulting and picking on a few of his underling colleagues.  He was assisted by his cronies.  There was the man who liked being mothered by his Jamaican secretary and when he once yelled at her in crunch time, all hell broke loose.  And things weren't calm until he apologized to her and bought her a gift.  There was the man addicted to sex, and specially with Asian women because, as he admitted once, "they were eager to please."  There was the intelligent Princeton graduate who really should have been a civil servant, but found himself crunching numbers for stupid mortgage backed deals -and was slowly getting enticed by the money.  There was the Jewish man with short arms and reptilian eyes.  He made himself a mentor to women and spoke nonstop, and once said that "the paychecks keep coming and after a while you stop to even notice."  There was the Indian woman who wanted to be a freshly minted american citizen.  And the day she did become one, she came in her knee length dress, and said, "I am a freshly minted american citizen."  That was before her water broke - in the office- after which she became a mother and was the only banker who left at 6 pm.  There was the "short man" trader with a personality and temper that more than compensated for his lack of height.  He tried to take me under his wing - picked up a phone and said "this is how we get things done."

There was the Puerto Rican receptionist who was 26 and beautiful, and sat there all day smiling in her thick make up.  She told me the sex addict had propositioned to her.  When I told her that was absolutely disgusting she said these bankers are very rich, and its an easy way to make money.  There was the Harvard grad who was trying so hard to be a VP.  She wore conservative clothes and constantly worried about securing her advancement - and was probably an embarrassment to her sorority.

And then there was my nemesis.  I hated him with such a passion.  He tormented me, forced me to come in on a day when I had called in sick in the morning, constantly complained that I did no work, and bitched me out to superiors.

I did no work.

After the first two months, I had withdrawn to my cubicle and wrote on my computer -- petitions, essays, stories, emails.  They all knew it but couldn't fire me because I was there for a two year internship anyway, and I did what was asked of me.  What I did not do was pant like a dog, wag my tail, and suck up to my bosses, and beg them to keep me working all weekend so that I may succeed.  What irked this jerk, was that that despite my lack of ambition, I was liked enough by enough people who mattered.  Also by the the sex addict who weilded power on account of his evil genius-- and who, luckily for me, was a total sexist, and his internalization of gender roles was so deep that he never expected me to do anything more financially meaningful than look pretty.  He would smile furiously when he ran into me in the hallway. He would thank me graciously for getting him a document, and mumble something incomprehensible and look irrepressibly shy.   And I would think to myself, despite all, I don't mind this pervy Jew so much.  A middle-aged Portnoy, just less socialist.

My nemesis tried to get me into closed room with three bosses so they could assert to me the seriousness of my situation.  He was a one of the cronies of the burly pink guy.  I need to buck up.  I needed to show more enthusiasm.  It was really my politics he could not stand.  They had read my letter to a magazine that did a photo shoot of  college girls naked, and I called the whole idea misogynist.  He was on to me and he could not believe I was getting away with it.  He must have had a harsh Italian childhood, beaten for not working hard enough, fed bootstrap stories, pulled away from video games by the ear; and here he saw me, a spoiled college grad, getting away with grounds for dismissal. He brought his two year old child to work one day on "Take Your Daughters" to work day (which he hated because it was liberal) and she ran up to me and clasped my leg.  He was saying to everyone how the first words he taught her were, "Big government is the problem."  Much to his horror and my surprise - I looked down at this blue eyed kid and picked her up.

My nemesis did have his moments.  He came to my cubicle and told me my ID picture was nice with a look of big brotherly lust.  He wanted to debate with me, and disabuse me, but did not know where to start.  He once saw me with my sister and was most inquisitive about what it was I had handed to her out side the building we worked in.  One fine day, I was able to leave, and it must have been the most joyous day of my life.  Suddenly, I felt insecure financially - crashed on the floor of a friends house in Jersey City, alarmed at how Newports, menthol cigarettes, were being bluntly targeted to the city's lower income Latinos.

When I returned two years later for a job on the same street, but this time with the ACLU doing 1st amendment work, I was paranoid I would run into one of the bankers - especially when I bought one dollar coffee at the small grocery stores --owned by old Italians.  I was addicted to the cheap, burnt sweet flavor..  I thought I would see them.  They would mock me and jeer me subtly for being a student - and in debt. My class of analysts probably made a $60,000 bonus, and rented swanky apartments, and here I was surviving on french fries and rice, bought at bulk rates from Indian stores, and commuting from Jackson Heights on the seven train, and then switching for the South Ferry.

No one can afford to live in New York without a high paying job.  Not then.  Not now.  When I visited recently, my friend told me that there is no future for the youth.  "Harlem is deep into the informal economy, and people have no jobs."  On our way to the Bronx zoo, we saw people selling bottles of water, drugs, services, and decrepit neighborhoods with businesses shutting down.  Poor neighborhoods were being gentrified - and a million dollar building stood in the midst of Harlem driving poor and middle class people further into fiscal fringes.  People had no jobs or worked part time, on contingency basis, as contract staff. She told me when Trader Joe's, a grocery announced, they were hiring,  there were lines that were several blocks long because supposedly they provide good benefits. .

Sooner than later the 99% were going to emerge with force against the wall streeters who control power and resources, and who hold the peoples' future mortgage by their unfair and immoral trade practices.  They sell and resell debt; they exploit people by making money off home loans, credit card, student and car loans.  They make money by creating nothing that is tangible or of utility.  They do not manufacture; they do not provide essential services; they do not even entertain.  But they make so much money, and charge exorbitant travel and food expenses just to appear legitimate.  They are parasites.  And now that they have run out of ways to make profits that would subsidize their hedonistic ultra consumerist lifestyles, they want to privatize social security.

This movement is long overdue.  It hits at one of the core problems in the economy. The utter lack of hope and opportunity for the youth, the students, the elderly, the women, the under and unemployed, the people of color, the majority.

I can imagine what my aging wall streeters must be saying.  They must still be absorbed in their exorbitant lunches and their limo rides home, now with security; they must be dismissive, making derogatory comments about the protesters, doubting their plans and vision, calling them hypocrites, losers, lazy, salvation army dressers -- and being so damn unintelligent and greedy - they never wonder whether they are on the wrong side.

Will there be a fight, a siege, an ambush?  Will the protestors march out of Bowling Green station and force the buildings shut, put a sledge hammer to the stock exchange building?  Will the gates get boarded up?  Will Wall Street be shut down? Will the bankers be sent home in shame on the new jersey transit so they can drink beer and not bet on football as they wait for summons and subpoenas on fraud and economic crimes against humanity?  Will the yuppie bankers with the million dollar flats in Soho go into refugee camps in Pennsylvania?

It won't take long because the fissures are so apparent, but it will take time and sustained work.  Its an amazing time to be alive.

PS: I have changed peoples' details.

Let Qadri Live

I consider what Mumtaz Qadri did to be a heinous crime and one of the most serious -- murder, and that too motivated by ideological reasons.  The victim was the governor of Punjab who in furtherance of his public duty had met a woman convicted under the state's discriminatory blasphemy laws.


Nevertheless, Qadri should not be executed as the death penalty must be opposed on all accounts.  There should be a special onus on us to resist the temptation to punish someone for their ideology, however repugnant we may find that ideology.  People must unequivocally reject the death penalty, specially as applied in Pakistan.  Liberals who say they are against the penalty, but then go on to assert that they would support it in Qadri's case, as an exception, have no ground to stand on.


I believe Salman Taseer's family may be justified in feeling that only death will avenge them.  But  it is a fallacy to think all victims' families want to see blood.  Amanda and Nick Wilcox (1), in the U.S., lost their daughter and maintained their once theoretical stance against the death penalty.  If the desire for revenge was so ingrained in our psyche, many countries would not have abolished the death penalty.  If there is no option for the death penalty, people would modify their expectations, and gradually rid the state of its taste of choreographed murder -- the dreadful march from courtroom to prison to the noose.


Also, there are no conclusive studies that show that death penalty is a deterrent in Pakistan.  According to the HRCP's report (2), Slow March to the Gallows (2008), "capital punishment in Pakistan is discriminatory and unjust, and allows for a high probability of miscarriages of justice."  Twenty-seven different charges carry the death sentence including blasphemy, stripping a woman of her clothes in public and sabotage of the railway system.  The capital punishment should, for the sake of argument, however, be reserved for the murder alone, and is arguably cruel, unusual, and grossly disproportionate punishment in these other cases.


The report further states that Pakistan's Special Courts (like the ATC) are much less likely to assure a defendant's right to a fair trial.  However, in a publicized case such as Qadri's where the scene was shown on television and the defendant paraded before the camera right after the shootings - it is unlikely, but not impossible, that this provision was affected in such a way at least in confirming guilt.  Also, police corruption and intimidation of witnesses that are common experiences in most murder cases and thus taint the prospect of a fair trial, do not appear applicable here.  But even in this case it may not be that he received a 100% fair trial.  This can only be verified by accurate accounts of what ensued at the Adiala jail before the ATC judge announced a two times death sentence behind closed doors --  whether Qadri was allowed access to his counsel, whether he was kept under humane detention conditions, allowed adequate rest and proper nutrition, whether he was allowed visitors.


Regardless, the death penalty should be abolished uniformly as it would make matters susceptible to unfairness, too complicated to handle for the courts, and too time consuming if it were allowed where the trial gave the semblance of fairness.  


Another argument against the death penalty in Pakistan is that sentencing judges are not allowed much room to maneuver when handing the grimmest sentence.  A 2003 Supreme Court case limits their choice.  It holds that "the normal penalty of death should be awarded and leniency in any case should not be shown, except where strong mitigating circumstances for lesser sentence could be gathered."  This ruling violates the fundamental right to life and in fact should be its inverse - that the death sentence should be given only in the most serious aggravating circumstances, and should be applied sparingly.  A judge should ordinarily be giving life sentences that should be knocked down to anywhere between 7 and 20 years followed by close supervision.  Liberals who propose that the man rot in jail for life have only a theoretical and vague perception of liberty and incarceration.


Unfortunately, there are few mitigating circumstances in the case of Qadri.  He shot a man 25 times in an act of cowardice and betrayal.  His victim was the very man he was obligated to protect as a member of the elite security force.  He killed him for reasons that are nefarious - his association with a right winged ideology that finds its basis in extremism.  The victim was trying to do the conscientious thing in a public office - defending the rights of a minority Christian woman condemned to death in an unfair trial.  There is no argument in his favor, except that he has young children.


The fact that Qadri had a higher calling, and that many people have rallied behind his zeal, could not possibly be a mitigating factor.  Qadri is no Robin Hood.  In this tale, a man upholds the rights of the weak and the poor.  Qadri in contrast, though not affluent, would have the country uphold a law that in its application discriminates against the poor, the marginalized, and the people with the fewest political freedoms.  It is mostly working class Christians who are unfairly targeted by the law.  The blasphemy law gives legal cover for the peoples' desire to punish to death any person for even their unintentional insult to their religious sensibilities, and is arguably not in line with the basic tenets of Islamic law.  The accusation can be unsubstantiated and based on a false perception alone - it doesn't matter.  So Taseer, by putting himself behind Asiya Bibi was, in this one moment, betraying the trappings of his class, and actually siding with the weakest in society - something more politicians should do as meaningfully.


Hence, under the Supreme Court precedent, Mumtaz Qadri was sentenced to death, and there was little room for discretion or leniency.  But, Taseer was a proponent of human rights, and defending Qadri's right to live is in line with those same principles.  This is the same reason Qadri should live.  Demanding his hanging would be to subscribe to the most degrading    human politics and diminutive of our own dignity.


What makes issues worse is that Qisas and Diyat allow a victim's family to pardon a killer in lieu of blood money.   In what HRCP terms a "privatization of justice," the rich and powerful are less likely to be satisfied with any amount of money; it is more likely that a death sentence will be carried out where the victim's family is of a higher social status then the defendant's.  This flip-flop application of the law is discriminatory with terrible implications for poorer defendants and their families - and assures the rich and powerful (for e.g. Raymond Davis) an easy exit after they make a lump sum payment .   These laws violate notions of human rights and prima facie discriminate on the basis of class and social status - and hence make the case against death penalty even stronger in Pakistan.


In 2008, there were 7,400 on death row in Pakistan.  Clearly, case hardened Pakistani judges are not shy of meting out this most severe punishment.  Pakistan uses the inhumane form of execution - hanging, (although no mechanism of killing can ever be humane, not even the lethal injection.)  The injection, perhaps, seems more civilized and twenty first century, and hangings are reminiscent of more barbaric times in England in the 1800s - but both are equally violent.  


Troy Davis who was given the lethal injection on September 21 said -- "I'm not the one who personally killed your son, your father, your brother".  In some sense, Qadri alone did and did not kill Taseer.  The state has been complicit in systematic and sustained promotion of such right winged ideologies: Zia and his Islamization, Musharraf and his patronage of the MMA - and both regimes in their role in imperialist wars that have resulted in gross human rights violations - summary executions and disappearances - and deprived people of fundamental freedoms.


If Illinois could declare a moratorium on the death penalty, so can we.  We have to stop framing the debate in terms of peoples' lust for blood and frame it in humanitarian terms.  The death penalty can never be carried out equitably where poor people accused of crimes that carry the death sentence can not ever be guaranteed adequate, let alone the best, counsel.  It is likely that we are allowing the state to murder people where prosecution has not met their burden in proving guilt beyond reasonable ground.  It is possible that we are killing the innocent.  And so Qadri must live, not because he is anyone's hero,  - but because the death penalty in Pakistan is unjust and discriminatory, specially against the poor, and we should all stand for principles of human rights.

(1) http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=128

(2) http://www.fidh.org/Slow-march-to-the-gallows-Death-penalty-in