Random Variable

I’m unclear of what exactly Effendi actually wants of universities. In an earlier post, Effendi makes a link between “pant bomber” AbdulMutallab  and the East London Mosque, and in a more recent post says that UCL must take responsibility for AbdulMutallab ’s radicalisation, and in another where he accuses Sunny of “insidious and ignorant propaganda” again highlights a link with the East London Mosque. I know some people who want to turn UCL into an open-source software house, but this to call for it to transform into a counter terrorism unit is just silly.

Moazzem Begg spoke at UCL in January 2007, and didn’t broadcast an interview with Al-Awlaki until December 2007, and after AbdulMutallab  passed on the reigns of the ISOC presidency to another. How is UCL supposed to have taken action ex-ante of any actionable information? Surely it would be better to point the finger at intelligence agencies? Qasim Rafiq, who was ISOC’s president 2006-2007 reported that Islamic Societies were under pressure in the wake of 7/7 and some action was likely to take place if there was any clear information, and he didn’t have any knowledge of what AbdulMutallab was up to.

I also find the “gateway drug” hypothesis less than compelling. The “gateway drug” analogy is a common trope of the right, applied to everything from Grand Theft Auto to Durex ads. There’s a clear distinction between on-campus groups, such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and violent extremists. There’s enough internecine ideological conflict within the neofundamentalist movement that means that HuT neither condone AQs methods nor have any formal links with them. Most individual members also seem to hold an internal psychological limit as they trade off being an active member of an organisation against other desires and interests – which tend to grow after finishing at universities when they realise that a family and job security matters more to them than a political cause built up on a deck of cards. Those who are going to move towards violent extremism will self-select and seek out opportunities for radicalisation.

The Hizb phenomenon, as well as the claims being made about UCL ISOC’s 2007 War-on-Terror must be seen in the context of the wider politics on the campuses of universities. Political parties remain generally unrepresentative, and tend to have small presences on university campuses today. Their members are invariantly career politicians, unconcerned with grass-roots mobilisation and persuasion unless they’re going to play well to the national audience. Labour can say what they will, but the Iraq invasion amidst huge public opposition ended any pretence of representation that many British Muslims felt they had. Which tends to leave the far-left and Hizb-ut-Tahrir to fill in the gap to attract people interested in the politics of the disaffected, and HuT has the social network advantage amongst Muslim students.

However, we cannot deny students from being involved political activities directed against at the policies of the nation-state or that do not call for violence to be enacted against its citizens. Whereas the oft-thinly veiled anti-Semitism of HuT does violate this principle, Islamic Society or SWP members rallying against the “War on Terror” and suggesting that prisoners of all sorts are entitled to due process and humane conditions, and framing the Israel/Palestine conflict as one of between an “imperial power” and “freedom fighters” does not, no matter how unpleasant that statement may seem to rest of us.

When staff and students see comments such as the one quoted by Malcolm Grant, about why we would allow a non-national to become a president of a Students’ Union society, we won’t see it as anything less than an attack on the founding liberal principles of the college. Here’s article 6 of the 1977 UCL Charter (I was trying to find the 1836 original, but it’s somewhere in the library stores):

All persons of the requisite academic standard, whether resident in Our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or elsewhere, shall be eligible for admission to the College without any distinction whatsoever and no religious test shall be imposed on any Member of the College nor shall any disability be imposed on the grounds of political belief, sex or race.

We cannot regulate the actions of students due to their religion or any other part of their identity. It should be stated, that UCL was the first university in England to accept students without requiring an Oath to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, was the first to admit women, and the first university to establish a Students’ Union.

Jeremy Bentham, UCL’s spiritual founder and resident of the South Cloisters, was offended by having to make an oath to the Thirty-Nine Articles at Oxford. He later argued against the idea of oaths even in public court, saying that testimonies on oath were required “not in pursuit of the ends of justice, but in pursuit of private sinister ends – indirect hostility to the public ends.”

To which “private sinister ends” are some pursuing in today’s age in “indirect hostility to the public ends” and without benefit to justice? Nothing less than the subjugation of free speech on campuses and the private beliefs of our students to mere public opinion.

Good night and good luck with that.

As the stakes grow higher in the race of presidency, Obama’s election campaign hits UCL in an attempt to get the vote out.

If you’re American, and you haven’t already, register to vote!

From NotBBC forums, via Liberal Conspiracy, comes an eyewitness report on Johnny Vegas’ set as part of Stewart Lee’s “Ten Best Stand-Ups in the World Ever” series:

It was pretty contentious, so I’m slightly concerned about misrepresenting what happened if you didn’t see it with your own eyes. I can’t give you the complete context without recounting the whole set, and that would take forever and I’d probably get it wrong anyway. With that in mind, I’ll try to explain what happened, but please take what I say with a pinch of salt and bear in mind that it’s my intepretation.

Anyway, fairly early on in his set, he stated that he had no material, and that he was there mostly to get laid; it came across as quite possibly the truth spoken in jest. He started chatting up girls in the front row in an exaggerated, slightly cartoonish way, and quickly focused on a girl who was about 18 or 19 and was very obviously unnerved by it. To cut a long story short, he fairly insistently press-ganged her into getting carried onto stage by six members of the audience, while pretending to be dead. The premise was that they would then lay her down on the stage and he would bring her back to life with a kiss, and he warned her that there probably would be tongues. Honestly, you couldn’t have found a nervier or more passive girl if you’d scoured all of London – she was like a rabbit in the headlights, but she was giggling and clearly somewhat enjoying the attention, so it just sort of went ahead without so much as a yes or no from her.

Once she was on the stage with the 6 ‘bearers’ lined up at the back, he told her to lie very still and he turned back to the audience for a bit. She couldn’t stop her nervous giggling, so he told her to shut up and look more dead or he’d kick her in the ribs. There was a menacing tone to his whole set, so I have to admit it didn’t come across to me entirely as a joke. There wasn’t anything funny about it anyway, unless you find that funny in itself.

Eventually he got down next to her and started stroking her breasts. That hadn’t been mentioned before, and in the light of of the repeated refrain of “don’t fucking move” it seemed like an abuse of power. She could have got up and walked away, but it would have taken a lot of courage to do that in front of a large room full of people, against the explicit orders of the famous guy with the microphone. Then he started running his hand up her leg and pulling her skirt up. Every time he looked up to address the audience, she’d reach down and pull her skirt back down, but he kept pulling it back up and ended up fingering her through her clothes for a second or two. Then he straddled her, completely pinning her to the floor, and kissed her quite full-on for quite a while. Then he asked if they could bring the curtain down, which they couldn’t, so there was an awkward minute until Simon Munnery came out and brought down an improvised curtain consisting of his coat.

It was pretty hard to know what to make of the whole thing. I came away with the distinct impression that she was given very little chance to say no, if at all. The six ‘bearers’ made it even more grim, as it seemed their sole purpose was to make it look more acceptable – more endorsed, if you will. If it had just been him and her on the stage, I think it would have been rather harder for the half of the room who laughed through it to do so.

I say half, as my impression at the time was that people were going along with it and broadly enjoying the set, but on leaving, I heard nothing but “that was disgusting”, “that was practically assault”, and so on. My girlfriend was quite upset that she’d sat through it and not done anything, but I’m not sure what she could have done – walk out, I suppose. I was just fucking confused by trying to find a way in which it was acceptable. I don’t like to think that any area is out-of-bounds for comedy, even if the comedy is lazy nonsense (which on this occasion, I think it mostly was) – but that really only applies when you’re talking about words and ideas. Once you’ve got someone pinned down on the stage, it becomes a rather different matter.

If this account is accurate, then I’m appalled to have UCL associated with this performance (The Bloomsbury Theatre is a UCL subsidiary).

UPDATE: Johnny Vegas is suing The Guardian for Mary O’Hara’s reportage, and has had to take down the content. Here is Google Cache:

Since when is sexual assault funny?
This article appeared in the Guardian  on Thursday May 01 2008 on p12 of the Comment & features section.

I go to comedy gigs almost every week, but I’ve never seen anything quite like what I witnessed at the Bloomsbury theatre in London last Friday night. Like many people I’ve often left gigs offended. That’s stand-up. If you go regularly you need a thick hide – a good comedian will often say or do something that offends you and, if you’re in the front row, you may well be targeted for public ridicule. Until Friday, however, I had never left a gig feeling disgusted.

Along with hundreds of others I watched a set during which Johnny Vegas, without any discernible artistic or comedic merit, gratuitously groped a young woman on stage. Judging from some of the furious postings on the internet that followed the gig, I was not the only person asking if he had crossed a line.

Vegas stepped on stage to cheers and immediately announced that he had no material, and that he was there mostly to get laid. There

followed a short meandering ramble (mainly about lap dancers) before he turned his attention to the audience – and to one young woman in particular in the front row who, he announced, he wanted to be “inside”. Anyone who has seen Vegas live knows to expect the unexpected, and you take a front row seat at your peril. He can appear deliriously and uncontrollably drunk and casually offensive, and he isn’t afraid of injecting a dose of tension by involving members of the audience in his erratic act. But something backfired this time.

The woman he focused on was about 18 or 19 and was very obviously unnerved by his attention. I saw her expression clearly – I was in the front row too, just three seats along. Vegas insisted that she allow herself to be carried on to the stage by six members of the audience – he called them “pall bearers”. She must pretend to be dead, he said, and he would bring her back to life with an onstage kiss. He warned her that there probably would be tongues. As James Williams, writing on the NOTBBC forum after the gig, put it, “Honestly, you couldn’t have found a nervier or more passive girl if you’d scoured all of London – she was like a rabbit in the headlights, but she was giggling and clearly somewhat enjoying the attention, so it just sort of went ahead without so much as a yes or no from her.” As she was carried on stage, Vegas repeatedly goaded one of the pallbearers to “finger” the girl.

Once she was on stage, Vegas told her to lie very still. She couldn’t stop her nervous giggling; he threatened to kick her in the ribs. It didn’t come across to me as a joke – and near to where I was sitting, no one was laughing. Eventually Vegas crouched down beside the nervous girl and started stroking her breasts while repeatedly saying, “don’t fucking move”. Then he ran his hand up her leg and began pulling her skirt up. Every time he looked up to address the audience, she would reach down and pull her skirt back down, but he kept pulling it back up. According to Williams, who had a different view of the stage from me, Vegas ended up “fingering her through her clothes for a second or two”. What I heard was an audible sharp intake of breath from the audience as they realised that the woman was getting much more than the kiss Vegas had told her to expect.

There was an air of menace from the outset, made worse by the fact that Vegas clearly had no idea where he was going with his act. The more the young woman was groped, the more anxious one of the “pallbearers” looked. Then Vegas straddled the young woman, pinning her to the floor, and kissing her for quite a while. Most disturbing, perhaps was that around half the audience seemed to find this really funny. Vegas asked if the curtain could be brought down; when it wasn’t, Simon Munnery, the comedian who had been on stage before him, came on stage and used his coat to screen the pair from the audience.

Back before Vegas was famous, his act often involved him – the shambolic, hapless, self-loathing buffoonish bloke – persuading a woman in the audience to feel sorry for him by letting him give her a quick kiss. It was funny because he had no power. He wasn’t famous then. Being famous and the power that it brings changes the dynamic in such a scenario. This time, I could see nothing creative or subversive; just a powerful, famous man on a stage seedily touching up a young woman.

Soon after the gig, a furious exchange began on the internet. James Williams kicked off the debate on NOTBBC.co.uk: “I don’t like to think that any area is out of bounds for comedy, even if the comedy is lazy nonsense (which on this occasion, I think it mostly was) – but that really only applies when you’re talking about words and ideas. Once you’ve got someone pinned down on the stage, it becomes a rather different matter. I honestly don’t know what to think. Really, did no one else see it?”

Some leapt to Vegas’s defence. Others wondered if the issue was whether it was Vegas or his stage “persona” doing the groping, and, if so, what was the underlying point of it. The debate has since evolved to a broader exploration of the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in comedy. One poster (who wasn’t at the gig) encapsulates many of the views in a response to Williams: “It’s always hard to know with Vegas where the pathos starts and ends – aggression to the audience has always been part of his act.”

Others have no such qualms. “I have no problem with the view that comedy should be allowed to address any idea or subject it likes,” says Fiona Knight, who is Williams’s girlfriend, and was with him at the gig. “Ideas cannot hurt anyone until they are turned into actions. But any performer has a responsibility for what they (or their character/persona) does, just as the audience has a responsibility for its reaction to their actions. For me, at this gig, Johnny Vegas crossed the line from fantasy to reality when he translated his ideas into actions that I thought were unacceptable, and I only wish I had had the guts to say so at the time.”

Good comedy is frequently uncomfortable for those watching. Brendon Burns, last year’s If.comedy winner at the Edinburgh Fringe, is brilliant at making his audience feel so awkward they wish they were somew here else, and the previous year’s winner, Phil Nichol, spends a lot of his gigs naked for all but his guitar as some of the audience look on in horror. Sometimes, people vote with their feet. I’ve seen people walk out when the gay comedian, Scott Capurro, got a bit too graphic. Often, as happened at the end of Friday’s Vegas gig, some members of the audience withhold their applause.

But like Knight, I wonder if members of the audience – or Stewart Lee, the comedian who hosted the event – should have intervened. The young woman had seemed to go on stage of her on volition, but had no reason to suspect she would be pinned to the floor and groped. I did shout “get him fucking off you”, but obviously not loud enough.

Reviewers, who could have made an impact by registering concern, seemed largely unmoved by the groping. Steve Bennett, founder of the UK’s most popular comedy website, Chortle, alluded to what happened, and referred vaguely to Vegas’s “rather pervy” come-ons, but says he “wouldn’t go as far as condemning him”. Bruce Dessau, who, like Bennett, wrote a rather benign review of the gig for the London Evening Standard on Monday, had by Wednesday decided to blog about it, acknowledging that other people were bothered by what had transpired. In the blog he says: “I’ve often said that one’s response to a performance depends on where one is sitting … But from where I was sitting, my concern was more about his substantial bulk bearing down on her than where his wandering hands were … Our very own Richard Godwin was at the gig and he was closer to the action than me. He clearly felt Vegas went far too far. Others have also made similar allegations, that Vegas took advantage of an innocent woman.”

The Guardian asked Vegas for a response to the reaction to his performance, but he was unavailable for comment. Lee’s agent did not return our calls. That is a pity. Friday’s gig needs to be openly debated. One comment posted on Chortle, which appears to celebrate the sexual molestation of a woman in public, illustrates why. It reads: “This was the most enjoyable night of comedy I have ever experienced. The discomfort in the predominately middle-class section of the audience I was sitting in was palpable during Vegas’s set! During the bit where Vegas was sexually molesting a librarian whilst singing Shakespeare Sister’s Stay With Me Baby I overheard a lady behind mutter under her breath ‘this is hideous!’ The scene was horrifying yet hilarious and Vegas was relentless until Simon Munnery covered the spectacle with his jacket! I will be laughing about this evening for a very long time!”.

Yesterday, Professor David Colquhoun gave a stirring lecture on the corporatisation of academia, and the rise of non-science. It was great to see an esteemed professor call university performance metrics a load of “meaningless bollocks”.

He attacked, and rightly so, the growth of homeopathy degrees in the universities. For me, there is only one reason why you would need professional homoeopathists. That is to lull those turning to alternative medicine into hospitals and then get them on normal treatment. But, that’s a marketing exercise, and a poor and expensive one at that, which detracts from what should be the real work of universities.

There are doubtless some hard left sociologists who did see the task in hand of destroying science. But, let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water of constructivism. As Latour says in Reassembling the Social, when we think about “construction”, we should think about how like a building (which is real and exists) is constructed – “how is it constructed?”, “how well is it constructed?”, “what were the materials used to construct it?”, etc… That should be the task of sociology applied to the sciences. Also, the actors in a sociological study of the sciences should be able to read an account of their construction of facts, and learn how to better construct them.

Some sociologists and theorists need to stop trying to destroy the sciences with obtuse language, and deal with the practicalities of assembling our collective. However, the sciences must be willing to learn from the sociological studies, in order to improve themselves.

Here’s an extreme case in point – Evolution. When experts claimed that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the classroom, it is not to say that creationism should be put on an equal footing with science. It should be taught alongside evolution so children can learn how each of these theories are constructed. To use a building analogy, one is made of straw, and the other is made of bricks. Unfortunately, and perhaps this is what the “experts” are missing, without the teachers being taught about the construction of knowledge, we cannot expect for one minute for them to teach evolution and creationism properly in the classroom without making a botch of it. On a side note, this is precisely why universities should be running the academies, not businesses.

On the issue of climate change, I have said many times that on some levels, the climate scientists are doing the job of the denialists for them. This may be an odd statement, but bear with me. For decades, we have taught children, and adults have learnt about the scientific method. However, the sociology of scientific knowledge revealed that the sciences are a whole lot more complicated. Funding disputes were discovered. It was discovered that the sciences are heavily influenced by the political status quo – right now, it’s insipid managerialism. However, it does not necessarily follow that the sciences reality doesn’t really exist. It simply adds to the explanation.

However, the denialists had a look at the open process of climate scientists and saw pretty much the same thing as the sociologists. However, their trick is to assert that the mythological pure scientific method is the “one true science”. As a result, they can dismiss the climate sciences of falsehood, and claim their scepticism to be superior.

Had the science wars been averted and the natural and social sciences had a conversation, then perhaps collectively we wouldn’t find ourselves in an age of endarkenment. The sciences armed with the reflexivity of constructivism would have been able to shield itself from the creeping marketisation it finds itself in.

I look forward to the day when scientists and sociologists can meet without the words “microfascist” and “Sokal” being exchanged.