Edward Kennedy's Quest for Justice

The date is etched in my memory. February 14, 1972: First day of spring in the newly independent nation of Bangladesh.

Ted Kennedy arrived at the Dhaka University campus with his wife Joan Bennett and Robert Kennedy, Jr., escorted by popular student leader Abdur Rab. I was a student at the University then. 8,000 of us had crammed into the courtyard, lecture hall balconies and roofs, wildly applauding the 39-year-old US Senator who was among the first to draw world attention to the genocide unleashed by the military government of Pakistan on unarmed Bangladeshis.

“Even though the United States government does not recognize you,” Kennedy said that morning, “the people of the world do recognize you.” (The United States recognized Bangladesh on April 4, 1972. Bangladesh became an independent nation on December 16, 1971).

“Joi Kennedy,” we roared, a play on the “Joi Bangla” slogan that carried our country to independence. (Joi is Bengali for victory).

The Pakistan army had launched its attack on the night of March 25, 1971. 10,000 Bangladeshis were massacred in the first three days alone. Over a period of nine months, as many as 3 million were killed and 10 million had to flee to India for safety. Kennedy witnessed firsthand their plight when he toured parts of India and spoke of “one of the most appalling tides of human misery in modern times.”

On that spring day, our hearts filled with gratitude for the man who had denounced the Nixon-Kissinger policy of “tilting” toward Pakistan. Kennedy compared our struggle for independence with the American Revolution, drawing tumultuous applause.

Bangladesh had found a friend in need who would remain a friend indeed for as long as the new nation existed. And so it had been.

That is why, when Edward Moore Kennedy passed away on August 25 at the age of 77 after a year-long battle with cancer, Bangladeshis took it personally. Many of us had made the West our home now but who could forget his fight on our behalf during those fateful days of 1971?

I replayed the scene of his visit to Dhaka University over and over again in my mind, reliving those magical moments when anything seemed possible and freedom resonated in every fiber of our being. A human wave brought me close enough to shake Kennedy’s hands; the next minute another wave carried me back to the periphery. When Rab, the student leader, finally managed to establish some order in the crowd, Kennedy planted a banyan sapling at the spot where another banyan tree was uprooted by the Pakistan army.

It was under that ancient and historic tree that students had first planted the seeds of Bangladesh’s independence movement. Kennedy’s sapling was a reminder to tyrants everywhere that while you could uproot a tree, you could never uproot the sapling of freedom that sprouted in every human heart.

In subsequent years, Kennedy experienced both triumphs and tragedies. We learned of his undisciplined personal life, his reckless pursuit of pleasure. But in a second act of self-renewal that is unique in American history, Kennedy conquered his personal demons to become, in President Barack Obama’s words, “not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy … For nearly five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts. His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives - in seniors who know new dignity; in families that know new opportunity; in children who know education’s promise; and in all who can pursue their dream in an America that is more equal and more just, including me.”

Kennedy was most animated by the quest for justice. Although he was the prince fated never to be king, his achievements far exceeded those of many presidents. He had no taste for abstract ideas. He excelled in the particular, in the painstaking and prosaic legal processes that resulted in laws that brought meaning to millions of lives. He inspired us by proving that we could overcome our failings, however deep and many, if we dedicated ourselves to causes larger than ourselves.

Once asked what he considered was his most valuable trait, Kennedy replied, “persistence.” His persistence was the product of his convictions – justice, equality, opportunity for the marginalized and the forgotten - on which he staked his political fortune. “I have believed,” he once said, “that America must sail toward the shores of liberty and justice for all. There is no end to that journey, only the next great voyage. We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make.”

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when hate and prejudice against Islam and Muslims gripped America, Senators Kennedy and Richard Lugar sponsored a "Cultural Bridge to the Islamic World” program. Addressing visiting Muslim students in June, 2004, Kennedy said, "After a year here, each of you are now unofficial American ambassadors to your home countries. I am sure you don't agree with everything the United States says and does, but I hope that you'll be able to explain our country and our values to your friends and family. Each time you do, you'll be sending forth a new ripple of hope.”

On September 27, 2002, a year before the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Kennedy gave a prescient speech in which he voiced his opposition to the war. “War with Iraq before a genuine attempt at inspection and disarmament, or without genuine international support - could swell the ranks of Al Qaeda sympathizers and trigger an escalation in terrorist acts.”

In another speech on January 9, 2007, he called the Iraq War “George Bush’s Vietnam.” The Iraq war, he said, “is the overarching issue of our time, and American lives, American values and American honor are all at stake … Congress can demand a justification from the President for such action before it appropriates the funds to carry it out … This bill will give all Americans – from Maine to Florida to California to Alaska and Hawaii – an opportunity to hold the President accountable for his actions.”

Another person who worked hard to focus world attention on the genocide in Bangladesh was former Beatle George Harrison. Along with Ravi Shankar and other musicians, he organized the Concert for Bangladesh in Madison Square Garden in New York City on August 1, 1971. Harrison’s signature song was “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

Musicians and politicians, of course, use different media to express themselves, each effective in its own way, but there was no gentle weeping for Kennedy when it came to opposing injustice and atrocities. Rather, he thundered. No equivocation or considerations of political expediency. Simply state the truth as you see it and reveal the crimes, wherever the chips may fall.

As I was reminiscing about the events of 1971-72, I tried to articulate anew my thoughts and feelings on that spring morning in Dhaka almost four decades ago when Kennedy came to our campus. Then I read these memorable words of Kennedy himself, delivered at the 1980 Democratic convention in Madison Square Garden, and knew that I had found what I was looking for: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”

Thanks to Ted Kennedy and those like him, our hope endures and our dream of a just world moves toward reality step by step, moment by moment.

Moment of Truth for Obama’s Health Care Plan

Will it or won’t it? That is the question.

Will the public option, a government health insurance plan to compete with private insurers in the open market, remain a part of ObamaCare or will it have to be jettisoned to salvage the remaining reform pieces?

That the United States needs a better health care plan than what exists today is almost universally accepted. 47 million Americans are uninsured. Current health care is discriminatory and unfair. Administrative inefficiency is excessive. We spend almost 18% of our GDP on health care. That’s about 2.5 trillion dollars!

But Obama has so far failed to convince voters that his reform plan is the way to go.

In downtown San Jose recently I saw noisy protesters condemning the proposed program as inhuman and unacceptable. “We are not shovel-ready yet,” read a banner, held aloft by a couple in their ‘70s. In spite of the exponential growth in technological connectivity, we remain isolated in islands of ignorance and prejudice.

But this also is true: There is a strange lack of passion in the president’s attempt to convince voters of the soundness of his health care reform plan. What calls for rolling up the sleeves has instead brought us a theoretician’s ruminations, something the nation – rocked by recession - is in no mood for.

Forget the rabid right-wingers and manipulators, their outright lies about death panels, “pulling the plug on grandma” and socialism. The average American is beginning to question the president’s commitment to health reform. Has compromise been the goal all along? Is appeasing his most vocal opponents the president’s priority?

There is widespread fear and anxiety about what the future holds for health care in America that the White House hasn’t been able to dispel.

It is not too late for Obama to put his health care reform back on track, with the public option in place as it ought to be. But this will require the president to infuse his advocacy with the same passion that he poured into his presidential campaign. Too many voices from his corner are crowding out his message, leaving many perplexed and confused, while allowing his diehard opponents to spread their lies with impunity. “These are the reasons why you should vote for my health care reform plan,” the president should say, and then list his top 5 points with a clarity that anyone can understand. The only way he can combat the fiction of FOX and followers is with facts expressed in clear language. For a gifted orator and wordsmith, that shouldn’t be difficult.

P.S. With Ted Kennedy's passing today, it becomes that much more urgent for his fellow legislators to make health care available for every American. It was the goal that Kennedy worked for, "the cause of my life," until the very end of his life.

MERLOT 2009 International Conference

I attended the MERLOT 2009 International Conference in San Jose, CA (August 13-16) as a presenter. MERLOT is the acronym for Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (www.merlot.org). Title of my Poster Session was “Acing K-14 Algebra: An Online Case Study.”

Education is going through a radical transformation, given the vast array of Web-based tools available to teachers and educators. Yet in his electrifying keynote speech (Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation), John Wilbanks, Vice President of Science at Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/), made the point that the Web has transformed our culture and commerce but its impact on education has been relatively small. Arcane copyright laws, artificial controls and obsolete business models have thwarted the emergence of value creation that is the hallmark of the Web. We have to take down all barriers to scholarly communication so that as more people are able to engage, possibilities of intellectual breakthroughs that we sorely need in our times dramatically go up. Innovation is an emergent property of networks. Many smart people around the world cannot make scholarly breakthroughs because they lack access to integrated information. A sustainable and scalable digital commons increases the flow of scholarly knowledge.

Educators are fond of forming “Standards Bodies,” said WilBanks, but these do not lead to breakthroughs. “Solving real problems do.” “If we can make the things we know more useful in the evaluation of hypotheses and models, we are simply increasing the mathematical odds of discovery. This is the transformational potential. It is treating the literature and data online as elements in a vast periodic table of knowledge, a common reference point against which we can test how things fit together.”

This was probably the most intellectually challenging and provocative keynote address I have ever heard. It may take a while to realize the vision that Wilbanks articulated but now we can at least hope that the Web’s radically disruptive (as opposed to traditionally incremental) effect on education will become a reality, at par with its effect on culture and commerce.

Several presentations and workshops ran in parallel during the conference’s 4 days, an abundance of riches that made me dizzy. What amazed me were the number of teachers committed to helping students get ahead in life by introducing them to innovative tools and practices. Online teaching and Web 2.0 tools are now a fact of educational life and we will see more and more of these with time. The challenge is to ensure that we are not using the Web merely as a wrapper to digitize face-to-face classrooms but to use its transformational power to bring about real and lasting changes in the ways we think, teach, learn and innovate.

Exercise to Lose Weight? It's a Delusion!

For over a decade, I have been hitting the gym with a regularity that is downright scary. Five times a week, sometimes even 7. The idea was to keep the brain alive against the ravages of time and age, and also to tone the muscles and develop at least a 2-pack, if not 6.

But the main reason was to become lighter by shedding excess pounds. I started with 162 and aimed for 150, a nice round number that seemed just right to me. Getting rid of 12 pounds or so wouldn’t be much of a problem.

So I thought. After more than a decade of aerobics, treadmill, cycling, pushups, stretching and other forms of punishment, I weigh … 161 pounds. What gives?

In a cover story, TIME magazine (August 17, 2009) tries to explain the mystery, although the knowledge doesn’t exactly cheer me up. Apparently, exercise, particularly strenuous exercise, can actually add to your weight rather than subtract because of the effect it has on you. The effect is commonly known as … hunger. After the sweat (and sometimes the tears), you want to “compensate.” And that often turns out to be variations on the theme of “lip-licking, perfectly salted, golden-brown French-fries!”

In other words, what the gym taketh, the self giveth … and giveth. Let’s say you manage to melt 200 calories in your typical workout. But that blueberry muffin that you crave, and succumb to, after a hard day’s calisthenics, packs 360 calories. You are already in the red by 160 calories!

On the other hand, the average person who finds the idea of formal exercise with expensive equipments preposterous but casually exerts himself (walk around the block, climb stairs and such) without having to consume muffins, fries or Happy Meals, actually comes out ahead of the gym guru.

One metabolism expert puts it bluntly: “In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless.”

So how do you become lighter? By choosing your food carefully, while maintaining a reasonable amount of physical activity that does not require a trip to a gym.

Exercise minimizes the risk of heart attacks, prevents diseases and improves cognitive ability. There is no doubt about this. But its effect on weight loss has apparently been greatly exaggerated. The key is moderation. Eat good, wholesome food in moderation. And strike a balance between a potato (couch) and a rat (gym).

Meanwhile, for old times’ sake, glazed chocolate donuts, anyone?