A compendium of popular cultural and literary depictions and discussion of vegans and vegan bodies, of politics, and of other messed up things. And an occasional rant or two.
On October 25,
2013, at the age of 43, I had a massive myocardial infarction that nearly
killed me, did irreversible damage to my heart, and caused me acute
psychological distress, which manifested itself as PTSD, depression, and
anxiety.After receiving conflicting
medical diagnoses from two cardiologists in North Carolina (neither of which
was a women’s heart expert), I sought at third opinion from women’s heart
specialist Dr. Sharonne Hayes at the Mayo Clinic, where I was definitively
diagnosed with Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD), a genetic disorder
that causes often fatal and spontaneous shredding of the lining of the
arteries.
SCAD
predominantly affects healthy women with no risk factors whatsoever – I am a
long distance runner, non-smoker, long-time vegetarian, for example – and has
only recently been studied, in large part because of discriminatory preexisting
assumptions and attitudes about women and heart disease/attack.For my heart, I take a low dose ace
inhibitor, which takes some of the stress off of my damaged heart and allows
the healthy part of my heart not to work as hard, and a daily low-dose
aspirin.For my anxiety, depression, and
PTSD, along with seeking psychological therapy, I have tried Zoloft, Prozac,
and Lexapro, with varying degrees of success.
At my annual
physical in July of this year, I discussed with my doctor, Laurie LeMauviel, my
continued struggles with the physical and psychological aspects of my heart
attack; I don’t believe that the mind and body can be disaggregated and
disengaged from one another, and I remain troubled that Western medicine (and
Western insurance – even after the Affordable Care Act did significant work to
address that issue) consistently refuse to recognize that treatment of one
necessarily impacts the other.My blood
work indicated the my B12 levels were very low, and, given my battles with
depression and anxiety and my seeming inability to find the correct medication
to help me with those, Dr. LeMauviel suggested genetic testing for variants in
my MTHFR.Two
abnormalities were diagnosed after this testing, and my knowledge of those
abnormalities and their implications is absolutely medically necessary.Here’s why:
The variations
noted (677T and 1298C) are responsible for several factors that impact both my
physical and mental health.First, these
variants are responsible for my body’s inability to properly absorb certain B
vitamins, primarily B6 and B12, and this lack of absorption is probably the
cause of some of my struggle with depression and anxiety.Second, low levels of B vitamins contribute
to elevated levels of homocysteine in the blood, which have been directly
linked to increased risk for heart attack – including SCAD related heart
attack.This test may very well save my
life.
I am concerned
that this denial of benefits for this testing as “not medically necessary” is
based on a failure to understand or appreciate the value of mental health in
the service of physical health and vice versa.Further, since being diagnosed with SCAD, I have been as vocal an
advocate as possible for increased understanding and study of the ways that
women have heart attacks, why women have heart attacks, and how the medical and
insurance communities can more appropriately and responsibly respond to women’s
heart attacks.It is my sincere hope
that this letter will do some positive work in the service of the
discrimination that women have long faced, from medical providers and from insurers,
with regard to heart and mental health.
I cannot thank everyone enough for the outpouring of support that I have received since I published on 2/21 my email that was requested by the Pope Center. I have received emails and phone calls from faculty across the UNC system and beyond who are outraged and appalled at the idea of the challenge to academic freedom that my case (and the case of my colleagues) represents to those of us who disagree with the influence that corporate money has to shape student ideology in higher education.
I honestly did not expect so much attention to my blog (it's never seen the like) or outspokenness against the actions of the Pope Center and the Koch Foundation.
So this is just a simple thank you. And this is an assertion as well that this is what vegan activism looks like.
“Thanks.
I can see the OneDrive. Quick question: I haven’t looked at these
yet, but is there any reason why I can’t or shouldn’t just go ahead and publish
this material myself?”
-- Laura
Wright to Shea Browning, Legal Counsel, Western Carolina University (2/9/16),
about the email that she was to turn over to the The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.
***
The letter ordering me to turn over my email.
On Thursday,
January 21, 2016, along with another colleague in the English Department, the
Chair of the Faculty Senate, and the Head of the Department of Philosophy and
Religion, I received an email from Western Carolina University’s Legal Counsel
office notifying me that a public records request had been made for my email by
the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.The request was made by Jay Schalin, a guy
who holds a BS in Computer Science and an MA in Economics, and who writes for
the Pope Center on such topics as “The Decline of the English Department,” a
report that “examines a troubled discipline.” But more on Schalin and the Pope Center in a bit.First, back to the public records request for
my email.
The players: This is our boy Jay.
I was informed
that Schalin’s request asked for “…all emails concerned with or mentioning the
following: the Center for Study of Free Enterprise, Dr. Ed Lopez, the
name 'Koch,' 'BB&T,' and Ayn Rand. The time period is from July 1,
2015 to the present.”The reason for
this request, as far as I can tell, is the fact that I have been somewhat
outspokenly opposed to a $2 million gift offered to WCU by the Charles Koch
Foundation for the establishment of a center for the study of free
enterprise.The reasons for my
opposition are numerous and grounded in extensive research about the Koch
Foundation’s gifts to institutions of higher education as well as research into the ways that the Koch brothers have bought huge influence in my state’s political machinery, which has led to the dismantling of environmental policy, higher
education funding, and public school curriculum.
The players: Dr. Ed Lopez, WCU's BB&T Distinguished Professor of Capitalism
Here's Dave Levinthal in the Atlantic on the subject of the Kochs' higher ed donations: It is well-known that the
Kochs’ network has invested hundreds of millions of hard-to-track
dollars in conservative political nonprofits that influence elections. The
brothers, who earned theirbillions leading private
oil, chemical, and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries Inc., were
dominant forces in recent election cycles. They’re now poisedtorankamong
the most influential Americans shaping next year’s presidential and
congressional vote. Much less well-known are their activities on college
campuses.
The Kochs’ giving . . . focuses on an
ideological approach to free-market economics in a way that’s distinctive among
political mega-donors. Koch officials routinely cultivate relationships with
professors and deans and fund specific courses of economic study pitched by
them.
***
Tax returns, as well as emails and private documents
exchanged among Charles Koch Foundation officers and various college and
university officials, indicate the foundation’s commitment to funding academics
is deep and growing.
Koch education funding, which is almost singularly focused on economics, also
sometimes comes with certain strings attached.
At the College of Charleston in
South Carolina, for example, documents show
the foundation wanted more than just academic excellence for its money. It
wanted information about students it could potentially use for its own benefit—and
influence over information officials at the public university disseminated
about the Charles Koch Foundation.
It sought,
for one, the names and email addresses—“preferably not ending in .edu”—of any
student who participated in a Koch-sponsored class, reading group, club or
fellowship. The stated purpose: “to notify students of opportunities” through
both the Charles Koch Foundation and the Institute for Humane Studies at George
Mason University.
The players: Dave Levinthal reports for The Center for Public Integrity
In October of
2015, WCU held an open forum on the proposed center, which was moderated by Dr.
Brian Kloeppel, Interim Dean of the Graduate School and Research. Dr. Ed Lopez,
the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Capitalism, told those of us in the
audience that he had been approached by the Charles Koch Foundation about establishing
the center, and then he tried (rather unsuccessfully) to answer questions about why WCU would want such a center when it already has a Public Policy
Institute, when numerous other centers had been recently eliminated within theUNC system,
and when the cost to the institution would be about $1.4 million in funds
allocated for faculty lines to support the center (I should note that “a job posting for a WCU economics professor openingappeared in early October — two months before the free enterprise center wouldcome before the board of trustees for a vote.” Language in the ad also specified that this person would be part of the center, but that language was
later removed from the ad after faculty cried foul). And then the forum devolved into what I can
only call an attack led by Lopez and his colleagues against Dr. John Whitmire, the
head of the Department of Philosophy and Religion for a carefully crafted and
thoughtful statement against establishment that he had presented to the Faculty
Senate prior to the forum. The whole thing was surreal and unsettling – and you
can read about it in my email.
The series of
events that followed went something like this:
1. Responses from
faculty who attended the forum were collected by Dr. Kloeppel and forwarded to
the administration for information.
2. I contacted the
media. The people with whom I was in contact over the course of several weeks
include David Levinthal whose Atlantic article cited above provides a
comprehensive examination of the ways that Koch donations function to undermine
academic freedom, genuine scholarship, and higher education more broadly. I
also contacted Jane Stancil at the Raleigh News and Observer (the
state’s newspaper of record) and convinced her that despite the fact that WCU
is way out in the western reaches of the state (an area not generally covered
by the N&O), that that was, in my estimation precisely why WCU had
been chosen for this gift: no one would notice.I asked that she please notice, and she did.I contacted reporters at the Asheville Citizen-Times,
the Sylva Herald, and the Smoky Mountain News, all of whom
covered the story.
3. Shortly after
the open forum, the faculty senate voted overwhelmingly against the center (21
against, 3 in favor).
4. At the
beginning of December, “despite faculty opposition, Western Carolina
University’s Board of Trustees approved the creation of a center on free
enterprise likely to be funded by the conservative Charles Koch Foundation.
The board
voted unanimously Friday to approve the WCU Center for the Study of Free
Enterprise. The center, to be led by an economics professor, was previously
endorsed by the university’s provost and Chancellor David Belcher." See this story.
5. Dr. Whitmire
made the faculty senate aware of the existence of Policy 104, which states, “If a proposed gift has curricular implications, that is, if it
contains any restrictions, conditions, implications, and/or suggestions with
regard to academic content, the Chancellor, or his/her designee, will
immediately be informed and will inform Legal Counsel. The Chancellor, or his/her
designee, will then appoint an ad hoc committee of five faculty members to
review the curricular implications of the gift and to make specific
recommendations regarding the acceptability of such implications. One member of
this committee should be drawn from the curriculum committee of the affected
department, one should come from the curriculum committee of the affected
college, and two should come from curriculum committees from other academic
units. The committee will be chaired by the Chair of the Faculty, or his/her
designee, providing that the committee chair is not a member of the potentially
affected academic unit. The chair will serve as a voting member of the
committee. This ad hoc gift review committee will act with consideration of the
need for confidentiality and speed in the negotiation process. It will make
recommendations to the Chancellor concerning the implications of the gift on
the curriculum as well as the need for any further review or modification of
any proposed agreement.”
The Simpsons' Ayn Rand School for Tots
This policy
was instituted after the 2008 hiring of Dr. Lopez, as a stipulation of his
position (funded by BB&T) was that he teach the works of Ayn Rand,
which faculty felt was overreach and compromised academic freedom. Here’s more
from the Smoky Mountain News:
“The criteria initially
imposed by the BB&T Foundation in exchange for its $1 million gift in 2008
was ultimately rewritten as a result of faculty pushback.
It initially required WCU
to make Atlas Shrugged — considered a Bible of libertarian economic philosophy
— required reading in College of Business courses and required a copy of Atlas
Shrugged to be given out to every business major their junior year.
That criteria was tempered
as a result of faculty pushback that maintained outside donors should not be
permitted to dictate what professors teach, or force professors to teach a
particular viewpoint to students.”
The
policy had been utterly ignored with regard to the establishment of the current center.
6. On December 8,
Interim Dean Kloeppel notified everyone who had submitted feedback after the
forum that “documents pertaining to the Authorization to Plan and the
Authorization to Establish the Center for the Study of Free Enterprise have
been the subject of multiple Public Records Act requests. Documents, including
your emailed feedback to me during the comment period, have been released to
the requesters as required by the North Carolina Public Records Act.”
A colleague
asked who had submitted these requests and was told by legal counsel that “We
have received public records requests from the Sylva Herald, the Smoky
Mountain News, and the Charles Koch
Foundation.” 7. December 10: WCU's Provost, Alison Morrison-Shetlar, sent an email to faculty senate asserting "I write to share
with you my sincere concern about what I read in one of our local newspapers.
The article, I can assure you, does not represent my beliefs about the role of
Faculty Senate and its role in representing the faculty. " This statement came in response to an article in the Smoky Mountain News, which indicated that the Provost "questioned
whether McCord’s views reflect those of the faculty at large and whether his
comments should be extrapolated as applying to all faculty. Morrison-Shetlar
even questioned whether the faculty senate vote was indicative of faculty
sentiment. Casting
doubt on the clout of faculty senate could have made it easier for the
chancellor and board of trustees to justify their own decision that ran counter
to that of the faculty senate."
8. December 11: John Hardin, Director of University
Relations for the Koch Foundation, writes an op-ed in the Citizen-Times
called “Why we Partner with Western Carolina University.”In it he says, “our
work is sometimes mischaracterized and singled out, frequently by activists
with a partisan agenda, leading to genuine concerns from well-intentioned
people. Events often follow a familiar path. Instead of engaging with the ideas
and professors directly, a Freedom of
Information Actrequest is filed
with the school, seeking correspondence with school administrators and faculty
along with any other documents that might bear on the academic center. ... FOIA requests are a
favorite tool of special interests who already have a pre-determined idea of a
story to tell. They then go on a fishing expedition to validate their
original narrative. It doesn’t matter what’s actually transpired.”He adds, “When this happens on a college campus, a professor or administrator’s
private correspondence can be weaponized against them and the school.”(all emphasis is mine)
The players: John Hardin
9. January
19: Journalist Jane Mayer published Dark
Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical
Right.
Mayer’s argument, according to Alan Ehrenhalt’s NYT review,
is that “the
Koch brothers and a small number of allied plutocrats have essentially hijacked
American democracy, using their money not just to compete with their political
adversaries, but to drown them out.”Mayer discusses in Rolling Stone the ways that the Kochs tried to intimidate her, to accuse her of plagiarism;
they had spies follow her and harass her as she researched her material for the
book.
The players: Jane Mayer
10. January 21: My email is requested by the Pope Center
which is necessarily and completely affiliated with and, in many ways,
controlled by the Charles Koch foundation. Charles Koch sat on the board of directors until very recently, and many of the
current members of the board have Koch affiliations. Art Pope, who founded the
center, was hand picked by the Kochs to serve as NC’s budget director. Further, the current
president of the center, Jenna Ashley Robinson,
“joined the Pope Center in January 2007 as campus outreach coordinator and
later became the center's director of outreach. She was previously the E.A.
Morris Fellowship assistant at the John Locke Foundation, where she had worked
since 2001. . . .Robinson is also a
graduate of the Koch Associate Program sponsored by the Charles G. Koch
Foundation.” Check here for how Art Pope ran the NC government for years. And here and here for information about Art Pope more generally. 11. 9. January 20: the Chancellor addressed the faculty senate and indicated that mistakes were made in the way that the process for approval of the center was handled. He continues to insist that academic freedom is his highest priority, and he promises that to make sure that there are no strings attached.
12. January 23: WCU shows up
in the Daily Kos in a story about Becky Johnson's coverage of this whole debacle in the Smoky Mountain News.The piece notes that Johnson'sstory "is exactly why the Koch brothers worked so hard to keep
their vast network of extreme anti-government organizations so secret. It's a
local news story investigating the infiltration by the Kochs into the local
university."The article notes the complete initial
omission of and the utter disregard for faculty voice in the process of
approving the center.
Here's Rabbit battling Papa Doc in 8 Mile. It's a preemptive strike, which inspired this blog. Please watch and then read below.
So here’s the
thing: Jay Schalin has submitted a public records request for my email so that
he might do the very thing that John Hardin criticizes: “cherry pick” from my
correspondence to tell a “pre-meditated” story about me and my colleagues who
have chosen to speak out against our institution’s acceptance of Koch
money.As Hardin notes, “When this [a freedom of information
request] happens on a college campus, a professor or administrator’s private
correspondence can be weaponized against them and the school.” In this case, my correspondence will not be weaponized
against WCU, I don’t think (as the Koch Foundation doesn’t want to alienate the
school), but it will certainly be used against me to serve whatever ends Schalin, the
Pope Center, and the Charles Koch Foundation deem appropriate.Feel free to see what he says about English professors in his aforementioned article about the demise of my profession: it
is, in his estimation, because we’ve stopped teaching the great works, are all
democrats, and are engaging in cultural studies explorations that he finds utterly
ridiculous.
The players: Laura Wright
And
here I am, a really excellent target: a postcolonialist ecofeminist, whose
latest book is about veganism.I am the
antithesis of everything that Schalin, the Pope Center, and the Charles Koch
Foundation want to see in an educator.I’m also, apparently, scary.
So
without further ado and after consulting with legal counsel, I present all of
my email that was submitted to the Pope Center after its request was made to
interim Dean Kloeppel.There are over 100
pages here, most of which is just me forwarding various news stories to
people.Some of it might be interesting,
but the majority of it won’t be.Choice
bits include my comments after the forum, the text of a blog post on the NC
lapel pins that McCrory sent state employees, and various other anti-center
commentaries by my colleagues (mostly leftwards leaning English types).Legal counsel redacted anything in my emails
that contained personal information, and I have redacted the names and emails
of my colleagues with several exceptions: David McCord, Chair of the Faculty
(whose emails are also the subject of this request) has given me permission to
keep his name on his correspondence.I
have likewise left Interim Dean Kloepple’s name public, as he’s done nothing
more than collect feedback and let us know that the Koch Foundation requested
that data.Members of the WCU’s Legal
Counsel Office, the Chancellor, the Provost and members of their offices remain named, as do the various
reporters with whom I’ve corresponded. The material covered in this blog is provided merely for context.
I am writing
with regard to the “NC” lapel pin you gave me and, I’m assuming, all UNC system
employees, with the enclosed card asking that I “please accept this token as
our appreciation for all that you do to make North Carolina a place where we
are all inspired to do, see, create, experience and achieve more.” I know that
you’re a generous if utterly tone deaf kinda guy; I remember when you offered the Moral Monday protesters cookies
as they stood on your lawn protesting your tightening of restrictions on access
to abortion (if I remember correctly, your cookies were returned with a note
that read “we want women’s health care, not cookies”).
Oh, look! A pin!
In the case of
the lapel pin, I don’t own a single item of clothing with lapels, and even if I
did, I wouldn’t wear this pin (is that a pine tree between the N and the
C? My god, that’s ironic. Wouldn’t coal ash make more sense? A
nice, wide swath of the stuff bifurcating the “North” from the
“Carolina”?) because I’m not proud of my state at present, not willing to
don an “NC” pin when I think that those letters rather stand for “Nefarious
Conservatism” or “No Compensation” – particularly with regard to our state’s
educators. Did you send these pins to public school teachers? Because
while you’ve been governor, you’ve gutted public education, induced a mass
exodus of our best teachers, failed to adequately compensate their labor, and
sat idly by as our national rankings have plummeted.
(For the love
of all that is holy, please tell me you didn’t send those little pins – which I
found for $.49/each if you buy in bulk – to North Carolina’s public school
teachers. It’s bad enough that you sent them to us.)
University
faculty and staff in the UNC system haven’t seen raises since 2008.
That’s seven years, Pat. I know you’re giving us all a $750 bonus on December
23, and like the good Bob Cratchits that we are, perhaps we’ll raise a glass to
you, our benefactor, two days later (please, sir, may I have another lump of
coal … ash?). But the lapel pin. Your timing couldn’t be worse.
We’ve all just learned that the Board of Governors, who, like you, is owned by the Koch Brothers,, behind closed
doors has approved insane raises for 12 of the 17 system
Chancellors, some as high as 20% of already exorbitant
salaries.
Do you have any
idea what this has done to morale on those campuses? Do you care?
This looks very much like the bribe that it is to those of us not getting
raises. Which is the rest of us. All of us.
And (again
behind closed doors, angering even staunch conservatives in the legislature) the
Board of Governors has hired Margaret Spellings, the homophobic
former George W. Bush education secretary who has never done an ounce of work
in higher education, to take over as the system president after the
still-unexplained ouster of Tom Ross.
Please know
that what you’re reading is actually a love letter to my state regardless of
its criticisms; my family has been in western North Carolina since the
1700s. We’re dug in, as they say, like ticks, and I’m not going
anywhere. My father graduated with a business degree from Western
Carolina University where I now work. I am the product of an
undergraduate education at Appalachian State University and an MA degree from
East Carolina University. I taught there, then at North Carolina State
University for four years, and I've been at WCU for the past 10. I have been here a damn long time, long
enough to be utterly fed up with your treatment of your citizens, your treatment of my state’s environment, and
your destruction of my state’s formerly exceptional educational system.
Coal ash!
Just like the lapel pin, a gift that just keeps on giving.
So back to the
lapel pin: what an insult. How stupid. How unconscionable.
How very “let them eat cake” and all. The pin as final nail in the
coffin, as emblematic of your administration’s belief that we’re too dumb to
see what you’re doing to us. That a trinket is enough to placate all the frustration and anger that so many of us are feeling.
At my own
institution, I’m watching a game being played out to its logical conclusion, and
I’ll tell you how it looks.Every year,
the faculty in my department –and other departments across campus – take up
collections for our administrative assistants and housekeepers who are so
woefully underpaid that it’s embarrassing.Most are women, often supporting families, who have to hold down another
job in addition to the full-time work they do at our university.My colleagues contribute their own money –
and remember that they haven’t seen raises in years – because it’s the right
thing to do.But here’s the thing: it’s
actually the right thing for you to do.But you’re not doing it.Meanwhile, the Board of Governors just gave our chancellor a 19.43%
raise, taking his salary to $335K.I
realize that this raise isn’t his fault; it’s just further evidence of an
utterly broken system.A system that you
broke.
And now the Kochs have
offered WCU a two million dollar “gift” to establish a Center for the Study of
Free Enterprise. I’m not an economist, but I’m worried that my economist
colleagues are missing the economic implications of this maneuver in the face of needed funding;
I’m worried that they aren’t seeing that they are being given money by the very
entity that is denying the institution for which they work money. The Kochs are buying bits of the institutions that they have worked to starve. And the ideological costs of such transactions are huge.
The Faculty
Senate at WCU voted overwhelmingly against support for the center, citing the lack of peer
review, the lack of institutional need for such a center, particularly given
that WCU already has the Center for Public Policy, the cost to our
institution’s reputation, and the monetary cost to the institution (in terms of
faculty lines that will support the center). But the Kochs effectively
own us; they have shaped our state legislature and our Board of Governors, and they have, therefore, been instrumental in the processes that have given our
chancellor and others gigantic raises.This "gift" then seems like a deal that he can’t refuse, doesn’t it? Nonetheless, I hope
that he does because doing so, again, is the right thing to do.
I’m not an
economist, and I’m not a political scientist. I’m a humanist, and if the
Pope Center is correct, my ilk is the biggest threat out there. The job of the humanist is to call out hypocrisy and injustice, to assess the cost of certain transactions to our very humanity. And, I hope, call
out those who would deem to do us harm. So that’s what I’m doing.
As for the lapel
pin, I’ve found a good home for it.
