Dispatch from the Trenches: A Bohunk in the Ivory Tower

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Polish Americans complain about their absence from, or misrepresentation in, journalism, films, and academic curricula.

Polish Americans are correct. Polish Americans are often erased, at best, and demonized, at worst, in American media and academia.

Ethnic groups: African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans; Religions: Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims; Socioeconomic Groups: upper class, working class, white collar, blue collar; Other interest groups: gays, feminists, communists: all compete for access to the microphone, to the bank account, to the truth.

Novelist Milan Kundera described this warfare perfectly:

"People are always shouting that they want a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of interest to no one. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories rewritten."

Polish Americans have not significantly, united, organized, and supported each other in this power game. As a result, Polish Americans lose.

I offer the anecdotes, below, from my own experience. I have heard anecdotes like these from others, others who choose to remain anonymous.

It's not easy for me to tell these stories publicly. Often, when they were happening, I told myself, "Forget this ever happened. Tell no one. There is no benefit, and much risk, is letting anyone know that this ever happened."

Now is as good a time as any to tell these stories. As a wise man, Rabbi Hillel, once said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

It's my first semester of graduate school. My mother, an immigrant, had to leave school when she was a child. Her father was a coal miner. He had contracted emphysema. She, fourteen years old, had to support her family. My father also left school as a child. His father, also a coal miner, was bushwhacked and beaten by American men who called him "The Little Polak." My mother cleaned houses; my father worked in factories. I supported myself in college by working as a nurse's aid. I graduated magna cum laude and scored very high on the GRE verbal. I have no money.

My advisor and department chair says to me, "You are the wrong minority to receive funding. I have to give the funding to an African American. They are underrepresented." I reflect: I've had African American bosses and teachers, and bosses and teachers of a wide variety of ethnicities. I've never had a Bohunk boss or teacher. Aren't we underrepresented?

The African American student who receives the funding is middle class; her parents are white-collar professionals.

My advisor puts me to work as a live-in domestic servant for the mother of a friend. This woman tells me, "I had to take you in because you are Catholic. Catholics have too many children and can't support them. That's why you are poor."


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I'm in a grad school seminar. My fellow students are all future PhDs. I'm feeling the low-level, background discomfort that poor, white Christians and blue collar ethnics feel in grad school. We are among the most discriminated against groups on elite campuses like this one. We are, simply, unwelcome.

The grad school seminar I'm sitting in on this day has nothing to do with Eastern Europe. The professor mentions, in passing, that none of the countries of Eastern Europe had existed before the Versailles Treaty of 1919.

I send the professor a polite e-mail after class, mentioning that, yes, Poland had existed prior to Versailles, and that it had a significant history.

Our next class is bizarre. The professor puts the day's scholarly agenda on hold. With chalk, she draws a sloppy map of Eastern Europe on the blackboard. She locates Poland. She says that Poland had a history, but that it mostly was a history of oppressing Jews.

There is a Jewish student in the class, a young man from South America. (Yes, that same South America that provided warm refuge to Josef Mengele.) He sits across from me. He stares at me, with a combination of righteous rage and sorrow. If the Poles would just own up to their horrible nature, the professor, says, and apologize.

Yes, the Jewish student says, staring at me. If the Poles would just admit it, and apologize. There is no predicate. There is no "If Poles would just own up to their horrible nature and apologize, then we could recognize them as human as we are human." Nope. Poles just need to, over and over, admit to being horrible, and apologize, over and over. Period.

Every student is staring at me now. Why won't that woman just apologize and get it over with? I do not apologize. I am suddenly very unpopular.

There are offices on campus devoted to African American students, gay students, Hispanic students, Native American students, international students, returning women students, veteran students, physically handicapped students, cognitively impaired students … there are special scholarships, parties, speakers, monies, procedures, counselors, deans, days, cafeteria tables, recruiters, retention experts, dedicated to making all of the aforementioned students' lives easier, their graduation assured, and their post-graduation employment a cinch.

There is no campus office for me, or others like me, though, poor, white Christian ethnics are among the most discriminated against and unwelcome students on elite campuses like this one.

There is no national Polish American organization I can approach with this matter.

There will remain an impenetrable wall of hostility between me and this professor. Collegial relationships with powerful professors are the key to success for graduate students. This professor's unofficial role is mentoring outspoken feminist students like me. So much for that.

Officially, though, the incident slides down the memory hole. It never happened. "There is not now, and there has never been, discrimination against Polish Americans." Of course there hasn't been – events like this go undocumented.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

It's the same class, the same professor, later in the same semester. The professor mentions that immigrants who arrived in the U.S. early in the twentieth century often faced discrimination. She reports that that is because those immigrants were darker skinned than Americans. It's just another example, she says, of white oppressors putting down dark-skinned people.

I know that what the professor is saying is false. I know that the c. 1880-1924 immigrants, including Poles, were often quite white, and faced serious discrimination.

This truth must not be spoken, though, because it would violate the dogma: whites oppress; dark-skinned people are oppressed; no whites have ever been oppressed. Polish-American history must be expunged in order to serve the power narrative.

I remain silent. It's not that I am afraid to speak the truth in this class. It's that I know it will be, as it was when I mentioned that Poland had existed before 1919, a waste of time. The professor will deny what I say, and the other students will find my comments peculiar and unnecessary and stare at me and just wait for the disruption to blow over and for our indoctrination in the power narrative to continue.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I'm a graduate student. My professor, multiply published and honored, asks to talk to me one-on-one. I am excited. Perhaps he has seen something of value in my work. Perhaps he will encourage me, point out opportunities I've missed, mentor me.

I report to the professor's office. "Why are you here?" he asks. "It's so obvious that you identify with the working class. You dress like a working class person. You don't fit in here. Why not just go back home? You're making yourself and everyone else unhappy."

I am suddenly finding it very difficult to control my facial expression. I had entered this professor's office with hope. I now wrestle with hurt, outrage, and anger, all of which I am too polite to show. I surrender trying to control my facial expression. I stand up and leave.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I'm a graduate student, focusing on my chosen topic: Polish-Jewish relations. A Holocaust scholar with an international reputation, neither Polish nor Jewish, warns me, without prodding, "You are Polish and Catholic and you write about Polish-Jewish relations. You will never have a career in Academia."


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

A caring advisor pulls me aside. "You're writing about people no one cares about. You will never get funding. You will never get a job. You lived in Africa. You speak an African language. There's lots of money for Africa, lots of jobs. Forget the Poles. Or do the Polish stuff on the side. Do Africa. Then you can get a job."


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

Indiana University plans to host a discussion of Jan Tomasz Gross' book "Neighbors." From what I've been hearing, "Neighbors" is being used to buttress the Brute Polak stereotype. I contact the organizers and ask to speak. I say that I am a PhD candidate at IU, and that I'm a Polish American. I would like to speak against using the Jedwabne atrocity to demonize all Poles. I point out that the 1992 L.A. Riots, during which African American men tortured truck driver Reginald Denny on camera, should not be used to demonize all African Americans.

I provide my bona fides: I've published two previous articles about stereotyping of Poles. One, "The Polish Ogre on Frontline" which appeared in 2B: A Journal of Ideas, addresses stereotyping of Poles in popular culture. Another, " Golem as Gentile, Golem as Sabra: An Analysis of the Manipulation of Stereotypes of Self and Other in Literary Treatments of a Legendary Jewish Figure" which appeared in New York Folklore, addresses stereotyping of Poles in Jewish folklore and literature. My work has also appeared in local media. I've broadcast essays on WFIU, the local NPR affiliate, about stereotyping and the Holocaust (here and here).

I'm denied permission to speak on the panel. There is no local or national Polish organization that contests this. No one to say to the Indiana University community, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't use 'Neighbors' to demonize all Poles."


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I'm almost done with being a graduate student. I've jumped through all the hoops. I'm now writing my dissertation on the role of stereotypes in Polish-Jewish relations. My committee, consisting of noted scholars, has approved my plan enthusiastically, and I've been absorbed and beavering away, days from five a.m. to 11 p.m.

Years into the project, one committee member, having gotten a whiff of the controversies involved, gets cold feet. "I can't let you do this," he says. "You are Polish and Catholic. You can't be trusted. Your ethnicity and religion disqualify you."

This professor is the most famous. Reluctantly, two other committee members cave in. A third is too intimidated to say anything. None of these professors is Jewish.

If an African American grad student were told by a powerful professor, the kind whose books are reviewed on the front page of the NYT book review, that she could not pursue her topic for no other reason than that she was an African American, that story would make the six o'clock news.

Al Sharpton, the NAACP, Cornell West, and a crack team dispatched from the White House would be on that story like white on rice.

But this happened to a Polish American, so it's not a story. It never even happened. It never happened because no one discriminates against Polish Americans.

Simon, my best friend, is a lawyer. He's also Jewish, by the way. His outraged advice: sue the damn university. He offers his services pro bono.

I make an appointment with a dean. I enter the dean's office. I introduce myself. I never have to broach the topic of a lawsuit. We've never met, but the dean immediately recognizes my name – I've been locally active in gay rights; my name has appeared on the radio and in newspapers. He stops me before I can even begin to tell my story; he just picks up a telephone. Within five minutes of my entering the dean's office, my permission is restored.

My work, that would become the book "Bieganski," was rescued by my best friend, who is Jewish, and a non-Polish, non-Catholic dean, who appeared to be appreciative of my work on gay rights.

At that point I'd been actively working on Polish matters for years. I'd been an activist; I'd been publishing; I'd been in touch with other Polish American individuals and organizations via the internet. When a committee member threatened to shut down my research on the basis of my ethnicity and religion, there was no one from Polonia who voiced to IU a peep of protest or support.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I've been poring over academic job listings for ten years. Painstakingly reviewing these job announcements in the vain search for a tenure-track job has taught me much. Academic job announcements in the humanities value some ethnicities more than others. African American and Hispanic American identities and/or areas of research and publication are most frequently cited as making a candidate attractive, or even as the bare minimum requirement, for academic employment.

After that, one earns points for Native American, Asian, Gay, Arab, Jewish, and, in a few rare cases, Italian, and Irish identities and research and publication focus.

Never, not once, in ten years of looking at thousands of job announcements in a wide variety of humanities jobs, including teaching freshman composition, film, creative writing, folklore, world literature, and gender studies, have I seen any Bohunk ethnicity or focus listed as having any appeal to an employer at all. The University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania's heavily Bohunk anthracite coal region, emphatically defined Bohunks out of an "ethnic literature" job announcement.

Bravo to African American, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Arab, Gay, Jewish, Italian, and Irish activists for making themselves visible and valuable in academia. For making their scholars employable. For making their stories known. For endowing their worldview with authority and respect.

Bohunks – Polish-Americans, Ukrainian-Americans, Slovak-Americans, etc, have not done the same work, and they suffer for it. Their literature, film, experience, worldview, are disrespected, misrepresented, stuffed down the memory hole, trashed.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I am in a Farmer's Market. A vender is selling shiitake mushrooms. We get to talking. My name invites him to tell me that he is married to a Polish woman.

I eventually meet his wife. She is lovely. She learns of my work. She mentions a manuscript. Hand-typed. Unique – just one copy. She, this woman I hardly know, with a heartbreaking resolve, determines to get that manuscript to me. She entrusts to me a family heirloom, this unique manuscript.

The story is overwhelming. One of her family members had been rousted out of her home, packed into a cattle car, and sent to a living hell in Siberia. It's an amazing, gripping read. I can't help but note that this manuscript is very much like a dozen Holocaust memoirs I've read. The same elements: the irrational, random persecution, being targeted only for one's ethnic and religious identity – in this case, Polish Catholic – the terror, the cattle cars, the unknown fate. The genocidal dictator – Stalin, not Hitler.

But the Holocaust memoirs I've read were all published, all known to the world. As I read these pages, I realize – I am their only reader. There is only one copy. After I finish this manuscript and return it to the lovely lady met by chance in a Farmer's Market, these pages may never be read again.

I've been working on Polish issues for years, and I know no one, no Polish American individual, no Polish American organization, no Polish American publication, no Polish American scholar, that would accord these pages any attention at all. There may be such people. They've never made themselves known to me.

I mention the manuscript to fellow Polish Americans. They do not respond by offering suggestions on how to publish the manuscript. Rather, they respond, adamantly: "Isn't it a SHAME. How the Jewish story GETS TOLD. But nobody tells OUR story. What a SHAME." No mention, none, that maybe, just maybe, we, Polish Americans, could and should support each other and tell our own story.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I'm visiting Chicago. I'm staying at the apartment of a friend, "Fred." Fred is an African American. We've been friends for over 25 years. We're having an all-night conversation. I begin to talk about my family, and mention that one of my family members, a Polish immigrant to America, was lynched.

"Lynched? What do you mean?" Fred asks, suddenly hostile.

"I mean lynched."

Fred is incredulous. I mention that 27 percent of lynching victims were white. That the largest mass lynching in American history, 1891, New Orleans, was of Italian immigrants. That Leo Frank, white, was lynched in Georgia in 1915. That my family member, a Polish immigrant, was lynched.

Fred shrugs contemptuously. "White boy gets lynched. Why should I care?"

Fred is a dean at the University of Chicago. Fred is one of the people who decides which student's woes the University of Chicago will allocate resources to addressing, and which student's woes the University of Chicago will dismiss. Fred, as a University of Chicago dean, helps determine which group's stories are worth telling, and which group's stories go down the memory hole. White boy gets lynched? Shrug. Why should the university of Chicago care.

"White boy gets lynched." Lynched Italians in Florida. source

I'm an adjunct professor at a large taxpayer-funded university. I'm waiting for a printout from the university's printer. A student's paper comes out ahead of mine. I read it as the machine spits it out. This student paper regurgitates the contents of his professor's lecture. German Nazis were peripheral to the Holocaust. The real planners and perpetrators of the murder of six million Jews were Polish Catholic peasants.

I have no outlet. There is no official body to whom I can protest this matter, or work for any change. There is no national Polish American organization I can approach – I've tried contacting them; they don't respond. There is no local Polish American organization with a presence on campus.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

A state-funded university shows "Sophie's Choice" to educate students about the Holocaust. The film grossly distorts history. I complain. Those who hear my complaint smile and nod. I'm the only one complaining. They screen the film. There is not even a local Polish organization, never mind a national one, that would join me in this.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

My student asks, "Why did the Nazis persecute only Jews? Why didn't they persecute any Christians?" I question the student. He really doesn't know that the Nazis committed mass killing programs of handicapped people, Gypsies, Polish priests and intellectuals, Soviet POWs. This isn't just any student. He's an honor student; he's president of the campus Catholic club. He's intelligent; he's devout, and intellectually ambitious. And he has no idea, none, of Nazism's plan to eliminate Christianity.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

The television sitcom, "Back to You," tells viewers that for Poles, collaborating with Nazis is in their Polish blood, like bowling and eating kielbasa. I know of no Polish organization I can go to with my outrage. I write to the program as a private citizen, and post my letter on the internet. Other Polonians quote it, without ever contacting me and suggesting that we work together for change.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

At a conference devoted to study of working class people, I meet a scholar. He's multiply-published, both in academic and popular venues, and an award-winner. He fashions popular and scholarly understanding of working class people. I tell him that I study Polish Americans. He says, first, "Why are you working on Polish Americans? Polish Americans don't exist. They've all assimilated."

Later, he says, "Why are you working on Polish Americans? They're all working class slobs."

Still later, he says, "Why are you working on Polish Americans? They're all bigots, racists, drunks, and anti-Semites, without any culture."


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

"Bieganski" has been kicking around university presses for a number of years. I relive the same "Groundhog Day" over and over again: at first editors express interest. The writing is good; the topic is timely. Eventually editors get a sense of how controversial the book might be, and drop it. "Bieganski" is at its latest university press. A previously enthused editor begins to waver. I visit him in person. I want to see his face as he talks to me.

This episode took place on the campus of a Catholic university; the editor was not Jewish. The editor is frank. The majority of the board wanted to publish "Bieganski." A minority objected. Their position, as the editor paraphrased it to me, "She can't say this because she's not famous. She can't say this because she's Polish and Catholic. She can't say this because it may harm this university's relationship with the Jewish community."

Do Not Blame the Jews – that stance is false, it is immoral and it is a complete waste of time. This was the position of the editorial board of a Catholic university. I applaud Jews for making their voices heard by such boards. My question for Polonia is, where were you? A major university told a writer she could not say what she said because she was Polish and Catholic. Will you be there the next time this happens? Is there an organization in existence today that would stand up for a Polonian writer in that situation? If there is, I am unaware of it.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

Through the internet, I've been conversing with "Marek," a very intelligent young man. He writes beautifully. He is a current-events junkie. He is deeply engaged not just with the headline news, but with the big trends and clashes of ideas behind the headline news. I have a PhD and he works a grunt job, but he introduces me to big thinkers I'd never heard of.

He is Polish-American. He's a devout Catholic. He is fluent in both English and Polish. He has a masterful command of scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic.

One day he says to me, "Since I've been talking to you, I've given it a lot of thought. I think I'm going to enter a graduate program."

I am thrilled. He will bring his unique perspective to American scholarship. We talk about programs, professors, fields of study.

A few weeks go by, and the plan is scrapped. "I have a pointless job now, but I can pay rent and I have health insurance. If I entered grad school, what happened to you would happen to me, I just know it. I don't agree with the people in power politically or culturally. They'd tell me how wonderful communism is. I lived under communism and I know it's not wonderful. They'd tell me how oppressive Catholicism is. I don't see Catholicism their way. They'd tell me I'm just another white male oppressor, but people in my family were murdered by dictators. I'd never get funding. I'd never get a job. Forget it."

Every sharp and pointed and well-informed contribution Marek could have made to the national exchange of ideas is lost. He's still working his grunt job. It's a cliché. It's true. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

When one of my African American students or Hispanic American students tells me that he or she wants to go to graduate school but isn't sure how to proceed, there are African American and Hispanic Americans professors I can send that student to. These are professors who have identified themselves as willing to mentor younger scholars. I know of no Polish American scholar I can send Marek to. I have been approached by African American and Hispanic American professors who want to mentor the next generation. I've never had that kind of encounter with a Polish American scholar.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

"Wanda" has been my student for years. She is perfect, the kind of student who leaves other students in her shadow. She's always in class, always on time, always reads everything, is always the first to understand, always gets every assignment done to perfection. She's also beautiful and a genuinely nice person.

In a better world, Wanda would be fully funded and respected. She's "the wrong minority," though. She's Polish-American. She pays for school herself, and supports herself by working a pink-collar job.

This semester there are cracks in Wanda's perfection. She's missed a class, and an assignment. I know something must be terribly wrong.

After class, we sit and talk. She is eager to unload. She is stressed beyond enduring. Wanda is a Christian. She let that slip in one of her classes. Once – she just mentioned it – that she is a Christian.

The professor in that class has been verbally harassing Wanda ever since. The stress is getting to her.

Another student pulled Wanda aside and said to her, "I'm a Christian, too, but I never let them know. I don't want to have to put up with what he's doing to you. Live and learn."

"We'll do something about this," I tell her.

We go to a campus higher-up. "I can't do anything," this person says. "Academic freedom … Tenure."

I'm stunned. What does harassing a student have to do with academic freedom?

Wanda says she just can't take the harassment any more. Though she has paid for the class out of the money she makes in her pink-collar job, she will drop the class, forfeit the tuition, and take any hit to her transcript that dropping a class will exact.

Later, I am at a conference with approximately ten fellow professors. I mention Wanda's fate.

The chair of the conference is a nice guy, widely beloved, trusted and admired. He is a senior professor, with responsibility for training other professors.

He immediately adopts a Southern accent (there are few students on our campus with Southern accents) and begins performing a Minstrel show mockery of Christian faith. The point: Christians are dumb, obnoxious, disruptive, and unqualified to study in English departments. Their insistence on eternal life cripples their ability to understand mortality, and, therefore, great literature.

This very same professor, in a previous meeting, had loudly and ostentatiously celebrated this campus' "Diversity." "We, the professors, departments chairs, we make very sure that our faculty, staff, and student body are diverse. We are deeply committed to diversity," he had said, as if announcing a really courageous stand.

Now he's making fun of Christian students.

No one in the room says anything. Ten professors present, in a wide variety of departments, and no one objects.

I e-mail the chairman after the meeting, and say that his mockery of Christianity and Christian students shocked me. He apologizes, but I am never invited to teach in that department again.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I've spent my professional life in the US on community college and university campuses. I'm in the humanities, and work with professors who teach literature, including ethnic literature, film, history, ethnicity, anthropology, racism, class. I can't remember ever seeing a book, an article, not even a poem about the Polish-American, or the wider Bohunk-American, experience on a syllabus, except in Polish language classes.

My NJ students descend largely from the c. 1880-1924 immigration. I know, because semester after semester, I ask. "Who here has grandparents or great-grandparents who came from Eastern or Southern Europe?" between fifty and ninety percent of the students raise their hands. In required literature and racism-sexism classes, they are assigned anthologies that define them out of America. "I envy people who have an identity, a history, people who matter," they say.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

"Jane" is a bright, charming student, amazingly well-informed, and an original thinker. The first time I met her, I decided that she was PhD material. She works full time in a pink-collar job. She lives paycheck to paycheck. Her parents do not support her. She is in my office, telling me she will quit college.

"You can't quit!" I insist. "Why do you want to quit?"

She's in a required class. To her the class feels more like indoctrination than education. Her professor kept going on and on about poor blacks and Hispanics. Jane raised her hand and said, "There are poor whites, as well." And the professor told her, "Their poverty does not count because they are white." For Jane, that was the last straw. It convinced her that college was just BS.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

In the past four months, two of my students, both under age 22, both hip, good looking, lots of friends, have told me that they are Polish, but have changed their names. They don't want me to use their real names. They don't want people to know that they are Polish.


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

Chapter two of "Bieganski" exposes the Brute Polak image in American mainstream press. I read every Lexis-Nexis or Reader's Guide article I found that was connected with the Auschwitz convent controversy and the coverage of Jan Tomasz Gross' "Neighbors" and "Fear." As documented in that chapter, article after article, in the New York Times, in Commonweal, in Newsweek, depicts Poles as more monsters than humans. If I remember correctly, there were no mainstream press articles authored by Poles that interrogated these stereotypes.

During a comparable controversy, as "Bieganski" shows, when African Americans and Muslims were in danger of being negatively stereotyped, the very same publications – the New York Times, Newsweek – made sure to publish articles by African Americans and articles that exculpated African Americans and Muslims.

What was Polonia doing during these controversies? What was the hierarchy of the Catholic Church doing regarding the press crucifixion of "Rome's most faithful daughter?"


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

It's 2011. "Bieganski" is finally published. Concerned readers of my blog send me the Brute Polaks they encounter on museum websites, in films shown in museums, in online discussions of Polish Nobel-Prize-winning poets and Polish saints. I post about these hate incidents on this blog … but where is the national Polish American organization that will take action?


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

Jan Tomasz Gross' new book, "Golden Harvest," is scheduled to be published in America in August, 2011. Articles about it have already appeared. Reader comments like those found beneath this Jewish Daily Forward article amply demonstrate that whatever Prof. Gross' intentions, his audience insists that his work proves that Poles are idiots, are cannibals, and are spiritually debased. Most troublingly: German crimes against Poland? Poles deserved it!

What is Polonia doing in March, 2011, as this book begins to have an impact on world readers?


***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I could go on. You could go on. You tell me these stories, too. You send them to me via e-mail. And then you tell me never to tell anyone about them. They could hurt your career. People would call you crazy, a whiner. They could make Polish Americans look bad. Why cause trouble?

Just ignore it, you say. It will all go away someday, you say. Why should I complain, you say. Others have had it worse, you say. Just fake it and forget it and ignore it. Get the degree and get out. Take the salary and lay low.

You tell me about the Polish American professor attempting to deliver a paper at a conference and being shouted down before he could even begin to speak. About the commitment to publication that evaporated. About the media that use the phrase "Polish concentration camps." The textbook that identifies Pilsudski as an anti-Semite.

I could go on. You could go on. We go on. We go on and on and on and on. In our little internet groups. Talking only to each other, changing nothing.

We can change this.

In the near future I hope to post another message addressing what we can do.