Word: markell
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Hello, what's going on here? Dan Markel writes a humorous piece entitled "Can We Call You Al?" (December 9) that, despite its many merits, might not have been completely thought through, and Haneen M. Rabie, President of the Society of Arab Students, finds an opportunity in her critique (letter to the editor, December 12) of this article to make a totally inappropriate comparison of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to the Nazis. It's mind-boggling. The warring parties of the Middle East are finally sitting down to take steps toward building peace and what's going...
...Markel's piece calls for an end to "stiff formality" between professors and students and uses the fact that the enlisted men of the Israeli Defense Forces are on a first-name basis with their superiors as an example of the advantages of the "egalitarian spirit." The comparison, while somewhat funny, is inherently absurd and indeed inappropriate. The Israeli Defense Forces are a military organization. They probably want to build a sense of comaraderie in their ranks because they just might all die together in the defense of their nation. However, death by a sniper's bullet isn't something...
...point Markel was trying to make is that we should learn more effectively in an intimate atmosphere, then his example of Plato and Socrates teaching in "little study groups under the shade of the tree" should have been the focus of his article. It was a good point that was both humorous and relevant. The comparison to the IDF, however, wasn't of much substance...
...Markel's opinion piece of December 9 was very disturbing to me. Aside from the fact that what Markel advocates may further decrease respect of our professors in an atmosphere in which students already rudely talk, laugh, fall asleep or put their feet up on chairs during lecture, the piece contained for me a more personal and much more important issue...
...Palestinian-American, I was offended and saddened by Markel's flip suggestions that Harvard model its behavior on that of the Israeli defense Forces...