This Ain't Revisionist History, Folks!

Back in late April, I spoke publicly (rare for a moral coward) in praise of the U.S. occupation of Japan. To this day, General Douglas MacArthur is venerated in Japanese popular culture. His Cadillac (nice touch for an occupier) has a place of honor in a venerated Tokyo nightclub. I failed to mention the occupation of Germany. Iraq and it Ba'athist Party comes closer to Nazi Germany than to Japan (although Saddam Hussein aspired to the status of the Japanese Emperor: a god). Ah, the lessons of revisionist history. I don't think being President of the U.S. (POTUS) is as much fun these days for George II. We're gettin' down to the short rows, now. The mistakes, misstatements, and miscalculations are out front and obvious to everyone (except W, Cheney, Rummy, and all of their blind supporters). If this be treason—said Patrick Henry—make the most of it.

[x Asia Times—July 2003]
Middle East

Occupying Iraq: The lessons of history
By Alexander Casella

In early June, the American provisional authority in Iraq sent a message to some 50 former Iraqi ambassadors abroad instructing them to report back to Baghdad. Forty-six of the ambassadors contacted complied with the instruction. This was not the reaction that one would have expected from the failed bureaucracy of a failed state and for good reason. Iraq, whatever its regime, was never a failed state.

Its governing structure, including the police apparatus, had a long civil service tradition going back to the days of the Ottoman Empire. Likewise, though the country has large pockets of poverty, it has not only an educated middle class but also a substantive number of well-trained technocrats, which include some of the best doctors, engineers, architects and scientists in the Middle East. Thus, given the right circumstances, Iraq was not short of trained Iraqis to run the country and to do so well.

The contention that in the wake of the American invasion the governing structure of Iraq simply collapsed and has now to be "rebuilt" simply does not hold water. Conversely, the governing structure did become inoperative overnight. Why it did so will probably never be fully explained but it is well possible that Washington's insistence on "regime change" combined with its inability to communicate to the grass roots what it had in store for the country - all indications point to the fact that while the war was meticulously planned, hardly any thought had been given to how to run Iraq after Saddam's fall - induced the governing bureaucracy to literary vanish. The end result was a vacuum, which as of now is still mostly unfilled.

There is little doubt that had the US seriously planned for a post-Saddam administration, it would not have had to change practically its whole transitional administrative team only one month after the fall of Baghdad. While this lack of advance planning as regards a strategic exercise, of which the military stage was only the first phase, is downright incomprehensible, it is not the first time in history that immediate concerns overshadowed the need for a long-term occupation strategy.

Though the post-World War II era is hardly one of peace, it is a rare occurrence in which one nation invaded another with the publicly stated purpose of imposing its authority on it, changing its regime and transforming it into a client state.

Even at the height of the Cold War, outright invasion of a foreign state without the pretext of supporting a real or hypothetical local force was not the norm. Thus while the Soviet Union did subjugate Eastern Europe, it did so by imposing, under its umbrella, the rule of local communist parties. Likewise, its invasion of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 essentially sought to reinstate pro-Soviet local communist hardliners who had been ousted by more liberal internal forces. Ultimately, until the American invasion of Iraq, the last time outright invasion occurred was in 1945 when the US defeated Germany and Japan and sought to substitute its authority for that of the Nazis and the Japanese imperial government.

Granted, there were two major differences between Germany and Japan on one hand and Iraq on the other. Unlike Iraq, Germany and Japan had both formally surrendered and had populations which by tradition were respectful, if not submissive, to authority. But beyond these two important differences, the basic issue remained the same: how does an army, which does not wish to resort to unrestricted slaughter, manage the everyday running of a conquered country? The answer is that it does not.

When the Germans defeated France in 1940 and occupied Paris, they left untouched the whole management structure of the French capital. Waterworks, electricity, sewage, road maintenance, postal service, public transportation and the like continued to operate as they did before the occupation. Likewise the Paris police force, by and large, continued to function under the Germans as it had under a French government. Indeed, when in July 1942 the Germans decided on the mass roundup of the Jews in Paris, it was the French police who made the arrests and the Parisian public buses which transported them to the holding center from which they were sent to the death camps. And while the French police ultimately did revolt they did so only in the last days of the occupation when the Germans had withdrawn most of their forces from Paris and the Allied divisions were one day away from the French capital.

This same pattern was repeated in all the Western countries occupied by the Germans. The local administrations were left in place with the Nazis restricting themselves to exercising military control through their army and political control through their secret police, the Gestapo.

While in moral terms the Allied occupation of Germany can in no way be compared to the German occupation of the Western European democracies that it had defeated in 1940, the purely practical issue of how to manage a defeated state remained the same.

Five weeks after Germany's defeat, Sir Ivor Pink, deputy undersecretary at Britain's Foreign Office, wrote to a colleague complaining that he had trouble convincing the press that the Allies had a policy toward Germany. Sir Ivor had reason to be concerned. There was no Allied policy. All that stood for a policy were two paragraphs in a handbook prepared in 1944 by the Allied command and then withdrawn. The first paragraph provided that "under no circumstances" should active Nazis or their sympathizers be retained in office. The second paragraph stated that the "administrative machinery of certain dissolved Nazi organizations may be used when necessary". Very soon, "necessary" became the rule rather than the exception.

On paper, the Allies had made the "de-Nazification" of Germany a priority. This provided that before being integrated in a new governing structure, Germans had to prove that they had not been active Nazis. De-Nazification required the completing of a highly complex questionnaire, which would then be submitted to a de-Nazification board. Confronted by some 13 million questionnaires on one hand, which would have taken years to process, and the pressing requirement of normalizing everyday life, the system soon collapsed under its own weight and was quietly shelved.

With Germany literarily in rubble, feeding the population was one of the Allies' pressing priorities. This required that the railways system, by which practically all food supplies were transported, be reactivated at the earliest. To undertake this demanding task the US occupation authorities could find no better candidate than Theodor Ganzenmuller. As state secretary in the Ministry of Transportation, Ganzenmuller was the man credited with keeping the German railway system operating throughout the war years. Even at the height of the Allied bombing campaign, Ganzenmuller always made sure that the trains kept moving. He even received a personal commendation from Himmler, the chief of the SS and the German police for having ensured, confronted with the greatest odds, that the trains kept on running between the Jewish ghettos in Poland and the extermination camps. "I thank you for your efforts," commented Hitler's adjudant, Wolf, noting "with satisfaction" that "for two weeks now a train has been carrying every day 5,000 members of the chosen people to Treblinka". Treblinka was one of the main extermination centers where over 600,000 were gassed. Seeking someone with the expertise to rebuild the railways in their zones, the Americans proposed Ganzenmuller for the job. The choice however proved too much for Washington, which cancelled the appointment and chose instead to give the job to Ganzenmuller's superior, Dr Dorpmuller, Hitler's minister for transportation.

Keeping law and order was another challenge for the Allies. While the Reich's main security service, which included the secret police, the Gestapo, as well as the Nazi party security service, was disbanded, the Order Police, which included the criminal police, were left structurally intact. Thus the cop on the beat was for all practical purposes kept in his job. Given that the Order Police had been infiltrated by the SS, it became a haven for former Nazis. Thus when in May 1946 Kurt Schumacher, the leader of the new Social Democratic Party went to Hanover to give a talk and was assigned five bodyguards from the local police, he discovered that 4 were former SS members, including one captain and one major. All had been recruited by the local police chief who was himself a former SS man. It was a process that repeated itself thousands of times all over Germany.

By the time the German Federal Republic was born in 1949, not only was having been a Nazi no source of shame, but it was former Nazis who were rebuilding Germany. By the mid-1950s about 60 West German ambassadors were former high-ranking Nazis. Practically all the former Nazi teachers, lawyers, judges and civil servants had been reinstated and the drafter of the 1934 Nazi racial laws that paved the way for the Holocaust had been appointed chancellor Konrad Adenauer's state secretary. Ultimately it could hardly have been otherwise. Given the legacy of history, the choice was either to rebuild Germany using former - and unrepentant - Nazis or not rebuilding it at all. De-Nazification had to await the passing away of a generation.

Even with the wisdom of hindsight, it is difficult to see how the Allies could have chartered a different course for the new Germany. Granted, reinstating former Nazis was not a deliberate policy, but complacency, the requirements of the Cold War, expediency and the wish to turn the page. Turning a blind eye to murder became a matter of convenience.

Half a century after the fall of Nazi Germany, the American occupation of Iraq raises many of the same questions. What will work in Baghdad will not work in Basra and might not be required in Mosul, but the basic issue remains the same: how do you run a conquered country? Three months after an occupation that is becoming increasingly contentious, Washington is slowly rediscovering that if you want to rule a foreign country you must empower the local police, pay the salaries of the former military, keep the local administration functioning, use local contractors to maintain and repair utilities. Armies are made to wage war and not to keep law and order. And as for the much-vaunted "regime change", there are enough past examples to show that it comes from the top down and not vice versa.

With time running short and for want of a comprehensive occupation policy, the US authorities in Iraq are now rediscovering the wheel, namely reactivating the local police and paying the salaries of former soldiers. It is possible, just possible, that had these measures been advertised and taken three months ago, the US would be in a far better position than it is today in confronting a situation of increased insecurity.

The lessons were there to be learned. To its chagrin, the US is now slowly discovering that they were either forgotten or ignored.

(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.

I do stand-up, not burlesque

Remember my patron saint: Lionel Basney (RIP)? Basney said...The basic equipment for a classroon teacher is the same as for a stand-up comedian: a striking voice, a direct gaze, and the inner freedom to say more or less anything that comes to mind.... Below is an account of a professor doing a clown act, perhaps burlesque, but it sure as hell ain't stand-up.

[x CHE—July 25, 2003]


Did You Hear the One About the Professor? How one statistician learned to use humor in the classroom and is now teaching others how to do it

By THOMAS BARTLETT


Baltimore

It's easy to make fun of Ronald A. Berk. And, to be fair, anyone who wears oversized cowboy hats and has more than one inflatable alien doll in his office should be prepared for some ridicule.

So go ahead, laugh at him. Really. It's OK. He wants you to.

After all, everyone else does, including his students. The 56-year-old professor of biostatistics and measurement at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing has become well-known for his wacky classroom stunts, one of which involves a touching duet between Céline Dion and a leaf blower.

In person, Mr. Berk always has a joke at hand. Although many of them are groaners, he seems to be having such a good time that it is hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm.

But beneath the nonsense is a simple and slightly subversive message: If you're funny, they will learn.

The professor has written two books in support of that theory: Professors Are From Mars, Students Are From Snickers and the recently published Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator. He has made presentations to packed rooms of professors across the country, maintaining that humor not only reduces anxiety and fosters better relationships between students and teachers but also helps make difficult concepts clearer and more memorable.

Indeed, Mr. Berk has become higher education's humor guru, a title for which, admittedly, there wasn't much competition. Along the way, he has racked up a shelf full of teaching awards, a cadre of wisecracking disciples, and stacks of gushing student evaluations.

"He's more than funny," says Sherri Wheeler, a senior majoring in nursing. "He knows how to take a subject and truly bring it to life."

Most professors use some form of humor in their courses, tossing in the occasional wry one-liner or witty aside. What Mr. Berk advocates is employing humor as a systematic teaching tool that, he says, can "shock students to attention and bring deadly, boring course content to life." It can also, according to the professor, create an "atmosphere of play and creativity" that encourages exploration.

That's not to say that everyone agrees that humor, particularly the over-the-top variety, is the right approach. "Some students seem to like it, but there are others who find it annoying and distracting and unnecessary," says Martha N. Hill, dean of the nursing school.

Still, Mr. Berk and teaching experts like Jim Eison remain convinced of humor's pedagogical value. "Instructors don't necessarily have to be entertainers, but humor is one way to make material more compelling and engage students in the learning experience," says Mr. Eison, a professor of higher education at the University of South Florida.

The Scarf and the Leaf Blower

It started innocently enough. Then it got out of hand.

Ever since Mr. Berk began teaching in the nursing school, some 17 years ago, he has made sure to add a few jokey examples to his lectures. Not comedic gold exactly, just a play on words or a pop-culture reference or two.

The students seemed to pay closer attention. "They were smiling and laughing," he says. "No one would believe we were talking about multiple regression."

Soon he had gone beyond funny test questions and was devising elaborate musical skits to illustrate certain principles, often enlisting the help of his students. In one, several students danced into the room to music from Chicago, followed by another group wearing hooded sweatshirts and punching the air to the theme from Rocky. They were meant to illustrate the concept of statistical sampling. (The class discussed how certain students were selected for the two groups and in what ways those groups were similar or different.)

In another stunt, he had a student stand at the front of the room with her arms out straight, so her body was in the shape of a "T," to represent a statistical concept called "T score." To make the demonstration more memorable, he had her hold a scarf in her hand while another student turned on a leaf blower and he played the Céline Dion tear-jerker "My Heart Will Go On" from the movie Titanic. (For the two of you who didn't see the movie, this is a play on one of its most famous scenes.)

"They loved it," the professor says. "The room exploded."

Not only did they love it, but such antics have helped students remember the material better, the professor contends. Attendance improved and test scores rose, he says. "The response reinforced my idea of using humor as a teaching tool," adds Mr. Berk, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park in education.

Along the way, Mr. Berk developed some rules about the right and wrong kinds of humor to use in a classroom. For instance, he found that self-deprecating humor puts students at ease and leads to more interaction. Sarcasm, however, can poison a classroom and turn students off.

Barry Margulies learned that the hard way. The assistant professor of biology at Towson University says his own sense of humor tends to be a bit acerbic. He didn't think that was a problem until he started receiving evaluations from students with comments like "inappropriate humor" and "sarcastic."

So he asked Mr. Berk, whom he heard speak at a teaching conference, for help. Mr. Berk encouraged him to eliminate the sarcasm -- which might be misinterpreted as a put-down -- and replace it with less biting goofiness. It seems to have worked: Mr. Margulies's last batch of student evaluations was much more positive, he says. And Mr. Berk's humor techniques have been a hit with Mr. Margulies's students. "If they can remember me acting like an idiot, maybe that will trigger a memory that will allow them to solve a problem or answer a question," he says. "Sometimes the most hilarious or off-the-wall presentations make the biggest impressions."

But is it acceptable for a professor to act like an idiot? Mr. Berk argues that it is, so long as doing so helps students learn. But not everyone agrees. "There are people who think that it's frivolous, it's undignified," he says. "They don't understand that it's not the humor by itself, but it's the humor linked to certain concepts that I want students to remember. It's about active learning."

Screwy Syllabus

Mr. Berk's philosophy is also linked to current research about humor, which shows that laughter can reduce stress and improve mental functioning. But that connection, he says, is lost on colleagues who think of him as the guy who wears silly hats. He has even run into opposition from his own department.

One of those battles was over his use of humor in his syllabus. Quips such as "A Third Less Content, Same Great Taste!" sprinkled throughout the list of requirements and assignments were viewed by the nursing school as inappropriate for official university material. But putting small jokes and non sequiturs in official university material is what Mr. Berk is all about. Indeed, he encourages other professors to follow his lead and make their syllabuses as funny as possible. Being told that he would have to distribute a serious syllabus to his students was not something he took lightly.

He called the American Association of University Professors, which put him in touch with a lawyer. After much discussion, a compromise was reached: Mr. Berk would be allowed to distribute his original, funny syllabus to students so long as he provided a joke-free version to the department for its records. The professor happily complied.

While some colleagues remain skeptical, others, like Diane S. Aschenbrenner, an instructor in pharmacology, are big supporters. "He's a very effective, engaging teacher," she says. "I don't think people quite recognize the scholarship and learning theory that is behind what he does in the classroom." Ms. Aschenbrenner says that even though she is low key and serious by nature, she has used several of Mr. Berk's skits in her classes and has been pleased by the results.

That's why she was particularly upset when it was recently announced that Mr. Berk would no longer be assistant dean for teaching in the School of Nursing, though he will remain a professor. The official reason for the change is not Mr. Berk's performance in the role, but rather that the department is being reorganized under Ms. Hill, who was named dean last year.

Some in the department, however, suspect that Mr. Berk's humorous approach is not taken seriously by the new administration. "I think it's unfortunate not to have him in that position anymore," says Ms. Aschenbrenner. "I think he has helped a lot of other professors here with their teaching."

Whether what Mr. Berk does really helps students learn is a matter of debate, according to Ms. Hill. "I'm very interested in how we improve teaching excellence and increase competency-based learning," she says. "The question is, What are the effective techniques? I don't have any data that allow me to say what he does is effective."

She asserts that student evaluations reveal that not everyone is amused by Mr. Berk's technique. "The reviews are mixed," she says.

Mr. Berk disputes that and says evaluations from students have been almost uniformly stellar. "She doesn't have a clue about what goes on in my classroom," he says. "I don't think I've really had any negative reviews in two years." Mary Kathleen Lears, a nursing instructor who is also a member of a committee that examines students' evaluations, confirms that Mr. Berk's evaluations have been "superb" and among the highest in the department.

The professor says he has grown accustomed to negative reactions from colleagues. "The rest of the faculty dismiss or simply tolerate you," he says "People don't know why you do what you do, and they don't care." He adds that there is "hardly anyone else doing anything at the college level with humor as a teaching technique."

While they may be in the minority, there certainly are other professors who have found unconventional ways to help students learn. Among them is Muffy Siegel, a professor of English at Temple University, who also happens to be a ventriloquist. In her linguistics classes, she uses a puppet she's named Gregory the Grackle to explain the difference between human and animal communication, among other concepts. Ms. Siegel says students are disappointed on days when she doesn't make use of the talking bird.

"Sometimes it's hard to fit him in, but students demand it, and so I have to find a way," she says. "They say they look forward to coming to class -- and that's a good thing."

Ms. Siegel doesn't see her ventriloquism as a gimmick. "There's no better way to teach the course," she says. "There's no question to me that it's an effective teaching tool."

Anthony Clark Arend agrees that humor in the classroom can be effective. The professor of government at Georgetown University says including "colorful examples" is an integral part of the way he teaches. "In the hypotheticals, I'll talk about Snoop Doggy Dogg or Britney Spears," he says. "I try to keep it current.

Hopefully, by hearing something unconventional, students will participate more and perhaps enjoy what they're doing."

That said, Mr. Arend also believes humor shouldn't interfere with the lesson. "You need to use humor in such a way that it advances the substantive matter you're discussing," he says. "You never want to do it where it becomes paramount and the material becomes secondary."

What he does seems to work for students. He has won 10 teaching awards in his career, including three in the past year.

"He's hysterical," says Justin Wagner, a senior majoring in government and economics. "He personifies a professor who is able to incorporate humor and do it appropriately."

But just because the professor is funny doesn't mean his course is a cakewalk. Mr. Wagner says Mr. Arend's class is definitely challenging. Ms. Siegel says students feel they same way about her courses. "They uniformly say that the classes are funny, and they're hard," she says.

Milton M. Reigelman is known for being a tough teacher, too. But the English professor at Centre College is also known for using humor, and the occasional planned stunt, to grab students' attention. His favorite such event was the time he invited Ed McClanahan, author of the novel The Natural Man, to visit his class. The professor didn't tell the students that the author of the novel they were reading would be making an appearance. That would have ruined the gag.

The class was held outside, and halfway through the lecture Mr. McClanahan wandered up and began arguing with the professor over his interpretation of the book. The argument became increasingly more intense, until it looked as if the two men might come to blows. At that point, Mr. McClanahan revealed himself.

"You ask people who have graduated 20 years before what they remember, and it's stuff like that," Mr. Reigelman says. "You have to be a showman at some level. I think humor is absolutely fundamental to teaching."

Class for Clowns

If humor is fundamental to teaching, is it possible to teach professors to be funny?

Mr. Berk thinks so. While he doesn't guarantee that students will be rolling in the aisles, he does say that his "low risk" brand of humor can enliven any classroom. "It's not dependent on your ability to tell a joke," he says. "It's using humor in a very different way. Using music or putting jokes in your syllabus -- it's a no-brainer. Anybody can do this."

Bob McMorris, a professor of educational psychology and methodology at the State University of New York at Albany has tried some of Mr. Berk's techniques and says they're as good as advertised. "My outlook on humor has been colored a lot by Ron," he says. "He makes it accessible and gives people things they can use."

Ms. Lears has seen some of the techniques work in her classroom, too. She says she devised a skit to demonstrate how and how not to communicate with patients based on Mr. Berk's strategies. It was a smash, she says. "He has helped people here who you never would have thought would use humor in their classes," she adds.

She hopes Mr. Berk's methods will catch on. "If we can just get the rest of academia to understand that this is proven stuff, it works," she says. "It's OK to let your guard down and try something humorous."

SILLY SCHTICKS

Ronald A. Berk believes that being wacky in the classroom gets students' attention and helps them retain what they learn. Here are two of the humorous openings that he suggests could be used to kick off a lecture. They are from his book, Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator:

Stat Trek
a. Music: Theme from Star Trek
b. Time: 45 seconds
c. Props: Spock ears (optional), miniflashlight
d. Preparation: Conceal ears in pocket or under something near projector
e. Transparency: "Stat Trek: Where No Statistician Has Gone Before"
f. Script

Statistics
The final frontier
These are the voyages of the Stat Trek
Its 15-week mission:
To explore strange new statistics
To seek out new methods for conducting research
To boldly go where no statistician has gone before
g. Execution:
Test projector procedure
Turn out projector light
Place transparency on projector
Black out room
Put on ears
Use miniflashlight to find script and transparency
Read script
As you read last line, turn on projector light
Press button to begin music
After 30 seconds, turn off music
Turn on room lights
Launch into lecture

The Good, the Bad, and It Could Get Ugly
a. Music: Theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
b. Time: 30 seconds
c. Props: Humongous Western, big-brim hat, small cigar, poncho (optional)
d. Preparation: This demo can be used to introduce any topic where you plan on presenting a comparison of good and bad, pluses and minuses, advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses, or similar lists. Place props in a bag under the projector tables so they are easily accessible.
e. Transparency: "Experimental Design: The Good, the Bad, and It Could Get Ugly"
f. Execution:
Test projector procedure
Turn off projector light
Place transparency on projector with cover paper
Say, "I think we're ready to begin."
Bend under table with recorder in hand
Put on hat and put cigar in your mouth
Press button to begin music while under table
Stand up
Turn on projector light
Move paper down slowly on transparency to reveal one line at a time with the music
After the last line, stop the tape
Turn off projector light
Say, "This [morning, afternoon, evening] we're going to examine what's good and what's bad about [this topic]."

Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education