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CLASS NOTES
Illin’ at Harvard
BY CAMILLE DODERO

The prelude to last Friday’s " Globalization and Human Values: Envisioning World Community, " a dreamy-sounding Harvard class of 522 students that’s the brainchild of junior faculty member Brian Palmer, was supposed to be footage from a Tibetan Freedom Concert. But concert organizer and Palmer’s childhood chum, Adam Yauch — a/k/a MCA the Betty-Crocker-blasting-Beastie-Boy-turned-Tibetan-mouthpiece — left New York in a rush and forgot to bring the DVD. So instead, Palmer introduced his friend this way: " Adam Yauch is the founding member of the most respected white hip-hop group of all time — "

At which point, the seemingly embarrassed lyricist playfully shoved Palmer and mumbled, " Nah, let’s get down to it. "

The afternoon Yauch appeared at Harvard was four days before the Beastie Boys released " In a World Gone Mad, " an antiwar rant available at www.beastieboys.com with priceless lyrics like " George Bush you’re looking like Zoolander/Trying to play tough for the camera " (Yauch’s line) and " You and Saddam should kick it like back in the day/With the cocaine and Courvoisier " (Mike D’s chestnut). Comfy in dark sneakers, saggy slacks, and a greenish-brown hooded sweatshirt, Yauch wasn’t here to give props to his upcoming track — he didn’t even mention the release until a handful of fan-students remained for autographs. As planned, he softly and self-effacingly sat on the lecture-hall table for 50 minutes, answering students’ questions.

Does he have political ambitions? " No, I don’t, " he murmured into the microphone. " But I gotta say, I lived in LA and Hollywood for a while, and when I visited DC, DC was the most similar place to Hollywood that I’ve ever seen in my life. " Does he think lyrical content affects listeners? " A lot of the things we said on [Licensed to Ill], we would just be goofin’ around and trying to say the wildest things we could, " he said solemnly. " Over time you start to see how it does affect people. I’d be hanging at a club and have some kid come up to me and say, ‘Yeah, it’s cool you smoke dust.’ I’m like, ‘Ah, I was just kidding.’ "

An anthropology professor who won the 2002 Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for his labor-intensive work on a sister course the New York Times dismissed as " Idealism 101, " Palmer, along with teaching fellow Kate Holbrook, designed the class as a talk-show format in which students interview renowned speakers, mostly with prepared questions. " I wanted a forum where the guest can’t necessarily control the theme, where someone can ask Robert Reich about a low level of charitable giving on his tax forms one year, " Palmer says. " Or like last semester, where someone can ask Tom Chapell, the founder of Tom’s of Maine, whether he drives a sport-utility vehicle. " (He does.)

Yauch might be the only name listed on Religion 1528’s syllabus who’s both rhymed on-stage with an inflatable phallus and communed with the Dalai Lama, but the 19 other guests Palmer lined up aren’t exactly underachievers. The roster includes inner-city-kid advocate and author Jonathan Kozol, former secretary of labor Robert Reich, lefter-than-left linguist Noam Chomsky, ethicist Peter Singer, historian Howard Zinn, political scholar Michael Ignatieff, and writer Jamaica Kincaid. " They’re high-voltage individuals who seem to have found a forum in which to affect politics, " Palmer says of the speakers he spent more then five months securing. " The guests are all, I know the word only in Swedish — fire souls — impassioned people struggling. "

Not every invitee accepts. Among those who have declined are Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, as well as Harvard president Larry Summers. As teaching fellow John McMillian is quick to point out, Summers’s decision smacks of contradiction: " He’s said in many forums that he wants closer contact between himself and students. It’s a little bit silly that he can’t free up an hour on Monday or a Wednesday to answer students’ questions. "

If you’re sensing a bit of hostility against Harvard, you’re not mistaken. " In some ways, the course is consciously un-Harvard, even a touch anti-Harvard, " admits Palmer. " It challenges the emphasis on competition — education as a means to find one’s way to the top of our competitive society. " He adds, " I’m more interested in the larger world than in simply the Harvard community. The university will spit me out like a used piece of chewing gum sooner or later. "

Issue Date: March 13 - 20, 2003
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