Crimson Crusadertrade; Glenn Kinen informs me that this ridiculous boycott-of-Israel business is barely registering on Harvard’s ideological Richter Scale — that the media coverage being given this “academic” travesty is disproportionate to its actual, real-world importance (much like Bill O’Reilly’s career, come to think of it).

Still, I just can’t seem to let it go, it’s so firmly lodged in my craw. So here’s more info on that dim bulb Nancy Kanwisher, the clueless goof helping to spearhead this MIT-Harvard divestiture petition. The text is taken from her MIT Brain-lab site; the translations are mine.

The research in my lab focuses on visual cognition: how we recognize faces, objects, and scenes; what happens in the mind/brain when we pay attention or imagine; and how cognitive/neural processing gives rise to our conscious experience of the visual world.

Translation: “The brain, properly understood, is a kind of fairy land. And what’s more magical than a fairy land? Nothing is! Nothing is more magical than fairy land! Whoooopeeeeeeeeee!

And in fairy land, cognitive/neural processing gives rise to our conscious experience of….well, more fairies! Lots and lots and lots of fairies! Beautiful, colorful fairies — dressed in long flowing robes and remarkably ornate headscarves…. Wheeeeeeeeeeee! Oh, how I do love the fairies!

(But in answer to your question, no, I can’t account for the disconnect between real-world events and my support for the Palestinian cause — except to say that sometimes, in the process of cognitively recognizing faces, objects, and scenes, I can get really confused. Like this one time, I recognized that it was Noam Chomsky I was talking to, but I actually perceived Lucifer, standing there in Chomsky’s stead. Even had the horns and the creepy tail. Odd, huh?

Hell, I can’t explain it.”)

Visual cortex is an enormously complex structure comprising about a third of the cortical surface. In an effort to understand this system and how it gives rise to perceptual experience, our strategy is to use functional MRI (fMRI) to proceed on three fronts. First, we are attempting to find and characterize the fundamental components of higher-level vision. Second, by watching these components (or “modules”) in action, we hope to determine how their activity is a) affected by attention, b) engaged during mental imagery, and c) correlated with awareness. Third, we are investigating the origins and plasticity of cortical modules, by testing whether new ones can develop and whether old ones can move to new cortical sites when their original loci are damaged.

Translation: “A brief digression, if you’ll indulge me. I love pickup trucks. In fact, I lost my virginity in the bed of a pickup truck. To a boy named Tommy Ross. I loved Tommy, I really did. He was soooooo dreamy. But then at prom, Sue Snell and Billy Nolan and Norma and the rest of Tommy’s clique arranged to have a bucket of pig’s blood dumped on my head. Ker-splash! Totally fucked up my dress. Boy, was I ever humiliated. And pissed off, too. I felt like blowing some shit up just then, I can tell you that.

So you see, I empathize with the Palestinian freedom fighters. Also humiliated and pissed off. Though of course the blood they’re drenched in is the blood of Israeli children, not pig’s blood.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Is it fair for her to compare the Jews to Tommy’s clique? Is history, or morality, or ideology — or even common sense — on her side?’ Well, probably not. But fuck it, somebody’s gotta pay, right? I mean, this was prom! And it was totally ruined! Sue Snell? A Jewess. Norma? Also a Hebrette. Billy Nolan I can’t be sure about. But still.

Damned Jews.

Cut off their funding and leave ’em there, drenched in blood. That’s what I say. Let’s see how they like it.”

[…] The research in my lab is unusual in two respects. First, our strategy is to focus intensively on specific cortical regions defined functionally within individual subjects, so that we can characterize the function of each region with greater anatomical precision and cognitive sophistication than has been possible in the past. Second, our ultimate goal is not simply to map the functional anatomy of the brain but to discover the fundamental architecture the mind, and the cognitive/neural mechanisms involved in the construction of our perceptual experience.

Translation: “I should mention, though, that I love bagels. And whitefish. Lox, too. So you see, it’s a mistake to dismiss me as some knee-jerk anti-Semite. I’m not.

In fact, some of my best students are Jews.

It’s just, well — the Jews are gettin’ a bit uppity of late, aren’t they? I mean, ‘Never Again’? Who do they think they are, anyway?

No, the Zionist war machinery must be destroyed. Swords must be beaten into ploughshares, and the lands cleansed of vermin. The capitalist infrastructure must be systematically dismantled; the soils returned to the Bedoin. For berry gathering. For loaves baked in dune-carved ovens. Robes of silk and finery. Scimitars.

Sandy Koufax was overrated.

I sure do like ducks.

42.”

[update: The Grasshoppa Blogger, an MIT student, sends along this link: Harvard-MIT Petition to Oppose Divestment

Because not all Ivy Leaguers are unthinking buffoons…]