A group of University of Wisconsin faculty and staff will host a “teach-in” tonight and tomorrow to present alternate viewpoints and ideas on the war in Afghanistan.
Professor of sociology and one of the organizers of the event, Joseph Elder, said he and the other organizers held a mini teach-in last year after President Barack Obama announced his plan to increase troop levels in Afghanistan.
After Obama announced he would increase troop levels again in December, Elder said he felt a responsibility to stand up and say the war is not just.
Elder said he has an obligation to the American public to share his expertise on the area. He said he and the professors speaking at the event all have specific knowledge on the region.
Elder said the concept of a teach-in is very relevant to the UW campus.
“There is an old tradition of teach-ins going back to April 1, 1965,” Elder said.
While he did not attend that first event, Elder said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald he heard a great deal about it from those who had attended and was very excited by it. He said those teach-ins were held for similar reasons: professors who were experts on Vietnam felt they had an obligation to tell the university community what they knew.
Former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin attended the teach-ins in the 1960’s. Soglin said one of the most interesting things about the events was the fact the knowledge presented at the teach-ins was not available in the mainstream media.
“There was also a sense of surprise and awe… why isn’t it universally reported, why isn’t it universally known?” Soglin said.
He added that by two or three years after the teach-ins, the ideas that had been presented there were, for the most part, universally known.
Soglin said it will be interesting to see how active UW students get in the teach-in. He said there are two things that engaged people in the 1960’s: a sense of altruism and a sense of self-interest.
“Certainly in the ’60s there was a combination of both, since we had the draft as a very realistic threat,” Soglin said.
