Author: Hannah Levine

I just watched Raymond O. Arsenault’s lecture titled “Courage and Civility.” He talks about the life of Richmond born Arthur Ashe, who has been the focus of much of Arsenault’s career. Today, Arthur Ashe is remembered as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. However, Arsenault argues that Ashe is one of the “greatest Americans of all time.” Ashe’s impact as a civil rights advocate and activist against AIDS transcends his tennis career.

In 1968, Ashe won the first US open. During the same year, he was in uniform at West Point. Jefferson Roberts, a black minister in D.C., invited Ashe to speak in church. Although it was his first time speaking in public, Ashe became inspired to speak out against race matters, and motivated other athletes to do the same. We are no longer in the defined civil rights era, but that doesn’t mean that the fight for civil rights in our country has ended. The legacy of Arthur Ashe lives on as a model of a man who was able to leverage his platform in order to change the world.

Dr. Laura Knouse, clinical psychologist at UR, gave her “last lecture” about the concept that being a person is hard. She discussed human’s psychological tendency to perpetuate upsetting memories despite our efforts to lessen these painful experiences. In other words, we create our own suffering. This is a fundamental, unwindable, human process.

She then went on to talk about the controversial idea that “people are doing that the best that they can.” It is much easier to refer to this grouping as “people” rather than saying I am doing the best that I can. By excluding yourself from this narrative, you are not owning your mistakes. At this point in the lecture, Dr. Knouse became very emotional. She then shared a personal anecdote about her son who has been diagnosed with autism. As a psychologist, Dr. Knouse never thought that she would be able to cope with having a child who is unable to connect on a social level. Fortunately, Dr. Knouse realized that her assumptions of what she needed to live a happy life were wrong. Her son shows his love in his own way, and she has learned that everyone can live a vital life, as long as you show the world that you are a person too.

On Friday, November 8th, I attended former Jepson grad, Sean Theriault’s lecture titled “Contempt in Congress: The Decline of Statesmanship in the U.S. Senate.” Theriault’s lecture was the final in the 2019-2020 Marshall Center Lecture Series. Theriault is a professor at the University of Texas, and has spent most of his professional career analyzing Congress. He is currently conducting research regarding the extreme polarization of Congress in recent years. Because his research is unfinished, he spent a lot of time explaining how he hopes to continue his research.

Theriault attributes the grid lock in congress to a group of senators that he has nicknamed “the Gingrich Senators.” This name comes from the Republican senators who previously served in the House after 1978, the year of Newt Gingrich’s first election to the House. These senators are more conservative, more likely to obstruct legislative process, and more likely to oppose Democratic Senators that their fellow Republicans in Congress. He thinks that these “partisan” warriors have radically transformed the way that the Senate operates. In 2011, Senator Al Franken started an annual Secret Santa in Congress in order to combat partisanship. Gingrich Senators are the least likely to attend. It makes sense that members of congress who are more moderate and want to “work across the aisle” would be more likely to attend. Interestingly, participants of the Secret Santa are no more likely to pass legislation that leads to problem solving that those who did not attend. Theriault’s research aims to understand why this is the case.

The reading, “Ingroups and Outgroups,” analyzes the different categories that place us in an ingroup or outgroup scenario. I found the emphasis on language as the most interesting defining category. I find it really easy to forget how much language influences our daily lives. Language is such a bonding force that groups hold onto. Speaking a language that is the primary language where you live places you at an advantage above people who do not speak that language, or who do not speak it as their first language.

In my psych class in high school, I learned about how for people who are multilingual, their personalities change based on what language they are speaking. In Spanish, they might be more outgoing while in French, they might be more shy. I wonder how those personality changes impacts someone’s ingroup/outgroup status.

I had learned somewhat in previous classes about the similarities and differences of the Women’s rights movement with the Civil Rights movement, but the videos did a good job harboring home the idea that the Women’s rights movement was a white women’s movement. Just like all of the other myths that we have been busting in class, the women’s rights movement is celebrated for its work to make all women equal. In reality, white women gained momentum to rise up because they saw black men doing the same thing, and decided that they could not stand being considered inferior to black men by law.

It is so absurd that such an important social movement like women’s rights grew out a fear of race, and that we are okay with dismissing that knowledge today in its celebration. Additionally, while the women’s rights movement and civil rights movements were both actively engaged in the same goal, they were so divided. The whole idea that the women’s movement gained the success that it did because the women in lead were white relates to our conversations about how it is really hard to make changes if you do not have certain privileges, which explains why our “great leaders” in history tend to be white, and most are male.

Having not known much about the story of Jonestown, I thought the podcast was super interesting. I think it’s crazy that Jim Jones actually started off as a really good guy. The podcast mentions that the formation of his church was based on social change. The church worked to feed the hungry, preach racial equality, and integrate Indianapolis. Even when things started to go in the wrong direction, Jones genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing.

At the end of the podcast, the hosts compared Jones to a psychopath or a serial killer. They said that his background of an abusive father and overprotective mother fit the pattern of a typical psychopath, as well as his ability to use charm to get what he wanted. The problem with this comparison is that Jones thought he was doing these terrible acts for the benefit of his community. In his twisted way, he cared about their wellbeing, unlike a psychopath who lacks that emotion.

In Irving Janis’ analyzation of groupthink, she talks about how groupthink is most dangerous during “a crisis situation that puts everyone under intense stress.” Although Janis didn’t mention this as an example of groupthink, I kept thinking about the Donner Party. The Donner Party was a group of settlers in the mid 1800s who were trapped in the Sierra Nevada during the winter. In order to survive, the group resulted to cannibalism.

I remember learning about this in my high school psych class, but I’m not sure if we focused on the group dynamic in general or groupthink. In terms of groupthink, I think this is a really interesting example because this small group was put under so much stress that they ignored their reservations about such a taboo topic and literally began eating each other. It is easy to look back in hindsight and say we would have never done that, but due to the stress that starvation put on the group, they were unable to see any other option. And for those who argued for plan b, the pressure from the group silenced them.

Based on the readings, Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) stands out to me from other charismatic leaders that I have been picturing during our in class discussions. A charismatic leader can be defined as one who embodies six main characteristics: emotional expressiveness, drive, eloquence, vision, self-confidence, and responsiveness. While MLK undoubtedly possessed these traits, there was something about him that I found seemingly more “ordinary.” 

First, MLK didn’t want to be a leader. In the article,  Leadership Lessons from Martin Luther King, Jr, Professor Bill George states that King was “chosen at a town meeting…to lead the protests against racial discrimination,” (George 1). In other words, MLK was faced with an obstacle that anyone could be faced with: he had to step up to a challenge. This idea of situational leadership instills a hope that anyone can become a leader, just like the “myths” we talked about in class. In the article, Martin Luther King, Jr: Charismatic Leadership in a Mass Struggle, the author Clayborne Carson explains how the story of Martin Luther King Jr. is also a myth, calling MLK  the “black counterpart to the static, heroic myths that have embalmed George Washington as the Father of His Country and Abraham Lincoln as the Great Emancipator,”  (Carson 28). 

Additionally, there are multiple aspects of King’s personality that differentiate him from other charismatic leaders and make him appear more “ordinary”. To begin with, MLK didn’t enjoy the devotion and loyalty of his followers like most other leaders do. He didn’t even always try to appease his audience. On many occasions, Carson states that King “risked popularity among blacks” to achieve peace (Carson 29).  Finally, MLK let his fear of certain situations shine through, denying the argument that charismatic leaders are self-confident. 

Hero: Nelson Mandela

Leader: Eleanor Roosevelt

Role Model: Barack Obama