Who Puts in the Effort?

There is a pro-Palestinian session at the conference of my professional association of literary critics. I’m for freedom of speech, so I support. I’m not going to attend because the titles of the talks sound preachy, and life is too short but I support people speaking about whatever they choose. In any case, what I wanted to mention is that there are no sessions that positively highlight the Israeli or the Jewish culture. The number of Jews in academia is extraordinary. But they aren’t organizing sessions or making their case.

Lots of people complain and moan but have they put in the work to change things? Like people who say they don’t have time to write but they’ve made zero effort to make time.

This isn’t a post about Israel, in case people don’t understand.

And as a bonus to those who have read to the end, I learned a new word today as a result of reading the program of the conference:

translanguaging

I have no idea what it means and zero interest in finding out.

Literary critics, eh? Such love for the language. Such clarity of expression.