Mentha Hynes-Wilson just completed a year as the director of student life for Whitman College, Princeton University’s newest residential college. Functioning as the chief student services officer for the college, she serves an essential role in the strategic and assessment plans of programs and policies which extend learning beyond the classroom and maximize student opportunities for personal development.

Hynes-Wilson previously served as the associate dean of multicultural affairs and student affairs at Smith College. Her profound commitment to educational equity led her to design and implement highly-successful initiatives to make Smith a more diverse and welcoming community for people of all backgrounds.

Active in a number of educational and civic endeavors, she holds professional memberships in associations including the American Association of University Women, American College Personnel Association, and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. She earned a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Sacramento and a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

What do you consider your hometown and tell us a quick story from living there?

Well, I was born and raised in the cozy waterside town of Vallejo, California, the headquarters of the first State Capitol – albeit for merely a few weeks - and a prominent naval shipyard.

I remember the close-knit friends who encircled me all through my childhood. Jeff. Gino. Michelle. Gregory. Dali. Kimi. Patricia and Sylvia. We were restless dreamers hoping to carry out our parent’s aspiration of a brighter future; my own family members were among the mass movement of Black Americans migrating from the Southern region of the United States to the Northern states for economic and social reasons.

During a grade school exercise on the subject of America’s melting pot, our teacher instructed us to prepare an oral presentation connecting our respective family traditions and food. One by one my little social group stood to share narratives of sacred hoops, June dinners, quinceañeros and much more while parent volunteers served lumpia, corn soup, chicken and rice, fried plantain, and sweet potato pie.

So even before I could put a name, diversity, to it, I could sense that there were interrelated concerns and interests and challenges among these varied “minority” groups.

What two or three activities outside of work are you most proud of or enjoy the most?

My husband and I share an enthusiasm for community involvement and are active members of two prominent civic organizations: Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

I’ve participated in numerous efforts beyond those associated with the sorority, the more recent examples include canvassing the Springfield community to encourage residents to get out and VOTE NOW, reading to elementary school students in conjunction with the Read Aloud Program, and providing transportation for elders needing assistance with personal errands.

I believe I have a responsibility to lend a helping hand to those in need and intend to volunteer within the greater San Diego community.

What about Thurgood Marshall College are you excited about as you begin working here?

Without a doubt, I’m looking forward to being apart of a spirited community that has demonstrated an unshakable commitment to the principles of academic excellence, leadership and service.

How does a student maximize his/her college experience?

Students learn not just by reading texts and engaging in classroom discussions but by extending learning outside of the parameters of structed instruction. It is the broadest mix of ideas, opinions and outlooks that contribute so greatly to creative learning. I believe linking classroom theory to real world application results in a well-rounded individual.

If you were not in student affairs what job(s) would you have?

I’d probably be a race car driver. I enjoy motoring along the highways and connect with Nikki Giovanni when she exclaims in the poem Beep Beep, “the power within my toe delights me.”

Tell us the title of the soundtrack of your life.

Oh dear. I’m partial to “Just Fine” by Mary J. Blige but I’d have to say “Golden” by Jill Scott strikes a chord with me too!

This was Mr. Haddad’s second tour with the Wilson Administration, having directed California’s Washington, D.C. Office from 1991 to 1993, then moving to Sacramento to assume the position of Deputy Secretary and General Counsel at the California Resources Agency. Following Governor Wilson’s re-election in 1994, Mr. Haddad was named chief-of-staff to San Diego Mayor Susan Golding. As the mayor’s top aide, he served as her primary liaison to the community at large. Highlights of his tenure with Mayor Golding include her re-election to a second term by a whopping 78% of the electorate, and the successful staging of the 1996 Republican National Convention.

The following is a brief interview with him.

You have led a fascinating career in public service and government. Have you noticed a significant change in how the political dynamic has changed in San Diego since the mid 1990s and can you also address the budgetary problems facing the city in current times?

I have seen San Diego’s political dynamic change in many ways since my first experiences in the late 1970’s. In fact, having spent considerable time in the political arenas of Washington, D.C., Sacramento and San Diego, I would say the dynamic has changed significantly at all three levels of government. Some of the changes have been spurred by technology — when I started, fax machines were a rarity and computers even more scarce. As technology has sped the free flow of information in countless ways, it has significantly altered the way in which politicians and their staffs respond to constituents. This can be a good thing, particularly in terms of processing routine requests, but it can also be a bad thing in terms of the quality of the work being done.

Term limits have also caused a significant shift in the political dynamic, particularly at the State level here in California. Both legislative houses are impacted, but the problem is particularly acute in the lower house, where Assemblymembers are held to six years (three terms). Again, we may be sacrificing quality for the sake of expediency.

Actually, the reason the public imposed term limits goes to the heart of the matter — the erosion of the public’s trust in its own government institutions. There are many reasons for this erosion, including embarrassing abuses of power, corruption, and arrogance. I fear the erosion will continue before it is checked because I see little being done by those in office to change their ways. Special interests still have too much sway over the common good and some legislators still believe they are entitled to favors not available to their constituents.

You mentioned the budget situation in the city. There isn’t enough space here to give it adequate due, but in the context of the foregoing paragraphs, it is worth noting the political climate in which Mayor Sanders and the City Council are working. There is little debate over the fact that Sanders inherited a budget that was seriously out of whack and mostly out of view. He has attempted to reform the budgetary processes of the city, by providing greater transparency, while at the same time restoring its credit rating, grappling with pension deficiencies and balancing its budget each year. He has been thanked for his effort by a five million dollar campaign attack which plays on the public’s distrust of government — evil developers dictating city business, a budget “crisis,” and lobbyists sitting on boards and commissions. I am sure the doubters and the partisans of Mr. Francis will quickly jump on my statements, and point out to your readers that 1) I have contributed to the mayor’s re-election, 2) I am a lobbyist, and 3) Sanders has done a lousy job.

I will say that before I lobbied, I served the public for over twenty years. That is still where my heart is. So I am comfortable telling your readers that Mayor Sanders is a good man. He is not perfect. He has made mistakes and admitted to them. The budget remains a challenge. The pension remains a challenge. Could someone else have done better with the hand that Sanders was dealt? Perhaps. Could that someone be Mr. Francis? Not a chance.

Since you know D.C. very well, is there any reality to the classic 1939 Frank Capra film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? And should we go back to a 1939 sensibility?

I love Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. However, I don’t suspect it reflected the reality of 1939, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the reality of 2008. And I think we all know that even if there was a certain innocence in the pre-WWII years, we aren’t going back there…ever.

That said, I did witness an occasional act of selfless valor now and again while working on Capitol Hill. Those special moments that stirred my passion for our republic and the intent of our founders didn’t occur on the House or Senate floors, as in the movie, but in various meetings that led to congressional action. I can’t possibly recreate the moment for your readers, but I did see and hear individual elected officials that would have reminded you of Jimmy Stewart…if only for a few precious minutes!

What role did you play in bringing and staging the 1996 Republican National Convention to San Diego?

Regarding my role in the 1996 Republican National Convention that took place in San Diego, I had virtually nothing to do with convincing the Party to come here. I became chief-of-staff to Mayor Susan Golding in early 1995, a few months after the Republicans chose San Diego.

Of course, from the time I began my job, right on through the end of the Convention, this event kept me busy. The mayor and I created a special liaison position within our office to carry out the day-to-day details, but I still spent a signficant amount of time on it.

It has become part of local political folklore that the city’s pension problems are due to the Convention. It is true that the Convention presented its share of budget challenges, but it is not true that it caused the pension crisis.

I will say that the Convention did have a profound effect on how the outside world sees San Diego, because I heard this from so many visiting national media correspondents both during and after the event. We had a feeling that San Diego was regarded as a sleepy, retirement community with a strong Navy presence. It had been a long time since the nation took a look at us, and a very long time since the summer of 1972, when the Republican Party snubbed us for Miami.

San Diego did itself proud in 1996. Everyone pitched in, regardless of political persuasion, to make sure the rest of the world took notice. We had grown up and it was time for all to see.

Why do lobbyist have such a bad public image in 2008? And are you a lobbyist?

I cannot remember a time when lobbyists had a good image. I am about to give a lecture to the current class of LEAD San Diego, and the subject is lobbying. The title of the lecture is “Lobbyist: Dirty Word or Indispensable?” Even though lobbying is grounded in the First Amendment’s right of petitioning our government, I think lobbyists are disliked for several reasons, and I will just outline two of them here. First, there are the bad actors who have broken the law or who have behaved unethically, so the public figures if one is bad, they all are. Second, the very nature of a lobbyist’s work puts them in close contact with elected officials, and as the public’s esteem for the latter has waned, so it has for the former.

Part of my job with California Strategies, LLC is lobbying, though that is by no means how I spend the bulk of my time. I also served as California’s chief lobbyist in Washington, D.C. This is probably a lobbying job that most people don’t think about because it involves one public entity, the State, lobbying another public entity, the Federal Government.

Your prizewinning play explores the harsh realities of Hurricane Katrina and America’s social inequities. Could you please elaborate on how you came to write “WADE IN THE WATER?”

During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I was really moved by the images of families searching for one another, the frustration of people being stranded for days on end without any immediate help in sight, and the stories I would see and hear on television. All of these things stuck with me and haunted my dreams and thoughts for days on end and I was angered by the government’s response to the situation. I knew I wanted to do something but the what wasn’t apparent. About a month after the Hurricane’s initial impact, I kept hearing different phrases and lines from the character Josette in my mind. So I sat at my computer and started to type them and more started to come and before I knew it I was writing a play. Lines, conversations, characters, and scenes started to pour out of me like sweat. I didn’t choose to write this play, Josette chose me to tell the story of her family’s experience.

Which African American artist or author has influenced and perhaps inspired you in the last few years?

I have a trinity of writers that I look to the most for inspiration; Zora Neale Hurston is the father, Toni Morrison is the son, and Alice Walker is the spirit. But I still enjoy and draw from other writers. Ntozake Shange and Pearl Cleage inspire me as playwrights because their fiction and poetry is just as strong, lush, and colorful as their theatre works and they gave voice to the African American woman experience in this country which is still highly ignored. Our experience has been and still is vital to the progression of this country and the stories that are told in the beauty shops, kitchens, and porches of America are valid and can enrich the human experience on a universal level. Susan Lori-Parks is another one because she challenges the form and reminds me that I don’t have to always follow the rules or play the role that has been set for me as a writer who is a woman of color in order to have a impact in the literary community. Most Recently I have been reading Eugene O’Neil and Mamet so I can step out side of what I normally read and broaden my perspective as a writer.

Your major at Howard University is theatre arts with an emphasis on acting. Will you continue to pursue acting and the performing arts after you graduate?

Writing is my calling and acting is my therapy so I need both in order to maintain my sanity as an artist! I also write poetry and fiction and would have never have thought of playwrighting as an option had it not been for my friend Keon White (R.I.P.) and my professor Sybil Roberts who is an amazing and prolific playwright in the D.C. area. I would love to pursue the notion of theatre for development and use the stage as a means for change within my local and global community. Theatre is a powerful tool for this because it allows people to suspend their preconceived notions and ideals for an allotted time and be open to a point of view that may not have considered on the sidewalk of theatre they are attending. This invigorates me as an artist and to have that live connection with an audience and to be privileged to witness the thought process and go on the journey with them is amazing! To make a long answer short, yes I will!

How do you view the current Presidential campaign and the mood of the electorate?

When I talk to my parents and older people I realize how fortunate I am to be alive to witness this time in political history. It is wonderful to see a woman and an African-American man actually have a real chance at becoming the next president of this country. I feel like this election challenges the ideals and action that this country was built on and is a rich backdrop for some amazing artistry to be created.

What topics would interest you if you were to write another full length play?

Again, writing feels like channeling at times so I’m just open to what story or character will come to me so no topic is unapproachable. I just returned from Cuba so I’m excited about what stories will come from those experiences.

What was your reaction when you found out that you won the national Dr. Floyd Gaffney Playwriting Competition?

I was so happy when I found out I won. I was at work when UCSD’s Theatre Program called and I started jumping up and down and the students I work with were like “what’s wrong with Ms. Maya?”. I couldn’t believe I won because my play reading professor told me about the competition three days before the deadline so I spent like 20hrs. at my computer typing like a mad woman and running to the post office to get it in! So I just figured it’s your first playwriting competition just do it for the experience, I never thought that I would win so I was shocked, I still am. Thank you all so much for this recognition and opportunity.

Obvious to our society is the sharp turning point America has experienced, not by entering the year 2000, but by enduring the aftermath of September 11, 2001. The great trauma to our nation has touched every aspect of American life, from commercial travel to safety in our neighborhood schools. Clearly, the public trust had been undermined by lax security and by the unaffordable luxury of our complacency in a shifting global situation. Although the Cold War has subsided with the dramatic reunification of Germany in 1989 and the transformation of Communist Russia in the 1990s, the stateless enemies of the United States have created a new polarity that effectively supplants the long standing superpower rivalry. From a national perspective, America’s criminal justice system has been severely tested and compromised by our detention camp for terrorists suspects in Guantanamo Bay, our civil rights and privacy have been challenged by the federal Patriot Act enacted October 26, 2001, and our image in the world has been altered perhaps irrevocably by our invasion of Iraq and our soldiers’ misconduct with Abu Ghraib prisoners.

Beginning with the Federal Theatre and the Group Theatre in the 1930s, political performance had taken root for generations and the reflection today holds a degree of truth all the way back to the once banned, 1937 leftist labor musical The Cradle Will Rock(by Marc Blitzstein/direction by Orson Welles). It may be axiomatic to say that political theatre has often played, at best, a secondary role in American stage life. Still, the value of political theatre is indisputable to our cultural dialogue, our notion of freedom, and our artistic collective identity. Seventy years after Blitzstein’s legendary production, it is eye opening to consider Connecticut’s Wilton High School and the controversy engendered by the principal’s cancellation of student composed play, Voices in Conflict , for being too inflammatory and partisan about the Iraqi War. The text was inspired in part by the emotional letter from a 2005 Wilton High graduate killed in the war. Bonnie Dickinson who has taught theatre at Wilton for thirteen years, explained to the New York Times, “If I had just done Grease, this would not be happening.” ¹ Some First Amendment attorneys have defended the principal, saying that he had latitude to intervene because of public disruption and controlling “educational merit” during the school day. This was not the only censorship issue at the high school; the student newspaper ran into trouble for criticizing the administration and the Gay Straight Alliance had to take down posters hung in the school stairwells. In response to this action, the Public Theatre and the Vineyard Theatre in New York City, had invited the high school students to present the play at their prestigious theatres in June 2007.

The Wilton case was not the only publicized example of accusations involving theatrical censorship of political works in recent years. Off Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop encountered a storm of protest by cancelling Alan Rickman’s production of My Name is Rachel Corey originally scheduled March 2006, after a notable London premiere. Using diary entries, My Name is Rachel Corey documents the life and death of activist American Rachel Corey protesting Israeli actions against Palestinians. Complicating the matter was not the literary material per se but the various groups and media interpreting the play’s propaganda value in light of the current crisis in Israel. Furthermore, New York City has the largest concentration of American Jews who figure prominently in the cultural life of the city. When the play went on to a New York opening at another venue, many key critics were unconvinced of the play’s aesthetic voltage, objectivity, and theatrical necessity. ^{2 & 3} Certainly, the greater drama had occurred outside the play than within the play.

What became apparent to the world after September 11, 2001 was the paradoxical reality of United States’ vulnerability and majesty - which is to say that our country as the one remaining superpower was overripe as a target for terrorism. We were rendered a helpless giant in pursuit of an invisible nemesis. Prior to the direct threat from Islamic radicals, federal authorities were widely focused on the grass roots militia and separatists movements that, in part, spurred badly handled stand-offs at Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge. Regrettably, the demonic shadow of terrorism could be delineated from afar and within our own backyard. The Oklahoma Federal Building bombing in April 19, 1995, the first attack on the World Trade Center in February 26, 1993, and the anthrax scare just months after September 11 had cautioned the nation about any domestic catastrophe; still the magnitude of the Al Qaeda airline scheme had surpassed the imagination of our best defenses. Beyond the realm of homeland security, a cry from the heart was heard from our cultural elite, with many pundits calling for the “end of irony” in our literary life. Included in this circle were Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair editor, and Roger Rosenblatt of Time magazine. Had irony died as a result of September 11th or was societal cynicism just knocked down senseless?

Six days after September 11^th , comedian Bill Maher on his ABC TV show Political Incorrect , generated a firestorm of controversial by parrying in so many words that the Al Qaeda plane hijackers were not cowardly (he admitted they may have been stupid), but we were cowards for lobbing cruise missiles 2,000 miles away. Maher’s remarks triggered his show’s cancellation instantaneously and launched a sensational media debate on free speech and patriotism.
Coming to Maher’s defense was New York Times Sunday columnist Frank Rich. The argument, by a Times’ writer, for ‘unpunished’ free speech in our media was not surprising. Rich’s career metamorphosis into politics was significant since he initially found fame as the Times’ first string, acerbic theatre critic throughout the 1980s. One of Rich’s running themes in the last few years is the unsavory cross-pollination between American entertainment and the transparent market strategies of political camps and their campaigns. The White House’s theatre of war in Iraq and the president’s exploitation of the September 11^th tragedy, according to Rich, have gone on for years despite numerous statements from Bush’s own party about the folly of this endeavor. ⁴

To many political and cultural analysts, theatres reacted dully and cautiously to the seismic action of the newly emerging threats from foreign terrorists and from our government’s responses to these threats. With hundreds of professional regional theatres scattered around the continent, few institutions commissioned or presented shows to acknowledge recent events. Hollywood’s response was equally measured with a few films such as Spike Lee’s 25th Hour (2002), Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (2006), Paul Greengrass’ United 93 (2006. ) Of course, other powerful issues were also impacting this period of history. Novelist John Updike amazed many literary critics when he moved away from his “adultery in suburban” milieu and published Terrorist (2006). ⁵ Our nation’s confidence had been punctured in 2000 after a phenomenal burst in the Internet economic bubble, in anticipation of the tsunami from Massachusetts (granting legal gay marriage in 2004), shocked by a hurricane called Katrina, and unnerved by Enron’s colossal corporate fraud. Moreover, older controversies such as abortion and affirmative action were back in the news along with futuristic concerns regarding stem cell research and cloning. Quite telling of our society’s ‘progressive’ race and sexual relations was CBS management firing radio personality Don Imus, April 12, 2007, for loutish remarks directed toward the champion female Rutgers basketball team. The corporate decision was slow in coming, despite the public uproar about “nappy-headed hos”, and the daily media circus implemented perfect unscripted political theatre. In addition, there were star political figures such as Senator Barack Obama saying that he would never again appear on Imus’ show again as if Imus never misspoke before. ⁶ Finally, Vice President Dick Cheney’s unmarried, lesbian daughter, Mary, gave birth to a boy in 2007; American conservatism and every organization that touted family values remained braced for anything worse. Dramatic irony was resuscitated and looking rather good again.

Perhaps one of the most discussed and celebrated overt play about September 11^th and our nation’s military adventure in Iraq was from a British playwright, David Hare. Hare’s Stuff Happens (the bald title comes from U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s response to the unchecked looting of Iraqi museums) triumphed in London before moving to non-profit theatres in Los Angeles (2005) and New York (2006). A highly memorable scene in the Hare’s writing has Condoleezza Rice informing Colin Powell – a higher ranking cabinet secretary and her senior - that Powell has lost his standing and usefulness with the president. The playwright explained in an interview, “I describe it as a play about how a supposedly stupid man, George W. Bush, gets everything he wants – and a supposedly clever man, Tony Blair, ends up with nothing he wants.” ⁷

Hare’s caustic script (more proof that irony’s alive) was not the sole political production that commanded attention outside the scope of the national theatre community. Just months after the September 11^th attack, Tony Kushner’s prescient Homebody/Kabul – his first significant work after his 1994 Pulitzer winning Angels in America - was produced by New York Theatre Workshop. In Kushner’s play, the profound corruption and hardship in contemporary Afghanistan is witnessed in an extended, sophisticated monologue by a middle-aged British woman as if attempting to reconcile the various historical accounts, guide books, and her own fragile common sense. Certainly, the Taliban was in the international news before the Al-Qaeda affair on our jets; in March 2001, the Taliban had ordered the demolition of two massive Buddhist sacred statues (circa 507 and 554 AD) in Bamiyan, Afghanistan and in 1996 the Taliban invited Osama bin-Laden to leave the Sudan. Al Qaeda found a perfect new alliance inside Afghanistan. Kushner’s ambitious drama intensified the warped Western lens of scrutiny on a major hot spot half way around the world. Islamic fundamentalism, as an underestimated theatrical character on the global stage, was ready to make an unmistakably striking presence.

Other lesser known theatre offerings arose on the heels of September 11^th. In Yussef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat, two government agents wreck havoc on the life of obliging Khaled, seemingly a luckless Arab-American. The importance of the play is aided and abetted by the Federal Patriot Act. The Guys, Ann Nelson’s elegant two character drama, depicts a damaged fire department captain who relies on a woman writer to shape fitting tributes for the officer’s fallen colleagues. Irish singer/song writer Larry Kirwan’s The Heart Has a Mind of Its Own places emphasis on Lieutenant Brian Murphy of New York’s Police Deparment, who perished in the line of duty that fateful day. Elena K. Holy, artistic director of a tiny New York group (the Present Company), had commissioned several writers to address 9/11 – the result was Response: Stories About What Happened (works by Julia Lee Barclay, C. Rusch, and Leslie Bramm). From New York’s Stuyvesant High School a respectable work was assembled by student and faculty testimony, and edited by their high school teacher Annie Thoms. Stuyvesant’s With Their Eyes had productions outside of New York in Kansas City, Missouri and in Los Angeles. Robert Maese’s The Fallen 9/11 was a supernatural story about a trapped attorney inside an elevator shaft saved by firefighters and Saint Barbara. Seen on in Southern California and developed at the Sundance Theatre Lab, actress/playwright Adiana Sevan dramatized in Taking Flight her own experiences of assisting a dear friend who nearly died on September 11^th.

Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout wrote a scolding treatise in 2005, When Drama Becomes Propaganda-Why is so much political art so awful? , in which he lost all patience for politically relevant theatre.⁸ Analyzing Sam Shepard’s Bush-baiting The God of Hell (2004), Teachout declared the satire from one of the best contemporary American playwrights half-baked and wholly unfunny. The critic classified the burden on the political dramatist to be both a good artist and a competent journalist. Moreover, Teachout faulted leading authors such as Tony Kushner for unabashed self-righteousness and, again, Shepard for club-thumbed sententiousness. He slammed popular actor/writer Tim Robbins for his anti-war play Embedded (2003) and marked down Jules Feiffer’s McCarthy era story, A Bad Friend (2003) for idealizing the “progressives” of Feiffer’s Brooklyn youth. Teachout’s key criticism was to blame the artists named not for their leftist identity, but for coasting on their leftism and their gargantuan self-satisfaction. However, he did have words of praise for Doug Wrights’ 2004 Pulitzer Prize play, I Am My Own Wife, about a German transvestite who survived the Nazis and the Communist regime in East Berlin, and for Heather Raffo’s one woman show entitled Nine Parts of Desire (2004) covering a range of women’s lives impacted by Saddam Hussein.

Teachout may have been reacting to an upbeat New York Times Friday edition Critic’s Notebook piece by theatre reviewer Bruce Weber, with respect to the explosion of political plays hitting the American scene. ⁹ Weber quoted Tocqueville on the visitor’s point of view on our nation as a way to weigh British playwright David Edgar’s two play cycle, Continental Divide upon its recent 2003 U.S. premiere. Although Weber praised the erudite work (ostensibly a California statehouse election drama) and Edgar’s venues at prestigious Oregon Shakespeare Festival and La Jolla Playhouse, the relevance of Edgar’s saucy political commentary and plotting was brutally eclipsed, if not by the unexpected gubernatorial victory of film star and bodybuilder Arnold Swarzenegger, by the four missile jets in September. Weber cited a positive direction for American dramatists (sensibility left of center) in response to the rise of George W. Bush, September 11^th infamy, the undefined war in Iraq, the shifting composition of the Supreme Court, and the discernible realignment of the political forces from blue to red states. In addition, he identified the historical liberal proclivities of the professional theatre community. The article highlighted Richard Goldberg’s Take Me Out (2002) – a Broadway play with sustained frontal nudity and winner of a Tony Award about a gay ballplayer – and seven other mostly New York based shows with distinctive political overtones. John Patrick Shanley’s Dirty Story and A. R. Gurney’s O Jerusalem were two 2003 tales centered on America and the Middle East conflict. Gurney also updated his older play The Fourth Wall from 1992 that pokes harsh fun at Bush senior’s presidency and the hideous callousness of the GOP toward those Americans struggling to make ends meet. Presented around the nation with many Hollywood stars enacting the script, The Exonerated (2002) by Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank depicted mercilessly their indictment of the death penalty in a “docu-drama”. At the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues (2002) satirizes the notion of a second coming inside a third world, Latin police state and attracting a callow American camera crew. In its 2002 New York premiere, Book of Days, Lanford Wilson’s reinvention of Wilder’s classic Our Town links the web of corruption from corporate America to church, home and the Republican Party. British playwright Caryl Churchill’s Far Away (2000) – a cautionary fable about an unnamed authoritarian regime - was showcased at New York Theatre Workshop. Of course, Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul appeared in the pedigree roundup.

With enthusiasm, the New York Times article asserted that this new wave of political theatre in the United States had not been rivaled since the Vietnam War/Watergate era. Webber selected an apt quotation from playwright Richard Greenberg, “You do see American theatre that by default, by what it accepts, promotes conservative thinking. But activist to the right? Theatre doesn’t seem to be the medium for that. Maybe it’s not right place for demagoguery. Nobody ever wrote Waiting for Righty, did they?” The seventy year jump from Clifford Odets’ 1935 classic ‘call to action’ play, Waiting for Lefty is instructive about what remains timeless in our society and what strains of change we must confront. 1930s union membership battles and unfair labor laws were a far cry to what conditions face the American wage earner today. American theatres continue to support soft edge, social narrative over heated, political accusatory tracts. Even John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 Pulitzer winning script Doubt that bears down on the Catholic Church’s sex scandals is constructed in a restrained and quiet temper. The recent spate of successful agit-prop (agitation-propaganda) documentary films by Michael Moore (Sicko) , Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), and Al Gore/David Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) suggest what might appear as a more attractive and influential medium for politicized entertainment.

What was curiously missing in Weber’s essay in linking the present artistic activity with theatre life during the Vietnam/Watergate period: the plethora of influential ideological theatre groups that helped define that epoch and the splendid unfolding known as “off off Broadway”. Julian Beck’s The Living Theatre, Joe Chaikin’s Open Theatre, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Richard Schneckner’s Performance Garage, Peter Schuman’s Bread and Puppet Theater, Squat Theatre, Luis Valdez’s Teatro Campesino, Ludlam’s Theatre of the Ridiculous, Lee Breuer’s Mabou Mines, Andre Gregory’s Manhattan Project, Richard Foreman’s Ontological/Hysterical Theatre, the Talking Band, and the Wooster Group. Some of these theatre groups have endured with sheer tenacity and sweat equity. The health of these groups is not unrelated to the continuum of political plays by political playwrights. The scrappy, site specific, political group from the 1980s and 1990s, New York’s En Garde Arts folded when funds dried up and its artistic director Anne Hamburger nabbed a royal salaried position with Disneyland.

The economics of survival for experimental/political theatre groups is rudely Darwinian. New York real estate escalations have made low budget, loft theatre virtually unthinkable. The same can be said of most major theatre cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Seattle. While the dollar continues to shrink in value, funding organizations and state agencies prioritize grants to the larger artistic enterprises over the “bottom fish”. Typically, the larger theatres play it safer than the small ones. In addition, the attraction of premium television cable productions and the rise of independent films have drawn a good deal of theatre talent away from live performance. For most stage actors and artists, there is no health insurance and no 401k retirement annuities. Toward a poor man’s theatre was a more acceptable idea during the hippie revolution. Non-profit theatre and corporate business have merged after a courtship in the 1980s. The results are convoluted, but clearly the bean counting CPAs are running much of the show. Hence, regional theatres have been careful about selecting political work first seen in New York since the days of Wallace Shawn’s controversial Aunt Dan and Lemon (it’s closing monologue argues ironically for genocide) and again a dozen years later with Paula Vogel’s 1998 Pulitzer play on incest and social denial, How I Learned to Drive. Driving the life and the artistic decisions of regional theatres is the preservation of the subscriber base; loading up the season with “ lush upholstery drama” and avoiding confrontational art makes wise sense to the board members of any large cultural palace with an operational budget five million dollars and upward. Quoting a campaign line from the 1992 Bill Clinton arsenal, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Another observation that may be very insightful: commercially successful playwrights such as David Mamet and Paddy Chayefsky made their most blatant political and satirical statements in film scripts such as Wag the Dog (1997) and Network (1976) respectively, reaching an audience in the millions. When British playwright Harold Pinter received the Nobel Prize in 2005, his acceptance speech was a long diatribe aimed squarely on George Bush’s foreign policy and American questionable values. Likewise, activist American dramatists such as Tony Kushner, Naomi Wallace, and Larry Kramer have no qualms mixing their daily politics with their body of works.

Harold Clurman, the renowned founder of the depression era Group Theatre, once declared that all outstanding plays are political, be they the family plays of Eugene O’Neill (Desire Under the Elms, 1924), Tennessee Williams (Glass Menagerie, 1947), and Arthur Miller (All My Sons, 1947), or the more demonstrative political works from German dramatist Bertolt Brecht (Mother Courage and Her Children, 1939) and American John Howard Lawson (Processional, 1925). Is it the audience’s obligation to provide the larger social context when nothing within the narrative is politically overt? Clurman’s statement begs the question of themes both explicit and implicit. Certainly, his Group Theatre made every attempt to foster social and ideological change. But if the play’s intention is quietly implicit of political content, does the writer’s message have the commensurate power and provocation of more brash drama? Was there a considerable risk personally or economically in staging the play? Should an autobiographical playwright ask nakedly, “Is my life someone’s propaganda?”

In future years the American stage, as is its want, will revive favorite plays and musicals from our time and the plays of Shakespeare. The politics of our age may become passé and irrelevant, along with the self-absorbed fashions of our time. That wish, to some perhaps, sounds exceedingly refreshing. Indeed, the recent nostalgia for Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing (1935) at Lincoln Center may have little to do with anything pointedly political today. But in the mirror of our cultural face, we must account and accept our blemished, political features. Theatre is our life. Certainly, an unexamined life is not worth living. Our eternal memory of truth resides inside this mirror and, in some profound capacity, so does our nation’s destiny.
Notes:
1. Cowan, Alison Leigh, Play about Iraq War Divides a Connecticut School, New York Times article March 24, 2007
2. Brantley, Ben. Notes From a Young Idealist in a World Gone Awry, New York Times review of My Name is Rachel Corrie, October 16, 2006.
3. McCarter, Jeremy. Stand and Don’t Deliver, New York Magazine review of My Name is Rachel Corrie, October 30, 2006
4. Rich, Frank. Someone Tell the President the War Is Over. New York Times Op/Ed piece, August 14, 20054
5. Kakutani, Michiko. Book of the Times: John Updike’s “Terrorist” imagines a Homegrown Threat to Homeland Security, June 6, 2006
6. Tapper, Jake. www.ABC.com, article on Senator Barack Obama calling for the firing of Don Imus, April 11, 2007
7. Jaffe, Ina. Stuff Happens’: The Iraq War as History Play, NPR, August 26, 2005
8. Teachout, Terry. When Drama Becomes Propaganda-Why is so much political art so awful?, Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2005
9. Weber, Bruce. Critic’s Notebook: Political Plays, Alive and Fiery, March 14, 2003

The decision in the Seattle and Louisville cases was disappointing, to say the least, but not unexpected given the rightward tilt of the Court. By discounting the use of race to eliminate racial disparities, they’ve taken away one of the most effective weapons to end discrimination.

How were you impacted as a teenager during the Little Rock Nine event in 1957? What was high school education like for you during that era?

The Little Rock Nine were heroes and heroines to me. They set a high standard for how a concerned young black woman or man ought to act. I attended an integrated high school in Pennsylvania – so I was not personally affected by the Little Rock crisis, but I took great inspiration from the Little Rock Nine.

Have you any thoughts on the recent Jena 6 and Jena High School controversy?

The NAACP – whose Board I chair, has been involved in the Jena case from the beginning. It is a travesty, and proof that race remains a divisive issue among us.

What suggestions do you have for younger generations to get involved in social justice movements in the years ahead?

Get involved. It’s easy. There are multiple organizations – including the NAACP – that badly need the participation of committed and dedicated young people in the movement for equal justice and civil rights.

Is the country ready to elect and support a non-white presidential candidate?

I don’t know – but we’re finding out every day. With a Presidential field featuring a woman, an African-American, a Hispanic, and a religious minority, our electoral systems is being tested for tolerance.

Julian Bond

Dr. Lee, many social critics and historians are arguing extensively about the Patriot Act and the shift in the notion of civilian rights. What are your thoughts on the matter?

The USA PATRIOT act was enacted in the aftermath of 9/11 to combat domestic and international terrorism. To an unsuspected eye the phrase “patriot act” may conjure up an image of “love of and devotion to one’s country.” The acronym represents the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” act. The act allows federal law enforcement agencies to bypass normal constitutional restrictions required for search and surveillance, as well as due process safeguards. For instance, the act allows federal law enforcement agents who find anyone suspicious of or connected to, terrorism to bypass a search warrant or probable cause required by the Fourth Amendment and freely engage in electronic eavesdropping and wiretapping, thereby to have unannounced access to personal records such as financial data, medical information, reading habits, and so forth. It is important to note that our Constitution forbids government to engage in “unreasonable search” and defines it as search without warrants and probable cause. The PATRIOT act allows federal law enforcement agencies to bypass this bedrock constitutional principle in the name of national security. The act also gives a blank check to federal law enforcement agencies to arrest a suspect, however tenable or theoretical the ground is, and to detain him or her a very long time without ever bringing a formal charge in a civilian court of law. No one disputes that national security is of paramount importance to the survival of our nation. But the level of “threat,” real or perceived, and the evidence of suspicion must be carefully defined, and the need for bypassing the constitutionally required due process must be monitored and supervised by courts. Theoretically, unsupervised law enforcement action violates the check and balance principle and leads to what James Madison called a tyranny. The PATRIOT act is not without restrictions in terms of its life span and guidelines. But it certainly walks on a dangerous terrain.

Let me digress for a moment. The PATRIOT act is not the first statute in which Congress allowed the Executive Branch to circumvent constitutional due process. The Alien and Sedition act of 1798, the Sedition Act of 1913, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the Internment Program during WWII are the incidences in which Congress curtailed freedom and civil liberties and the Supreme Court has reluctantly gone along with such curtailments owing to national exigencies. If this practice becomes routine without judicial scrutiny, the possibility is real that sooner or later freedoms and civil liberties we, as a free nation, cherish diminish to a shrinking violet. We have seen it during the Joe McCarthy era in the early years of the Cold War. It is of utmost importance that Congress revisit the necessity of such law and terminate it as quickly and prudently as possible, and that the Court exercises a strict judicial scrutiny on its constitutionality. It is an elementary knowledge that human organizations, whether they are a military unit, police, schools, or private firms, are blunt instruments that can cause a great deal of collateral damages while carrying out their job duties. It has already been reported that under the authority of the PATRIOT act the FBI mistakenly has been wire-tapping many individuals and businesses without credible suspicion. Without belaboring on this predicament, I would like to cite the eloquent warning of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall who said, “History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of emergency, when constitutional rights seen too extravagant to endure. The World War II relocation cases, and the Red Scare and McCarthy-era internal subversion cases are only the most extreme reminders that when we allow fundamental freedoms to be sacrificed in the name of real or perceived exigency, we invariably come to regret it.”

Many years ago, I believe there was a national survey about the U.S. Bill of Rights. The study found a large segment of the American public at odds with the Bill of Rights. How does that strike you?

Although I haven’t read this particular study—I think there have been many surveys on it in the past—I am not surprised that some segment of our society are at odds with the way the Supreme Court interprets certain provisions. For one thing, even Congress in 1990 did not support the Court’s 1989 decision on the problem of burning U.S. flags and condemned it by enacting a statute criminalizing the flag burning. In the same year, though, the Court invalidated the flag criminalizing statute.

Abortion, for instance, is a continuing controversy ever since Roe v. Wade in 1973. As far as the public is concerned, the opinion is split between pro-choice and pro-life. More fundamentally, however, disagreement is over whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a woman who aborts an unwanted fetus for reason. As late as 1989, the Court, in a narrow majority, reaffirmed the holding of Roe v. Wade. But the social forces to derail Roe v. Wade are formidable. It is possible that the integrity of the Roe decision may fatally erode if, for instance, a conservative juror replaces the aging Justice Stevenson. The Court dynamics is bound to change drastically. If we take the opinions of the Supreme Court as “public reason,” it is not difficult to see that public reason does change over time with respect to what the Bill of Rights means and how it applies. Obviously, change is welcome when it expands on human freedoms and promotes equal citizenship and welfare. But if change were to retreat from humanity and bow to a particular interest, we must resist.

Going back to the question, I don’t think that the American public, even a small segment of it, is abandoning the Bill of Rights. But they are often at odds with a particular interpretation given by the Court. This is another way of saying that people agree on generalities but they disagree on their particulars as these particulars affect them directly.

What is your view on American citizenship, equality and tolerance in 2007?

We, as a society, have come a long way to be where we are today, but we still have a long way to go if we are to realize the ideals of equal citizenship. The adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment of equal citizenship in 1868, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represent the shining milestones towards the realization of the American dream of equal citizenship. But the law in the book is not the same as the law in practice. To bring equal citizenship to it full realization not only must the laws be implemented faithfully, but society must genuinely accept it and exercise tolerance. If, instead, the members of society do not fully accept it but try to circumvent it by sleigh of hand, they can certainly vitiate it. Jim Crow laws were an example. From this perspective, we still have a long march ahead of us. We have seen enough of legal and technical quagmire in the enforcement process of the Fourteenth Amendment, criminal justice, equal educational opportunity, equal employment opportunity, and affirmative action.

The American jurisprudence underpinning equal citizenship is the idea of “color-blind” society. All seem to agree that the ultimate goal is a color-blind society, but people are in disagreement over the means by which to get there. The historically underprivileged, for instance, argues that given the history of societal, race-based discrimination, we must be “color conscious” until we find the affirmative, ameliorative measures no longer necessary. The privileged, on the other hand, insist that the idea of affirmative action is antithetical to the principle of equal citizenship. Unless we abandon the idea of color consciousness, we will never be able to get to the color-blind society. Recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, California’s Proposition 209, race profiling in law enforcement, and treatment of American-born children of illegal immigrants are some of the thorny examples of which tolerance and patience are in short supply.

That said, I believe that fundamental change has been set in motion in the contemporary American culture that embraces diversity as a core American value and in the culture that condemns race and gender based discrimination in whatever form as evil. Even those who are adamantly opposed to affirmative action do condemn discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, and national origin as evil. American people today are extremely conscious and careful about the language that they use in speech and writing lest they should evoke the closet feelings of racial and cultural prejudice.

Unfortunately, though, I cannot say that the same degree of tolerance is extended today to homosexuals and same-sex couples. This is another huge challenge to American civilization.

In your last publication, what was your key focus and would you adjust that focus today?

My most recent book was titled “A Reasonable Public Servant.” It came out in the fall of 2005. The book focused on the constitutional standards that govern public servants in the United States. The Constitution, as the Supreme Court sees it, requires that the public servant perform public duties efficiently and vigorously, yet in a manner that comports with civil rights and liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Classical theory of bureaucracy portrays a government bureaucrat as one who efficiently carries out executive function pursuant to utilitarian objectives. A reasonable bureaucrat under this classical formulation is pictured as a machine devoid of moral and ethnical concerns. If there is an ethical principle in this classical formulation, it is the principle of efficiency. In contrast, the constitutional theory of a reasonable public servant as I have formulated in my book which draws from Supreme Court opinions discards this instrumentalism and subordinates it to the protection of individual constitutional rights.

This shift is not a matter of emphasis but a powerful constitutional mandate. And this mandate is clothed with the common law liabilities regime under which a public servant who fails to perform his or her duties constitutionally is exposed to personal liability in the form of monetary damages. This liability regime creates a structural incentive for public servants to be knowledgeable about constitutional law understand and apply it to the area of their respective competency. Thus, a constitutionally reasonable law enforcement official must understand what society expects him or her to be knowledgeable about the law being enforced, observe the rules of conduct prescribed, uphold the Constitution as pledged, and exercise prudence under all circumstances.

Obviously, the areas of constitutional law standards for public servants are vast. No one expects that a public official is knowledgeable of all constitutional requirements. The notion of reasonableness suggests that a public official must be knowledgeable of the core constitutional requirements within the scope of their job duties. The book elucidated the clearly established constitutional rights and obligations of the public servants in several areas, including freedom of speech, due process, liberty and privacy, equal protection and affirmative action, and other statutory civil rights.

Do I want to make adjustment of the book’s focus? Not on substance. I believe that the constitutional theory of accountability has a definite place in a constitutional democracy. I should point out, however, that the narrative of the “reasonable public servant” that I have developed in the book was focused on the cases in American democracy. As I am learning from comments from scholars overseas, the theory of a reasonable public servant is equally applicable to other constitutional democracies. In the revision which I am contemplating I would like to broaden the perspective by including cases in other constitutional democracies. After all, the concept of a reasonable person has no national boundaries.

Do UCSD and other research institutions along the Mexican/US border address the immigration question adequately?

I must confess that I have not yet caught up with the state of research on immigration issues at UCSD and in the San Diego area. Issues on illegal immigration are truly complex as they have far reaching dimensions in the economy, society, and law. My main concern at this point is about the human rights dimension. One prominent constitutional concern is about the status of children of illegal immigrants born in the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment declares that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. It also declares that no state shall deprive “any person” of life, liberty, or property without due process; nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. The phrase “any person” is literally any person. The immigration law today does not protect the constitutional rights of children born from their illegal immigrant parents. When illegal immigrants are deported to their home country, many leave their children behind in the United States. The immigration law works in a way to deprive these children of their right to be raised by their natural parents. In other words, these “deserted” children are deprived of their liberty without due process. I would like to find out the extent of this abject deprivation with which these unfortunate children experience and what alternatives exist under the Fourteenth Amendment.

How would you identify yourself culturally and/or politically having spent a long time in Iowa and now in California?

Great question! As you know, I am originally from South Korea. I have lived most of my youthful life in the United States, first in California, later in Colorado, then in Iowa, and now back in California. In the Midwest, especially in Iowa, the dominant majority is white, most being the descendants of Northern Europe. People of non-European ancestry are a small minority. When I often visited small rural towns nearby, only 10 or 20 miles from where I lived, people always asked me where I came from, assuming that I was a foreigner. You know, the skin color still creates a powerful impression on people in the lily white rural Midwest. Of course, the people who knew me personally did never doubt that I had the same red blood as they did. But to the white folks in small towns I was a foreigner at their first impression so I used to give them more than one sentence answer. This was tiresome at times, but I never thought that their questions were ill natured. And because I had to give them more than one sentence answer, we often ended up having many interesting conversations and becoming lasting friends. These encounters made me conscious of my ethnic identity, but I also found it as my personal asset. I could share my cultural perspective with my colleagues, friends, and students, sharpened my inquiry into the mainstream values, and found my rightful place in America.

Back in California, my experience is shockingly different. California in general and UCSD in particular look like a different America, a mosaic of different colors. When I walk in my classroom, I am part of this mosaic and get easily blended in the crowd. I appreciate the diversity of this mosaic environment, which offers me a greater freedom of sharing my ethnic background, my personal experience, my worldview, and my connectedness to my students, whether they are white, African American, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian American. When I walk in the Marshall College Cafeteria, my students are lighted up to see me and say, Hi Professor Lee. I love it, and I whisper, you are making my day!