Teach-In

Franklin & Marshall College

TO: History Dept and SCSC

FROM: Van Gosse, Jonah Brewer, Dave Burrows and Kash Shea

Here’s what we are going to do on April 9, the day of the national Historians Against the War Teach-In, “Iraq: Anatomy of a Crisis.”

4:30-6 Lecture by Chris Toensing, editor of MERIP Report (Middle East Research and Information Project)—we are trying to get Booth Ferris, so it’s in the CC

6-6:30 Break, free pizza arrives for waiting audience

6:30 Re-convene in main atrium: “open mike” moderated by History Dept persons (rotating to get at least some gender balance) and SCSC rep: we arrange seating in large oval, put a stationary microphone at end near offices with a roving one being carried to students who want to speak. History Dept people sit at “front” near mike but are not a panel. We post and go over ground rules at beginning—to be written (time limits on speaking!). We post a few key questions to stimulate thought. People start talking (students, faculty, staff), and if appropriate historians answer questions. When historians feel like it, we make our statements and points, 5 minutes each. The event goes on as long as people want it to.
NOTE: this is an event for the F&M community specifically—all of us, rather than the larger Lancaster community, so we will ask for that to be respected.

We will also solicit from the International Club and personal contacts the names of students either from abroad, or who have recently been abroad, to speak for 1-2 minutes on perspectives regarding the war from outside. We’ll ask a bunch of people to come, and see who shows up, and then as appropriate, ask them to offer a viewpoint (Jonah will organize this, email Sonya.anwar).

Publicity will be done via posters, 1/4 size handbills stuffed in student mailboxes, and “Table tents.” This presumes college communications will do this for us—make them—but it will be a departmental event, so why not?

We can use $50 from dept funds for free pizza, but we’ll need more than that, so when the event approaches, I’ll collect donations from among us.

TASKS: please email to say which you can do—

Get information to communications so various materials get designed and printed
Organize the postering/box stuffing/table tenting
Liaise with SCSC (Students Committed to Social Change) and other groups
Reserve the atrium with microphones, and organize the set-up (including some butcher paper for posting)
Write some very basic groundrules and circulate for editing and agreement
Write a few good questions to be posted
Promote to faculty to get them to promote to students
Contact campus or local press (or get College Communications to do it)
Collect money/order pizza/arrange drinks

Time is short—two weeks—so I hope people can jump in and take on a task! We need to get this in place this week/next week.

For information, contact Van Gosse at vgosse@fandm.edu.