In the past, the MSE Symposium has been one of our most respected organizations, bringing us such speakers as Maya Angelou, President Gerald Ford, Noam Chomsky and Nelson Mandela. The Symposium has done a great service to the school and helped Hopkins students not only to seek knowledge outside of our academic curricula, but also to learn from people we might otherwise never have heard.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Symposium's standards have been lowered. On Thursday, September 21st, Jerry Springer will be speaking on the same platform as did Angelou and Mandela. Bringing in objectionable (or altogether vile) guests is not a new practice of Hopkins, for those of you who remember Spring 2010's performance by aggressive misogynist Tucker Max, organized by The Hop.
Springer gained notoriety through his The Jerry Springer Show, in which he profited off of and implicitly encouraged sexism, racism, homophobia, classism and transphobia, to the point of cliché. I wish that I didn't immediately associate "catfights" with anything, let alone a TV show whose host was hired to speak at my school. Homosexual guests are often shown as absurdly promiscuous and racist guests are brought in as if racism was a quaint novelty in the modern world – it's not.
On more than a few occasions, cisgendered men are featured attacking transgendered women (labeled with the slur "tranny"). Springer's speaking at our school cannot be judged outside of the context in which Washington D.C., neighbor to Baltimore, has seen at least six shootings against trans women, two of which were fatal, in the last two months. And now, the man who brought us "Attack of the Tranny" is coming to town.
The MSE Symposium's theme for the year is given as "America's Boundless Possibilities: Innovate, Advance, Transform." I honestly do not see a way in which Springer could meet this challenge. Maybe, we wonder, maybe he's here to speak about his failed political career – that could be edutainment!
But the Symposium bills him on Facebook as a Television Personality, and if the advancement of the United States can be shaped by fistfights over who is or is not whose baby momma, I'm not in the right country.
But even so, it doesn't matter what Springer will talk about. He could rave about daffodils and still be met by an audience chanting "Jer-ry, Jer-ry!" This is not a man who can be divorced from his context in society. For whatever aspect of academia might be spoken about in Shriver, that man speaking will still be the man that threw Marti Gras beads at female audience members for flashing their breasts on camera.
This is not a respectable person in society. I know, they can't all be Mandelas, but that's hardly a reason we should settle this low.
Further, it cannot be forgotten that Hopkins is an anomaly in Baltimore, where privileged students, coming to receive educations that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, are surrounded by native Baltimoreans who live in poverty. To bring to our oasis a man who makes his living exploiting the poor, the uneducated and the vulnerable is an absolute disgrace, and shows Hopkins, my school, my well-respected school, as a school that treats the lower class with utter indifference and even contempt as we celebrate the man who humiliates them for money.
It might also help our school's philanthropic case if a Hopkins-affiliated medical institute in Baltimore wasn't currently being sued for testing the effects of lead poisoning on black children in the 1990s. You all might want to read up on that.
Something is awry at our school, and Springer is merely the straw that is breaking my back. Jerry Springer is not a man who is suited for the honor of speaking at Hopkins, and his invitation makes me wonder about our school's place in the city, as a benefactor or an imposition, and about the place of minorities at the school – are we supposed to stand for this because that's what it takes to get a diploma stamped "Hopkins?"
And how many more villains will speak on our grounds before that's not a name we'll be proud to see? If we are only as good as the company we keep, this does not bode well for future generations of Blue Jays.
