Chapter 9: Ukraine/Russia Tearing Human Minds to Pieces: The Power of Hypocrisy and the Hypocrisy of Power

For many years, I have been teaching my social studies methods class at 7:30 in the morning. Readers can only imagine how “excited” my students are about hauling to class, particularly on dark freezing Indiana mornings in January. I, however, discovered a trick that helps me wake them up in the first minutes of our introductory class. When my students hear my accent and ask where I originally come from, my answer is “Indiana”—with a grin, I tell them I came from the country that no longer exists. I immediately see the change: Students’ eyes, dreamy and half-closed a second ago, brighten up; they take the challenge. After initial suggestions of Ancient Rome, Yugoslavia, or Syria comes the correct answer—the Soviet Union. This game is fun but at the very moment when I tell them about the country of my origin, I subconsciously make myself an object of additional scrutiny. I play in my head an imaginary dialogue that my students might have with themselves: “Oh, he is an immigrant. What can we learn from an immigrant? Come on, he is a professor, after all, and looks like a cool guy. So what? What does he know about the United States or American education?”