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Photo: Illustration by Angie Wang
Rudyard Kipling Was a Great American

Rudyard Kipling Was a Great American

By Photo: Illustration by Angie Wang

Rudyard Kipling’s creations in verse and prose are among the most familiar in the English language. It would be difficult to shield a child in any Anglophone country from Mowgli’s exploits among the wolves, or from an explanation of how the leopard got his spots. Many teenagers are still exposed to the hammering exhortations of “If—,” recently voted the most popular poem in Great Britain:

If you can keep your head when all about you

   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

   But make allowance for their doubting too...

If you can fulfill all these conditions, Kipling concludes, “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, / And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

And yet—this is not widely known, even in New England—Kipling wrote The Jungle Books, Captains Courageous, and many of his most familiar poems on the crest of a hillside overlooking the Connecticut River, with a view across the river valley of Mount Monadnock “like a gigantic thumbnail,” Kipling wrote, “pointing heavenward.” It is startling to learn that Kipling, who was born in Bombay and married a young woman from Brattleboro, hoped to remain in the United States. Over the years, he would presumably have become more and more of an American writer—English friends marveled at his American accent—just as the Polish writer Joseph Conrad and the American writer Henry James (who gave the bride away at Kipling’s wedding) became increasingly English in their own adopted country.

Kipling’s four-year sojourn in Vermont, from 1892 to 1896, was a remarkably productive period for this versatile poet and short-story writer, and established patterns, aesthetic and political, for much that came later. Kipling had his reasons for working hard. The leisurely around-the-world honeymoon that he and his wife, Carrie, had planned—with visits to India, where Kipling had first worked as a newspaperman, and to Samoa, to pay their respects to his idol, Robert Louis Stevenson—was aborted in Yokohama by two earthquakes: one actual, the other an international bank failure that wiped out Kipling’s savings. Carrie was pregnant and Kipling was broke. “The night cometh,” his father ominously wrote over their mantelpiece, “when no man can work.”

Kipling, who turned thirty in 1895, would likely have stayed in Brattleboro had not a bitter quarrel with his drunken lout of a brother-in-law put an abrupt end to his New England idyll. The Kiplings had built a beautiful Indian-style bungalow high above the Connecticut River (it is still there), and had hired Carrie’s boorish brother, Beatty Balestier, to care for the meadows and build a tennis court (also still there). Their quarrel over money ended in physical threats and a histrionic court hearing attended by so many spectators and reporters that the proceedings were moved to the largest assembly room in the town hall.

“There are only two places in the world where I want to live,” he lamented, “Bombay and Brattleboro. And I can’t live in either.”

The quarrel happened to coincide with an ugly dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana concerning their common border, where gold had been discovered, with President Cleveland, pumped up after a successful fishing trip, aggressively favoring Venezuela. Kipling was appalled by pervasive anti-British sentiment in Vermont and elsewhere. His dream of an Anglo-American alliance, mirroring his own marriage, seemed doomed. His hurried departure to England in August 1896, Kipling said, “was the hardest thing I had ever had to do.” “There are only two places in the world where I want to live,” he lamented, “Bombay and Brattleboro. And I can’t live in either.”

From the mid-1890s to World War I, Kipling, who won the Nobel Prize in 1907, was probably the most successful writer alive. And yet this consummate craftsman was always an innovator, driven by his own aesthetic promptings, and always a poet first. A new three-volume edition of Kipling’s poetry, meticulously edited by Thomas Pinney, is a major literary event, and an occasion to take a fresh look at Kipling’s still controversial achievement.

Finally some order has been brought to what Pinney wittily calls “the jungle of Kipling’s work,” along with the discovery of some fifty previously unknown (though slight) poems. Kipling published poems in many versions and international venues, appending them in whole or in part to stories, adding or changing titles along the way. He eventually collected them haphazardly in books misleadingly titled Complete Verse and Definitive Edition, deploying them in sequences that ignored chronology or any other obvious principle of selection. “No one has yet made sense of Kipling’s arrangements of his poems in the successive collected editions,” Pinney notes. He has wisely preserved, as the primary reading text, the individual books of poetry that Kipling published over the years, such epochal volumes as Barrack-Room Ballads and The Seven Seas. (The latter, written mainly in America, completes, imaginatively, the around-the-world journey of his honeymoon.) Pinney’s notes are informative, adducing variant wording or punctuation in competing versions of a given poem, while eschewing intrusive interpretation. The result is a general impression of seeing Kipling whole, with an opportunity to revisit and to revise previous assumptions about the man and his art.

Kipling’s cultural reach, extended by Disney and a thousand graduation speeches, is almost as broad as his popularity among children. But his legacy is curiously divided, almost contradictory, with most impressions of him as a poet based on a mere handful of poems. Conspicuous among these are notorious productions like “The White Man’s Burden” (1899), originally conceived as an invitation to Americans, embroiled in the Spanish-American War, to join Great Britain in extending civilization to “Your new-caught, sullen peoples, / Half-devil and half-child.” The poem is often invoked as sufficient reason to place Kipling beyond the pale, despite Auden’s claim that Kipling would eventually be pardoned “for writing well.” And yet the mood of the poem is hardly triumphal. Kipling sees empire as something a civilized country reluctantly assumes as a duty. He predicts that the “savage wars of peace” will engender nothing but hatred for whatever benefits they bring: “And when your goal is nearest / The end for others sought, /
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly / Bring all your hope to naught.” Teddy Roosevelt, to whom Kipling had sent an early copy of “The White Man’s Burden,” approved of the sentiments but judged it “rather poor poetry.”

A better poem is the hymn “Recessional” (1897), where what is “receding” is the British Empire itself:

Far-called, our navies melt away;

     On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

     Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Nor was Kipling always so downbeat about the “sullen peoples.” The same mind that conceived “The White Man’s Burden” also dreamed up the immortal Kim, a picaresque novel that had its first promptings in Vermont, and “Gunga Din”—memorable works sympathetic to Indian courage, dignity, and cultural diversity.

During his American interlude, Kipling initiated his lifelong practice of adding verse epigraphs to stories, and sometimes verse epilogues and interludes as well, knitting whole books together with an alternating current of verse and prose. The main inspiration, as Charles Carrington, Kipling’s official biographer, pointed out long ago, was probably Emerson, an overwhelming influence on Kipling’s poetry and prose. It was in The Jungle Books, written in 1893 and 1894, that Kipling first systematically adopted a complicated mix of poetry and prose.

Much of the main narrative of the book is built on a contrast between upholders of “The Law,” inculcated by Mowgli’s tutors, the kindly bear Baloo and the severe panther Bagheera, and those who undermine the Law—above all, the monkeys, or “Bandar-Log,” whose herd mentality prevents them from accomplishing anything of significance. Much has been written about The Jungle Books (with Kipling’s encouragement) as in part a political allegory, in which the monkeys figure as American populists, always promising great things and achieving nothing.

Kipling versified “The Law of the Jungle,” specifying the relation between responsible individuals and the collective: “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” In contrast was the sprawling “Road-Song of the Bandar-Log.” The prosody in each case matches the subject, with the insistent anapests of “The Law of the Jungle” in clear opposition to the skittishly swinging and swooping “leaping lines” of the monkeys in song and action.

Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,

That rocket by where, light and high, the wild-grape swings.

By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,

Be sure—be sure, we’re going to do some splendid things!

Kipling’s prose in The Jungle Books matched the vigor and the lyricism of the poetry. His first imaginative achievement is to establish, in the opening sentences, a credible family of wolves, neither overly anthropomorphic nor so feral as to be entirely alien:

It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. “Augrh!  ” said Father Wolf, “It is time to hunt again.”

When Father Wolf spreads out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips, Kipling turns us all into wolves.

Into this cozy domestic scene a tiny stranger intrudes. Father Wolf identifies the intruder as “a man’s cub,” separated from his terrified parents by the tiger Shere Kahn. Mother Wolf, meanwhile, is nursing her own cubs. “How little! How naked, and—how bold!” she remarks, the last observation coinciding with the man cub’s efforts to muscle his way among the wolf cubs and get some milk for himself. “Ahai!” says Mother Wolf. “He is taking his meal with the others.... Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man’s cub among her children?”

But no moment in The Jungle Books is more poignant than Mowgli’s brief and ambivalent sojourn in the home of his presumed birth mother, Messua, a kindly rural villager who doesn’t know quite what to do—like many a mother since—when her teenaged son wanders back into her life for a few weeks. One thing she does do, however, is to give the child milk to drink, as though her nursing, interrupted so many years earlier, could now be resumed without complication. Suddenly, at this very moment, Mowgli, standing by a window, feels something touch his foot. “ ‘Mother,” says Mowgli, “what dost thou here.” It is Mother Wolf, his adoptive mother, licking his foot. “I have a desire to see that woman who gave thee milk,” says Mother Wolf. Then she growls, possessively, “I gave thee thy first milk!”

Pinney’s edition of the poetry gives us a richer sense of what Kipling was up to in this scene, and of its compositional backstory. In an early poem, “The Only Son,” Kipling placed under a microscope the fraught encounter between a human birth mother and her son raised by wolves. Written in Vermont in 1892 and appended to an early draft of the Mowgli story titled “In the Rukh,” the poem was included in early editions of The Jungle Books. The opening lines describe a mother’s fear about noises in
the night outside:

She dropped the bar, she shot the bolt, she fed the fire anew,

For she heard a whimper under the sill and a great grey paw came through.

Having secured the door, she does nothing more, but her son lies down and dreams a dream, which he reports aloud:

“Now was I born of womankind and laid in a mother’s breast?

For I have dreamed of a shaggy hide whereon I went to rest.

And was I born of womankind and laid on a father’s arm?

For I have dreamed of clashing teeth that guarded me from harm.”

After a few more lines in the same traumatic vein, the Only Son asks his mother to unbar the door since, as he says, “I must out and see / If those are wolves that wait outside or my own kin to me!” The poem concludes as it began, from the mother’s point of view:

She loosed the bar, she slid the bolt, she opened the door anon,

And a grey bitch-wolf came out of the dark and fawned on the Only Son!

In The Jungle Books, Kipling has moved far beyond this horror story of a mother who discovers her son is a werewolf. But where exactly did he find the sources of this more benevolent version of adoption by wolves?

It has long been recognized that there is a biographical basis for Kipling’s stories of deracination. Born in Bombay in 1865, Kipling described his early impressions of India as something like paradise: “daybreak, light and color and golden and purple fruits at the level of my shoulder.” His kindly father, John Lockwood Kipling, had decorated pottery for the Wedgwood firm in Staffordshire, and named his son after Rudyard Lake there. Later Lockwood ran an art school in Bombay that sought to preserve native Indian art and craft traditions against invasive British taste. Kipling’s mother was the sister-in-law of the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and Kipling was introduced early on to the Arts and Crafts movement of family friends like William Morris.

Paradise abruptly came to an end in 1871, when Kipling, not quite six, and his younger sister Alice, known as Trix, were sent to England without explanation. The practice of farming out children was common for colonial administrators abroad, as a way to keep them safe from tropical illnesses and to get them started on a proper English education. The children were placed in a boarding house in the South of England, under the care of a retired Naval officer named Holloway and his monstrous wife. Over six brutal years, Mrs. Holloway fawned over Trix but bullied and beat Rudyard, whose only comfort was reading books. Kipling came to call the Holloway place the “House of Desolation.” Kipling’s mother eventually showed up to retrieve him. “She told me afterwards,” he remembered, “that when she first came up to my room to kiss me goodnight, I flung up an arm to guard off the cuff that I had been trained to expect.”

The devastating short story that Kipling wrote about his six years of misery was called “Baa Baa, Black Sheep.” It ends with the rescue of the abused child, and the Black Sheep assuring his sister that “we are just as much Mother’s as if she had never gone.” But the closing lines tell a different, darker story:

Not altogether ... for when young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion, and Despair, all the Love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge; though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light.

Edmund Wilson found the wellspring of Kipling’s art precisely here, in the damaged child who knows that the knowledge of darkness, once experienced, can never be wholly forgotten. Wilson believed that artists like Kipling created imaginary worlds in compensation for childhood suffering in this one.

After the ordeal described in “Baa Baa, Black Sheep,” Kipling attended an academy for the sons of military officers, commemorated in the stories of Stalky & Co., and then returned to India to work as a reporter for newspapers. Meanwhile he began to write, with precocious success, tales about life in India and poems about ordinary British soldiers of the kind he met in his reporting, such as “Gunga Din” and the still affecting dialect poem “Danny Deever,” about the hanging of a soldier for shooting one of his comrades in his sleep. “Ho! The young recruits are shakin’, an’ they’ll want their beer to-day, / After hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’!”

If there are biographical sources for Kipling’s sense of radical displacement, and adoption by wolves in particular, there are literary sources as well. Many of the stories of human children raised by wolves appear to have come from India, where Kipling would have heard them from his father, who had a particular interest in such tales. In his book Beast and Man in India, published in London in 1891, Lockwood Kipling wrote that “India is probably the cradle of wolf-child stories, which are here universally believed and supported by a cloud of testimony.”

One source that Kipling is thought to have drawn on for his Mowgli narrative is titled “Wolves Nurturing Children in the Dens,” first published in 1852, and written by a British official named William Henry Sleeman. The stories are relentlessly downbeat. When the children adopted by wolves are returned to their families, they have callouses on their elbows and knees from crawling on all fours; they prefer raw to cooked meat; they feed among the dogs; they are incapable of learning human language; they die young, and so on. The responsible parties in Sleeman’s suspiciously similar stories are never the villagers, with their negligent parenting that allows wolves to “carry off” their children, but rather the British officials and those employed by them. The need for European “paternalism” is demonstrated at every turn. The local Hindus must be taught to value their children. To teach them such values, one might say, is another of the White Man’s Burdens.

Faced with such stories of predatory wolves, feral children unable to return to human life, and careless unloving parents, Kipling does what he did with his own horrible years in the House of Desolation as a child. He finds a way to reimagine them as somehow positive. It is a mark of Kipling’s originality that he departed from his Indian sources in several key ways. This supposed guardian of empire and the White Man’s Burden chose a native child for his hero and portrayed Mowgli’s native birth mother sympathetically.

One might compare the Mowgli stories with Edgar Rice Burroughs’s eugenic fantasy Tarzan, for which Burroughs borrowed many details from The Jungle Books, including a godlike hero of superhuman strength, agility, and physical beauty raised in the wild by ferocious animals. But Burroughs departs from Kipling in his insistence that Tarzan’s birth parents are English nobility, Lord and Lady Greystoke, and that what this child nurtured by apes learns about proper behavior comes not from the beasts of the jungle but rather from the books his parents have left behind and that he miraculously learns, with no guidance, to read. Mowgli, by contrast, is adopted by wolves who happen to be model parents. He grows up not with callouses on his knees and elbows, cowering in the shadows, but rather as a virile and sensitive leader, powerful in mind and body, who can kill a tiger, make complicated moral choices, and right the wrongs in both human and animal communities. If Kipling did not find such themes in his Indian sources, where did he find them?

The story of Romulus and Remus was surely on Kipling’s mind: he devoted a minor poem to the subject, in which the founder of Rome is portrayed as “a shiftless, westward-wandering tramp, / Checked by the Tiber flood.” But a more immediate inspiration was, yet again, Emerson. In his verse epigraph to “Self-Reliance,” Emerson invoked wolves to represent a wild and vigorous America in touch with its primitive origins.

Cast the bantling on the rocks,

Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat;

Wintered with the hawk and fox,

Power and speed be hands and feet.

A quarter century before Kipling took up the theme, Thoreau thought that such an education in the wild for American bantlings (young children) would help prepare the United States for its glorious imperial future: “It was because the children of the empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the Northern forests who were.” Thoreau added, in a voice reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt and other Gilded Age imperialists, “America is the she wolf today.” As for Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” it was more than a favorite essay for Kipling; it was more like a personal creed. Kipling’s “If—” is simply a recasting of Emerson’s ideas of individualism and self-trust. Kipling’s choice of wolves for Mowgli’s ideal family, and Mowgli’s upbringing in the wild, might well have been inspired by Emerson’s epigraph and by the essay itself.

This idea of the benefits of an education in the wild was widespread by the 1890s, when there was pervasive fear that the United States was fast becoming a land of sissies unprepared for the onslaught of the immigrant hordes. The city of Boston, as T. S. Eliot once observed, was “refined beyond the point of civilization.” The value of a more rugged education undergirds Kipling’s beautiful “Harp Song of the Dane Women.” (“What is a woman that you forsake her, / And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, / To go with the old grey Widow-maker?”) It is also the theme of Kipling’s popular novel Captains Courageous, in which a pampered young New Englander is literally cast out of his luxury liner during a storm, plucked from the seething sea (the “widow-maker”) by a fishing boat out of Gloucester, and taught, in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, how to be a Man.

After his hurried retreat from Vermont, Kipling returned only once to the United States, to visit with American relatives, with disastrous consequences. The family stayed in New York City, where both Kipling and his beloved daughter Josephine contracted pneumonia. Kipling recovered, but six-year-old Josephine did not. He memorialized her in “Merrow Down,” from Just So Stories, a dream vision of a primitive and idyllic upbringing in the wild interrupted:

In moccasins and deer-skin cloak,

     Unfearing, free and fair she flits,

And lights her little damp-wood smoke

     To show her Daddy where she flits.

For far—oh, very far behind,

     So far she cannot call to him,

Comes Tegumai alone to find

     The daughter that was all to him!

An elegiac yearning for lost children pervades some of Kipling’s best later work, including the masterly ghost story “They.”

Kipling’s fantasies of martial valor, expanded during the years leading up to World War I as he supported British interests in South Africa, died as well. He had managed to get his son, Jack, too young for the English Army, into the Irish Guards instead. Jack was blown to bits on his first day in battle at the Belgian bloodbath of Loos in September 1915. Kipling served with distinction on the Imperial War Graves Commission, but his most powerful memorial is “Epitaphs of the War,” bitter as anything in Wilfred Owen. For Jack, he wrote “The Beginner”:

On the first hour of my first day

     In the front trench I fell.

(Children in boxes at a play

     Stand up to watch it well.)

And he summed up the meaning of the war for a generation with this definitive couplet:

If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Christopher Benfey is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the author, most recently, of Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival (Penguin).

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Berlin Ghosts

It may have come as a surprise to many people that Germany—the lynchpin of the NATO alliance on the European continent and a close ally of the United States since 1949—voted to abstain from the U.N. resolution authorizing force against Muammar Qaddafi. The country was a staunch advocate of humanitarian intervention in the Balkans, and it is most definitely not led by a government of leftists who are given to denunciations of American imperialism. Indeed, Chancellor Merkel’s affinity for American values is so pronounced that President Obama recently awarded her our highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why, then, has Germany been so adamant in its opposition to the Libya intervention?

The answer begins with the fact that two competing narratives of history are currently jostling for supremacy in German politics—each of which presents a dramatically different approach to the memories of World War II and the Cold War. One important thing to note about these narratives is that they are not simple matters of left and right: They cross both ideological and party lines.

The first narrative downplays the connection between force and freedom. It deemphasizes the fact that only Allied arms defeated the Nazi regime, while tending to accentuate the role of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, the West German and West European peace movements, and Mikhael Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost as the causes of the end of the Cold War. In some accounts, the hard line taken by the Western alliance before and during the 1980s and the role of Eastern European dissidents who delegitimized Communist ideology get less attention or are mentioned only as factors that endangered peace.

In the 1980s, the University of Bonn political scientist Hans-Peter Schwarz captured the essence of this political culture when he spoke of the shift from the “obsession with power” in Nazi Germany to a “forgetting of power” in the West German peace movements and in the political language of détente articulated by Brandt. Since the bitter disputes over nuclear weapons in the 1980s, elements of the mood that Schwarz described on the West German left have become part of a much broader consensus in the German foreign policy establishment. For its adherents, this mood is a civilized and decent response to the aggression and crimes of the Nazi regime. It means the replacement of primitive nationalisms of the past with multilateral principles of an integrated Europe. And it assumes that webs of interdependence created by the global economy will make problems solvable through negotiations and dialogue.

These views have dominated German politics since at least summer 2002, when Gerhard Schröder emphatically opposed the coming Iraq war—but the ascension of this worldview went beyond just Iraq. As Andrei Markovits has convincingly demonstrated in his book Uncouth Nation, Schröder’s opposition to Bush’s policies stoked anti-American sentiments in German society. While Germany did send 7,000 soldiers to Afghanistan, their rules of engagement are far more restricted than are those of American and other coalition forces, and their presence remains unpopular in Germany. The massive support for Obama in the summer of 2008—when 200,000 people turned out to cheer him in Berlin—rested partly on the belief that, as the “anti-Bush,” he would turn away from American military intervention, especially in the Middle East. Moreover, in the long and drawn-out negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program, there has been a powerful establishment current opposing tougher economic sanctions and certainly any hint of a military option. Indeed, in a 2009 book about Germany and Iran, the German political scientist Matthias Küntzel referred to the emergence of a “new constellation. On the one side, the Western powers, the USA, France and Great Britain and on the other side, Russia, China and the Federal Republic of Germany.”

The current government of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is steeped in this intellectual consensus. The government is a center-right coalition of the conservative Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union, along with the market-oriented liberal Free Democratic Party. On March 18, Westerwelle (who has spent his entire career in the Free Democratic Party, a small but influential party whose base lies in the country’s professional, economic, and academic elite) laid out the government’s position on Libya before the German parliament in Berlin. On the one hand, he said, “We condemn the crimes of the dictator Qaddafi. One can no longer work with this man. He must go.” But, on the other hand, he argued that there are “no such things as surgical strikes. Every military engagement will also produce civilian casualties. We know that from painful experience. We have often talked about this regarding operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Hence, German soldiers would not be participating. He did not explain why or how Qaddafi could be compelled to “go” in the absence of military intervention.

The government’s position has awakened many critics, who can be said to represent the opposing narrative in German politics. Their responses hearken back to the interventionism of the 1990s, when—as described by Paul Berman in this magazine and in his book Power and the Idealists—then-German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and other left-wing members of the 1968 generation, such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Peter Schneider, made common cause with conservative advocates of armed intervention in the Balkans. At the time, Fischer argued that only armed intervention could prevent ethnic cleansing. “Never again Auschwitz” had to trump “never again war” if Germany was to play a role in defending human rights. This time around, critics of Germany’s non-interventionist stance have included one of the CDU’s leading foreign policy experts, Ruprecht Polenz; a former Social Democratic cabinet minister for economic development, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul; the leader of the Green Party, Cem Ozdemir; and Fischer himself.

The government’s approach has also met with sharp criticism in the German press. In Die Welt, Richard Herzinger—for years the most articulate critic of the foreign policy consensus represented by Westerwelle—criticized “the shameful way that Germany emerged as the party seeking to delay action” on the part of the Americans, British, and French. Daniel Brossler declared that the decision had eliminated Germany as a serious candidate for permanent Security Council membership, in a piece for the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung titled “On the side of the dictators.” In the mass circulation tabloid Bild Zeitung, Michael Backhaus referred to the West’s military action as a “just military intervention against Colonel Qaddafi, who has terrorized his own people and the whole world for far too long.” Backhaus offered a remarkable historical comparison: “Just as the resistance against Hitler and his band of murderers hoped for the Allied landing in Normandy, so the rebels in Benghazi hope for fighter jets from the democracies.”

German public opinion, meanwhile, seems to have settled into an awkward place somewhere between these two competing narratives. According to a poll conducted by the mass circulation Bild Zeitung, while 62 percent of Germans supported the use of military force against Qaddafi, only 29 percent supported participation by German troops. Germans, in other words, seem to accept that force can be necessary to avert catastrophe; but they don’t want to use it themselves.

For many decades, the world feared a Germany that forgot its Nazi past or had visions of reviving old dreams of empire. But as Berlin’s current stance makes clear, the true problem—at least for those of us who believe that overseas intervention is sometimes necessary—is not that Germans fail to remember the past; it’s that a particular interpretation of the past (and present) has led one side in this debate to entertain illusions about the diminished role of force in international affairs and thus to rigidly oppose its use for humanitarian ends.

Jeffrey Herf, a professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland in College Park, has published extensively on memory and politics in postwar Germany. He is the author most recently of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World.

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Mitt Romney, Teen Barber

by Timothy Noah | May 11, 2012

Unlike Paul Begala (“Once A Bully, Always A Bully,” Daily Beast) I’m not inclined to connect the story of Mitt Romney’s teenage homophobic cruelty to such adult cruelties as imposing layoffs on companies leveraged to the hilt by Bain Capital or making his dog Seamus ride on the roof of the family car. Clearly Romney had a mean streak in him back then. I have no idea whether he has a mean streak today (though, as Alec MacGillis has pointed out, he has some anger issues).

What does interest me about this appalling story are two themes that have without question remained dominant in Romney’s adult life. One is hair. The other is control.

Let’s review the youthful bullying incident in some detail. The “soft-spoken” John Lauber, “perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality,” was minding his own business walking across the campus of Cranbrook, the Detroit-area all-male prep school where he was a junior, when Mitt Romney, a soon-to-graduate senior, spied Lauber’s bleached long hair (which drooped over one eye like Veronica Lake’s) and decided something had to be done about it. “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him,” Romney told a friend. Romney “kept complaining about Lauber’s look.” He couldn’t let it go. Finally, a few days later, Romney led a “prep-school posse” to Lauber, pinned him down, cut his hair, then retreated with his cheering conspirators to his dorm room. “It was vicious” recalled one childhood friend of Romney’s. Three decades later, Lauber (now deceased) would recall: “It was horrible.”

The homophobia inherent in the incident is, sad to say, the least extraordinary thing about this story. Scapegoating young males perceived to be gay was, for heterosexual young males of that era, not the exception but the rule. What was unusual was that the scapegoating would take such active form that one passive observer would recall, even at the time, experiencing shame that he’d done nothing to stop it. Romney didn’t merely mock Lauber for the way he looked. He imposed his will on Lauber and changed the way he looked through physical force. That’s the weird (and, even in the context of 1965, exceptionally cruel) part.

One thing we know from Michael Kranish and Scott Helman’s biography, The Real Romney (and from a 2007 Boston Globe profile that preceded it) is that Romney is a guy who gives more thought to hair than most other people. In November the New York Times ran a Page One story about Romney’s hair, which brought the paper some grief. But as I argued at the time, Romney’s hair merits attention, because (apart from his Mormon faith) it’s Romney’s North Star, a rare instance of consistency over many decades. Romney, Kranish and Helman write, “had grown up hearing people comment on his father’s sweep of slicked-back black hair, white at the temples.” Mitt himself had a “great head of hair.” And he idolized his father. But rather than style his hair in a manner similar to that of George Romney, Mitt coiffed himself in a manner similar to that of Edwin Jones, George’s top aide running the Detroit Mormon church. “He sat up front, to the side at a desk,” Romney would later recall, “keeping records. I remember that he had very dark hair, that it was quite shiny, and that you could see it in distinct comb lines from front to back. Have you looked at my hair? Yep, it’s just like his was some forty years ago.”

To Romney, it would seem, hair had a lot to do with manhood, and with discipline, and with identity. And no doubt it also had a lot to do, consciously or not, with sexuality (see Pope, Alexander, “The Rape Of The Lock”). It wasn’t just this stuff that you cut and it grows back. It projected who you were. And apparently seeing Lauber project, with his peek-a-boo haircut, who he was really freaked Romney out.

The other thing we know about Romney is that he’s a bit of a control freak. There was that moment in the GOP debates when Romney tried to shut Rick Perry up by putting his hand on Perry’s shoulder. For a moment it looked as though Perry might slug him. Indeed, as MacGillis reminded TNR readers, when Romney, on an Air Canada flight in February 2010, did the same to the party-rock performer Sky Blu while attempting to persuade Sky Blu to tilt his seat forward, Sky Blu (who later called it a “condor grip”) actually did slug Romney. As Romney later related, “He gave me a good swat and he broke my hair [italics mine].”

What the odd anger outbursts that MacGillis documented in his article tend to have in common is loss of control followed by some socially inappropriate attempt to seize it back. For instance, while running the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002, Romney got into an altercation with some police officers over their traffic directing, at one point infuriating them by directing the traffic himself. Lauber’s hair made Romney feel that something was out of control, and it was; Lauber was asserting, four years before the Stonewall riots, an identity that felt alien and threatening to Romney. And so Romney plotted—not spontaneously, but over multiple days—to set things right by ... well, let’s just say it. He raped Lauber’s lock.

I’m not sure what larger meaning Romney’s hair thing and his control thing would have for a Romney presidency. But these tics are weird, and, in the case of Romney’s control-freakiness, annoying and occasionally disruptive. In this instance where he cut Lauber’s hair, they were worse than that. They were violative and creepy and cruel.

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On New Rochelle School Security, A Certain Emperor And A Lack of Clothes

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On New Rochelle School Security, A Certain Emperor And A Lack of Clothes

January 20, 2013 - 14:57

NEW ROCHELLE, NY -- The Newtown Tragedy last month has brought to the forefront parent concerns about school safety across the county. New Rochelle is no different. Over the few weeks parents have shown up at board meetings to express concerns and demand answers. They have filled attended PTA meetings and engaged building leadership on perceived flaws and ideas for improvements ranging from better drop-off and dismissal procedures and door-checks to more extreme measures such as requiring parents to submit to background checks before entering schools and hiring armed guards to patrol the hallways.

In the immediate aftermath of Newtown, the board claimed that it was in full compliance with all state laws regarding school security. The following month Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak admitted this was not true.

The school district has responded by with a combination of belligerence and vague assurances coupled with a flurry of feel-good measures with few, if any, concrete measures to step up security. Chief among them is a recent announcement by the Board of Education announced that it "directed that there be a complete review of security procedures and safety plans". It took the board about a month after Newtown, and numerous complaints from parents, for the Board take even this piddling step.

But what did they really say?

The Board statement issued last week states that the board is "speaking with the security risk managers at the New York Schools Insurance Reciprocal and other agencies about conducting a complete review of perimeter and interior security in every school building, which will include a review of doors, windows, staffing, staff training, response procedures, and other security measures".

Not mentioned is that this is a service offered at no cost to every public school district in New York which participates in the New York Schools Insurance Reciprocal. The board has failed to utilize this service for at least a decade.

Finally, the board states the security review will be "augmented by the retention of an outside security consultant, as necessary" (emphasis added). As regular readers know, I have been calling for such an outside review for years; hiring an outside security consultant was part of my platform when I ran for school board in 2011. The phrase "as necessary" indicates the lack of a definite commitment to hiring a security consultant to conduct a full security assessment.

As of this moment, despite the pretty words, there is still no security review under way and no firm commitment to hire an outside security consultant to perform an independent security assessment. This sort of vague, non-committal, kick-the-can-down-the-road statement from the board is typical of a strategy long-employed by Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak to lull the community into a false sense of optimism that their concerns are being heard.

Some may ask why the district can not be taken at face value. Surely they care about the safety of children and their own employees?

The primary concern of the administration and board is to pass each year's school budget. That is the alpha and omega of the concern of our school district leadership. Everything comes second to that. Anything that interferes with passing the school budget is a threat that must be removed. The exposure of the district's utter failure to abide by New York school safety laws is one such threat as are the parents and other New Rochelle residents who have been shining a bright light on that failure.

The first response of the district leadership was to lie. They issued false and misleading statements including the bald-faced lie by Board President at the December 18th school board meeting where she asserted that the district was in full compliance with all school safety laws including the Project SAVE Law. Talk of the Sound has been reporting for years on the many failures to follow the SAVE law.

The Project SAVE Law is the central piece of legislation for school safety in New York State. Save stands for "Safe Schools Against Violence In Education". The New York State Center for School Safety summary lists 16 sections.

1. District-Wide School Safety Plan
2. Building-Level Emergency Response Plans
3. Codes of Conduct
4. Teacher Authority/Principal Authority
5. Uniform Violent Incident Reporting (VADIR Reporting)
6. Instruction in Civility, Citizenship, and Character Education
7. Health Curriculum
8. Interpersonal Violence Prevention Education
9. School Violence Prevention Training
10. Whistle Blower Protection
11. Fingerprinting (Background Checks)
12. Assaults on Teachers
13. Child Abuse Reporting
14. Prohibiting Silent Resignations
15. Teacher Discipline
16. Court Notification

The New Rochelle Board of Education has violated almost every aspect of this law over the last 5 years.

The District-Wide School Safety Plan has not been updated since 2009. The Building-Level Emergency Response Plans have not been updated since 2001 except for New Rochelle High School which was updated in 2006 after the new wing opened.

From 2001 to 2008 the school district did not make public the Code of Conduct, distributing to parents and students only a Summary version which contained only sections describing obligations of students and parents to the district and removed all sections that contained obligations of the school district to parents and students. Among them, the summary version removed all references to the Due Process rights of students in disciplinary proceedings. After Talk of the Sound reported on this extensively, the district began sending parents the full version. The district was given two years to update the Code of Conduct to include new anti-bullying provisions under the New York State Dignity for All Students Act. That deadline expired over the summer. The Code of Conduct was not updated by the end of the 2011-12 school year. An updated version was published and distributed to parents two weeks ago after numerous complaints by parents at school board meetings between July and December.

Violence and Disruptive Incident ("VADIR") Reports, each signed by Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak. are routinely falsified to dramatically understate the number of violent and disruptive incidents in New Rochelle schools. Analysis by Talk of the Sound using police reports obtained from the New Rochelle Police Department through Freedom of Information requests shows that an accurate accounting of such incidents would result in New Rochelle High School and Isaac E. Young Middle School being classified as "persistently dangerous". Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, parents of students in schools classified as "persistently dangerous" are granted the option to move their children to another school. Isaac Young students would be allowed to transfer to Albert Leonard. New Rochelle High School students would be allowed to transfer to another area high school, at district expense.

Regarding Silent Resignations and Child Abuse Reporting, Jose Martinez was confronted by the parent of a victim of child abuse. He resigned without disclosing the allegation. The board never reported any allegations of child abuse by Martinez but did accept his resignation. Talk of the Sound reported on information that at least six mandated reporters were aware of "red flag" behavior by the convicted child rapist including board members, building-level administrators and Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak. Talk of the Sound also reported on four other employees who engaged in sex with students. Three of the four still work for the district, ironically, the three remaining are all security guards, each was stationed at New Rochelle High School but two have since been relocated, one to Isaac Young and the other to Albert Leonard.

This is just a few examples of the many ways in which one law is violated wholesale. The district routinely fails to follow New York State Civil Service law, for years filed fraudulent "211 waivers", each signed by Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak, to allow school district employees with state pensions to double-dip. Ironically, the primary beneficiary of these fraudulent waivers were district security officers including School Security Director Bruce Daniele. This practice ended after Talk of the Sound reported on this illegal practice for two years.

In 2011, I made a Freedom of Information request to the New York State Department of State. The scope of the request was "all security licenses where the employer had the word 'New Rochelle' in it". I made the request that way to cover "City School District of New Rochelle" or "New Rochelle Board of Education" and other possible variants that might be in their database.

In response to my request, I received a list of 8 people from the state database where the employer had the word "New Rochelle" in it -- all of them for the City School District of New Rochelle. Of those 8 people, only 1 had a current license (Cheryl Minor). Ironically she was one of three persons I had been checking when I made my FOIL request because I was told that at the time I made my request she was on the payroll, getting paid, AND working without a license. By the time my request was fulfilled many months later she had renewed her license. The other 7 included Frank Keefer (retired), Joe Johnstone (retired), Bruce Daniele, a man who had died and a few others. This left open the question how all the other guards were listed in the system because they were not listed under New Rochelle.

Many of the New Rochelle "general school aides" (their official title) work security ONLY at New Rochelle schools. This begged the question, if they were not listed with the New Rochelle schools then who were they listed with? I then followed up with more FOIL requests into 2012 but still do not have answers from Albany.

During a recent Albert Leonard Middle School PTA Meeting on School Safety, I asked the district's security consultant Ellen Garcia about this. Before she could answer, Assistant Superintendent John Quinn, took the microphone from Garcia and gave a non-responsive reply to the effect that "all security guards are properly licensed". Quinn added that "no security guards are allowed to work without a security license" but that if I had information to the contrary to provide it.

When the meeting ended I provided Quinn three names -- Cheryl Minor, Robert McLean and LeRoy Manual -- all employees who worked as security guards without a license. I further stated that Mr. Quinn personally approved allowing them to work without a license. Quinn stated that he would "look into it" and follow up with a letter addressing my two questions:

1. In 2011, who were the employers listed for the roughly "92" security guards who were NOT listed under the New Rochelle school district?

2. Were they any periods of time when Cheryl Minor, Leroy Manual, Bobby McLean worked with an expired license.

It is going on two weeks and Quinn has still not sent a letter.

Given the district's history of playing fast and loose with the SAVE law and school security, why should we trust the board and the administration now?

How do we know not to trust them?

A tell-tale sign is the lack of deadlines or a timeline in their recent announcement.

Another is that any results that do come will not be made public and district confined to committees staffed with district employees and a small number of parents, hand-picked for the perceived willingness to support the administration against all comers.

We have already seen evidence of that at a recent Davis PTA meeting on school security when Chris Danielo, a Davis parent and New York City police officer, was introduced as the recently appointed parent-member of the Davis school safety team. At the meeting, Danielo was confrontational, belligerent and uninformed. Danielo aggressively, rudely interrupted and challenged parents speaking at the Davis PTA Security meeting who were recounting concerns about various failures to the follow the SAVE law which places various security and safety requirements on public schools in New York State. Danielo later admitted he had not read the New York State Project SAVE Law.

At a meeting at the home of a Davis parent the night before the Davis PTA Security meeting, Danielo praised Security Director Bruce Daniele whom he said he had known for many years. Danielo claimed that Daniele was working for for the district for free. In fact, Daniele has been, for many years, one of the most highly compensated public sector employees in New Rochelle with a total compensation in excess of $150,000 a year in addition to his police pension which took him well over $200,000 a year.

What Chris Danielo has demonstrated so far is that he is a puppet, having his strings pulled by Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak. It is these sort of belligerently uninformed parents that will be welcome on building-level school safety teams.

More broadly, rather than address the legitimate and entirely understandable fears and concerns of parents, the board and central administration have decided to hunker down while seeking to isolate critics, mislead parents and otherwise deflect attention away from a massive, systemic failure of district leadership. What choice do they have -- they have not updated a single building-level safety plan since 2006, most since 2001. The mantra has been "move on, look forward".

Why should we do that?

The same people who failed to do their job on school security are still in their jobs so why should the future be any different? Parents and residents would do well to recall the aphorism "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Without new leadership nothing will change.

School leadership is not asking parents to "move on" for the benefit of the parents. They want parents to ignore the utter failure of leadership in our schools because they are afraid these security failure might becoming a catalyzing force in May and cause the defeat of the 2013-14 school budget. And that's about it. That's all they care about -- passing the budget.

Unlike most every school district in our area, the Board of Education has failed to hold a single town hall meeting on school security instead devolving the responsibility on an ad hoc basis to the building PTAs leaving it to school principals to fend off hostile parents while attempting to explain a recently delivered school security "template" which they had no role in creating and for which neither they nor their staff has had any training.

School security staff do not report to building principals but rather the district-wide School Security Director, Bruce Daniele. Many guards have complained that they have still not been presented a copy of the new security template, had training or even met with Daniele since Newtown.

Board President Chrisanne Petrone told parents at a recent Jefferson School PTA Meeting on school security that the board had been discussing school security at recent board meetings. In fact, the subject of school security has not even been on the agenda at the two board meetings since the Newtown shootings on December 14th. At the two meetings that have taken place, parents who have come forward to address the board during the public discussion period have been harassed, interrupted, and bullied by board members, going so far as to turn off their microphone, arbitrarily limit their time and even threatening to terminate public discussion for all parents because a board member did not like the tone of one particular parent (not me!). In my case, I was threatened with physical removal from a meeting by security because I went 20 seconds over my allotted speaking time, attempting to complain about the heavy handed treatment of other parents who came to the board meeting to speak. More irony.

The simple fact is that the board and administration have been asleep at the helm for years on the issue of school safety yet now, with the sudden parent interest after Newtown, find themselves caught with their pants down.

Four days after Newtown, on December 18th Board President Chrisanne Petrone stated that the school district was in full compliance with all New York State laws regarding school security and particularly the Project SAVE law. In the weeks that followed I along with many others demonstrated conclusively the many ways in which the district was not in compliance with the laws designed to protect our children. Finally, after two weeks of lying about it, on January 3rd, the district admitted they were not in compliance with the Project SAVE Law.

Ever since, Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak has retreated behind the artful dodge of claiming the district was "substantially in compliance" with the law or in compliance with the "spirit" of the law and dismissing anyone who questions that as nitpicking over "paperwork" issue.

It is not a "paperwork" issue when you are failing to run required background checks on new hires and you have almost a dozen employees involved with various sex crimes against children, most of whom have since been arrested by the New Rochelle police or the Westchester County District Attorney.

The Project SAVE Law, passed in 2000 in the immediate wake of the Columbine shootings, requires annual reviews at all levels by standing district-wide and building-level safety teams.

Under Organisciak these teams ceased to function. The most recent resolution that even mentions the work of a school safety team dates back to June 2009 and addresses only the district-wide plan. That plan was copied-and-pasted from the 2001 plan as evidenced by the transferring of out-dated information from one plan to the next. For example, the police contact for the district listed in the 2009 plan retired from the police department in 2004. He passed away in 2008 and so had been dead for more than a year when the board approved the 2009 plan. It is this sort of carelessness and lack of attention to important details which brings into question the entire plan and raises doubts among many parents whether the district takes its responsibilities seriously.

These safety teams are required to contain specific types of school personnel and parent members. They have not. Building principals hastily began appointing parent members to building safety teams over the Christmas break. None of the current draft building-level plans being circulated were produced by duly-constituted safety teams conducting plan reviews but rather are cut-and-paste from a template created by New Rochelle High School Assistant Principal Joseph Starvaggi and security consultant Ellen Garcia.

In a stupefying breach of standard security protocol, a highly detailed security document entitled "School Safety Plan and Procedures Manual for Davis Elementary School" was made publicly available on the Davis web site for weeks. Other schools have emailed PDF versions of their school plans to hundreds of people or handed them out to anyone who asked. Since the plans are based on a template, the distribution of any of these documents compromises the security of every school.

When I asked Albert Leonard Principal Dr. Velma Whiteside at the recent PTA meeting why the plans for her school were not online she said that she did not agree what has been done at Davis, she was unhappy about it because their plan it basically the same as her plan and that she did not want anything done that would put the kid's in her school at risk. My children attend these schools, my wife work's in these schools and putting these confidential plans on the web is irresponsible and places my family and other families at risk.

It was only after numerous complaints from parents and union members that the Davis "plan" was removed from the Davis site. For my part, I have been the leading critic of the district posting this plan and addressed the issue forcefully at the Davis PTA Security Meeting.

It is not that the board did not know about security issues in the schools.

The board has been made aware, many times, for years, both by security-minded employees and parents, including myself that the safety teams were not meeting and that safety plans were not being reviewed and updated. Talk of the Sound has reported for years on numerous security failures at the schools including many violent incidents, an intruder found hiding in a closet at Barnard, a teacher assaulted by a parent at Columbus after bypassing the security desk and much more.

The district was also caught defrauding the federal government and was required to pay restitution of over $300,000. This was never made public. Ironically, the fraud that occurred involved the district's Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant funding for which was supposed to be used, in part, to update school security plans and provide training for staff. When asked about this grant at the board meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Organisciak feigned ignorance of the grant.

Mr. Organisciak's dismissive attitude towards the Project SAVE Law is well-known in the district and throughout the state. In a 2011 New York Times interview, Organisciak cited the VADIR reporting requested of the law as an example of a meaningless state mandate.

Richard E. Organisciak, superintendent of the New Rochelle schools in Westchester, said some mandates were bureaucratic headaches — like a required yearly report on “violent and disruptive incidents,” which he said cost $25,000 annually in administrative time to investigate and document every dispute in a district with 10 schools. In return, he said, the district has received “very little feedback that has been of value to us.”

The law was not passed for the benefit of Mr. Organisciak. It was passed to protect students and staff. That Organisciak finds compliance a "headache" or that he does not get the sort of feedback he would like is irrelevant. VADIR reports are for parents to know if there child's school is safe and, if not, under the No Child Left Behind Act, to have the option to move them to a different school at district expense. In any case, he might find the feedback more valuable if he was not cooking the books to underreport crimes and other incidents in the school.

Mr. Organisciak's tenure at Superintendent began in August 2006. Given his on-the-record attitude towards VADIR, in particular, and the Project SAVE Law, in general, is it any wonder that on his watch not a single updated building plan has been drafted, completed and adopted by the board?

Organisciak has made it clear that he believes that complying with school safety law required intend to protect the children of New Rochelle are a waste of his time. He has flouted state and federal law as a matter of routine. He seems to revel in it. For reasons that remain unclear, our elected board members make themselves complicit in his malfeasance.

It's hard to say. I have been a close observer of this school board for years and I still cannot figure out how board members who individually have many admirable qualities could collectively become the single greatest force for evil in New Rochelle. And really that is what this is -- evil.

There is a lot to like about the New Rochelle school system. Transparency, accountability, and fiscal responsibility are not on the list. That begins and ends with the school board. They have failed time and time again.

But again, why?

While I cannot be sure, I can say that the leadership of the City School District of New Rochelle has, for many years, worked diligently to present a certain image of the New Rochelle school system: high-achieving, diverse, safe and generally a model of excellence.

Board members, administrators and school boosters exude pride in the diverse student population, split almost evenly among white, black and hispanic students. The student population is likewise diverse along socio-economic lines, demographics and religious beliefs. Generally speaking, it works. Students get along and children think little or nothing about the sort of differences in background that often preoccupy adults.

Each spring, board members crow that New Rochelle's school budget delivers "the most bang for the buck" among the districts in Westchester County. The budgets are always among the lowest on a per-student basis. There was even an actual budget reduction several years ago. The school is audited each year by a top-quality accounting firm and has always passed.

Above all the schools are presented as safe, nurturing environments for children to receive a quality education. All four of my children are products of the New Rochelle School System. My two oldest graduated from New Rochelle High School and went on to top universities where they were well-prepared for the academic rigors of post-secondary education. My two youngest are currently enrolled in New Rochelle schools. My wife has worked for the district for 15 years as a special educator. We are both well-acquainted with the many dedicated teachers, staff and administrators in the school district and know many of them to be good people who care deeply about their profession.

So, what's not to like?

To understand the problems currently plaguing our schools with lack of transparency and accountability you need to go back a few decades. At that time there was a major concern with white flight in New Rochelle. Board members and their supporters cast a wary eye at Mount Vernon schools and their eroding tax base as property values plunged and the school population become predominantly African-American. Many in New Rochelle perceived a need to stabilize and even increase the number of white families, especially in the high-property value North End.

The Barnard Elementary School became a particular flash point. The school, nestled comfortably in the largely white North End of New Rochelle, had an increasingly large African-American population. White families began pulling their children out of the school. Among the leaders of this effort more than two decades ago was Deidre Polow who rode the wave of North End discontent to a school board seat which she has held ever since.

It is this desire to protect North End property values by attracting and retaining white families that became the sine qua non of school board politics ever since. Whether board members are black, white or hispanic, they are all "anointed" to their position (few people get on the school board that the school board does not want on the board) because they will defend the status quo. If a board member steps out of line (e.g. Martin Sanchez, Jeffrey Hastie) they are smacked around, ostracized and effectively removed from meaningful board involvement.

Political correctness aside, there is no denying the logic. National statistics are clear that schools with larger white populations tend to be better funded, have students better prepared upon entering kindergarten, do better on standardized tests and are more likely to graduate, go onto college and the best ones at that. White families tend to be more affluent and are better able to support a local tax base. Attracting and retaining white families means more money in the budget which benefits all students -- white, black and hispanic.

The problem is that the premise of that logic is inherently racist. Tension arises due to the self-image of many North End residents who are often political progressives, rightly supporting racial equality for African-Americans, Latinos and all races, ethnicities and religions. Many live in the 10804 zip code which is a predominantly white enclave within the City of New Rochelle. The 2010 census shows that the 10804 zip code has less minorities than neighboring Scarsdale. They might champion the Westchester County housing settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice but are inoculated from it because the high percentage of black and hispanic residents in all other sections of New Rochelle masks that their neighborhood (and mine) -- the '04 as it is sometimes called -- is more than 85% white. By contrast, 45% of the 10801 zip code is non-White minorities, three times more diverse.

In order to advance this agenda, the board requires a delicate balancing act -- publicly supporting diversity but privately work to prevent white flight out of the schools. From time to time this balancing act tips over and the tension comes into public view. For example, the replacement of Jeffrey Hastie, an African-American, as Vice President of the board with Deidre Polow, who is white. Another example is the debate over minority graduation rates or the board's reluctance to release demographic data for teachers and administrators after adopting a formal diversity hiring policy. The number of minority teachers in New Rochelle stands in almost inverse proportion to the number of minority students.

When an issue threatens to undermine white support for the district and the board -- the vast majority of parents attending the security meetings and board meetings since Newtown are white -- the school leadership will say and do pretty much anything including telling falsehoods or doing incredibly stupid things like putting the school safety plan template on the Internet. More broadly, the culture that arises from this -- all focused on making white (and affluent non-white) families comfortable having their children in the New Rochelle schools -- is one where telling half-lies through a clever arrangement of facts intend to deceive becomes the norm at which point the entire leadership team is morally adrift.

Years of rot and decay in our school leadership has left the board so far out to sea that they can no longer make out the shore. Lost, and without a moral compass to guide them, they drift on, lie piled upon lie so that even lies to protect violent criminals and child molesters somehow become acceptable.

Having attended all of the board meetings and many of the PTA Safety meetings since Newtown, I can tell you that the district is furiously bailing as their tiny boat sinks -- they are throwing a lot of facts but few the bear directly on the core issues. They are throwing out lies and half-truths, but mostly it is what they are not saying. Those half-lies are the most dangerous sort because they are inaudible to all but a few who know a dog whistle when they hear it.

To paraphrase Claude Rains character from the David Lean film, Lawrence of Arabia, a man who tells lies merely hides the truth but a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.

Since Newtown, there have been intruders at Jefferson and New Rochelle High School, abandoned security posts during the middle of the day, doors left open and many other security failures. Staff is still not trained, security plants are still not drafted and available for public comment, the board has not adopted a building-level safety plan for over 10 years. In short, beyond hot air and some cosmetic changes, there has been no significant improvement in school security since Newtown.

At a recent incident at New Rochelle High School, three intruders refused to leave. The policy is clear -- call 911, put the school on lockdown and wait for the police to give the all clear. Instead, security staff was told by Security Director Bruce Daniele to get permission from Assistant Principal Joseph Starvaggi to call the police. That approval took over an hour to obtain.

An hour?

While an official report is not due until March, news reports indicate the entire incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School took less than 20 minutes.

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BASEBALL NOTEBOOK: Locust Grove ‘learning a lot’ in rebuilding year

Photo by Derrick Mahone
Eagle’s Landing Christian coach Doug Campbell is hopeful that his pitching staff will hold up as the eighth-ranked Chargers look to compete for the Region 9-A title.

Photo by Derrick Mahone Eagle’s Landing Christian coach Doug Campbell is hopeful that his pitching staff will hold up as the eighth-ranked Chargers look to compete for the Region 9-A title.

Either Locust Grove is as bad as its 13-2 loss to Union Grove, or is as good as its 21-5 victory over Henry County.

Most likely, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The Wildcats are a team under construction this season after graduating seven seniors, including three college signees. Those seniors led Locust Grove to the state tournament in the school’s second year of existence, finishing 16-8 overall and 13-3 in Region 4-AAA.

Locust Grove coach Stephen Phillips has had to remake his entire pitching staff. The Wildcats leaned heavily last season on pitchers Seth Lucio and Dawson Brown, who signed with Division I schools Tennessee Tech and Mercer, respectively, and Jordan Dukes.

Locust Grove returned some experience in catcher Derrick Davis and outfielder Slater Eckert.

“We knew that this year was going to be a building year,” Phillips said, “not just losing seven seniors, but losing the talent we had.”

Phillips maintains this year’s version is a good team. It’s shown flashes of potential in a win against Ola (4-2) and close 3-1 loss to No. 9-ranked Spalding.

With plenty of schedule ahead, Locust Grove has exactly what it needs to make a run at a second state tournament appearance — time.

“We’re a good baseball team, and the great thing is we’re learning a lot,” Phillips said. “My hope is that by the middle and end of the season we’re clicking, get on a roll going into the playoffs and make a little run.”

Schedule upgrade

At first glance, it appears that defending Region 4-AAAA champion Mundy’s Mill is struggling this season as it replaces four starters.

The Tigers are 3-4 overall and 2-2 in the region. Last season, Mundy’s Mill cruised to a 22-5 overall mark and 19-1 region record.

This season, coach Patrick Smith has upgraded the team’s schedule to include some tougher non-region games against Sprayberry, Walker and Roswell.

“We wanted to get a measuring stick to see how we are stacking up,” Smith said. “We just wanted to see what we needed to do to get ready for the rest of the season.”

The team’s two region losses have come against Lovejoy and Jonesboro, two playoff teams from last season. Jonesboro was the only team in the region to defeat Mundy’s Mill last season.

“I think we are getting better every week,” Smith said. “It has been an adjustment for us this season in replacing some players that have graduated.”

Pitching depth

Eagle’s Landing Christian coach Doug Campbell says if his team pitching depth can hold up, the eighth-ranked Chargers have a chance to be a good team.

The Chargers lost two pitchers before the season to injury, and has had to remake its staff.

Campbell said that junior Patrick Busscher and sophomores Dalton Ethridge and Matthew Hammers have joined senior Kevin Martin to form the staff.

“Our defense has been the strongest part of the team,” Campbell said. “We have made very few errors. Pitching is one of those areas that we will need our depth to hold up.”

Young catcher

Last season, Dquan Matthews was playing catcher for his middle school team in St. Thomas.

This season, he has been thrust into the Mundy’s Mill lineup as the starting catcher. Matthews is the only freshman on this season’s team.

The Tigers graduated all-region catcher Robert Bell from last season’s playoff team.

“He is getting better,” Smith said of Matthews. “It is always tough when you play freshman, especially at the catcher position.”

Numbers game

It seems as if six is the magic number of runs for teams in the Southern Crescent, with seven of the 20 area teams averaging six runs per game.

Of those seven teams, five are playing at least .500 ball so far this season. The teams that are averaging six runs are Luella (8-1), Union Grove (7-2), Ola (6-3), Jonesboro (4-1), Forest Park (4-4), Locust Grove (3-4) and Stockbridge (3-7).

Only Eagle’s Landing Christian (10 runs, 8-1 record), Lovejoy (7 runs, 6-2 record), Mundy’s Mill (8 runs, 3-4 record) and Riverdale (7 runs, 4-6 record) average more runs per game.


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Indians notes: Chris Antonetti prefers Chris Perez keeps criticism behind closed doors

Indians general manager Chris Antonetti has spent more time this year than he'd like responding to controversial comments made by Tribe closer Chris Perez. Thursday, in his annual end-of-the season meeting with reporters, Antonetti had to put out another Perez fire.

This one involved Perez's comments criticizing former manager Manny Acta as being too passive during games and incommunicative with players in the clubhouse.

"It comes from a good place. Chris is very competitive. I just wish he'd used different words and in a different forum," said Antonetti.

Antonetti and Perez discussed the pitcher's comments during Perez's exit meeting at the end of season.

Asked how that meeting went, Antonetti said, "Long."

The Tribe general manager added, "We would appreciate Chris' candor more behind closed doors."

Asked if he thought Perez's comments affected the atmosphere in the Indians' clubhouse, Antonetti said, "There is no indication of that. We want guys who want to win as badly as Chris."

The Choo watch

Speculation has already started that the Indians will explore trading outfielder Shin-Soo Choo during the offseason. Choo is a free agent after the 2013 season. His agent is Scott Boras and it is rare for a Boras client not to enter the free-agent market.

Asked if the Indians would consider trading Choo during the offseason, Antonetti said, "Why would we trade him? We have him for another year."

The option watch

Antonetti adroitly talked around the question on whether the Indians would pick up the $13 million club option on Travis Hafner's contract: "Only if it would mean a lack of investment that we've had in the past."

The Indians also hold a $6 million club option on Roberto Hernandez, who only pitched three games in 2012, losing them all, due to his off-the-field legal troubles, and a sprained ankle.

Antonetti said the Indians did not see enough of Hernandez to help them make that decision, and that no decision has been made yet.

The Tribe general manager also said no decision has been made on whether the team will pick up Ubaldo Jimenez's $5.75 million club option for next year.

The deadline for picking up club options on player contracts is three days after the end of the World Series.

Mechanical failure

No. 1 starter Justin Masterson went from having a record of 12-10 with a 3.21 ERA in 2011 to 11-15 with a 4.93 ERA this year.

"He had a difficult time with his mechanics and executing his pitches," said Antonetti. "His stuff was just as good as last year, but his mechanics weren't."

Asked about the Indians' epic second half collapse, which included a 5-24 record in August, Antonetti had no answer.

"We've looked at it and we don't think it was any one single thing," he said. "We feel we have better talent than our record indicates."


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Painesville Police arrest two suspects in Monday's KeyBank robbery

Painesville Police have arrested two Mentor women in connection with the robbery Monday of a KeyBank branch at 8 N. State St. in Painesville.

A 42-year-old black woman who is accused of committing the robbery and a 54-year-old white female who is accused of driving the getaway car were arrested Wednesday, Painesville Police said.

Both women were charged with first-degree felony counts of aggravated robbery and transported to Lake County Jail, where they are being held without bond. The names of the women will not be released until they are arraigned at 11 a.m. today in Painesville Municipal Court, police said.

A Painesville officer was able to identify one of the suspects in a bank surveillance photo from the robbery, said Detective Sgt. Toby Burgett. He said the woman was someone that police had dealt with before in the city.

The robbery occurred at about 1:30 p.m. Monday. A black woman entered the bank, told a teller that she had a weapon and that it was a robbery, police said. She was wearing a hooded black coat, dark pants, dark shoes, a maroon hoodie, tan beanie cap and dark sunglasses.

After being given cash from the drawer, the suspect fled on foot into a blue four-door car driven by a white woman, police said.

No weapons were shown during the robbery and no one was injured.


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June 20 Horoscopes

10:58 PM, Jun. 19, 2013  |  Comments
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Today's birthday (June 20). This year introduces more love into your life. In July, take what you're given and run with it, and things quickly will improve. In August, ideals are disrupted when you create something unexpectedly beautiful. Your lucky numbers are: 28, 1, 44, 38 and 50.

Aries (March 21-April 19). Some say the iris gets narrower as you get older, but your vista is only increasing.

Taurus (April 20-May 20). You're much better off precisely because things didn't work out as planned.

Gemini (May 21-June 21). Resources that were available may be limited for unforeseen reasons.

Cancer (June 22-July 22). You'll receive the kind of recognition that people strive for. Enjoy it.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22). Open up and engage with the playlists of others' minds, and discover new music.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You give people the proper amount of time for their role in your life.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). You've known places you hadn't technically visited. Pay closer attention to what it means.

Scorpio (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). You appreciate the value of things even if you don't fully understand what they are.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). It becomes clear that there will be no plan unless you come up with one.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). Dismay over unhappiness in family relations will turn into delight.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). It's worth giving thought to how people feel because they mingled with you.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20). Your luck will be uncanny. You'll wander into the right people at the right time.

Holiday Mathis, Creators Syndicate

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Last updated: July 04, 2015

Weather: Sydney 5°C - 16°C . Mostly sunny.

AN SA Photo galleries

What the defection of Martin Hamilton-Smith means for the major parties

TUMULT: Martin Hamilton-Smith with wife Stavroula Raptis and son Thomas before being swor

TUMULT: Martin Hamilton-Smith with wife Stavroula Raptis and son Thomas before being sworn in to the ministry. Picture: Calum Robertson Source: News Corp Australia

FEW political parties in history have done self-destruction as well as South Australia’s Liberals.

They’ve now become so divided that large pieces are breaking off — and joining Labor.

Today, the Liberals have to decide if they ever again want to be in government and take the hard and painful steps needed to give themselves any chance of getting there.

'Very serious problems within the Liberal Party' 2:02

Renegade MP Martin Hamilton-Smith cuts loose on Nine News after seeing Liberal leader Steven Marshall brand him a traitor.

That means removing deadwood, bringing in new blood and promoting a clear vision.

SA Liberals are extremely fond of outsourcing the blame for their own failures. They rail at the Electoral Commission for having draw up a crooked system, their rivals for being prepared to do or say anything and the public for consistently voting Labor back in.

But the Liberals have spent the best part of two decades trying to stay in Opposition.

After winning the genuinely unlosable State Bank election of 1993, the Liberals toppled their leader in the first term of government before going on to forfeit power in two.

The leadership wars between Dean Brown and John Olsen salted the earth for all who came after them. Four more leaders were turfed until incumbent Steven Marshall took the job by default.

It’s not the kind of behaviour that convinces the public you can run a government.

In the final weeks of March’s state election campaign, Mr Marshall retreated into the shadows.

After mounting a case for change, he’d hoped to coast home with a small-target strategy.

Political defection 3:03

Former Liberal Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith stuns the State, deserting his party to become a Minister in the Labor Government

If the Liberals want to win in 2018, they’re going to have to do much better than that.

Former leader Martin Hamilton-Smith’s frustration at the lack of a clear policy agenda is reportedly one of the major reasons he decided to walked out on the party yesterday.

His detractors within the party instead blame pure megalomania.

But there’s something to it. Mr Marshall began articulating a vision of low taxes, economic expansion and infrastructure development that captured interest during the campaign.

However, it wasn’t enough to seal the deal. Content South Australian voters clearly set a high threshold for change. They will have to be made an offer they can’t refuse in 2018.

This means developing and explaining a bold and exciting vision.

To do that, Mr Marshall is going to have to surround himself with the best team possible.

Senior sources from both Liberal factions yesterday told The Advertiser Mr Marshall, a moderate, will be safe until the next election and has unrivalled partyroom support.

One conservative Liberal yesterday said Mr Hamilton-Smith was singularly responsible for every bout of leadership instability in the past decade and the party was better for his exit.

But the Liberals have also lost one of the few people in its partyroom who shape as capable ministers. Beneath Mr Marshall are the old factional rivals Vickie Chapman and Iain Evans. Dan van Holst Pellekaan and John Gardner are viewed as some of the more promising newcomers.

Aside from that, the talent pool is shallow. Some Liberals are toying with the prospect of a “Super Saturday”, where up to half a dozen backbenchers in safe seats are moved on in by-elections. It will be resisted by some, but is clearly needed for reinvigoration.

The trouble with the Liberals has always been that they reach for a quick fix. They dump leaders at the drop of a hat or, now, jump over to the Labor Party to get ministries.

Opposition is hard, and government is even harder. It won’t come easy, nor should it.

LABOR, or something like it, has just guaranteed itself four more years in government.

In the late hours of state election night, it became clear there was a stalemate. Neither party had won enough votes in the right places to form government in their own right.

While Opposition Leader Steven Marshall waited, Premier Jay Weatherill acted.

He made a desperate dash to Port Pirie and stitched up the support of independent MP Geoff Brock.

Mr Weatherill has now gone one better, peeling off former Opposition Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith. He now commands 25 votes in the 47-seat State Parliament.

A series of events even more unlikely, unbelievable and unprecedented than yesterday’s will be needed to make the Government fall. But there can be no doubt that Mr Weatherill — the self-styled man of principle from Labor’s progressive Left — comes from the Graham Richardson school of “whatever it takes”.

Liberals brand defector a traitor 1:45

Former SA Liberal MP Martin Hamilton-Smith has been branded a traitor for defecting to the Labor government.

In the state election, Mr Weatherill defended Labor’s attack flyer against the Liberal candidate in the key seat of Elder. It asked, in menacing text set against a bullet-riddled brick wall looking like a stock photo of downtown Beirut, if voters could “trust Habib”.

His actions sidelined the cause of the progressive Left for political gain. The lust for power was so strong, Mr Weatherill was willing to court the xenophobe vote. But it is since the election his pragmatism has truly shone.

He first told independent MP Bob Such regional development was so important he would make the ministry his own and set up a new department.

When Dr Such dipped out of negotiations, Mr Weatherill offered the ministry and a virtual blank check to Mr Brock.

His demand that taxpayers cover $291 million in risk for Port Pirie’s Nyrstar smelter was met as the price of minority government.

He’s gone on to overhaul the public service by sacking one of the most respected public servants of the past decade, infrastructure department boss Rod Hook. Then he put a broom through the Economic Development Board.

In the most stunning of all compromises, Mr Weatherill yesterday pulled a former Liberal leader who has fought to destroy everything his government stands for, to his breast.

Mr Weatherill clearly believes the state is better served by having a Labor government than not, and he is prepared to do anything to achieve it. Everything else is just detail.

Originally published as What the defection means for the parties

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Comments on this story

  • Charles Whoknows of Eyre Peninsular Posted at 9:56 AM May 28, 2014

    The parasites will do anything for money. How much extra a year will Hamilton Smith be on. Snouts in the trough again is it. I feel sorry for his electorate voters. Traitor is to soft a word to call him.

  • Jasmine Harkensee of Melbourne Posted at 9:06 AM May 28, 2014

    As voters we have the right and are able to change our preference (liberal, labour or other) easily and freely depending on the proposed policies and our personal opinions of the parties. Martian Hamilton-Smith obviously felt very strongly about the direction that the liberal party was taking and came to realise that the party and himself no longer held the same values. He changed his party in the same way we would change our vote.

Show All 2 Comments


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Last updated: July 04, 2015

Weather: Sydney 5°C - 16°C . Mostly sunny.

Origin fever spreads worldwide

Origin fever spreads worldwide

THE annual clash between the Blues and the Maroons has become an opportunity for Aussies worldwide to resurrect old state rivalries ... and have a drink or two, natch.

How Dugan became a Blues marvel

Josh Dugan

AS a child, Josh Dugan loved acting the superhero. Today, he lives his dream, stepping up to one of the greatest challenges in rugby league.

How Klem went from softball to hardman

 Softball Champ,David Klemmer,11 yrs,a student at Fairfield West Public school.09.12.05. Picture: Nick Andrean.

YOU could see the steel in his eyes at just 11 years of age. Fully focused, David Klemmer prepares to wreak havoc for the NSW representative softball team.

nrl photos

Here’s laughing at you NSW

PICTURE SPECIAL: While the Blues shunned Victoria to train at home, Team Queensland has been having a ball painting Melbourne maroon.

NRL Grand Final 2014: In pics

The Rabbitohs end a 43-year wait after an emphatic 30-6 win over the Bulldogs: Best pics from our photographers.

Hot Shots: Broncos v Storm, Rd 20

The Brisbane Broncos were whipped 30-8 by a clinical Storm side at Suncorp Stadium.

Thurston’s Dally M duel with Woods continues

NRL Rd 15 - Raiders v Cowboys

SUPERSTAR Johnathan Thurston’s unlikely Dally M duel with Tigers prop Aaron Woods continues heading into Round 16. Check out the full leaderboard.

Thurston surges to Dally M lead

Eels v Cowboys

HE is strong favourite to win the award for a fourth time and Cowboys star Johnathan Thurston is now on top of the Dally Ms leaderboard. See the full list.

Marshall seizes Dally M lead

NRL Rd 12 - Dragons v Sharks

AS the halfway point of the season approaches, the Dragons revival has catapulted Benji Marshall to the top of the Dally M leaderboard.


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Feb. 13, 2014

Engineering saves $15,000 in energy competition

Energy Smackdown participants
Energy Smackdown participants in Carpenter Hall.

Buildings in the College of Engineering avoided more than 191,000 kilowatt-hours and $15,000 in energy costs through the Energy Smackdown competition held over six weeks in November and December 2013. Ten buildings participated in the competition conducted by the college and the university’s Energy and Sustainability Office as part of their “Think Big, Live Green” campaign.

“Through the energy competition in academic buildings, we’ve avoided $15,000 in energy costs,” said Erin Moore, energy outreach coordinator at the Energy and Sustainability Office. “That could be financial aid for a student or be reallocated to different needs within the college. It’s not going to a utility bill.”

The online Cornell Building Dashboard, a real-time display of electrical, heating and cooling energy costs for campus buildings, was used to monitor energy consumption, and Carpenter Hall won the competition by reducing its electrical energy consumption by 23.7 percent. As a reward for winning the energy competition, Carpenter Hall will receive a green makeover.

Volunteer “green ambassadors” for each of the 10 buildings are trained to work with their peers to encourage resource conservation. Abbey Alexaides, a staff member in the dean's office and the ambassador for Carpenter Hall, said: “We were given ideas on how to engage people in the green initiative and different ways to implement things. For example, if we want people to recycle more, then the recycle bin should be bigger than the waste bin.”

The ambassadors also received a checklist of green actions to implement in their buildings. “We put up light switch stickers and posters to remind people. We replaced space heaters with heated footpads, old power strips with new energy-saving ones that switch off peripherals when the computer is switched off. Over the winter break, we unplugged electrical devices,” Alexaides said.

While the competition was only conducted in engineering last semester, the Energy and Sustainability Office seeks to incorporate two more colleges by the next school year. Moore said: “Competition is a great way to engage people in energy conservation. People can actually see the results of their actions and know that one little thing really does make a difference when you do it as a collective.”

Sushmitha Krishnamoorthy ’17 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.


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Union Mine coach arrested on sex charges

4:28 PM, Jan 6, 2012   |    comments
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  • David Robert Freeman
  • David Robert Freeman from Union Mine High School yearbook

EL DORADO, CA - The varsity baseball coach at Union Mine High School has been arrested on felony charges involving alleged sex acts with a former student at the school.

David Robert Freeman, 38, was booked into the El Dorado County Jail Thursday and later released on $175,000 bail.

According to jail records, Freeman faces separate charges of having sex with a minor and oral copulation with a minor.

El Dorado Union School District Superintendent Christopher Hoffman said that in addition to coaching varsity baseball, Freeman also coaches junior varsity football and teaches physical education and computer technology.

Hoffman did not say how long ago the alleged victim left the school or when the alleged crimes took place.

Union Mine High School Principal Tony DeVille said Freeman had been placed on leave and would not be on campus Monday when school resumes after a three-week winter break.

DeVille said Freeman was popular among students and faculty and had been at the school since it was built in 1999.

"When people hear about this, they're going to be shocked," DeVille said.

by George Warren, GWarren@news10.net

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By Bryan Alexander

Sexual themes ranging from kinky to creepy spice up the slate of 119 feature films and documentaries at the annual Sundance Film Festival, which opens its 11-day run Thursday in Park City, Utah.

More than a dozen movies take on intimate human interaction, a number that's "part circumstance, part coincidence," says festival director John Cooper. "But it's an in-depth exploration of the subject of sexual relationships - how they are all part of our basic human need. This hasn't been explored as deeply as we seem to be exploring it now."

Among the high-profile offerings are the bondage-themed documentaryKink, with James Franco as executive producer;Concussion,a drama about a lesbian housewife who gives up the suburban life to begin working as a prostitute, from award-winning writer/director Stacie Passon; andDon Jon's Addiction, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directing premiere, a comedy about a porn-addicted character who can't relate to women until he is aided by two friends (Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore).

HIGHLIGHTS:From 'Before Midnight' to 'A.C.O.D.'
MORE:Female directors rule Sundance Film Festival 2013

A number of stars have been lured by the chance to delve into provocative material, including Kristen Bell (TV'sVeronica Marsseries),who appears inThe Lifeguard,about a woman who returns to her childhood home where she begins a passionate affair with a teenager.

"It's an unusual role for me, that's what attracted me to it," says Bell. "I've done goofy sexuality like in (2008's)Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But nothing that was this intimate. And it was scary to do."

A similar theme is explored inA Teacher,about a Texas high school educator (Lindsay Burdge) who begins an affair with one of her students (Will Brittain). Doubling down on the concept, the dramaTwo Mothersstars Naomi Watts and Robin Wright as lifelong friends who begin affairs with each other's sons.

The focus goes younger as Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen portray girls who make a pact to lose their virginity, in the dramaVery Good Girls. Similarly, Shailene Woodley's character loses her virginity to lead character Miles Teller in the coming-of-age filmThe Spectacular Now.And in Drake Doremus'Breathe In, Felicity Jones plays a student staying with a family who embarks on an affair with the household's father (Guy Pearce).

The exploitation of sexual power is explored in Michael Winterbottom'sThe Look of Love, about the scandalous world of Paul Raymond (Steve Coogan), who opened the first "gentleman's club" in London's seedy Soho area; andLovelace,in which Amanda Seyfried stars as porn-star turned anti-porn crusader Linda Lovelace.

?"The themes and stories in films we show can be challenging to some, but ultimately, our mission is to show excellent and original work," says Cooper.

"The times are changing, and relationships are changing,'' adds Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford. "It would be a mistake to say this is sex for sex's sake. The films are looking into sexual relations."

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