5/14/2024
My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,
I made a new friend, yesterday. He’s 4. He was wary at first but warmed up when I pulled out the 60-year-old case of Matchbox cars I happened to have in my office. His dad is the PhD student I was telling you about the other day.
I’m in a quandary today about how to support my undergraduates. At least one student can’t manage having classes meeting on Zoom & on campus on the same day. I don’t know if others face the same challenge. I have to go with my gut & know that I’m not going to please everyone by holding class in person at 1:40.
You know how that feels! According to a piece in today’s CSM, your stance on the Gaza situation has you between a rock & a hard place. Conservative political analyst Henry Olsen says you are doing your usual thing of occupying the middle of the Democratic party, “not satisfying anybody” but also “not driving anybody irrevocably away, either.”
Perhaps we both should employ a “robust satisfying” decision making strategy where we “assess the putative desirability of the alternative decisions & evaluate the vulnerability of those alternatives to surprising future developments.” That’s what Yakov Ben-Haim recommends in his 2018 writing for US Army War College Journal.
The kiddos in my class have been through too much uncertainty & are suffering. I’m afraid that my figure-it-out as we go along style is troubling to some. Others are freaked out by the campus disruptions, although UCD’s have been minimal compared to other UCs.
Whenever I find myself being agitated by events of the day, I compare my situation to that of the people in Burma, Gaza, the Sudan or Ukraine, & I calm down. I do not have to fear a drone whizzing around, a bomb falling on me, or that I won’t be able to get food or water. Our troubles are trivial.
As Thich Nhat Hanh writes, to have peace we need to BE peace. I will do my best to hold onto my serenity today. I hope you do, too.
BYBS,
