What College Students Can Teach Us About Beheadings and Our Own System of Capital Punishment

[marmar]

from truthdig:


What College Students Can Teach Us About Beheadings and Our Own System of Capital Punishment

Posted on Sep 8, 2014
By Bill Blum


Like everyone this side of a serial killer, I was repulsed by the videotapes showing the beheadings of captured American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by a knife-wielding masked executioner of the Sunni jihadist organization that now calls itself the Islamic State. And like most, I was also moved by the dominant American narrative that both condemned the slayings and asserted the moral superiority of Western culture and the value we supposedly place on human life in contrast to the debasements and depravities promoted and practiced by the radical terror group.

But last week, shortly after news of the second beheading broke, something happened to disrupt the narrative, at least for me: I went back to college—not as a student, but to speak at a small undergraduate seminar on ethics and communication taught by Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer at USC.

I arrived on campus without much advance information about what we’d be discussing, told only that the class would be an informal gathering of no more than 15 students, and that I should just show up and be prepared to “schmooze” about my career in the law and as a writer. I had no idea until shortly before the first student poked her head inside the classroom that the topic du jour would be beheading. The students had even less of a hint.

Scheer began the class by reminding his charges that in their previous session they had examined conflicts between ethics and the law, and the fact that despite what we hear in the media and from our political leaders, the law often fails to live up to its ideals. And then he asked, point blank, “Does everyone know about the beheadings?” ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_college_students_can_teach_us_about_beheadings_and_our_own_system_of_c