June 10th, 2008 – Shimla, India
Today there was a mandatory trip to the University Law School in the state we are staying in India. Basically from what we were told some professors were going to speak briefly on a topic of Indian law that we would find interesting. I was highly skeptical of going in the first place, but it was mandatory and I no choice. When we got there we were greeted, we took our seats and this lady Trishe addressed us. She presented the professors, we introduced ours and the professors began to lecture. The first professor lectured on basic intellectual property rights and really did not say much and it was really a huge waste of time. He was also incredibly hard to understand and quite boring.
Then based on some of the questions from us another professor chimed in for another ten minutes again on the boring introductory topic of intellectual property rights and patent law in India. The next speakers including our professor were a little better but the topics were nontestamentary dispositions in India, Rights of Succession and Inheritance in America and the Death Penalty in India to which we could not really understand the guy speaker.
The last speaker was by far the most controversial of the day and I found quite insulting. He basically said that his goal as a professor was to be provocative and spurn provocation among his students and he was trying to do it today. To cut the whole, long, drawn out, propaganda bullshit short he basically stood up in front of us and bashed capitalism, and I thought the American way of life. He inferred that all American Law Students are highly unprofessional, which he based that on one occurrence he had with some law student in Chicago (which I actually don’t believe) and tried to convince us that Communism and Socialsim was the way to go these days. He did not provide one iota of empirical evidence, case law, studies nothing. It was awful to listen to and at one point one of the professors stood up and said “your delusional” communism and socialism is wonderful on paper and it does not work. Then other students tried to get at the professor and he basically just pushed us all away and continued with his marxist bullshit. It was terrible to listen too and I was getting all fired up.
But, it got worse. The last speaker was Trishe. This lady for the past thirteen years has basically been our contact and host in Shimla during the Touro Law Program so what happened next came to as a shock to us all. She started off by saying that over the past thirteen years it has been wonderful to have students come from America blah blah but every year it seems as the students have come with an increasing amount of baggage and preconceived notions. She then went on to say that India has surpassed America as a Superpower and is a new superpower of the world and that soon the rest of the superpowers and the world will have to answer to India. She then went on to say that America is extremely discriminatory to women, in that how have not elected a female President when India elected one extremely early on in their history (who was shot and killed by her body guards after she committed a form of genocide at a muslim place of worship in India), but nonetheless. She continued on and on bashing us personally and America, and eventually I shouted out “this isn’t a method to provoke us you are just bashing us and our country!” I was so heated that I eventually got up and left during her speech because what she was blurting was probably the most offensive things I have ever personally been witness too. It is one thing to have a debate about issues of countries, but when you are unwilling to provide statistical data to any of your comments, and refuse to recognize the problems of you country and rebut our questions with exemplifying our problems is terrible. One american student was in tears, another two students left after me.
Even though there was a form of a debate which from what I heard was just us trying to defend our country and us as people and them not willing to answer any of our questions, I could not stay there any longer. I think that we should never associate with this lady Trishe again. She is condescending, ignorant, hurtful and quite frankly a piece of shit. I personally never want to speak to her again or her smirkly, smiling fat face.
On the way back and at dinner everyone was talking about what had happened. Most people recognized what had happened as being awful but some had opinions as to the real meaning and some of the Indian-American students even tried to defend this lady and the socialist psycho.
Anyway that experience was horrible, the professors were embarassed, the indian students who are studying with us were embarassed for us and themselves for being subject to this type of bashing.
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Josh
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