I liked his office for the books, and for the smell. It was against university regulations, but Cliff continued to smoke a pipe when he was by himself. For a while in college, some friends and I had taken to wearing sport coats and Doc Martens and smoking pipes as we biked to class. Since then, I’d loved the smell of loose tobacco; it reminded me of those brooding days, riding high on my own intelligence and the freedom of college.
“Thank you so much for coming in, Raj. I appreciate it. Please sit.”
I did. Cliff switched from his reading glasses to his regular glasses. He was in his mid-seventies, with matching white hair and a beard, and I suspected that he was going to teach and write until the day he died.
“How are classes going?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said. “Same as ever. But if you’re asking about them, maybe I should be worried.”
I could see that he was trying to find some judicious way of proceeding with the conversation. He had taken on the chairmanship only because no one else in the department would. It was not a natural fit for him. He had no leadership skills and very little desire to deliver bad news to people. He did his best work alone.
“A student, or a group of your students, has filed a complaint with the dean’s office about some of your views in class. And the dean’s office sent me this.”
Cliff turned his sleek Apple screen—his one nod to the twenty-first century after a lifetime of figuring out the twentieth—so that we could both see. The browser was open to a hectic, full site, packed with articles and banners and ads. I didn’t recognize it, but right up top there was a headline: “Anti-American Professor Spews Hatred of the West.” There was a video embedded in the story, and Cliff clicked to play it. At first, the footage was grainy; it was hard to make out. After a few seconds, though, it zoomed in and the picture became clearer. It was me. Lecturing. I recognized the red Lacoste shirt I had worn the day before. I looked kind of fat, which made me sad.
He turned up the volume. “Americans have been so obsessed with these gurus not only because they fulfill our Orientalist desires, but also because they offer an alternative to the culture and religiosity of Christianity. They offer a counterpoint to the emptiness of Christianity and Western life.” And to ensure that I wasn’t misquoted, the slide saying the same thing was lit up behind me.
The article had been posted that morning at six eastern time. There was no byline. I quickly scanned the story. There were quotes from anonymous students about my belligerence in class, my so-called rants about anthropology as a form of colonialism. I scrolled down farther. There were already two thousand comments.
My body felt hot. My heel was on fire.
“Please don’t read those comments.” Cliff placed his warm hand on mine. The gesture was alarming in its intimacy. “It’s the gutter.”
“Is the student who complained to the dean the same one who took this video?” There were so many students taking pictures and videos of my lectures, I couldn’t begin to guess who it might be.
“I don’t know,” Cliff said. “I learned about all of this a few minutes before I called you this morning.”
“What did the student complain about to the dean?”
“He—and I’m assuming it’s a he. It may not be. The person thinks you’re stereotyping Christians, and white people more generally. ‘Reverse racism’ and ‘religious discrimination’ are the specific complaints. He says you keep saying that white people stereotype others. When, in fact, it is you who is stereotyping them.”
I had wondered when this type of accusation was going to come my way. It wasn’t a huge surprise, given that lately students had become more and more vocal about the source of their injuries. And now that it had come, I had two initial thoughts. Had I actually been stereotyping these students? I didn’t think I had been, but I worried that no matter what, this was not going to turn out well for me.
“Cliff. It was a lecture on Orientalism and Orientalist desire. Bread-and-butter Edward Said. I’ve been giving some version of that lecture forever. Careers have been made on the idea. I’m just the messenger.”
“Raj, I have no question about the content of the lecture or any of your lectures. I have already explained this to the dean’s office.”
“So what now?”
“The dean has to follow a certain protocol when complaints are filed. They want to see your complete file. And your evaluations.”
Now my back was soaked. Digging always led to dirt. “The evaluations are stellar,” I said. “It’s the only thing I have going for me.”
“It’s not the only thing. But yes, they’re stellar. I’m hoping they’ll clear all this up. For now, go on with your day. I’ll have Mary send your file over to the dean, and I’ll be in touch if anything more comes up. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this over the phone, but I thought we should do it in person. If it was just the student complaining to the dean, it’d be easy to handle. But I worry this publicity will blow up the issue still more. We’re in a different world now. I don’t recognize it.”
“I teach tomorrow,” I said.
“For now, come in as usual. Let’s assume that as quickly as the story has grown, some other story will replace it. That’s what often happens with these things. We’ll figure this out, Raj.”
When I stood up, I felt something wet at my feet. I saw that the Band-Aid the dermatologist had placed on my foot was soaked in blood. I gingerly walked out.
I went back to my office and, with the lights off, turned on my computer. I took a tissue and pressed it against my heel, and then typed my name into Google. One of the first hits led me to the same site that Cliff had just shown me: Freedom Now. I scanned the headlines; for a moment I considered that this all might be a joke, a satire of a conservative site. The biggest headline read simply, “Jews and Hollywood.” It was accompanied by a photo of Steven Spielberg. The story about me was sandwiched between “The Racism Behind Black Lives Matter” and “WWARD: What Would Ayn Rand Do?” I couldn’t believe that people actually went to these sites. The tone was angry, but the primary mode was one of bewilderment. All of the articles were, at their heart, about how the country had changed into what it was today. The writers of this site seemed incredibly alarmed—threatened—by a more diverse nation, with a changing workforce and a changing set of voices. In the most literal of ways, the world didn’t look the way it used to, and these people didn’t like that. They didn’t like me.
I went to my story; it was barely two hundred words. “Professor Raj Bhatt is part of a new generation of activists dressed up as so-called scholars. As you can see in this video, which an intrepid, vigilant student in his class sent to us, the use of ‘scholar’ to describe this man is a stretch at best.”
I had known, the second Cliff warned me against it, that I was going to read the comments. He may have some Buddhist ability to tune out what people thought of him, but I certainly did not. “Go home, Haji” was the very first comment. And they rolled on from there, one after another. “Terrorists with fancy PHDs r still terrorists.” “No1 wants 2 hear u and ur stupid accent. Ur jokes rnt funny.” “Vans? You kidding with those? Aren’t you guys always barefoot?” “Perv.”
After a while, the commenters stopped writing actual words and instead left a chorus of two emojis: a white middle finger and a dark-skinned man in a turban. It started with a few people but spread to readers across the country. I had people from Arizona to Maine flipping me off. I couldn’t believe they all cared so deeply about what went on in my classroom.
Before I clicked out of the article, wishing I had listened to Cliff, I scrolled down one more time, either to inflict a little more punishment on myself or maybe out of a desperate hope that there was one defender out there among all the flamethrowers; I couldn’t be sure. One name caught my attention. In lieu of symbols, “BigBen24” had left a charming haiku. Big Ben? There were many Bens in the world, and surely plenty who went by Big Ben. But considering the history I shared with the one Big
Ben I knew personally, and his love of a particular phrase that appeared prominently in this haiku, my gut told me this was him.
* * *
I started college in the fall of 1990.
I drank too much those first months, and between hangovers and exams, I watched bombs as they rained down on Baghdad. It was my first taste of freedom and my first televised war.
That Halloween, still unsure of who I was and where I belonged, I dressed up as Saddam Hussein. I wore dark green pants, a pine-green half-sleeve shirt my mother had bought me at the start of school, and a pair of combat boots I had borrowed from Art Chu, a handsome Korean-American guy who had anchored the defensive line on his high school football team. Art lived down the hall in my dorm, and he and I had become best friends in the six weeks we had known each other. In an act of intimacy we both laughed off, he held my chin and drew a bushy mustache on me using a thick black marker. And just so there was no confusion, I pinned a sign on the front of my shirt that read Hi, I’m Saddam Hussein. Dumb costume? Absolutely. But I liked that part of me didn’t care, or more precisely, didn’t know to care. It was an altogether more innocent time.
It was a warm, still California night, the smell of upturned earth heavy in the air. Several of us from my floor had arrived at a Halloween party at one of the nicer fraternities on campus. I’d gotten tickets from a guy I’d met in my medieval history class, John. Once inside the crowded house, everyone scattered, including Ursula, a girl from my dorm whom I had taken to and who was now dancing with another guy. Reared in a large Catholic family, she could barely afford college. She was Carmen Miranda for the night, with a hula skirt and a hat she had made with wax fruit. She told me she was going to return the fruit to the drugstore after Halloween for a full refund. She had long fingers, long legs tanned amber, and an exquisitely long neck; she looked like a tropical heron.
I went through the house and into the backyard. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing there. A few minutes later, John walked onto the deck.
“Glad you could make it, Raj.”
John wasn’t dressed up, but as he figured out my costume, he gave me a knowing nod.
“How’s the plague?” I asked, referencing our last history lecture.
“Still black,” he replied.
He asked if I wanted to see the rest of the house. I said sure.
“It’s hard to tell with all these people here, but this is one of the better houses on campus. We get hefty donations from the alumni.”
In the kitchen, he told me they had a cook make them lunches and dinners during the week. “We have to fend for ourselves for breakfast and on weekends, but the pantry is completely stocked.” He introduced me to several guys who were members of the house. After meeting the fifth or sixth guy, I realized that John was trying to recruit me. I felt the sudden boost of confidence that came with being desired. Maybe I didn’t need Ursula after all; if I joined the frat, I’d have girls lining up for me.
John and I maneuvered past large groups of people and made our way upstairs. The mood up there was more laid back. In every room, there was a different small, individual party going on. I was leaving behind the kids and settling in for a night with the adults. We walked into a room where several people were sitting around drinking. There was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, cans of Coke, and an ice bucket on the table. In the dorms, we only drank cheap beer; the bottle of whiskey seemed extravagant, a sign of what awaited me if I played my cards right.
“Cuba libre?” John asked.
I must have looked perplexed.
“Rum and Coke?”
I’d had two or three beers already and wasn’t sure that liquor was a prudent decision. But I didn’t want to say no to John.
“Of course.”
He made us two drinks, and we went into his room.
All the other rooms had two beds, but this one was a single, the décor a bit more postcollege than the others. There was a large, framed Ansel Adams photograph of Half Dome on the wall, a full bookshelf, and a small couch. There were two women in the room, one dressed like the white-robed Princess Leia and the other like Pocahontas in a little brown suede bikini top, a matching suede skirt, open-toed moccasins, and a feather in her hair. John kissed Leia and introduced her as his girlfriend. She was much prettier than Carrie Fisher, less sisterly. I wished Art and the others could see how quickly I had ascended.
But not five minutes later, Ursula walked in with a muscular guy with dirty-blond hair and no costume. I already disliked him for his sinewy arms and the confidence it took to show up to a Halloween party without a costume, but I couldn’t help but be thrilled at the sight of Ursula, despite that. We nodded to one another but didn’t let on that we lived on the same floor. John introduced me to Pavel, another member of the house, and Pavel introduced Ursula to us all. And so there we were: John and his girlfriend, Pavel and Ursula, Pocahontas and me.
Ursula and I stayed quiet as the others talked about people we didn’t know. I took long sips of my drink so I had something to do with my hands. I was tipsy enough without it, but paradoxically, the more I drank, the less out of control I felt. And the more I hated Pavel.
“So, Pavel. Is that a European name?”
“It’s Czech.”
Things were worse than I thought. Not only did he have Ursula on his arm, but Prague was the hip place to be. Everyone seemed to be going there for the summer and coming back with stories of cheap beer and flowing wine.
“That’s cool,” I said and took another long sip of my drink. I thought about going to the bathroom and never coming back.
“I’ve been introducing Raj to the guys in the house,” John said to the group.
“What do you think?” Pavel asked me.
“It’s a nice place. We’ve been going to a bunch of parties this term and some of the other houses are pretty disgusting. But I don’t know. I’m not sure fraternities are for me.” Truthfully, I just didn’t want to seem overly eager. While the principled part of me hated the idea of frats, I had loved walking around with John, feeling the effect of being his guest in this place.
“What’s wrong with them?” Pocahontas asked.
“I guess I’m not that big into group activities.”
“That’s how I felt too,” Pavel said. “That’s how I still feel sometimes. But the perks are great and the alumni contacts are amazing. The big companies don’t expect much from the students on this campus, so they don’t come and recruit. You know who shows up to the job fairs? Insurance companies and car rental places wanting to hire branch managers. You need something else to move you along.”
I didn’t want to like what Pavel was saying, but it made sense. Maybe a frat would give me more options than law school.
“I agree,” John said. “I don’t like every guy here and some of them don’t like me, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be helpful to one another. Everyone’s civil; we don’t have to be best friends. You should think about it.”
I could see how they could help me. But I also saw how they thought I could help them. I’d been surprised by John’s interest in me in class, but while I guessed not all of the brothers were so forward-thinking, John must have realized just how white the house was. I would darken it a little—not too much—and they would look a whole lot more welcoming and open-minded than the other fraternities.
I thought about how I’d explain a fraternity to my parents. I assumed they didn’t know much about them, but then they always surprised me with how much they gleaned from their preferred information sources: snippets of TV movies, 20/20 reports, and the Wall Street Journal. My father may have correctly determined that fraternities were clusters of binge-drinking, oversexed, burly white boys. Though he’d never spoken in explicitly moral language, I knew he thought that most white Americans were too susceptible to alcohol, too enchanted by the allure of the easy life. He wanted me to do better, rise above. If I pledged, I could just say I was boarding in a big group house. Or I could tell him the t
ruth and emphasize the networking benefits. He would appreciate the utility of that as much as I did.
“I have an idea,” John said. He asked Pavel to help him, and they stepped out of the room, returning a few moments later with a small, round Formica-topped dining table. “It’s been a while since I’ve played quarters.”
“I’m not playing,” Leia said immediately.
“C’mon,” John said. “We should give Raj a bit of what he thinks us dumb frat boys do all the time.”
He winked at me. I felt like I’d said too much.
For the next hour, we played quarters, drank still more, laughed, and listened to Bob Marley. The pairings around the table were clear. John and Leia kissed and joked between turns, and Pavel whispered to Ursula. I wanted to make a pass at Pocahontas, but I didn’t know how.
After a while, Pavel got up and opened the mini-fridge. “Hey, Raj,” he said, “we’re out. Could you go a couple doors down and get some more from Steve’s room? Tell him I sent you.”
I sat there for a second, not sure what to do. It seemed a normal enough request, but it didn’t feel right. He was treating me like a pledge already, asking me to do the dirty work that pledges do. But there weren’t any other pledges around; I was just the brown kid he was asking to go fetch him some beers. Him, the especially muscular blond guy in the room.
When I hesitated for a moment, Pavel said he’d go. But I knew that if I didn’t, I’d feel as if I’d been ungracious, unwilling to do just this one favor, so I told him not to worry.
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