On August 8th the Board of Trustees at Emerson College in Boston announced that the school “will not…issue statements on complex geopolitical issues” (Emerson College website).
When Jay Bernhardt, Emerson’s President, was asked by reporters to provide an example of a non-complex geopolitical issue, he replied, “all geopolitical issues are complex. Even ones that look simple are complex.
“Consider the ‘simple’ geopolitical question of which is better: thin-crust pizza or deep-dish pizza? At first glance the obvious answer would appear to be thin-crust. As everyone knows, biting into a slice of deep-dish pizza is like sinking your teeth into a stained motel mattress that has been covered with monkey blood and left out in the rain for a week.
“But what if you’re consuming pizza in a restaurant and have a Ziploc bag of cocaine in your pocket when a DEA agent walks in? Good luck hiding that contraband in a slice of thin-crust. On the other hand, slipping the bag into the thick, mushy innards of a deep-dish slice is a snap. Problem solved.
“I’ll say it one more time: every issue is complex. Of course, you might wonder, ‘What about the morality of slavery? What could be more straightforward than that?’ Well, let me ask you this: Have you ever seen a field of unpicked cotton rotting in the blazing sun on an abandoned Mississippi plantation? I have. Is that not a moral tragedy? Chew on that slice of deep-dish for a while and get back to me.”