Bree

Go figure - the "textbook" for one of my classes is Lisa Beamer's book Let's Roll based on her husband's experience as a hero on one of the flights hijacked on 9/11. I have told my professor I downright refuse to purchase this book and support this golddigging, sacchrine-sweet Christian woman. I also told her I refuse to borrow it from the library to read it.

Well, she somewhat sarcastically said I could read any book that was a biography about a great leader, and that outlined his/her leadership qualities at a "post-secondary" level (as if Lisa Beamer's book is post-secondary, LOL). I need recommendations - my professor's recommendation was Oprah Winfrey's autobiography. I don't think so.

Any suggestions?

Sakpo

Drop the class. It's obviously not worth your time, the prof is an airhead, and she probably hates you now (rejecting Lisa Beamer and Oprah? ). That type can be pretty vindictive about ensuring you don't get a fair grade (and it doesn't sound like the course work could possibly be substantial enough in terms of objective quality for an appeal to stand a decent chance). I know it probably loses money and messes up your schedule but...

Personally I would have bitten the bullet and have gone with the damned book and faked my way through ("oooh, it was sooooo inspiring").

Grad Student Humanist

So Todd Beamer's a "great leader" now?

While I certainly find his action on 9/11 to be commendable, I think it's ridiculous to put him in the same category as Lincoln, Churchill, FDR, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, etc

Ronin

I offer you my man ~ Lance Armstrong "It's Not About The Bike".

"I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs.

Quite simply, I believed I had a responsiblity to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough.

At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whther I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven." If so, I was going to reply, "You know what? You're right. Fine."

I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research. "

Yeah...

muon

:notworthy

Hobbs

What the hell is this class? What's the title and subject, what else do you have to read? Is this one you absolutely have to take, no getting around it? If not, I'd second Sakpo's recommendation to drop it. Or at least wait until it's offered again with someone else teaching it. It's not as if you would miss out on anything deep and intellectual with this semester's reading list.

Bree

Yeah, no doubt she DOES hate me, now.

This course is entitled "Contemporary Leaders" and is supposed to be about how to become a great leader. We're supposed to learn about other great leaders in the hopes that we'll emulate their actions. I need this class to graduate, which I am hoping to do in May. Besides, if she flunks me based on subject matter, I'll simply have to take it up with the Dean.

I wonder how the Arabic students feel about this?

Sakpo

Well, as stupid as the course and its reading list sounds, why would Arabs especially dislike it? Does Lisa Beamer's book get into Arab bashing or something? Or is it likely the book could cause idiotic readers to whip out their favorite Arab prejudices? It's not as if most Arabs in America would side with the hijackers and their goal over the passengers.

christ-on-a-stick

I am absolutely flabbergasted that a professor at a university level, in a course on "Contemporary Leaders" would suggest either of those books.

"Let's Roll" by Lisa Beamer?!?!?!? Give me a break - I started a thread a while back (ooh I'm gonna practice linking now) My rant on Lisa Beamer in which I expressed my disgust at some of the content of her book. Some of the then-resident theists were none too happy with my observation that many of her thought process re: religion were disturbingly parallel to that of the 9/11 hijackers.

Todd Beamer may have acted commendably/heroically in an isolated and totally unforeseeable situation, but that seems a pretty low bar to set for being considered a "Contemporary Leader".

I would strongly second Lance Armstrong.

christ-on-a-stick

Hi Sakpo,

My post linked above discusses the fact that her book is chock-full of religious (Xian) platitudes and near-preaching. For that reason I would suspect some of the Muslim Arabs in the class might find it objectionable.