A nerd costume for sale online: Doesn't he look kind of frum?Picture a continuum that runs from “really sensual” to “not sensual.” You could place animals and machines at either end: animals are all sensuality, machines all reason. Contemporary racism sets different ethnic groups along this continuum: animals, then Africans, then Europeans, then Asians, then machines.

The MIT-based psychologist Sherry Turkle argues that the machine age, especially the computer, has caused modern educated humans to define what is human as “emotional,” in contrast to thinking machines, instead of just defining what is human as rational, in contrast to animals. If nerds are people who have been sucked into the orbit of the machine and sapped of human emotion, then Asians—who are perceived as industrious, asexual, machinelike—are the nerdiest of ethnic groups. Modern anti-Semitism has been so varied that it’s hard to locate Jews on the animal–machine scale, but in America, the nonsensual, nonearthy Jews generally stand on the same side as the Asians, and both stereotypes are the progenitors of the contemporary nerd.

Orientalist racism, powered by the perception that Asians are too calculating and industrious, goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But in the United States it’s taken a distinctive form since 1965, when an immigration act allowed for renewed migration from East and South Asian countries and radically increased America's Asian population. Because the act’s policies made immigration much easier for educated families, and because many of those first educated immigrant parents found themselves holding more menial jobs in the United States than the ones they’d held in their native country, there was often an unusual degree of pressure on their children to enter the professions. By the early 1980s Asian-Americans constituted a much larger percentage of the student bodies at top colleges than they did in the population in general. Time heralded the new “Asian-American Whiz Kids.”

Asian-American kids in Time: That's Masa Oka from 'Heroes' on the cover One consequence of this mildly threatening vision of Asians was the re-emergence of old-fashioned Orientalist racism, best embodied in Sixteen Candles, John Hughes’s 1984 teen comedy, in the character of Long Duk Dong. Dong shared with 19th century caricatures of Chinese immigrant labor a cheerful productivity, social ineptitude, and the problem of being attracted to women who would rather be with white men. (In the minstrel shows of 150 years ago, a character named John Chinaman always failed to get the white girl). In Sixteen Candles, Molly Ringwald’s parents remind her that Long Duk Dong excels at doing chores. Long Duk Dong stares at her with longing, and, famously, dangles upside down from the top of a bunk bed to call out, in inflectionless speech, his face all dazed oblivion, "What's happenin', hot stuff?”

Molly Ringwald hates Long Duk Dong because he doesn’t realize he’s a disgusting sexual prospect, and her parents like him because he’s hardworking and inoffensive. Inoffensiveness is the similarity between the stereotypes of the Chinese-Americans who settled on the Pacific Coast in the nineteenth century and Romantic-era stereotypes of Jews popular in England and America.

The eighteenth-century minister of Parliament James Howell described Jews as “the most timorous people on earth, and so utterly incapable of Arms, for they are neither Soldiers nor Slaves: and this their Pusillanimity and Cowardice … may be imputed to their various thralldoms, contempt and poverty, which hath cow’d and dastardized their courage.”

“They are rarely to be found engaged in any of the personal outrages that are so common in the metropolis,” observed one English writer of Jews in 1842. “And even in the very few instances in which that name of a Jew is to be found mixed up in any scuffle or affray that takes place, it will almost always be found that he is not the aggressor. A Jew is a singularly quiet, inoffensive member of society.”

In 1871, Mark Twain published an article on the Chinatowns in West Coast cities called “The Gentle, Inoffensive Chinese.” “A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a lazy one does not exist,” he wrote. “Chinamen make good house-servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quick to learn, and tirelessly industrious.” It wasn’t until Jews and Asians began their respective initiations into the schools of the American upper-middle class that they acquired reputations as “grind” cultures – but both much earlier acquired reputations for meekness and physical restraint.

In the case of Jews, a certain proto-nerdiness might have started much, much earlier. Because Jews were required by doctrine to read the Torah four times a week, Jews tended to learn to read at a much higher rate than other ethnic groups in the centuries just after Christ. As a consequence they all but abandoned agriculture much earlier than the rest of humanity began to drift away from it. They started the process around AD 200, and by AD 700 about 90 percent of Jews had moved into other trades, long before the medieval laws that forbade Jewish farming.

Geektacular: Nugent's bookThe Berkeley professor Daniel Boyarin has argued that the rabbinical culture that developed in the Roman Empire involved a version of manhood at odds with the dominant Roman one. The Roman gender constructs associated masculinity with reception, whereas one rabbinical masculine ideal was a man who read the Talmud and understood it, declining contests of strength, declining nonintellectual professions. There was some rationale, Boyarin felt, for the stereotypes of Jews that evolved in Europe. (What to the dominant culture in Europe was contemptible was to Boyarin something worth preserving.)

Boyarin’s intent was to show how Jews subverted gender roles, but the evidence Boyarin marshaled to illustrate his point about Western images of Jewish men often makes Jews look nerdy, that is, poorly equipped to handle physical confrontation, made for the abstract realms of finance and scripture. He cites a Yiddish folksong, written from the perspective of a young woman who wants a husband, that includes the line “for Holy Torah he must be fit,” but no mention of any conventionally masculine qualities. An 1890 German cartoon of a Jewish boy with giant ears and spindly limbs falling off a bicycle seems to equate Jewishness with a lack of athleticism. He doesn’t look so different from Louis Skolnick, the protagonist of Revenge of the Nerds. These images suggest Jews sometimes played a role in the popular imagination not so different from that of today’s nerd.

As a general rule, notions of ethnic identity are deployed as politically and economically expedient. The modern concept of the nerd developed in the early twentieth century, when the WASP establishment was confronted with a threat to its position and so created an ethnicity-informed distinction between the invading force and itself: a dichotomy between the athletic man of character and the “greasy grind.” This was a precursor to the contemporary dichotomy of jock and nerd. Put another way, the nerd is the grind stripped of the immigrant/Jewish/ unknown-ethnic-identity status implied in the older term.

Shortly after a substantial and growing percentage of the Harvard student body came to be Jewish, Ivy League administrations stated to equate Jewishness with what would now be described as nerdiness. It was around the same time that the “greasy grind” became a despised stock figure in writings about student life. Jerome Karabel’s The Chosen, a 2005 book on admissions policies at Harvard, Princeton and Yale, found a pile of documents that made the link.

Long after sheltering the Northeastern Protestant elite from immigrants ceased to be a major priority for Harvard administrators, the Jew-grind association persisted. Wilbur Bender, who was chairman of Harvard’s Committee on Admission from 1952 to 1960, observed that the school’s population of urban Jewish boys included “some of our most unattractive and undesirable ones, the effeminates, the precious and affected, the unstable.” Bender was painting Jews as effete intellectuals, not nerds per se. But in his status on campus, his combination of intellectual power and social powerlessness, Bender’s Jew is an ancestor of the nerd.

Ladies' man: Antisemitic propaganda, or harmless teen movie? The Asian nerd stereotype remained a Hollywood staple decades after Jew-grind stereotypes came to be frowned upon. In the 1980s, when North American feared being taken over by the machine-loving Japanese, movies like Rambo pitted the animalistic he-man against Asians, while Blade Runner and the novel Neuromancer linked Asian corporate takeovers with the rise of androids. As the cultural critic Slavoj Zizek put it in the 1990s, the role of the Jew was now being played by the Japanese.

In Slate, Nicholas Lemann perceived a displacement of Jews by Asians in more specific ways: “Golf and tennis are perceived by the Asian-Americans not as aspects of an ethos adapted from the British landowning classes (which is the way Jews used to perceive them) but as stuff Jews know how do to…the wheel of assimilation turns inexorably. Scratching out an existence is phase one, maniacal studying is phase two, sports is phase three.” In America, the state of single-mindedly academic adolescence with no physical confrontation is something an ethnic group transcends when it becomes firmly established in the ruling class. The next phase is long afternoons at the shore club, Waspy well-roundedness.

The source of that state—of having a body that appears to have been thoughtfully designed by a benevolent God, rather than conceived as a breeding ground for viruses and a wellspring of pain—is sport. Being in the obsessively grade-grubbing phase of assimilation used to get you called a greasy grind, the implication being that your ethnicity was sinister and unwanted.. Now grade-grubbing gets you called a nerd. When kids lob cold-cuts at your head in the lunch room, you can rest assured that these days it has nothing to do with your skin or creed; it’s all your fault.

Excerpted from American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent, out May 13 from Scribner.

 

Columbia's main lawn: In a rare protester-free momentSo, protests sometimes happen at Columbia University. In the past month alone there has been a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the 1968 riots, a week-long CU Democrats war protest (including a massive red balloon display that, despite its seriousness, only succeeded in getting that song stuck in my head), a protest about Tibet, protests about Columbia’s impending expansion into Manhattanville, and a Take Back the Night rally. Not to mention the blood drive, arts fair, sex fair, free Mumia posters, a relay for life, and that random jumping castle and pink balloon-display that showed up last Friday. Seriously, Columbia students have recently done everything short of throwing a pie in Thomas Friedman’s face.

So what are those crazy kids going to do next? How about an al-Nakba rally – Say, day before Yom Hashoah-ish? Sure, why not – it can at least provide topical fodder for name-calling.

Many Jewcy readers will know that this May is the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence. They might be less familiar with the fact that many Palestinians and Palestinian support groups are marking this time as the 60th anniversary of al-Nakba, a time in which Palestinians were forced out of their homes to make room for the new state of Israel. That's why, starting this week, a new flier campaign began over at the Columbia campus about the mistreatment of Palestinians as a casualty of Zionism. According to the fliers, it’s officially Nakba Week.

Competing birthdays: A poster commemorating Al-Nakba's 60th anniversary Also, a Pro-Nakba Week student published this article in the campus newspaper, accusing the campus Hillel (and its president, Emily Steinberger) of disrespecting the week’s commemoration by refusing to co-sponsor the event simply because it used the word “Nakba.”

Then came the backlash. LionPAC, the pro-Israel group under the broader Hillel umbrella, put up a bunch of retaliation fliers equipped with their own pro-Israel statistics. And in retaliation to the original Spectator article, Steinberger submitted this report, which, among other things brings up (drumroll, please)…the Holocaust! So the whole debate becomes not the “new chapter in Columbia’s Israel-Arab discourse” that LionPAC says it wants, but instead a great big print-based shouting match.

It is of course the prerogative of every ethnic group to raise sympathy for and awareness of their respective oppression by waiving their grievances in people’s faces. But will shoving opposing tragedies at the opposition really solve anything? As Spectator columnist Armin Rosen puts it, this methodology is “more proof that the Zionist and anti-Zionist blocs totally deserve each other.”

Holocaust discourse in general is something that is all too easily buffeted about. Palestinian supporters often accuse Zionists of acting like Nazis toward the Palestinians -- within a homeland that was created to be a Jewish safe haven in the face of Nazism. Similarly, Zionist are often too quick to pull their own Holocaust card. We’ll see who racks up the most references when we get down to the “discourse.”

So yesterday night I arrived back in Nashvillle and did most of my unpacking right away. It got me thinking about all the times I packed and unpacked in college, and about the Jewish things that quickly fell by the wayside because they weren’t worth shlepping. A Kiddush cup, for instance, is of little use when you’re too young to buy wine. I mean maybe you’ll go out and get grape juice, but more likely you’ll end up at Hillel. And candlesticks for Shabbat are nice, but I don’t know of any dorms that allow candles, so it was always kind of a moot point. Anyway, while I was unpacking I came up with nine things to give a Jewish college student so that they can have their Jewish bases covered. And they're not what you think they are...
Hummus: Don't start college without it
1. Mezuzah These are pretty necessary, and the nice thing about living in a dorm is that you’ll only need to get one. Make sure to have a kosher scroll, too. You can buy fancy ones at the mezuzah store, which is where I linked to above, but you can also just ask the local chabad and they’ll get you one for cheap.
2. Tzedakah box You can buy a fancy one at a Judaica store, or you can make one from a box you buy at a craft store and some paint or whatever you want. It’s also nice to have a little discussion about how much tzedakah to give, and where the money will go at the end of the year. I like to give mine to the scholarship fund at Iowa, where I did my undergrad work, but there’s no shortage of good causes.
3. Siddur It pains me to recommend that you buy the superfrum Artscroll siddur, but it really is the most comprehensive and easy to use siddur. It has instructions for pretty much every Jewish ritual, and you can buy small size for fairly cheap. An irritating but ultimately worthwhile investment.
4. Tanach Every student should own a copy of the Bible if only so they can look up various biblical references in literary texts. The JPS translation is, I think, by far the best, and they sell small paperback copies that are great for students.
5. Luach Though it’s easy to access the dates of holidays and such with the internet, it’s nice to have it written down somewhere, and a Luach or Jewish calendar will make sure you don’t forget tomorrow is Rosh Hashana. This one also has tons of other helpful info in it for anyone who goes to shul regularly.
6. Hummus No Jewish child should be forced to live without good hummus. And by “good hummus” I do not mean that Athenos crap. I mean Sabra brand hummus, or something else genuinely Israeli if you live in an area where that’s available. These babies come in containers small enough to fit in your mini fridge, and are great with baby carrots, chips, pita, and cut veggies. The perfect between class snack.
7. Kippah and/or tallit You really don’t need to buy either of these items. You can score a kippah at your local synagogue or Hillel, and I’ve already told you how to make your own tallit. Good things to have on hand for the nights you decide to hit up Hillel for some free food.
8. Israeli Flag Yes, this is necessary. It doesn’t have to be huge, but a medium sized Israeli Flag says, ‘Don’t fuck with me or I will bring out my mad Krav Maga skills.” Tack it up on a bulletin board with a few things covering parts of it and you’re casually tough. Excellent.
9. Mivtza Savta Mivtza Savta literally means Operation Grandmother, but it’s basically a screwball version of Little Miss Sunshine done in Israel several years ago. It’s one of those cult classics that gets funnier every time. A nice thing to prove you’re one of those cool Yids.

Now you’ve got the tools to give charity, go to services, curb hunger, and stay amused. You may also want to buy books and bedding and whatever… That’s not really my forte.

Now get out there and make your mother proud!

I’ve written before about an undergrad class I’m taking at Vandy that’s supposed to be looking at the literature and history of the Middle East. For the past few weeks we’ve been talking about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and, not surprisingly, it hasn’t been pretty.
They're Not Complete Idiots: But they don't understand Judaism
Here's the best example of the problem I have with the class: two Tuesdays ago we were talking about the origins of Zionism, and one of the two profs who teaches the course asked the class what they knew about Zionism. A girl raised her hand and said, "The Elders of Zion...?" She then started to say what she thought they were, which sounded like it might be right, but the professor interrupted her and said that it was a religious group. I cut in at that point and zealously set the record straight. Clearly, the prof wasn't trying to be anti-Semitic, and I don't think he had any idea he was wrong. The history of the Protocols aren't part of his field as an Islamic studies professor, but his lack of knowledge was pretty terrifying.

Today in class, the other professor handed out a copy of a page he had made from a Reform siddur. He pointed to the maariv aravim and ahavat olam paragraphs and then read the translation that the siddur provided:
“O God, how can we know You? Where can we find You? You are as close to us as breathing, yet You are farther than the farthermost star. You are as mysterious as the vast solitudes of night, yes as familiar to us as the light of the sun. To Moses You said: "You cannot see My face, but I will make all My goodness pass before you."
Even so does Your goodness pass before us: in the realm of nature, and in the joys and sorrows of life.

When justice burns within us like a flaming fire, when love evokes willing sacrifice from us, when, to the last full measure of selfless devotion, we demonstrate our belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness, then Your goodness enters our lives and we can begin to change the world; and then You live within our hearts, and we through righteousness behold Your presence.”

The problem is, those paragraphs aren’t even remotely related to the Hebrew texts they purport to be translating. The prof then went on to say that in Judaism what's most important is the "ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness" which is why American society has chosen to (mostly) embrace the Israeli superstory, and Zionism. This text was what we needed to know about Judaism, he explained.

I don't know what to do. Tikkun Olam, the idea of trying to fix the world and spread righteousness, is not even mentioned in the Hebrew text. Yes, Tikkun Olam is a huge part of Judaism, but it's not why the US is supportive of Israel, and neither is it the reason any particular person should support Israel. The Hebrew is, I think, a more accurate and succinct description of what Judaism is about, but that was clearly not helpful to the agenda of the class/discussion in the mind of the professor.

I like both professors on a personal level, but I'm excruciatingly uncomfortable in class. Their understanding of Judaism is (or seems to be) bad, and they're passing this poor understanding off onto a class that dutifully copies it down into notebooks. These aren't anti-Semitic people, and I don't particularly object to what they're saying about Israel, but I'm really concerned about what they're saying about Jews and Judaism. In some cases, like the Elders of Zion episode, I’m happy to step in and make sure that outright and harmful falsehood isn’t propagated, but with something like the prayers, the line is less clear to me. What he was saying about Judaism was nice, it just wasn’t particularly true. And if I step in I risk him getting mad at me for correcting him in front of a classroom full of students. And I’m not sure what I’d accomplish if I stepped in, anyway.

What is the most practical way of dealing with this situation?

PS- I know my posts have been kind of heavy lately. I promise to go back to posting about sex soon.

As much an annual Passover fixture as horseradish or bad wine, every Jewish family has an Uncle Ron. He is, in fact, at most every holiday gathering, but with Pesach’s prescribed overindulgence, he’s in rare form. After tipping back the fourth cup of wine, his mix of arrogance and outrage boils over. Uncle Ron’s been ruining American seders for a century, but over the decades—depending on the context—his diatribe has changed. In generations past, Uncle Ron was the seder socialist, crying for world revolution and railing against the piecemeal reforms pushed by FDR and his labor union boss. But with today’s Uncle Rons inhabiting the upper socioeconomic echelons of American society, the seder rant is more likely to critique welfare queens than corporate fatcats. “Look, I didn’t get to Scarsdale by hanging out on street corners,” today’s version might go. “The Asians study, work, and get ahead. But don’t hold your breath for the Puerto Ricans. And the ...

Loyal and talented Jewcy contributor and Faithhacker scribe Laurel Snyder posts in “The ‘New’ Jewish Antisemitism” an endorsement of the progressive rabbi of the Jewish community, Michael Lerner, and his crusade to highlight the “silencing of debate about Israeli policy” exposed in a recent publicity blitz that includes prime time television spots and well-placed newspaper editorials. Some silence.

Laurel’s endorsement – and those like it – only helps to further marginalize the Jewish religious left by perpetuating Lerner’s lousy leadership. Progressive politics in the Jewish community deserves a new representative.

The justifiably-loathed Smarm King has made a cottage industry out of co-opting the fable of censorship in defense of his politics. Carrying with him the lessons learned during his 60’s anti-war days, Lerner understands that one of the best ways to engender support for a cause – or, say, transform pious, well-meaning peaceniks into unquestioning apparatchiks – is to evoke a Big Brother-like opposition sinisterly suppressing the truth. That such a thing doesn’t exist isn’t important; what matters is that it remains an effective tool of persuasion.

The fact is debate about Israel is not being silenced on college campuses or anywhere else. On the contrary, there is no country more openly criticized, supported, or argued about than Israel.

What campus could Laurel or Lerner be referring to that suppresses debate because of their Zionist agenda? I suspect the healthy handful of institutions that stir up campaigns for Israeli divestment on a near-annual basis are not among them. Nor could they possibly be referring to the field of Middle East Studies such as it is, peopled by tenured leftists and pervaded by an attitude that one would be hard-pressed to describe as pro-Israel (see Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America).

And really, how is any debate of any kind silenced these days? It’s not possible -- especially with the young demographic in question, who are expertly skilled in exploiting all the new forms of participatory media to vent and dialogue and find information of any and all persuasions.

Frankly, I’m amazed Lerner still has any credibility at all after being busted some years back for pseudonymously penning a few self-congratulatory letters to his own barely-read magazine, Tikkun. His letters included exquisitely swaying rhetoric, such as: "Your editorial stand said publicly what many of us are feeling privately but dare not say."

Always the fearless prophet willing to speak the forbidden to the shadowy, censorious force of hawkish barbarians, so what if Lerner fibs a little here and there. So what if the Rabbi tends to make things up when it comes to popularizing and pushing his own agenda. The level to which Lerner will stoop isn’t as surprising as the failure of his imagination to create new and original fabrications over the years. The man sticks with what works.

I will say, Laurel, that while the debate about Israeli policy is certainly not being silenced, it is marked by a uniquely dysfunctional quality that says more about the strange relationship between American Jews and Israel than it does about Israel’s political behavior.

After all, what could be more strange than the fact that when you muddle through all the rhetoric and hype, the majority of American Jews and Israelis are in general agreement; we agree we want Israel to survive; we agree any eventual reconciliation between the two peoples necessitates a Palestinian state and even what the general parameters of what that state will look like; we agree that Israel’s action are, at times, unnecessarily forceful and have too often violated human rights. So many of us agree on so much that the extreme polarization of the debate seems strange.

I tend to agree with Jeffrey Goldberg who says that American Jews view Israel as “a place of myth and hope and fantasy and crushing disappointment and embarrassment and pride, but it's not a real country populated by real people…” For that reason, Israel lends itself to serving as proxy for all the other real disagreements – religious, cultural, and otherwise – that the American Jewish community is confronting right now.

That’s a whole lot of layers of obfuscation and the one thing we need more of right now is brutal and unblinking candor. We don’t need more tribal sentinels reflexively branding the mark of “self-hater” on every perceived dissenter and we don’t need indignant leftists masquerading as kumbaya-singing spiritual leaders who view their criticism of Israel as radical.

In his book, The Left Hand of God, Lerner rightly complains that the “Left's hostility to religion is one of the main reasons people who otherwise might be involved with progressive politics get turned off."

No, Mr. Lerner, it’s your hostility to truth that keeps me away. It's time to stop endorsing the Rabbi; it only encourages him to keep making things up.

New Voices: Maybe you've got oneI’ve noticed lately that this blog is receiving a lot of really funny, eloquent, well-written comments. And I’ve also noticed that several of our more regular readers are younger than me, and still in school. So it only seems right that I link New Voices, in case people don’t already know about it.

And just what IS New Voices? Well, besides being one of the best Jewish magazines around (no kidding)…

New Voices is America's only national magazine written by and for Jewish college students. Published since 1991 by the independent, non-profit, student-run Jewish Student Press Service, New Voices is read by over 26,000 students on over 400 campuses across the United States and abroad.

Certainly, our oh-so-writerly college-age commenters should submit something to NV, and certainly NV would be thrilled to hear from our Jewcy clan. (submission guidelines are here)

Not just because it’s a chance to network. But also because writing about a Jewish topic is the best way I know of working through that topic, thinking about the subject matter in new ways, researching new angles and other people’s perspectives.

Like someone very wise once said to me (probably quoting someone even wiser)… writing is the best way to figure out what you didn’t know you knew.

Stay out of school: Charles MurrayThere are few more disturbing phrases, even spoken in jest, than "he / she / people that dumb shouldn't be allowed to breed." But substitute "shouldn't be allowed to go to college" and I'm all ears. I know it sounds awfully elitist, but in many cases it's for the good of the college-bound subject, who runs the risk of death by swelled head. Take Noah Riner, a member of the Dartmouth Class of '06. He came to school by way of Kentucky (see Horatio Alger anecdote below), became student-body president, and got into a spot of trouble, but more or less held onto his dignity and the respect of his less excitable peers. Now he's thrown it all away with this embarrasing foray into the creepy world of the Ivy-obsessed.

A couple Dartmouth alums have put together a website to allow Ivy Leaguers to
share their knowledge, humor, and hubris with inquisitive high schoolers, and I
wanted to share it with you: codeivy.org

As most of you know, I grew up in Kentucky and until my junior year of high
school, had never heard of Dartmouth or most of the other Ivy League colleges.
In fact I had to Google "ivy league" just to find out which schools were on the
list. I did some reading about the schools, was lucky enough to visit a few,
and eventually fell in love with Dartmouth. Hopefully this website will help
get the word out about the opportunities, resources, and experiences of college
in the Ivy League in a way that is fun and very personal.

So go sign up, check it out, and maybe share something.

Thanks,
Noah

Do we need to add another tendril to the kudzu-like proliferation of test-prep books, overpaid tutors, how-to guides, black-market essay websites, and so on, already suffocating us with the message "Ivy or Bust"? Does making a joke of Ivy League "hubris"—not exactly the right word, where simple "vanity" would have sufficed—make it okay to indulge it? No, and especially not when this is your idea of "showing the ropes" to impressionable high school students:

How do I ask a question?
Just register, plug it into the ask box, set your point amount, set the category and hit send.

What if my question has already been asked?
Your question may already have been asked and beautifully answered. To find this out and avoid spinning your wheels, use our Search page.

What are points?
Points are your intellectual capital. You need points to ask questions. Your questions can be worth from 10-50 points, based on the level of challenge and how quickly you want a response. When you select a best answer for your question, the points you put up for it go to someone else. When you run out of points, be patient. Three days after empty, you'll be replenished again. Or, you could be someone else's best answer. The more points you gain, the more brilliant the world knows you to be. Points are the power of your influence.

How do I earn points?
If you're an Ivy League student, register with our site to begin responding to posted questions. You gain the point amount attached to the question.

Why would I want to earn points?
Because you want to help people. Because if you're the top respondent, you get featured as our Ivy Expert for the month, and we post a picture and profile of you and people of the opposite sex will stare and swoon. Because you care about the glory of your college, and want it to be the League Leader. Because it's fun and easy to contribute.

Charles Murray, where art thou?