From: Andrew Phelps <math_anxiety@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [withholdapadues] request for info on Phil Zimbardo
To: withholdapadues@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, November 12, 2010, 11:07 AM
Zab:
For me, this is a dangerous question. My assessment is that Phil Zimbardo is a man aligned with a retrograde advocacy, akin to Martin Seligman. Seligman saw there was a problem with "dog torture" and attempted to "turn around" his learned helplessness advocacy. Nonetheless our Ethical APA activism is built around a critique of the "strategic helplessness of the APA." Whether or not we condemn Seligman personally, his current advocacy is still problematic. Jeff Kaye has been studying "reverse SERE" and its present policy facets, for instance.
Zimbardo built his experiment in a similarly broad way. He had people sign up for becoming experimental subjects, and then had the police come and "arrest" them and take them to the basement of the Stanford Psychology Dept. Where is the responsibility taken for the "community impact" of those social interventions? Instead he espouses social learning theory, which is short on community values "social justice" advocacy. Like Seligman (who went for "positive psychology") Zimbardo reacted to the Abu Ghraib experience by getting engaged in advocacy against "torture." Like Seligman he did change enthusiastically, but also uncritically. His advocacy for the logic of Israeli Psychological Warfare, that Palestinians are rats that need behavioral management, that "jumping down on the Mavi Marmara" is appropriate security behavior, seems to me uncritical in that respect.
Phil Zimbardo wrote the foreword to James' Fixing Hell and teaches "psychology of terrorism" for the Naval Postgraduate School today.
On Wed, 11/10/10, Zab wrote:
Having just completed our first year as residents of Florida .., my wife and I have accepted adjunct positions at a local college teaching undergrad Psych. We're "team teaching," and if there's anything worse than an old "Lefty" on the podium it's two Old Lefties. We're teaching at a school for the local "everyman" and it's clear that we're pretty "different" for this crowd.
Anyway, not to drag this out to intolerable length, we've decided to present the "Milgram Experiment," and naturally Phil Zimbardo's name surfaces as someone who has much to say about this matter - much to say that we both like the sound of. What I need to know is where does Phil fit in the WithholdApaDues scheme of things. Phil, if YOU are on this list, .. If Phil is not on this list, and is therefore not going to answer my inquiry, can someone else comment on whether a guy who still hasn't rejoined APA because he doesn't think they've cleaned up ANYTHING (I'm talking about myself) should use Phil's name and publicly available commentary.
Phil Zimbardo has "performed," e.g. he was a presenter at the APA S.F. 2007 Ethical APA alternative convention process. But as of today I have not seen behavior from him that provides the possibility of trust.
Andrew Phelps
who is an activist with the Coalition for Justice and Accountability (San Jose/Silicon Valley) that endorsed the 2007 S.F. Ethical APA demonstration