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This resource has been visited 167 times This resource has been downloaded 13 times “Where there’s no fight for it there’s no freedom�?: Scholars, intellectuals, civil courage, and human rights in Southern Africa Melber, Henning Abstract: The article focuses on the social commitment in Southern Africa in the concepts of freedom, human rights and civil disobedience. According to the author, the concept argues for the need of a permissive postcolonial socio-political system which allows the junction of views and concludes with an appeal to opt for such a socio-political commitment. It suggests that the postcolonial reality is accurately reflected in the contradictions and challenges already described by scholars and writers. Full text available as: Rich Text Format Title of Paper : “Where there’s no fight for it there’s no freedom�?: Scholars, intellectuals, civil courage, and human rights in Southern Africa Conference Date : 0000-00-00 Date: 2005 Document Type: Conference Paper (Peer Reviewed) Subject Area: National Systems and Comparative Studies Country: African Continent Keywords: Intellectuals, Scholarly Values, Political Beliefs, Human Rights, Resistance, State, Critiques, Academic Freedom Relationship: Subsequently published, with minor revisions, in Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 24 /2 (May 2006): 261-278 File Size: 97 KB Additional information: Presented to the 24th Biennial Conference of the Southern African Universities Social Sciences Conference (SAUSSC) at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, 5-7 December 2005 Date Added: 28 November 2006 Melber, Henning (2005). “Where there’s no fight for it there’s no freedom�?: Scholars, intellectuals, civil courage, and human rights in Southern Africa . Paper presented to the 24th Biennial Conference of the Southern African Universities Social Sciences Conference (SAUSSC) at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, 5-7 December 2005
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Volume II, Number 2, Fall 2006 "Neoconservatism vs. Multiculturalism and Radicalism during the 1980s and early 1990s: The Historical Ideology of Gertrude Himmelfarb" by Avital H.�Bloch Avital H. Bloch is Research Professor and Director at the Center for Social Research, University of Colima, Mexico. Email: avital_b@yahoo.com In this paper I will focus on the distinguished historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, Professor Emeritus of modern British history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I will examine her approach to history and her critique of the practices and trends prevalent in the study of history during the last three decades. In her own work as well as in commentaries on the work of other historians--even though she studies the British past and often refers to British scholars--Himmelfarb especially expresses concerns especially about the state of historiography in the United States, concerns that are a reflection of the American neoconservative ideology and its concepts of history and politics. Himmelfarb was born in 1922 in Brooklyn, New York. She received her bachelor’s degree in history and philosophy from Brooklyn College in 1942, the year she also started her graduate studies at the University of Chicago. There, as she herself acknowledged, she came under the influence of what by the late 1940s began to be known as “conservative liberalism.” This was articulated by the prestigious “Chicago School,” with which prominent thinkers such as philosophers Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt, and economist Friederich Hayek were associated. They were particularly concerned with the nature of political freedom as a superior goal and examined political values in the traditional light of early modern and classical thought. Such ideas have indeed guided Himmelfarb’s historical work ever since. In 1950 Himmelfarb completed her doctoral thesis at Cambridge University on the 19th century British parliamentarian and political philosopher Lord Acton. After working for fifteen years as an independent scholar with no institutional affiliation, in 1965 she joined Brooklyn College and, from 1968 until her recent retirement, she was a member of the City University’s faculty. She achieved the undisputable reputation as a prolific writer and one of the most important historians of 19th century Britain, which brought her prestigious memberships in the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (“Himmelfarb”). Himmelfarb is one of the few historians, very few women, and the only prominent female historian, among the leading core group of American neoconservative intellectuals, which has included primarily sociologists and political scientists, along with literary critics. What defines them all--people such as Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Seymour Martin Lipset, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter--as neoconservatives is a peculiar history of political transformation that shaped a distinct ideological concept. Since the late 1930s, their antitotalitarian and anti-Stalinist critique brought them away from socialism into mainstream postwar anticommunist Cold War liberalism. The transformational process culminated in the late 1960s in a shift from liberalism to support of a newly created ideology of neoconservatism. It combines a few vestiges of the old American left, some principles of orthodox consensus liberalism, and high degree of right-wing conservatism. Himmelfarb represents what might be described as a "neoconservative family." One of the most important neoconservatives and probably the best known is Himmelfarb’s husband, Irving Kristol. He is a co-founder and co-editor of Public Interest , a central neoconservative journal and an influential figure in the American Enterprise Institute, the neoconservative think-tank. The couple’s son William Kristol is a second generation neoconservative, active in White House and Republican Party politics. Elizabeth Kristol, their daughter, writes as a critic in the neoconservative magazine Commentary . Himmelfarb’s brother, Milton Himmelfarb, is also a veteran neoconservative who writes frequently in Commentary . Himmelfarb’s opinions about the principles of history and its writing are significant due to her elite position in the historical profession. Yet, what also makes her historiographical critique important is the neoconservative ideological-political point of view it represents in the larger debate over contemporary historical writing in the United States. An understanding of the connections between Himmelfarb’s historical thinking and neoconservative political thinking can explain further the central role of ideological conviction in the conflicts between historiographical schools over the last three decades. Himmelfarb began asserting neoconservative academic concerns during the campus crisis of the late 1960s in the United States. Neoconservative and traditional liberal professors were worried about the threat they believed was posed by radical New Left students to the American “liberal university:” they feared the violent occupations of the most prestigious campuses by students, their attempts to politically mobilize the university, and above all, the loss of the principle of “academic freedom” because of students’ efforts to make learning “relevant”--to politicize it. In such atmosphere, in the late 1960s, Himmelfarb was among the founding members of the network University Centers for Rational Alternatives ( UCRA ), along with its neoconservative philosopher leader Sidney Hook. The organization struggled to mend the campus situation by articulating a critique of the academy by anti-radical, responsible liberal academics themselves. Their goal was to restore the university’s autonomy and integrity (Bloch, “Emergence,” 236-85). The 1980s presented American campuses with a new crisis, which has been primarily characterized by new attempts to politicize the curriculum. What came to be called “multiculturalism” in the universities intended to fit the curriculum to the emerging needs for cultural identity on the part of “marginalized” racial, ethnic, gender groups. In fact, the debates since the 1980s between the intellectual left and right over scholarship only accentuated and expanded on issues that had already emerged in the 1960s (Bloch, “Multiculturalismo”). Thus critical intellectuals compelled to continue their defensive struggle in the 1980s, and once again Himmelfarb joined forces with previous allies. She has served on the editorial advisory board of Academic Questions , the journal of the National Association of Scholars ( NAS ), the leading group that has campaigned against what its politically conservative and neoconservative members regard as the continuing dangerous influence of the left in academia. In the name of this very cause Himmelfarb also published extensive articles especially in the neoconservative opinion magazine Commentary and the more academic journal American Scholar , representing various currents of conservative thought. And recently, in 1992, she was named Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the powerful federal government agency for support of the humanities (“Of Heroes”). Under its chairperson Lynne Cheney, in recent years it was committed to the defense of traditional scholarship. In her historical writing and political critique, then, Himmelfarb represents the neoconservative and traditionalist trends of thought. She has been concerned about the deterioration of humanistic learning in general and of history in particular, and perhaps above all, about the possible detrimental effects this deterioration might have on the direction of present society and politics. Several critics have already commented on the way Himmelfarb’s historical work reflects her concerns about present issues and her wish to influence intellectual discourse and public affairs through historical writing. For example, in a comment on Poverty and Compassion , her most recent book, the historian Alan Ryan wrote that she has “a hidden agenda--save that her agenda is not at all hidden...It is unthinkable that Ms. Himmelfarb would pass up the chance to fight a few contemporary battles while she is chronicling the past. She has always subscribed to the view that history is philosophy teaching by example, and the tart tone of much of her writing is no doubt due to her sense that we live in an age of bad examples.” Following this are her biases: she is “an excellent practitioner of the sympathetic historical reconstruction...when she writes about her likings, but no better than the rest of us when it comes to her antipathies” (Ryan, “Do-Gooders”; Petersen; Degler; Turner; Murray; Porter, “Charitable”). Her essays in defense of the old traditional history and against radical historiography, many put together in the 1987 collection The New History and the Old , are openly polemical. Her beliefs about politics, society, and culture that constitute her neoconservative philosophy surface above her specific arguments about historical truth. Himmelfarb correctly identifies the “New History” with the radical historians of the 1960s and 1970s who were influenced by the French Annales school, Structuralism, and British neo-Marxism. This kind of history began as an attack on the traditional narrative history as it had been known for generations. During those decades, the anti-narrative historiographical trends in Europe and in the United States challenged the traditional narrative. They attacked it for its political as well as methodological failures to represent historical realities of lives of ordinary people and masses (Bloch, “Historia”; Novick 415-68). Thus Himmelfarb describes the counter-narrative approach chosen by the “new history”--to which she also alternately refers as “structuralist history,” “sociological history,” and “history from below”--as history that adopts subjects and methods from the social sciences, focusing on anonymous masses, groups and communities, and on themes such as work and play, family and sexuality, birth and death (_New History_, 13-32, 47-69; “Abyss”; “Group”; “Manners”). Himmelfarb reiterates that what bothers her is that the new history has become orthodoxy in the profession, as even many reputable historians know no other kind of history, while the “Old History” has been largely displaced: “What once defined history is now a footnote to history.” Even the original Annalistes , she writes, did not mean that the forces they unleashed would go so far as to totalize history and subvert it altogether (_New History_, 1-12). But the effort Himmelfarb makes to invalidate all the principles that underlie the new historical practices demonstrates that it is not only the dominance of the new history that disturbs her, but its basic premises and its very existence (Scott, “Review”). The first feature of the new history that Himmelfarb criticizes is its focus on the everyday lives of the masses, common men and women, and large groups of people categorized especially by class, race, ethnicity, and gender differences. Such groups are considered by the new history to be structures and the principal problems for historical analysis. Himmelfarb considers the replacement of what was at the core of the old history--elites, organized groups, institutions, and distinguished individuals--with such collectives as a fundamental historiographical revolution that produced several severe interrelated consequences. The importance given to impersonal and unchanging structures means the loss of the central role given by the so-called “event history” of historical elites and distinct actors (Burke). The new tendency, Himmelfarb laments, not only demystifies history, as it takes away from it what used to give it its drama. But it also falsifies the meaning of history because it discredits great public “momentous” events, such as wars and revolutions, as the major forces that determine the course of history (“Of Heroes”; McKendrick). She asserts that important events are not to be understood by means of the daily activities of ordinary people, but through the actions and ideas of distinguished public individuals. They are the heroes of humanism, the creators of “heroic history,” since through free will they generate events and move history. And as she was taught by both Alexis Tocqeville, the critic of the French Revolution, and American literary scholar and critic Lionel Trilling--two of her intellectual heroes--the role of the historical narrative is to commemorate their worthy actions. But now, historical individuals, the heroes of the old history, are deprived of the freedom to influence, mobilize, or dissent. They cannot become heroes nor “heroes of evil,” namely, villains. Even the historical roles of Hitler and Stalin are trivialized by the new historians.” Denying the deliberate intentions and personal responsibility of those individuals, the new practitioners fail to understand their dreadful regimes as anything more than just historically unexceptional structures (“Of Heroes”; “Abyss”). In a history that depreciates the value of elites, describing them as self-serving, privileged, or hegemonic, all great individuals are reduced to a level of anonymous private persons and made into “anti-heroes:” their outstanding public moral virtues are ignored and the ideas they have articulated forgotten (“Of Heroes” 22-3; Rubin). After all, the heroism of the Victorian intellectuals Himmelfarb herself studies--from Charles Darwin and John Stuart Mill to Lord Acton--lay in their minds, works, and public virtues (_Darwin_; Liberty ; Lord Action ; Semmel, “Two Views”; Cheney 4, 9). Unlike the new historians, Himmelfarb asserts that the ideas of outstanding historical figures are created independently of social reality, transcending race, gender, or class. And precisely due to their greatness and the greatness of their creators, ideas have the power to change reality and to claim a superior status in historical study. The denial by new historians of the importance of personalities with extraordinary minds and recognizable identities is a “presumption against greatness” that contradicts “the very idea of individuality” (“Of Heroes” 22-3; Cheney 6). And since Himmelfarb’s commitment to history as traditional humanism explains her deep concern about the loss of the historical individual, she recommends a return to her kind of history, humanistic history, which consists of a combination of the history of ideas--or intellectual history--which deals with individuals as creators of serious ideas, and political history, which deals with individuals as actors who mobilize history (_New History_ 9, 94-106; “In Defense”; Magnet). The old political history that regards “man as a rational, political animal” is what connects ideas with the basic principles of both humanism and the modern liberal state (_New History_ 25; Rubin). Himmelfarb suggests that if we look at the Victorian “Whig history,” the ideal she tries to follow as a model to her own work, we will acknowledge that it demonstrates the dependency of the paradigms of humanism and state upon the notion of continuity. The Victorian historians conformed Burke’s idea that liberty is not an effortless natural right that is always in a process of progress, but is a patrimony gained through “descent.” If, as she stresses, liberty is “laboriously acquired and preserved” and is not “assured by providential order,” it needs “laws, institutions, conventions, and principles which encourage its acquisition, preservation, and transmission” (_Marriage_ 163-77). What is required in order to secure freedom and prevent tyranny, then, is a conservative system: a political apparatus organized by reason and matched by a moral mechanism, and in order to sustain them both, a deep appreciation of the past. Through discovery and transmission of the historical truth, says Himmelfarb, the role of intellectual-political history is to guarantee the continuity between morality and politics that transcend time and are established in the present. This kind of historical approach is admittedly conservative because it approaches the past with a priori respect: it attributes to past wisdom and virtue “the collective opinion of generations” that deserves to endure in the present (“Remaking” 364). While the new social history--”History with the Politics Out”--ignores the “polity” as the principal bearer of inheritance and the insurer of continuity, Himmelfarb hopes that even when she focuses on poverty or on marital relations, her social history--like that of the Victorian historians--is “insistently political:” it discusses the private sphere just to illuminate “public affairs” (_New History_ 13; Marriage 163-77; Cheney 5; Hays). Due to the ultimate importance of the public sphere, the disappearance of the notion of “national history” also presents a threat. Himmelfarb observes that “in the democratic ethos of the new history,” which maintains that all groups and individuals are equally important and which particularizes history down to atomistic and individualized units, “it is certainly not nationality or citizenship that enjoys [a] favored status.” While the new historians wish to liberate history from the tyranny of the national phenomenon, she insists that beyond inner differences or disparate events, distinct nations with distinct national histories do exist. And nation as an entity is fundamental for political history since the concept of nation implies a common base for the historical continuity of collective political institutions. Nationality as embodied in those institutions, therefore, means the preservation of freedom, individuality, and progress, as well as of a set of values that are accepted by all the nation’s individuals (_New History_ 121-42; “Some Reflections” 665, Semmel, “Two Views”). For Himmelfarb, the radical historians are responsible for the harmful fragmentation of the idea of national history primarily because of their strong emphasis on class. She does not reject the general notion of class as a fundamental concept of stratification, and she can even sympathize with traditional Marxism in which national history is a basic framework. She is troubled, however, by Marxist and revisionist Marxist ideas of economic determinism, dichotomic class structure, and class conflict (“’Real’ Marx”; New History 47-9). Thus what bothers Himmelfarb about the new historians who are influenced by Marxism is that in their desire to “illuminate darkness” they reduce the phenomenon of class to a quantitative question of standard of living, class relations to a question of oppression, and class culture to class consciousness. They create classes where they did not exist, and make class struggle central everywhere in history. And those who later became influenced by Michel Foucault’s notion of the past as a reflection of sexual, personal, and racial power relations worsen things by also politicizing race and gender, generally non-political phenomena (_New History_ 33-56; “Some Reflections” 661-70; Porter, “Heart”; Himmelfarb, Stone, and Degler). According to Himmelfarb, those who are most culpable for these attitudes in British as well as American historiography, before poststructuralism, are the English revisionist Marxists, whom she names collectively “The Group.” This group consists principally of E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Christopher Hill, who were pro-Stalin communists during the 1950s (“Group”). Himmelfarb’s resentment of them reflects her decades-long hostility toward socialists, Communists, and particularly pro-Stalinists. She particularly attacks Thompson for what she perceives as his naive blindness to Stalin’s atrocities and for his failure, after he left the Communist Party, to fully see the connection between Stalinism and Marxism, that is, to conclude that Marxism is always wrong. In comparison with critics who stress Thompson’s later “socialist humanism,” which emphasizes culture and individual initiative as forces shaping history, Himmelfarb does not acknowledge that this revisionism implies a departure from original Marxism. And she sees no other way for him and his colleagues in “The Group” but to confront their own past, an act that should induce them “to liberate themselves from the theories and assumptions they have applied to the past” and to abandon Marxist theory altogether (Porter, “Heart”; Wilentz; Cannadine; Bess; Semmel, “Two Views”). Himmelfarb demands that instead of over-utilizing economic information, radical historians should use “moral data.” Not the “state of mind” pseudo-data “_mentalit�_” historians apply, which is “the worst offender of intellectual history,” but facts about values that demonstrate that class is an entire condition in which moral disposition is a crucial factor (_New History_ 47-69, 99; Rubin). Through her own studies of 19th Century England, Himmelfarb intends to show that class historians impose a biased interpretation. Her work describes a non-economic class consciousness and an emphasis on the moral virtues of character, authority, hard work, prudence, and bourgeois respectability that, according to her, were shared by all English classes (Fuller; Gross; Meacham; Murray; Nisbet; Ryan; Turner; Porter, “Charitable”). She portrays a multiple-class structure that includes not one proletariat against a ruling class, but middle classes, along with several constantly mobile lower classes, united with the elites through an integrative moral order. It was a complex system of social relations, but one in which the poor classes were offered advancement by a group of compassionate yet analytical “scientific” reformers. They devised a welfare system that was value-oriented rather than materially-oriented, conservative rather than radical, and “hard-headed, rational, pragmatic--and at the same time moral and humane.” Therefore it provided “an invitation to economic betterment, social advancement, and, ultimately, political equality” that socialists could not offer (_Idea_; Marriage ; Poverty ; “Manners; “Victorian Values; “Eagles”; “Moral Responsibility”). Even more worrisome to Himmelfarb than the new history is its evolution since the 1980s into what she calls “The Newest of the New History.” She sees it as the previous new history but with an added up-to-date layer that consists of poststructuralist theories imported to the United States again, especially from France. The newest history deserves an additional discussion, says Himmelfarb, because “the varieties of the new history have proliferated so rapidly, the rhetoric and the rationale have become so bold, and the entire discipline has gone far beyond the old ‘new history’.” The-newest-of-the-new-history is much more frightening because it “threatens to deconstruct much of the new history together with the old” (“Some Reflections”). The more rigorous demands by the newest-of-the-new-historians to categorize society through “differences” of gender, race, and ethnicity and the pressures to create a multicultural “counter canon,” made Himmelfarb especially anxious about the possible disintegration of the American cultural consensus and political unity (“Of Heroes” 24; Novick 552-72; Schlesinger). She perceives this counter canon as a major threat to Western culture whose superiority, in her view, is due to its power to transcend all differences in a pluralist society such as the American society (“Remaking” 360-1). But above all, particularization threatens the importance of the West as the locus of humanism, modernism, and the “dogma of progress,” and it contradicts the definition of the American nation as part of the Western civilization, where the national unity is maintained by the dominant Western culture. Himmelfarb even tells how she herself experienced that power of the Western canon as a daughter of a Jewish family in her Brooklyn school years decades earlier. She laments that nowadays, the recent historiographical directions are accompanied by a fad of disillusionment with the idea of the West, which, according to Himmelfarb, puts history and civilization at stake. We might arrive at a future, she warns, which is not only non-American, but which is practically “post-Western” (“Remaking”; “In Defense”; Marriage 168-9; Darwin ; Nisbet; Fromm). What for Himmelfarb sustains the newest history and what makes it so dangerously anti-Western is postmodernist theories that question the idea of a stable and provable truth. She particularly refers to “deconstruction,” in which, among other currents of thought and thinkers, she includes Jacques Derrida’s literary theory and Richard Rorty’s neo-pragmatic philosophy. The first, she asserts, abolishes what we know as literature, and the second abolishes what we know as philosophy. Postmodernist theory “taught a generation...that there is no ‘text’ apart from interpretation, that the author has no more ‘authority’ than the critic, that there is no objective reality, only an ‘invented’ or ‘imagined’ reality.” Historians discovered that as text, “history too could be deconstructed, that the ‘events’ of the past have no objective reality, that they are no more than texts to be interpreted, invented, or imagined...” In this age of “historical imagination,” according to Himmelfarb, when texts have no “authorial voice” and “the past itself is deprived of any authority, any objective reality or factuality,” there is no past except for what historians reconstruct. Asserting their interpretive authority over the historical contemporaries, historians such as Simon Schama, Natalie Zemon Davis, and Theodore Zeldin claim the liberties of the “creative artist” (“Abyss” 346-8; Schama; Davis; Zeldin). Schama’s Dead Certainties has been discussed by historians as the one of the ultimate examples of postmodernism in history. Schama avoids the ordinary chronological sequences, jumps back and forth in time, uses multiple points of view, merges into the narratives fictional accounts and dialogues, builds invented characters and finally arrives at contradictory possibilities and conclusions about what might have happened historically. Davis became first known for her ideas about “possible history” through The Return of Martin Guerre , and according to Himmelfarb, in his book The French , Zeldin makes illusory connections that are not established by causation and chronology. These historians, then, abolish what we know by history. They impose their literary “‘critical’ or ‘ironic’ imagination” upon historical events and characters as if they were fictional material. Free from history’s “oppressive traditional tyrannies” of chronology, causation, and “facticity” they can simply make up a plausible historical account with no correspondence to facts. No wonder, says Himmelfarb, the words “fact” and “truth” are placed nowadays within quotation marks (_New History_ 122-3; “Abyss”; “Some Reflections” 668; “Remaking” 360-4, 379, 381; “Right”; “BAD”; Humpherys). Himmelfarb feels that the loss of truth to the notion of factitiousness in the most recent historiography threats Western humanism much more than the previous new history: the new nihilism about truth “may subvert liberal democracy together with all the other priggish metaphysical notions about truth, morality, and reality” (“Abyss” 345). The postmodernist history rejects even more easily the traditional historical genres that rest on the elitist yet universalist idea of truth. The substitutes postmodernism celebrates are equally fragments, and thus, more than ever before, the significance of elites, the majority, and national whole is trivialized. Furthermore, not only do the practitioners of the newest history single out “marginalized” social groups and magnify their historical importance, they justify it by largely inventing their past. As Himmelfarb’s example of women’s history goes, it is written intentionally from a deterministic feminist perspective, not based on actual experience of the historical actors. The risk in the spread of such a “conscious bias” is the possibility of a “total rewriting of history” (“Some Reflections”; “Self-Defeating”; Scott, “History”; Towes). Each element in Himmelfarb’s discourse and historical work echoes a parallel element of the American neoconservative ideology. First, the basic aspect of the vision of class structure. Himmelfarb clearly reflects what has developed into a neoconservative overall anti-radical concept of the class structure in western liberal democracies, especially in the United States. Ever since the 1950s, the answer neoconservative scholars have provided to the question of what is the best socio-political system for an industrialized, democratic, complex nation, has been “liberal pluralism.” This is a non-Marxist notion that prefers, as Himmelfarb demonstrates, to think about a socio-political structure of multiple groups. First, neoconservatives define these not as classes in the Marxian ideological sense, but as “interest groups.” Whether they are ethnic groups, labor unions, or voluntary organizations, they are guided not by ideologies or fixed principles, but by pragmatic interests. Second, while the Marxist class structure is a two-class structure, and the revolutionary process is a conflict between classes over who will get the entire pie, according to pluralism, there are many groups who compete among themselves for a larger piece of it. Being numerous actors in an established political arena makes such groups flexible and adaptable. Moreover, being in agreement on the basic socio-political principles that guide the country makes them, above all, anti-radical. As Himmelfarb explains the historical case of modern England, the English succeeded in achieving progress while maintaining stability because when lower classes were allowed to move up the socio-economic scale, they were nonetheless convinced of the legitimacy of the elite, and were committed to a consensus over society’s modest fundamental goals (Bloch, “Emergence”; Steinfels; Dorrien). In England, any extreme devotion to a singular ideological principle on others’ account was doomed to failure. As Himmelfarb argued--and neoconservatives have adopted this as a generally applicable argument--even the principle of “individual liberty” as a dominant absolute idea can harm the real liberties of others and, therefore, harm real liberalism completely. What more, she says, can prove the need for pragmatism and concession than the case of “Mill versus Mill.” Even John Stuart Mill himself realized that need for concession and later in life corrected his own initial radical “liberty” idea of On Liberty . Only when he changed did he truly deserve the title of “liberal” (_On Liberty_). Thus Himmelfarb’s dissatisfaction with the divisive tendencies by recent historians to particularize society stems from the neoconservative belief that such an approach threatens the unity and political balance that liberal pluralism provides. While neoconservatives believe in a multi-group pattern, they are disturbed by the intentions of radicals to impose a deterministic radical ideology on minority groups. According to neoconservatives, attempts to ideologically mobilize what are fundamentally content groups who are prepared to play only a modest political game, carry the danger of polarizing society, and possibly revolutionize it. The history of modern totalitarian revolutions proved to neoconservatives a few decades ago the futility and menace of ideologies. The answer they articulated in the 1950s was the theory of the “end-of-ideology.” This was an integral part of their anti-Stalinism and anticommunism, and has dominated their thought ever since. According to that principle, left-wing ideologies are always inherently dangerous because of their evil antidemocratic consequences, as the socialist and communist regimes they produced have demonstrated. Thus Himmelfarb’s attacks on radical historians, and obviously on the ex-Stalinists ones, are characterized by the typical neoconservative antagonistic spirit. To her as a neoconservative, an analysis that is guided by a radical ideology--be it original Marxist or revisionist Marxist--is forever misguided and misleading. And the more resentful neoconservatives have become toward radicalism and left-oriented liberalism, which, they believe, directs the new scholarship in the humanities, the more they have advocated conservative ideas. Especially since the 1970s, disillusioned by the ambitious government liberal social policies and left-wing demands to actively promote the American poor and blacks, they have stressed the limited capacity of the state to handle social and cultural issues and advance economic justice. Instead, they have urged bourgeois and traditional fraternal institutions--family, churches, voluntary associations--to assume much of the modern welfare state’s functions. They have emphasized that these are the institutions that bear the middle-class ethics, self-discipline, and moral prudence of the social majority, and therefore represent the genuine “public interest.” Morality, indeed, is proposed as the neoconservative desirable substitute for ideology. In fact, Himmelfarb significantly avoids in her texts the term ideology altogether. The counter-ideology is based on the notions that society is primarily a moral order and progress is an ethical, not a cosmic, taken-for-granted process. Neoconservatives, including Himmelfarb, are therefore alarmed by current--and historical--”absolute liberalism” not simply because it practically violates liberties. They fret about “the modish groups in our culture” who promote this kind of liberalism even more because they dismiss moral limits (Cheney 4). Just as neoconservatives prefer political leadership that respects bourgeois principles, so Himmelfarb prefers the English aristocratic reformers who, by appreciating rooted moral values, helped to bring about social and economic justice without violating liberties and communal solidarities. Himmelfarb’s call for a “restoration of the moral imagination” and her hope that “reality will assert itself, and culture...will once again assume the task...of interpreting reality” points to a tendency among neoconservatives to often elevate the cultural-moral realm over the ideological-political-economic realm (“In Defense” 463). They find pragmatism and complexities in the first sphere, which they associate with conservative thought, in contrast to determinism and simplicity in the other, which they identify with radical thought. Along with endorsing traditional culture, the neoconservatives wish to prove that in a “good society” the cultural and political realms must remain separate. Thus in liberal pluralism competition is defined only politically, that is, over material gains and power interests. Those interests are divorced from culture and morality, which should exist beyond conflicts. What underlies all the recent radical manifestations that concern neoconservatives is exactly what they understand as the politicization of phenomena that are mainly cultural: class, race, and gender. Politicization means, as it meant to them in the 1960s, a threat to the university. But more importantly, it implies forcing cultural entities, such as beliefs and life-style--which for the neoconservatives are not measurable in political terms--into the game of economics and power; forcing them out of the private domain of the individual and community into the public domain of the state. The danger in the confusion between the realms is in the penetration of non-quantifiable moral and cultural considerations into the quantifiable political and bureaucratic actions. According to the neoconservative analysis, this process of confusion, which is inherent in ideologies, causes emotionalism and absolutism to take over rationalism and pragmatism. The problem, however, is the loss of the latter, which are crucial for the well-functioning of democratic governments. Eventually, Himmelfarb’s rejection of postmodernism also relates to this problem. Epistemologically, neoconservatives have been committed to the western humanistic and scientific notions of truth. Truth, they admit, is not metaphysically absolute, yet empiricism and ethics do provide methods to determine true and false (Bloch, “Controversies”). But postmodernists’ extreme problematization of the idea of truth in their preoccupation with culture, and their efforts to place doubts also in the political sphere, might dangerously rob politics of its capacity to function on rational and pragmatic bases. But as much as Himmelfarb and the neoconservatives insist on the necessity of separating realms, they display difficulties in establishing this separation theoretically. A basic problem arises, for example, when we connect Himmelfarb’s central discussion on morality as a force that propels progress, with her criticism on the tendencies by radical historians to politicize culture, to use it as a resource to gain power, while, also, to renounce morality. As it appears in her own historical applications of the concept of morality, she does not definitely determine whether morality is a political or a cultural force. Because she cannot clearly observe within morality a political vs. cultural contrast, her Victorian reformers, for instance, come out as simultaneously cultural and political leaders, contradicting the theoretical principle of political-cultural division. Furthermore, since the reformer’s moral ethics was applied in political struggles to advance it, Himmelfarb cannot define their moral ethics as distinct from ideology, as her historiographical critique implies. Himmelfarb reflects the inability of neoconservatives to demonstrate that the actual separation between culture and politics is indeed possible in social reality, or that such separation reflects this reality. It has been precisely radical scholars in the last three decades who have observed the limitations and difficulties of strictly separating the cultural and the political man, culture and politics, ethics and ideology. In attempts to better comprehend the reality of human life they have sought to reconcile the two realms on the epistemological and theoretical level and consolidate the political with the cultural. It is their endeavors to reconcile these realms through a revisionist critique that a neoconservative, such as Himmelfarb, has tried to defeat. Works Cited Bess, Michael D. “E.P. Thompson: The Historian as Activist.” American Historical Review February (1993): 19-38. Bloch Avital H. “The Controversies Over the Curriculum in the 1980s: The Polemics of Sidney Hook.” Canadian Review of English Studies Nov. (2002): 31-45. ---. “The Emergence of Neoconservatism in the United States 1960-1972.” Diss. Columbia U, 1990. ---. “La historia como narrativa: aspectos de critica y de defensa.” Encuentro 4.3 (1986): 47-82. ---. “Multiculturalismo teor�a posmoderna y redefinici�n de la identidad nacional Norteamericana.” Identidades nacionalismos y regiones . Eds. Ricardo �vila Palafox and Tom�s Calvo Buezas. Guadalajara: U de Guadalajara; Madrid: U Complutense, 1993. 307-317. Burke, Peter. “History of Events and the Revival of Narrative.” New Perspectives on Historical Writing . Ed. Peter Burke. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP 1992. 233-48. Cannadine, David. “Cutting Classes.” New York Review of Books 17 Dec. (1992): 52-57. Cheney, Lynne V. “A Conversation with... Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb.” Humanities May-June (1991): 4-9. Davis, Natalie Z. The Return of Martin Guerre . Cambridge Mass.: Harvard UP, 1983. Degler, Carl N. “The New History.” Harper's June (1986): 4-6. Dorrien, Gary. The Neoconservative Mind: Politics Culture and the War of Ideology . Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993. Fromm, Harold. “Nervous Rapprochements.” Hudson Review Summer (1988): 377-83. Fuller, Edmund. “Victorian Vices and Virtues.” Wall Street Journal 25 Mar. 1986. Gross, John. “Review.” New York Times 28 Feb. 1986. Hays, Samuel P. “Review.” Journal of Social History Winter (1989): 395-96. Himmelfarb, Gertrude. “The Abyss Revisited.” American Scholar Summer (1992): 337-48. ---. “The BAD-mouthing of America.” New Republic 28 Oct. (1991): 27-31. ---. Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution . New York: Doubleday, 1959. ---. “In Defense of Progress.” Commentary June (1980): 53-60. ---. “In Defense of Two Cultures.” American Scholar Autumn (1981): 451-63. ---. “’Eagles in Manchester’: Inventing the Proletariat.” American Scholar Autumn (1983): 479-96. ---. “Of Heroes, Villains and Valets.” Commentary June (1991): 20-26. ---. “The Group: Bourgeois Britain and Its Marxist Historians.” New Republic 10 Feb. (1986): 28-36. ---. The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age . New York: Knopf, 1984. ---. Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. ---. “Manners into Morals.” American Scholar Spring (1988): 223-32. ---. Marriage and Morals Among Victorians and other Essays . New York: Vintage, 1987. ---. “Moral Responsibility: The British Experience.” Points of Light: New Approaches to Ending Welfare Dependency . Ed. Tamar Ann Mehuron. Washington D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center 1990. 1-7. ---. The New History and the Old . Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. ---. Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians . New York: Vintage, 1992. ---. “Self-Defeating Feminism.” New York Times 8 May 1989: A19. ---. “Some Reflections on the New History.” American Historical Review June (1989): 661-70. ---. “The ‘Real’ Marx.” Commentary Apr. (1985): 37-43. ---. “The Remaking of the Canon.” Partisan Review Spring (1991): 360-81. ---. “The Right to Misquote.” Commentary Apr. (1991): 31-34. ---. “Victorian Values Jewish Values.” Commentary Feb. (1989): 23-31. “Himmelfarb, Gertrude.” Current Biography Yearbook , 1985: 184-87. Himmelfarb, Gertrude, Lawrence Stone, and Carl Degler. “The New History.” Harper's June (1986): 4-6. Humpherys, Anne. “Review.” Victorian Studies Summer (1985): 188-90. Magnet, Myron. “The Life of Ideas.” Commentary Sep. (1986): 58-61. McKendrick, Neil. “Defending ‘All the Decent Drapery of Life’.” New York Review of Books 23 Mar. 1986: 9-10. Meacham, Standish. “Review.” American Historical Review Oct. (1992): 1219. Murray, Charles. “The Victorian Underclass - and Our Own.” Wall Street Journal 27 Sep. 1991: A10. Nisbet, Robert. “’The Decent Drapery of Life’: Morals Among the Victorians.” Humanities May-June (1991): 21-23. Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: “The Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Petersen, William. “Review.” American Historical Review Oct. (1984): 1073-74. Porter, Roy. “Charitable Contributions.” New Republic Nov. 25 1991: 34-7. ---. “The Heart of the Country.” New Republic May 4 1992: 35-8. Ryan, Alan. “Do-Gooders.” New York Review of Books 7 Nov. 1991: 3-6. Rubin, Merle. “A Scholar Looks at the Writing of History.” Christian Science Monitor 4 Nov. (1987): 20. Schama, Simon. Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) . New York: Knopf, 1991. Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society . Knoxville Tenn: Whittle, 1991. Scott, Joan Wallach. “History in Crisis? The Others' Side of the Story.” American Historical Review June (1989): 680-92. ---. “Review.” American Historical Review June (1989): 699-700. Semmel, Bernard. “Gertrude Himmelfarb: In Celebration.” Humanities May-June (1991): 30-34. ---. “Two Views of social History: E.P. Thompson and Gertrude Himmelfarb.” Partisan Review Steinfels, Peter. The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing American Politics . New York: Simon, 1979. Towes, John E. “Perspectives on ‘The Old History and the New’: A Comment.” American Historical Review June (1989): 693-98. Turner, Frank M. “Review.” American Historical Review June (1987): 666-67. Wilentz, Sean. “The New History & Its Critics.” Dissent Spring (1989): 242-49. Zeldin. Theodore. The French . New York: Pantheon, 1982. 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CURRENT URL http://arabist.net/archives/2004/12/17/the-empire-attacking-academic-freedom/
The Empire Attacking Academic Freedom Today's Guadian Reports that the Tariq Ramadan saga in the States is ending. Ramadan, swiss citizen and grand-son of Egyptian MB founder Hassan al-Banna, is one of Europe's most important Islamist thinkers. He won joint- appointments at Notre Dame last spring to teach Islamic studies and religion, conflict, and peace-building. A week before arriving Stateside in August, Homeland Security revoked his visa because of a security threat which was neither disclosed nor clarified. Despite attempts, including petitions signed by the most prominent of US academics working on the ME, the government chose to say and do nothing. Yesterday it more or less ended with Ramadan resigning his appointments at Notre Dame. There is a direct and aggressive assault on thought on behalf of the American Empire. The last MESA presidential address by Laurie Brand at the San Franscisco meeting in November cogently argued such a line. When it is published on the web, it will be posted. Academics, intellectals, and thinkers have for centuries struggled with various types of governments about their ideas. Now the world's latest Empire has joined the rather poor company of governments that oppose intellectuals. After 9/11 there was a moment to deepen understanding, spread lines of inquiry, and increase integration. The Bush administration missed the chance by opting for the conservative more long-term detrimental route. Shame on them. Some of my Egyptian friends happily rushed to say that "America is not allowing Tariq Ramadan to teach there" so as to flaunt the US mistake last fall. Unfortunately, a fact not revealed in the Egyptian press is that Ramadan has not been allowed into Egypt since 1995. The sad part is that I bet a high majority of Americans do not even know this is going on. Oh....the empire does not have to disclose what is not happening. It is ok though - these is an ebb in government-intellectual relations. Academic disciplines will continue. Thankfully, hard-working, serious thinkers that push the envelop would not have it any other way....from where ever they find the space and tolerance to practice their trade. Keep thinking...it pisses them off. 8 Comments Published by Josh Stacher December 17th, 2004 Categories: Posts . 8 Responses to "The Empire Attacking Academic Freedom" Feed for this Entry 1 Moritz Dec 18th, 2004 at 4:08 pm tariq ramadan is a bad example to show american policy. ramadan was interviewed by the swiss paper weltwoche a while ago and started to shout at the interviewers, because they were crtically questioning his points of view. this man is neither an itellectual, nor in any way able to take part in a dialogue. this man spreads a doctrine, but does not want to be questioned. moritz 2 Josh Stacher Dec 19th, 2004 at 10:52 am I disagree completely with your comment but am glad you made it. I think Ramadan is a perfect example of US policy. With all due respect, I feel you tried to muddle my argument by emphasizing what kind of person Tariq Ramadan may or may not be rather than what the US administration did. The purposes of my posting was not to support or defend Tariq Ramadan's personality, ideology, or intellectual abilities. That was Notre Dame's job. Rather, I wished to highlight that Ramadan's case is yet the latest of the Orwellian-like attempts to control thought and debates in American universities. The fact that Notre Dame chose him to teach at the university and Homeland Security got in the way and prevented Ramadan from coming is the problem. I could careless if Ramadan is a nice guy or not. Ramadan or anyone else a university chooses to lecture, share ideas, and contribute to a university environment should be allowed to do so. The onus for universities to bring in the right people is the universities' business, not the government's. Your line of argumentation makes it...."well I agree there are problems but since Ramadan is disagreeable then so what this time". The real question is the US admin paranoid that Ramadan may be able to advocate a more nuanced version of Islam. Or, is it just as simple that they blocked him because his grandfather was Hassan al-Banna. Either way this is a satisfactory and scary example of US policy towards the academy. For more see Laurie Brand's Presidential Address at MESA in SF last November. It is available at http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/Bulletin/Pres%20Addresses/Brand.htm The citation is as follows: "Scholarship in the Shadow of Empire," 2004 MESA Presidential Address, Forthcoming, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Vol 39, no.1, (Summer 2005). Also see: Joel Beinin, �€SThe New American McCarthyism: Policing Thought about the Middle East,�€� Race & Class 46 (no. 1, July-September 2004):101-15. _____________________________ No hard feeling Moritz - I enjoy disagreements as much as agreements. 3 Moritz Dec 19th, 2004 at 4:19 pm hi josh, i realised, that i didn't make my point as clear, as i could have. tariq ramadan has a swiss passport. therefor he has the right to live in this country. tariq ramadan has interesting opinions. and from an academic point of view, it is interesting to read his books, because he pronounces many things other people would not write. for every student it would be interesting to sit in a lecture held by tariq ramadan. you would get a quiet nice picture of what you could call the european way of islamism. still, there is different institutions, which have different jobs to do. the universities job is to get the most interesting people to teach their students. but it is not their job to check, if there is a security risk if that person comes to their country. that is the job of the ministry of interior (in any normal country) and that of the forsaken HLS in the US. if the responsible ministry believes the person to be a risk for internal security and to spread certain ideas in radical circles it does have the right to reject the visa request of that person. you might agree or disagree with the choice the ministry of HLS has taken. probably tariq ramadan is an islamist, who in the end, does not pose a thread. but you can't question, that the ministry does have the general right to take such a decision, because otherwise it would be local universities and professors for whatever who should decide who is safe or not safe to come to a specific country. of course immigration policies are always connected to other policies and interests. these connections are part of what different parties stand for. i personally disagree with strict immigration policies, because i usually am the one profiting from liberal immigration. but i did not like the dcutus of your article. "the empire attacking academic freedom" filed in "human rights". you know, the german translation of empire is "reich". besides the US do not really fit the concept of an empire altogether. if you chose to use polemic vocabulary, you might prefer to mark in the title, that it is an "opinion piece". i don't think either that tariq ramadan has the right to teach in the US and especially not a right connected to the fact,t hat he is a human being. you also have this paragraph "Academics, intellectals, and thinkers have for centuries struggled with various types of governments about their ideas. Now the world�€™s latest Empire has joined the rather poor company of governments that oppose intellectuals." here you say that tariq ramadan is an intellectual. he might be intelligent. but being an intellectual is more. that means you are ready to take part in an intellectual academic dialogue. tariq ramadan is not. "The sad part is that I bet a high majority of Americans do not even know this is going on. Oh�€�.the empire does not have to disclose what is not happening." well said (i really like the style of that sentence). but you imply indirectly, that the government stops media from publishing on the subject. but even, if you live in the US you do have access to "free media". problem is not, that the government does not run around naked and yell "ha ha, we surpress academia". problem is, most people, even if they did, would ask "so what?". "from where ever they find the space and tolerance to practice their trade. " here you seem to be generally speaking and if you would be, i could agree. but this article is still on tariq ramadan. for a long time we were basically ignoring radical islamic (and christian) tendencies in europe for the sake of tolerance. but it does not make sense to be tolerating the intolerant. look, i don't like the actual american government. i don't agree with many of their policies etc. but (i believe) it is not the right decision to formulate this kind of radical tolerance towards anything in the name of academia etc. just to be the proper antithesis of mr bush & co. i had quiet a lot of contact with islamists, even some who would use violence to realize their goals. you won't change their opinions by being a nice guy. looking forward to your reply, moritz 4 Josh Stacher Dec 19th, 2004 at 4:54 pm Dear Moritz, Thanks for the reply. We are going to have to agree to disagree on this. The problem with HLS is that it is far to conservative about who it lets in. It stopped Cat Stevens for goodness sake. This is a guy who wrote "Peace Train". There is a lot of Islamophobia in the US and I think Ramadan is one example that people can learn from - be they approve or disapprove of his style or ideas. Notre Dame cannot and should not doing the country's intelligence work and determining who has access to the US. However, HLS is preventing non-threats from entering based on politics when instead it should be about what the law says. There are processes and they should be followed. Then after they exclude/block people, they also refuse to disclose the reasons why. You can have it both ways in Bushworld, but in the other world you cannot. Perhaps you are right and I am wrong about Ramadan's intellectual prowess. But Ramadan was not denied entry because of this. And so what if they block him as a non-intellectual this time. The next time it will be an intellectual. I am well aware and do not expect the American or any other government from coming out and "tell on itself" and intentions. However, I reserve the right to criticize the hell out of any governments' decisions. Bush & Co have had three years to do something after 9/11 and it is all about war, marginalization, and exclusion. Perhaps it is time to try a new approach. 5 Josh Stacher Dec 19th, 2004 at 5:03 pm Dear Moritz, I forgot to address this issue.... America may not dominate physcial territory like the British or Roman empire did when they had holdings all over the world. Nevertheless, the US has its military, economic and political reach everywhere. Before the deployment of troops for the invasion of Iraq, the US military had 752 military installations in more than 130 countries. The Defense's budget is equal to the combined military budgets of the next 12 or 15 nations. MNCs and their investment capability are beyond doubt. They can cripple a country economically. Indeed, in a book I very much disagree with, Nial Ferguson argues, "in terms of economic resources as well as of military capability the US not only resembles but in some respects exceeds the last great Anglophone empire," (Ferguson, Colossus, 2004, p.19) Besides if that is not enough, Bushie says the US is not an empire and we all know reality is different outside of his bubble. Happy holidays! 6 Moritz Dec 19th, 2004 at 5:16 pm i'm not even sure if our opinions are so far away from eachother. i would crticize the ministry of HLS as well. i just did not like the way you took to do so. but the cat stevens example really made me smile. i wonder if they (HLS) really still have control over what they do. a friend of mine wanted to got on holydays to the US with his parents and his bother. they all travel on indian passports. his father is a quiet wealthy buisenessman here in switzerland. they actually granted visa to everyone except for him. the reason given? he's indian and studying computer science! oh right. i still have not managed to make a proper connection between the two things. as you may imagine the family decided to skip their US vacation for now. besides, he is a quiet good student. he is planning to do a phd. he wanted to go to the US, but now he is looking for a place in the UK. things like that happen everyday. other academics leave the country because there is too much hassle with the visa. european universities already see the applications going up. students/phd students/professors from all around the world, who would have gone to the US before come to europe now. all of this has a huge negative impact on academia in the US. but if you look at it, how much is really intentional. i doubt bush intentionally harms research and science in the US. it rather seems to me, that it is a sideeffect of a really malformulated policy, dedicated on a different question. moritz 7 Moritz Dec 19th, 2004 at 5:25 pm on the empire argument. all things you quote make the US a super power. factually it makes the US the only present super power. but the difference between a state and an empire is, that the state has a border and defines itself by its power monopoly inside its own border, while accepting other states have a power monopoly within their borders. an empire is a dragon always attemting to extend its borders and swallowing whatever neighbours there are. at the same time the empire is often held together by a central power, but it still has to acknowledge, that there is other local powers. the empire is therefore often better charactericized by the term power oligopoly. definitions are always clear, reality usually vague. but i guess by following these definitions the US is rather a state than an empire.
CURRENT URL http://archives.acls.org/op/20_Humanities_in_Schools.htm
A merican C ouncil of L earned S ocieties Occasional Paper No. 20 The Humanities in the Schools THE HUMANITIES AND PUBLIC EDUCATION Stanley N. Katz Cultural Equity? Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Women's Studies Movement Catharine R. Stimpson The Humanities and Public Education Stanley N. Katz American Council of Learned Societies T his evening represents the beginning of the culmination of a dream I have had since assuming the presidency of ACLS six years ago. Our organization is best known as a confederation of the national humanities and social science disciplinary societies in this country, a leading provider of post-doctoral research fellowships, the administrator of area studies and international faculty exchange programs, and the publisher of scholarly reference books. Since our founding in 1919 as the United States representative to the Union Internationale Academique, we have been one of the most important higher education organizations in the world, and the voice of the scholarly humanities community in this country. We must continue to serve these functions if there is to be a healthy and vital humanities and social sciences community. But I think that we must do much more if ACLS is both to serve the interests of the humanities broadly construed, and if we are to receive the public support the humanities deserve. I have argued for the past six years that we must expand our efforts at both ends of the life cycle, paying more heed to the needs of out-of-school adults and, crucially, to children in primary and secondary schools�an area in which ACLS pioneered through the use of summer workshops for high school teachers in the 1960s. We have been expanding our concern for adults through work with the Federation of State Humanities Councils. And for several years we have tried to familiarize ourselves with the leading K�12 curricular reform efforts (an area in which I have personally been active for 30 years due to my commitment to the improvement of American history teaching in the schools). It proved difficult, however, to develop a fundable K�12 project for an organization whose focus has been almost entirely post-doctoral research. Funders quite reasonably asked who we were to presume to enter the crowded world of pre-collegiate education, and I am deeply grateful to the Pew Charitable Trusts, the DeWitt Wallace-Reader�s Digest Fund, and our anonymous donor for their vote of confidence in this neophyte effort. As recently as 24 months ago I would not have believed that there would be an ACLS K�12 project during my tenure in office. Since I have already confessed that I am a dreamer, let me further confess that I view this project in which you have joined us as the beginning of an ACLS Education Office, which will focus our efforts on questions of education all across the life span, but especially on the K�16 years. Those of you who are professionals in elementary and secondary education will surely have noted the reluctance of those of us in �higher� education to attend systematically to questions of teaching and learning. The politics of higher education (for what I take to be the wrong reasons) are now forcing the colleges and universities rightly to take questions of education more seriously, so that it is now opportune for us to forge more lasting ties among educators of all kinds, and to share our experience, expertise, and wisdom. You may be amused to hear that this point was made at my expense just two weeks ago. My son, Derek, a musician, has just married a wonderful young woman named Sally whom he met because she played the cello in his orchestra in Boston. Soon after they met, they realized that their fathers had been closest friends in high school and college many, many years ago. Sally�s father, Mike Greenebaum, went on to a master�s degree in teaching (and later an Ed.D.), and a career as a history teacher and elementary school principal in Amherst, Massachusetts. I went on to a Ph.D. in history and a career as a university teacher and academic administrator. Mike wrote a brief musical comedy telling the story of our intertwined family histories for the wedding reception. About the first years of our friendship, one of the characters crooned that, after college, �Stan went into college teaching and Mike went into education.� Touch�. Well, I think that he is right, and I�m now trying to make it up. The underlying premise of the program in which we are engaged is that there is an unnecessary and counterproductive fracture within the teaching profession, between those who teach youngsters in the K through 12 years and those who teach grades 13 to 16. We should share the same concerns for the education of our students, although of course our strategies, techniques, and interim goals will frequently be quite different. I do not mean to trivialize important differences, among them the fact that for some post-secondary teachers the activity of teaching is subordinated to research, while for some pre-collegiate teachers the transfer of content-knowledge is less important than the maintenance of discipline. And so on. At least some of the time, nevertheless, we are all committed to conveying the most advanced and useful knowledge to our students. For those students we are very similar actors at different points in the educational process. What happens educationally in the schools is important to post-secondary educators not only because pre-collegiate teachers prepare some of their students for us, but also because they have both experiential and theoretical knowledge about pedagogy (both teaching and learning) to impart to us, though we have seldom taken their expertise with sufficient seriousness. Conversely, the disciplinary professionals of the colleges and universities have subject matter expertise which is essential to school teachers. Both need to learn from each other, but until fairly recently there were few institutional mechanisms for the sharing of knowledge and experience across the high school-college crevasse. It is now, happily, trite to say so, but such sharing has to be carefully structured so that no one is condescended to. There are many examples of mutually beneficial processes, ranging from both discipline- and university-based high school-college alliances through the efforts of innovative colleges of education to joint efforts in particular fields (such as geography, mathematics, and classics). When my colleagues and I began to plan a national education project, we surveyed the 52 learned societies which comprise ACLS to determine what they were doing with respect to K�12 education in their fields. We were gratified to discover that all of the large societies and several of the smaller ones (19 in all) had significant pre-collegiate programs. Most were also actively attempting to recruit school teachers to their professional meetings and other activities. This convinced us that the process of transmitting disciplinary knowledge was being attended to by the several fields, but left us with the sense that something needed to be done to move this process to center stage and national attention, especially in the fields of humanistic knowledge. Ironically, however, �humanities� is not a term much used in our schools, although humanistic subjects such as literature, classics, language, philosophy, and history all appear at various points in K�12 curricula. There is no professional category of pre-collegiate humanities education, either in the education schools or in school systems, although, for better or worse, �social studies� (though not �social science�) has a recognized place in training and in the schools. It seems odd that our curricula should have taken the humanities so much for granted as not to label them pedagogically. Categorical recognition is not the aim of the ACLS project, but we would like to see more attention paid to the humanities in the schools. Not so much more time, for we recognize that there are only so many hours in a teaching day, but more thoughtful consideration of the educational function and relevance of the subjects which comprise the humanities, and more adequate presentation of humanistic ideas and materials. This is particularly true at a time when the humanities fields are among the most exciting to undergraduate students. The humanities work extremely well pedagogically, forming the core of liberal education, and they could work much better than they currently do in the schools. At least one of the aims of elementary and secondary education, after all, is to provide a common core of liberal education for youngsters in a democratic society, but the nature of an appropriate liberal education in the schools has not received much attention since the days of John Dewey. It is not just that more �up-to-date� humanities knowledge should be conveyed (though no high school teacher would aspire to teach the �old� math or outdated physics), but rather that the intellectual and pedagogical centrality of the humanities is as applicable to schools as to colleges. College humanities teachers cannot tell school teachers how to enhance the humanistic content of their curricula, but they can work with them to make it happen. That is the philosophy behind this ACLS project. There is no easy way to define the humanities. The legislation which created the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1965 simply listed the obvious fields, among them philosophy, literature, music, history, political science, anthropology, and so forth. The belated 1982 Congressional charter of the ACLS said only that we are responsible for the humanities and the humanistic aspects of the social sciences. Neither document specifies the arts as aspects of humane knowledge and creativity, but surely they must be included. One can say, negatively, that the fields of the humanities are those which study human experience, past and present, by means other than those of precise measurement. As Justice Potter Stewart commented on pornography, we may not be able to define the humanities, but we know humanistic work when we see it. This is not the moment for a learned lecture on classical humanism, or its revival in the 16th century, but most western and eastern cultures do have long traditions of the humanistic study of mankind�of thought, politics, artistic expression, and other types of behavior. At the end of the last century, in the higher education of Europe and the United States, the several types of humanistic knowledge were categorized into �fields� of knowledge as the newly emerging research universities rationalized their organization and the newly self-aware disciplines claimed professional status. History, for instance, became a �department,� with the Ph.D. in history as its certification and with the newly-formed American Historical Association as its professional organization. And, likewise, philosophy, literature, and the other fields that now compromise the humanities divisions of our universities took on their modern form. There were and are divisions of opinion about allegiances�Is political science in the humanities or social sciences? Are political theorists social scientists or mathematical philosophers humanists?�but by and large the humanities departments of the university are those which study human activity from a non-behavioral perspective. And in any case there are close linkages between the normative and behavioral study of human life. But the classical architecture has begun to crumble. After all, anything in our culture more than a century old is an antique. There are at least two new forces undermining the old foundations: the weakening of disciplinary boundaries and the popularity of new scholarly topics which cannot be defined in traditional disciplinary terms. For more than a generation, scholarly work in the humanities has become simultaneously cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary for the simple reason that scholars have become concerned with problems which cannot be easily solved in straightforward disciplinary terms. Let me use my own career as an example. I earned my Ph.D. in American History with a dissertation on 18th-century Anglo-American politics. Studying political behavior in colonial America, however, I soon began to focus on legal institutions, and realized that I needed to know some law in order to understand my subjects. So I went to law school for a year, but returned to teach both American colonial history and legal history in a history department. After a couple of years, however, I moved to a law school and extended my research to constitutional law, both contemporary and historical, still inquiring into why Americans structured their political institutions as they do. In more recent years, I have begun to wonder why Americans created an �independent sector,� neither government nor business, to accomplish important social tasks, and I have begun to work on the behavior of not-for-profit institutions. All along, I have had a special interest in religion and religious institutions. During the 30 years of my teaching career, I have trained undergraduates and graduate students in history, law, art, journalism, political science, and sociology. What would you say is my field? I may have lost track, but I believe I belong to the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the American Studies Association, the Law and Society Association, the Selden Society, the Osgoode Society, the Conference on Critical Legal Studies�and probably others. I have been president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Society for Legal History. I am surely basically an historian, but my research and teaching have been driven by my pedagogical, intellectual, and political interests rather than by the traditional job description of the �American historian.� The second anti-disciplinary pressure in academia is the tendency of scholars to define themselves by the problems they address rather than the techniques they use. I have mentioned my interest in the not-for-profit sector�there is already a small group of scholars who define themselves as specialists in philanthropy, but who were trained as sociologists, economists, or historians. Much more important are the rapidly emerging fields of African-American Studies and Women�s Studies, and in general the movement toward cultural studies. These new interests put pressures on the classical departments and have led to the creation of numerous new programs in colleges and in universities. Partly as a matter of the inherent disciplinary conservatism of the humanities and partly due to very real economic constraints, relatively few new humanities departments have been formed, and we remain unclear about proper training in these new fields of interest. In the sciences, of course, the natural course has been to disaggregate old departments and even to create entirely new ones as research developments dictate the need. But, of course, there are a great many other new forces making for change in the humanities. I�ll try to suggest at least some of them this evening simply to give you a notion of the variety of activity and the sense of change. Technology has had a dramatic impact. While I have made the point that humanists seldom employ precise measurement or largescale computation, the computer revolution has had a range of dramatic effects on our work. Perhaps the most important is the creation of electronic databases for everything from bibliographical information (you can�t use the information if you cannot locate it) to full-text databases. I�ll give just two examples of the latter type. One would be the two major legal databases (LEXIS and WestLaw) which contain all legal decisions and much other data (legislation, regulation) in full text, fully machine-searchable. Another type is the Dartmouth Dante project, which has entered into machine-readable form all of the commentaries on the Divine Comedy, or the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, which contains on a single CD-Rom all of the classical Greek texts written before 700 A.D. This means that the scholar at her desk at home can summon up vast amounts of information, and manipulate them in ways it would have taken 100 19th-century scholars a century to accomplish. And note that this information is theoretically accessible on-line or on-disk anywhere in the country (or world), a radically democratic development when compared to the traditional scholarly advantage of those who worked in the universities with the largest libraries. There are, of course, many other beneficial consequences of the electronic revolution (not the least of them the electronic library catalogue), but I particularly want to notice the capacity to communicate by computer. This links the scholar not only to the new electronic sources of information, wherever they may be, but also to other scholars by e-mail. I keep in touch with colleagues in Germany, England and Australia this way, and can exchange information with them cheaply and instantaneously. Which leads me to the next new pressure: the internationalization of the scholarly community. This process began in earnest with the development of the jet aircraft, but it has been greatly stimulated by the ease of computer communication, the problem-orientation of research, and the end of the Cold War. The relevant scholarly community in all fields of the humanities is now an international community, and this has had an invigorating impact upon American scholarship, which for too long was dependent upon the beneficial impact of the remarkable group of European intellectual refugees whom the Nazis bequeathed to the United States. It is important to recognize that internationalization will continue to have a profound cultural impact upon the often parochial character of native American thinking, suggesting new approaches, themes and problems. Another strong new pressure, less obviously beneficial than internationalization, is the dramatic increase in the specialization of humanities research and teaching. As the teaching profession exploded demographically in the 1960s, the combination of the large numbers of new graduate students doing dissertation research with the development of new research methodologies and interests produced a vast flow of scholarship, much of which was much more tightly focused than that of early generations of humanities scholars. As with a microscope, the narrowing of the field of view can produce important discoveries, but it also tends to obscure the larger context. Perhaps more important, specialized scholars sometimes prefer to teach quite narrowly defined courses which undergraduate students have a hard time contextualizing. When it comes to transferring this specialized knowledge to the earlier years of schooling, some sophisticated translation will be required. Conversely, exposure to the traditionally broader focus of pre-collegiate education may produce important pedagogical insights for university teachers. Which brings us to perhaps the most heralded of the new pressures on humanities research and teaching: multiculturalism. Two and perhaps all three of the other speakers at this conference will discuss multiculturalism, so that I will mention only a few obvious points. The first is that humanists can no longer ignore the fact that the humanities have multiple traditions. Without confronting the problem of priority or superiority, we are everywhere reminded that there a great many traditions in the study of human thought and behavior�not just the Euro-American tradition and those of East Asia (the two most commonly taught and studied in the United States), but many, many others. Our students of other than European origin demand to know about their cultural roots, just as our faculty colleagues of other than European origin increasingly turn their scholarly mirrors on their own past. The result has been an explosion of interest in �foreign� cultures and a vast enrichment of the parameters of humanistic teaching and research in this country. But the movement to multiculturalism has brought in its wake some serious difficulties. We have too few teachers trained in the less common languages and cultures, and too little in the way of source material for research. The racial, ethnic, and national enthusiasms, which frequently accompany multiculturalism, can lead to a new sort of xenophobia, introspection, and cultural antagonism. The historic politicization of the academy has been exacerbated by the newly invigorated cultural allegiances, and the intervention of partisan politics into the educational sphere has proved too tempting to resist. And yet most thoughtful people agree that the myth of American cultural homogeneity has lost whatever shred of intellectual plausibility it might have had earlier in this century. One of the principal challenges to the humanities is the clarification of pedagogically and intellectually responsible approaches to multiculturalism at all levels of education. I want to mention one final development which has had a dramatic impact on the humanities in higher education, and that is its new inclusiveness. It is no exaggeration to say that, as recently as a generation ago, the humanities focused on old, elite (and largely Euro-American) cultural texts and problems. It was the case in every field, from music to philosophy. But now every aspect of human life seems suitable for serious humanistic study�all social classes, all the areas of the world, all periods of time (including the present), and all activities. Needless to say, women and African-Americans in particular have become leading subjects of study, but so have the sorts of mundane activity which the concentration on �high� culture caused to be overlooked: work, birth and death, play, and anything else for which a text exists. Corresponding to this subject-matter inclusiveness has been a remarkable expansion of the idea of the �text.� Humanists now claim to be able to read non-literate texts of all kinds, from religious and secular ceremonies to culinary traditions. We �read� styles of dress, patterns of sexual behavior, sports, photographs, buildings, popular songs. And to do so we have developed a great variety of new research techniques, since the old modes of reading traditional literary texts do not work for our new universe of subjects. My feeling is that it is this new inclusiveness that best characterizes the modern humanities. What an exciting period it is! Take African-American Studies as an example. Just think of the significance of the discoveries by Skip Gates and others of a large body of literature created by African-American women, the use by Eugene Genovese of slave songs, the identification by Peter Wood of the persistence of West African languages in the colonial American South, or even the controversial assertions about slave plantation agricultural productivity by Stan Engerman and Bob Fogel. The field of American Studies is currently swept along by a focus on popular culture, with serious work on movies, radio programs, beauty contests, and ethnic patterns of behavior. I could continue the list almost indefinitely, but I know that the after-dinner speaker must control his enthusiasms. I have spent so much time on the transformation of humanistic scholarship because I think it is immediately relevant to our common concerns with elementary and secondary education. Ironically, the fact that the humanities have never been institutionalized in the K�12 years may provide us with an opportunity to incorporate much of the new material and many of the novel approaches into the curricula of the schools. We do not have to fight the university departments, nor do we have to apologize for teaching subjects that students enjoy (always a somewhat suspect activity in the university). What we need to do is to determine how the new (that is, the inclusive and innovative) humanities can be brought to bear to increase the range of knowledge necessary to the intellectual development (that is, their liberal education) and social acculturation of young Americans, and how some of the new humanities research and teaching techniques can be made to work for school teachers. That is why the ACLS project is set up to be a collaboration between pre-collegiate and post-secondary teachers in a loosely-organized seminar setting. That is why we have asked some of the leading college and university teachers in the humanities to participate in our seminars. And that is why we must all work with our other colleagues in individual schools and school districts to work out not only new teaching materials and routines, but also strategies for establishing them in our largest school systems. What is at stake is bringing the best in humanities education to the largest number of young Americans in the most effective fashion. It is important to say that we need not concede anything in arguing for the importance of humanities education for youngsters. Today�s New York Times has an article reporting on a conference of economists convened to advise on how the United States can resume its economic growth. �Time and again,� the reporter notes, �the economists stressed the importance of improving �human capital,� meaning that a better-educated, better-trained work force can lift a nation�s growth rate.� The sub-headline is: �One consensus among the bickering: educate the work force.� I don�t doubt that most of the conferees and most readers of the Times will interpret the article to mean that Americans must be taught to count and do science, and so they must. But they must also be taught to read with discrimination, reason in complicated ways, appreciate the arts, and distinguish values. These things they will learn primarily from the humanities, and they are not frills. To paraphrase George Santayana, we must not neglect the utility of apparently useless knowledge. The humanities are not only educationally useful; they are indispensable. And so I close as I started. Tonight is indeed the culmination of my dream of an ACLS K�12 project, but it is also the beginning of a more important aspiration�that a continuing collaboration between the humanites teachers and scholars who comprise ACLS will have begun tonight, a collaboration whose beneficiary will be all of our children, and all of us. By now you will have guessed that I am counting on you to make me an educator. It is my best opportunity to �be like Mike.�
CURRENT URL http://archives.acls.org/op/31_Beyond_the_Academy.htm
A merican C ouncil of L earned S ocieties Occasional Paper No. 31 Beyond the Academy: A Scholar�s Obligations George R. Garrison Arnita A. Jones Robert Pollack Edward W. Said THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ACADEMY AND ITS ACADEMICIANS George R. Garrison Reflections on the History Wars Arnita A. Jones The Dangers of Willful Ignorance Robert Pollack On Defiance and Taking Positions Edward W. Said The Social Responsibility of the Academy and Its Academicians George R. Garrison Kent State University T he April 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City rang every bell in every head in America that is conscious, sufficiently mature, rational, and intelligent. It has reduced most of us to the most common denominator � moral agents, sensitive human beings and citizens with a common ideal and ethos. I commended the American Council of Learned Societies for raising this issue, even before this tragedy struck. The topic, �Beyond the Boundaries of the Academy: What is the Scholar�s Obligation to the Larger Public,� is certainly apropos . It is certainly no longer merely an intellectual exercise, if any one ever thought such, to raise that most important and timely question. Hate has always been with us and on a large scale, but did not impact the majority of population to a significant degree. And for whatever reason, the Academy in general has not adequately dealt with the truth about this phenomenon in our midst. Because of this, and the other things, we have lived under the shadow of illusion rather than that of reality, subjectivity instead of objectivity, social remoteness and isolationism, as opposed to fraternity and neighborliness, apathy and noninvolvement, over and above empathy the human solidarity. The hatred and violence that have historically manifested themselves through the institution of slavery and segregation, and the unimaginative violence of lynching, castrations, the bombing of churches and the killing of students by law enforcement agents on the campuses of the Black Academy, has struck with all the force of its deepest and most uncompromising, insensitive and indiscriminate ugliness, in the heartland of this nation. No society can continue to exist as a highly developed civilization if its supports, or allows to exist unchecked, high levels of violence, hate, confusion, and misunderstanding. There is more rhetoric and polemic directed at the minds of people today than ever before. It has removed the clarity in our thought processes and replaced it with confusion; It has suppressed the growing buds of harmony among our citizenry, and replaced it with friction in internecine conflict; It has attacked and begun to dismantle an educational system that, despite its flaws, was both the envy of the world and the hope of the nation, because of the access it provided all citizens at all levels. 1 This rhetoric and polemic, and the ugly politics from which they came, have thrown our society into a mode of social decay and devolution, where the very fabric of our national community, including the idealism that has been one of our greatest sources of inspiration, has begun to unravel. This has developed, to a large extent, because of the inaction, apathy, preoccupation with other matters, and, in some rare instances, complicity of members and segments of the Academy. I do not want to be guilty of over-generalization, so let me be clear in saying that I know that many from our ranks have represented us well on the front, and near front, lines of this struggle. My point is simply that they have been the exceptions and not the rule. There needs to be a conscious effort with a deliberate strategy by the Academy as a whole, to assume what I think is its social responsibility. In this brief discussion, I would like to discuss what really amounts to the social role and mission of the university and the Professor/Scholar. There are three parts to this short paper. First I lay out the basic assumptions of my argument, which really undergirds what comes later. Next is a discussion about the role, purpose and mission of Liberal Arts Institutions of Higher Learning. And lastly, I examine the civic and social responsibilities of those researchers and teachers who work in the Academy I. There are certain presuppositions or basic assumptions in this paper that I think it best to disclose immediately, viz.: All human beings have inalienable/human/natural rights, among which are LIFE, LIBERTY and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. All rational creatures are bound by the IMPERATIVES OF CIVILITY. All mature rational beings, individually and collectively, have SOCIAL RESPONSIBILTIES toward each other. Human beings have a MORAL OBLIGATION to participate in the historical struggle for social development and progress. Institutions in our society exist, among other reasons, to empower individuals toward self-sufficiency, to promote the general welfare, and to aid in the process of social preservation, development, and progress. II. Society as we know it, and that which we hope for, cannot exist without its institutions. The entire range of human activities occur, generally, within the scope of these societal entities or edifices that we call institutions � financial, marital, religious, military, educational, etc. Society does not, contrary to the views of the nineteenth century sociologist/historicist Herbert Spencer and others who think like him, improve itself or progress inevitably. It requires the active participation of its best minds and most energetic members, along with institutions that function efficiently, effectively and justly. If we conceptualize the Academy, generally, as an institution, we can identify its purpose as being primarily to: educate and train the citizenry; discover and disseminate new knowledge; monitor, record and analyze the human condition; encourage and facilitate human creativity and intellectual production through the ARTS, HUMANITIES, SCIENCES and TECHNOLOGY; and aid in the search for, and discovery of, solutions to the pressing problems that threaten the existence and undermine the well-being of humanity. The Academy has a unique responsibility and opportunity to be a major force in the process of civilision � the art and practice of civilized living. 2 Moreover, it must play a role in the creation of a better society. It does this in sundry but connected ways. Furthermore, it must be conscious of the critical role it plays in the maintenance of a free, open, and just society. Under this broad umbrella called the Academy are found professional, vocation, and other types of institutions that do not embrace the traditional role and mission of the Liberal Arts Institution. Hence, what is being claimed here would apply to them to a much lesser degree. It is, therefore, the Traditional Liberal Arts Institutions that embody, more than any of the others, what we mean by the Academy. To achieve its highest purpose the Academy must embrace a mission that grows out of its true raison d�etre and that is significant and meaningful to the human experience. Additionally, it must provide a curriculum that not only adequately covers the content areas of traditional disciplines, but one that has meaningful connections with, and relevance to, the real world of everyday experience as well. Furthermore, this curriculum must develop in the student a critically reflective mind, a sense of connectedness to others, and a social consciousness, as well as being a holistic educational experience that is interdisciplinary, multidisciplined, and multicultural in scope. Graduates with this type of education will, to a much greater degree, in all probability, become contributing members of society and good neighbors; exhibit sensitivity to the human condition; and possess a sense of moral responsibility. The overall quality of humanity will be enhanced, and the individuals will, untimately, aid and abet the positive development and progress of society. The Academy must also provide a general curriculum, and specific curricula areas, that disclose the actual truth, as we know it, about human experience. Without this the knowledge base of students will be seriously flawed and a source of error and confusion. 3 The Academy must also hire professors who are not only experts in their particular fields, but who are good teachers, open-minded to the pluralism that exists in our society and global village, dedicated to the truth, socially conscious, and willing to engage in meaningful service activities. This will make it easier for the Academy to engage in the critical work of building bridges, establishing liaisons, and creating good will between itself and local communities, especially those with the greatest needs. Those institutions that make up the PUBLIC ACADEMY have an absolute obligation to keep their doors open to all who desire and are capable of pursuing learning. Accordingly, they must remove all artificial barriers that stand between members of this society across racial, cultural, and class lines, that are clearly blocking the matriculation of some groups, disproportionately, into the university and their preferred career fields. Moreover, the PUBLIC ACADEMY must inform itself sufficiently about the various and specific resources that are necessary to ensure maximum success with its students. In so doing it will be an important partner in the process of plucking �diamonds in the rough� from the various communities, and returning them as �polished stones,� and thereby increasing the overall wealth of society, and contributing to the common weal. It is public education and the Academy that will ultimately ensure that this nation remains a leader and global competitor, and that will adequately and effectively prepare individuals for peaceful and harmonious coexistence. Let us turn our attention now to the off-campus role of the Professor Scholar. III. No institution as important and pivotal as the Academy can exist in isolation from the body of humanity. Likewise, no resource as critical as a teacher/scholar can withhold its experience, intelligence, talents, training, and education from the many processes involved in social, civil, and/or human preservation, development, and progress, without serious consequence. What, after all, are the legitimate and fundamental purposes of institutions, of which the Academy is included, and the social responsibilities of the gifted, talented, trained, educated, and experienced? Certainly, in each and all of these instances, as has been indicated above, it is not for purposes and acts that are exclusively private and/or individual in nature. Individuals and institutions that would adopt such narrow and self-regarding, and in some cases selected group-regarding, parameters, in effect, withhold from or deny society that which it needs in order to develop, progress, and evolve. Humanity as a whole, has a legitimate claim on its institutions and the service of those who have benefited the most from the existence of such institutions. In short, professors and scholars, like other professionals, carry with them, as they live and work in this world, inalienable social responsibilities. Needless to say, not everyone shoulders these responsibilities equally or in the same way. I am not suggesting, as some might, that those who devote the lion�s share of their professional lives to the pursuit of research, or that those universities and colleges that give greater rewards to those academicians with a larger research agenda, are making bad use of their time and resources, or are promoting the wrong institutional goals and mission. However, scholars and institutions that vigorously promote research agendas do have an inescapable obligation to ensure that a meaningful and significant, though not total, part of the overall program of research must, in crucial and vital ways, positively enhance the quality of life for individuals, communities, and the society as a whole. The extra-campus responsibilities of professors include helping communities find solutions to the myriad of problems they face, and assisting in the development of a sound and effective public education system that serves all equally as well. Furthermore, to those whom it applies, it is necessary for trained academicians, researchers and/or scholars to: 1) aid in maintaining an optimum level of public health; 2) help sustain an environment that is conducive to the preservation and health of all life on this planet; and 3) assist in the task of maintaining and promoting peaceful co-existence between individuals, communities, and nations, especially in the development of fair and equitable public policy. Of necessity this means not only making the usual and expected contributions from members of the Academy, but to engage in intellectual and physical labor that will cause to exist a world that is free of racism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, economic exploitation, deprivation, unwarranted violence, bigotry, and hatred of all kinds. More than at any other time, perhaps, it is required of the scholar to maintain contact with the day-to-day lives of the average citizen, and to travel abroad, sufficiently, in order to get an objective view of the global impact of our domestic, economic, geo-political policies, and military interventions. The residential community of scholars of the Academy must begin to see itself as a part of, in an important and vital way, the larger communities within which each resides. It is incumbent upon the scholar, therefore, to contribute his/her energies, labor, and talents to the positive endeavors and causes of those localities. Scholars are members of communities and citizens of nations. Going to work on the proverbial HILL in the IVORY TOWERS does not relieve us of the responsibilities associated with that status. University professors and/or scholars are among the intellectual elite and members of the privileged class. We have acquired that status either by inheritance or through the utilization of the institutions of our society. As pointed out earlier, a fundamental postulate of my discussion is that institutions, whether social, economic, political, educational, religious, or otherwise, exist primarily to meet the needs of the general citizenry and to help society develop, progress, and positively evolve. This being the case, then, no one arrives at the status of THE PRIVILEGED, or ascends to the class of THE ELITE, absolutely on his/ her own. Moreover, no one has a prima facie right to the rewards, opportunities, assistance, and advantages provided by the institutions of society. If this is true, it follows that those who use and profit from the institutions of the commonwealth incur obligations to those who are less fortunate, but who possess, nevertheless, the same claim on the life-enhancing elements of those institutions. Professors and/or scholars, hence, have a CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY and MORAL OBLIGATION to help in the construction of bridges across the chasm of disparity and despair, between the privileged and the underprivileged. What I have said about the residents of the Academy applies equally to those scholars that live and work off-campus, beyond the boundaries of the Academy. Both groups are compelled by the same imperatives toward improving the human predicament. I am aware that some critics may argue that there is an unbridgeable gap between certain groups, established by Nature, God, or some other Higher Principal. Most recently this view has been espoused by Herrnstein and Murray in their massive pseudo-scientific study, in that notorious book, The Bell Curve . However, one has merely to undertake a cursory investigation of this misguided and ill-intended intellectual tradition, covering more than two centuries, in order to comprehend why many of us have consigned such research and publications, with all their implications for public policy and the role of the Academy and academician, to the intellectual heap of the obsolete, the false, the flawed, and the discarded . 4 In conclusion, let me say that living in a Constitutional Democracy, in a society that is open and free, creates civic duties for us all. Those who understand the theory and philosophy behind our form of government, who are free of demagoguery, deception, and disingenuousness and who are capable of understanding the deep complexities, competing demands from individuals and groups, and who have the skills, talents and means, are at increased obligation to protect this way of life. The great English philosopher, John Locke, explained centuries ago that government and society can be dissolved either by external or internal forces. 5 As we have seen in recent years and by way of recent events, negative forces when left inadequately challenged can mushroom to such an extent that the very pillars of society can be shaken and placed in jeopardy. It is the Professor and/or Scholar, when fully actualized and properly focused, who is amply able to respond to those challenges that, if left unchecked, will undermine our way of life. At all times, members of the Academy must participate in the role of overseer and keeper of the gate. A free, open, and just society, if it is to work well, must operate like a finely tuned and well-oiled machine. Scholars have a role to play in the area of social maintenance. They must, through their research, publications, and civic involvement, provide local communities and the nation with continuous positive input into the discussions and work that are taking place. Notes 1. The Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, recognized the essentiality of public education. He believed it to be part of the conditio sine qua non for a well-run democratic system of government. The following extended quotation will lay out Jefferson�s views on universal public education. In his second proposal, titled � A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge ,� to the Virginia Legislature for public education, he wrote: Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large. . . . Whereas it is generally true that people will be happiest whose laws are best, and are best administered, and that laws will be wisely formed, and honestly administered, in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance. . . . It is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expense of all, than that the happiness of all should be confided to the weak or wicked. In his well-known book, Notes on the State of Virginia , Jefferson explains: The first stage of this education being the schools of the hundreds, wherein the great mass of the people will receive their instruction, the principal foundations of future order will be laid here. Instead, therefore, of putting the Bible and Testament into the hands of the children at an age when their judgments are not sufficiently matured for religious inquiries, their memories may here be stored with the most useful facts from . . . history. The first elements of morality too may be instilled into their minds. . . . History, by apprising them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views. . . . Every government degenerates when entrusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree. . . . An amendment to our constitution must here come in aid to the public education. Gordon C. Lee, Crusade Against Ignorance: Thomas Jefferson on Education (New York: Bureau of Publications, Columbia University, 1962) 81�97 passim . [ Return to text ] 2. This term was coined and explained in a paper, � Genetic Engineering: Some General Reflections ,� that I read at a colloquium at Howard University, June 20, 1984. In that paper, I wrote: Let me introduce at this point a new term, Civilision , which is the art and practice of civility. In its passive sense it is the homeostatic state of civilized existence. Civilision presupposes the following conditions: a) A set of universal moral principles that would be acceptable to most rational and reasonable persons. b) A moral commitment to the development of human potential. c) Global egalitarianism. d) Universal respect for the dignity and worth of persons. e) The treatment of all natural resources, including scientific knowledge, as one global reserve to be conserved and shared by all. f) A commitment to achieving for all humans, the highest possible standard of living that the current technology is capable of producing. g) Dissolution of all systems of caste and class. h) Commitment to the task of universal intellectual enlightenment. i) Minimization of killing and the production of harm. j) Recognition of the creaturehood of all sentient life (natural or artificial), and respect for nature generally, as a single organic ecological system, upon which all life ultimately depends. Civilision ensures that the appropriate humanitarian constraints are placed on all human behavior, conduct, and mechanisms. [ Return to text ] 3. Concerning the importance of scholars telling the truth, Dubois wrote: If history is going to be scientific, if the record of human action is going to be set down with that accuracy and faithfulness of detail which will allow its use as a measuring rod and guidepost for the future of nations, there must be set some standards of ethics, in research and interpretation. . . . Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable? . . . If we are going, in the future . . . with regard to all social issues, to be able to use human experience for the guidance of mankind, we have got clearly to distinguish between fact and desire. In the first place, somebody in each era must make clear the facts with utter disregard to his own wish and desire and belief. What we have got to know, so far as possible, are the things that actually happened in the world. Then with that much clear and open to every reader, the philosopher and prophet has a chance to interpret these facts; but the historian has no right, posing as scientist, to conceal or distort facts; and until we distinguish between these two functions of the chronicler of human action, we are going to render it easy for a muddled world out of sheer ignorance to make the same mistake ten times over. W. E. B. Dubois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860�1880 (New, York: Atheneum, 1973) 714, 722. [ Return to text ] 4. For earlier research into this area, see Louis Ruchames� anthology, Racial Thought in America , Vol. 1. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1969). The essays in this work cover the period from 1674�1858. They deal with pro- and anti-slavery arguments, the origin of the races, racial endowments, etc. It is in these essays that we find the range of opinion within the political, religious, and scientific communities, regarding non-White people in general, and Blacks in particular. The apologia for slavery, segregation and other forms of social, political, and religious stratification permeates the writings of these authors. The research of Herrnstein and Murray, in The Bell Curve (New York: The Free Press, 1994), fits solidly within that pseudo-scientific tradition which assumes the natural superiority of Whites over Blacks and other Non-whites, seeks explanations and evidence to prove what has already been presupposed, engages in the wildest type of speculation, and utilizes seriously flawed methodology. Let us compare the views of some nineteenth-century scientists with those of Herrnstein and Murray on the question of racial hierarchy. Samuel G. Morton (1799�1851) was a physician and naturalist who did pioneering work in the areas of medicine, paleontology, anthropology, anatomy, and zoology. Louis Agassiz was a distinguished naturalist, who worked in the areas of zoology and geology. Morton explains: The grouping of mankind into Races, has occupied the ingenuity of many of the best naturalists of the past and present century. . . . The Caucasian Race is characterized by naturally fair skin. . . . This race is distinguished for the facility with which it attains the highest intellectual endowments. . . . [The Mongolian] division of the human species is characterized by a sallow or olive colored skin. . . . In their intellectual character the Mongolians are ingenious, imitative, and highly susceptible of cultivation. . . . The Malay Race is characterised by a dark complexion. . . . This race is active and ingenious, and possesses all the habits of a migratory, predaceous and maritime people. . . . The [Native] American Race is marked by a brown complexion. . . . In their mental character the [Native] Americans are averse to cultivation, and slow in acquiring knowledge; restless, revengeful, and fond of war, and wholly destitute of maritime adventure. . . . The Ethiopian Race [is] characterised by a black complexion. . . . In disposition the Negro is joyous, flexible, and indolent; while the many nations which compose this race present a singular diversity of intellectual character, of which the far extreme is the lowest grade of humanity. (Ruchames 445�447 passim ) Similarly, Agassiz asserts: And it seems to us to be mock-philanthropy and mock-philosophy to assume that all races have the same abilities, enjoy the same powers, and show the same natural dispositions, and that in consequence of this equality they are entitled to the same position in human society. . . . In [the case of the Africans] we have a most forcible illustration of the fact that the races are essentially distinct, and can hardly be influenced even by a prolonged contact with others when the differences are particularly marked. . . . There has never been a regulated society of [B]lack men developed on that continent [Africa]. . . . Do we not find, on the contrary, that the African tribes are today what they were in the time of the Pharaohs, what they were at a later period, what they are probably to continue to be for a much longer time? And does not this indicate in this race a peculiar apathy, a peculiar indifference to the advantages afforded by civilized society? . . . The indomitable, courageous, proud Indian � in how very different a light he stands by the side of the submissive, obsequious, imitative Negro, or by the side of the tricky, cunning, and cowardly Mongolian! Are not these facts [emphasis added] indications that the different tendencies which characterize man in his highest development are permanently brought out in various combinations, isolated in each of the races, in a manner similar to all the developments in physical nature. . . . (Ruchames 458�459 passim ) In the twentieth century, Herrnstein and Murray claim: Despite the forbidding air that envelops the topic, ethnic differences in cognitive ability are neither surprising nor in doubt [emphasis added]. Large human populations differ in many ways, both cultural and biological. It is not surprising that they might differ at least slightly in their cognitive characteristics. That they do is confirmed by the data on ethnic differences in cognitive ability from around the world. One message . . . is that such differences are real and have consequences. (269) [ Return to text ] 5. Thomas Jefferson received much of his philosophical inspiration and insights from John Locke, especially those found in the Declaration of Independence. Concerning the social contract that exists between individuals in society, Locke wrote: . . . Laws [are] not . . . made for themselves, but to be, by their execution, the bonds of the society to keep every part of the body politic in its due place and function. When that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and the people become a confused multitude without order or connection. Where there is no longer the administration of justice for the securing of men�s rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the force, or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly is no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed it is all one as if there were no laws, and a government without laws is . . . a mystery in politics inconceivable to human capacity, and inconsistent with human society. . . . When men, by entering into society and civil government, have excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of property, peace, and unity amongst themselves those who set up force again in opposition to the laws, do rebellare � that is to bring back the state of war, and are properly rebels. . . . For if any one by force takes away the established legislative of any society, and the laws by them made, pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes away the umpirage which every one had consented to for a peaceable decision of all their controversies, and a bar to the state of war amongst them. . . . The body of the people may, with respect, resist intolerable tyranny, [but] when it is but moderate they ought to endure it. . . . To conclude. The power that every individual gave the society when he entered into it can never revert to the individuals again, as long as the society lasts, but will always remain in the community; because without this there can be no community � no commonwealth, which is contrary to the original agreement. Britannica Great Books, vol. 35, �Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay,� John Locke (Chicago: William Benton Publishers, 1952) 75�81 passim . [ Return to text
CURRENT URL http://archives.acls.org/op/op22oneil.htm
A merican C ouncil of L earned S ocieties Occasional Paper No. 22 The Limits of Expression in American Intellectual Life Creeping Absolutism and Moral Impoverishment: The Case for Limits on Free Expression Kathryn Abrams Art, Transgression, Shock, and the First Amendment W.B. Carnochan Truth or Consequences: Putting Limits on Limits Henry Louis Gates, Jr. FREE EXPRESSION IN THE ACADEMY: THREE HARD CASES THAT TEST EASY ASSUMPTIONS Robert M. O�Neil Free Expression in the Academy: Three Hard Cases That Test Easy Assumptions Robert M. O�Neil University of Virginia, Charlottesville I am delighted to be part of this vibrant panel. This morning�s theme recalls the last time I was asked to address an ACLS meeting. It was 1970, when the limits of expression were being severely tested. The immediate concern was to protect learned societies, and their annual meetings, from being politicized to the point of paralysis. Such concerns may sound quaint and remote today, though one hopes the lessons learned back then have endured. Let me offer this morning a fairly simple thesis with several (I hope apposite) examples. It seems to me our quest for free expression in the academy has of late been distracted by such enticing but elusive issues as speech codes and political correctness. Codes, I would say, are simply misguided, almost certainly ineffectual, and quite possibly counterproductive, even for private universities that may not be directly constrained by the First Amendment. Political correctness I concede to be both serious and odious, but I would suggest it is a phenomenon easily exaggerated in scope and degree. Because of such diversions and distractions as these, we may have neglected far more substantial issues of free expression and inquiry. Let me cite three � one dealing with research, one with teaching, and a third that affects both. All three are quite real; none has been fully resolved. The research issue is one on which an outsider would expect to find within the academy a simple answer: May a university ever ban or refuse otherwise valid research because of its content? We all have various policies regulating campus-based research � protecting, for example, human subjects and animal welfare. We require substantial disclosure, in part to control intrusion or bias by corporate grantors. And we impose certain other conditions on sponsored research, up to and including bans on classified projects (which some may find troubling on academic freedom grounds, though I do not). But what we do not do is to ban or reject research on the basis of content. Now enter the Pioneer Fund, a sponsor of social science research that seems invariably to document race-based differences in intelligence. Two senior faculty at the University of Delaware � established researchers in educational psychology with a conservative bent � seek and obtain Pioneer Fund support for just such studies. The administration faces an acute dilemma, torn between the insistence of the investigators in content neutrality, and equally fervent demands of others that the university not be used to nurture or validate racist ends. The president asks advice from the faculty research policy committee, which urges rejection of the grant � in part because of the sponsor�s intransigence when asked about its research mission and program. The president accepts the committee�s advice and declines the grant. The would-be grantees then seek arbitration through the collective bargaining agreement. The arbitrator rules in favor of the investigators, citing chiefly the university�s lack of an established policy that might justify such a rejection. (A few universities, Michigan among them, have such policies on the books, though apparently never invoked.) The arbitration award only defers the ultimate question: Can (or should) a university ever ban or refuse research on content grounds? The Delaware faculty remains sharply divided, and understandably so given the inordinate difficulty of the case. Let me offer my own view, which may have only the virtue of simplicity. I can imagine no circumstances under which an otherwise valid research grant should be refused for content reasons � and I speak as one who has approved projects that could threaten tobacco in Virginia or brewing in Wisconsin. One could conceive a grant a decade ago from the South African government to improve police weapons technology; while I would have tried everything in my power to dissuade a colleague from taking the money, and would have welcomed a procedural flaw, there seems to me only one way to resolve the substantive issue consistent with academic freedom and the nature of a university. But I may well be in the minority, even here. My second case comes out of the classroom � actually two cases closely related in time and in nature. One was the strange saga of Professor Jeffrey Levin at City College of New York, the other that of Professor Philip Bishop at the University of Alabama. Bishop had been warned by his dean to stop religious proselytizing in his physical education classes after students complained, while Levin�s philosophy students (who had not complained) were offered alternative sections if they found abhorrent his published views on race and intelligence. Both professors went to federal court, each claiming abridgement of his academic freedom. Levin prevailed, and Bishop suffered what might be termed a pyrrhic defeat. But the ultimate issue survives: How should a university deal with professorial views that are not only controversial and may reflect on the institution, but may also offend students? This issue eludes the clarity of response I offered a moment ago on the Pioneer Fund. But there are a few workable principles. Perhaps the clearest is that even outrageous views come within the scope of academic freedom. Thus talk of dismissal (openly hinted at in one of the cases) is irresponsible unless the affront is recurrent and substantial and reflects a departure from professorial mission. Yet the institution does have a role to play; in fact a university would grievously disserve the cause of academic freedom by pleading paralysis or insisting a critic call the AAUP. Surely if students complain (as Bishop�s but not Levin�s did), and most clearly if the course is required, some alternative must be offered. If I were the dean, I would probably not ask students why they objected; such an inquiry risks invading their academic freedom. But I would be inclined to limit the offer to students who did complain, and would not (as CCNY did) gratuitously extend the option to all course-registered students. That leaves us with the least tractable question: What should one do with the proselytizing professor? I suggested earlier that dismissal would be conceivable only if there is recurrent and substantial intrusion of extraneous material � though I recognize it may take a smaller amount of religion than of politics (let alone sports or sex) to invoke that test. Short of dismissal, there are many creative options that tend to be under-used in the academy � admonition, course reassignment, public refutation, and of course most important and probably most effective, collegial pressure. In the end, the proselytizer may be incorrigible. It is clear the institution has to tolerate eccentricity and deviance of view, in as well as outside the classroom. But academic freedom and tenure permit no one to escape basic accountability to students, most especially in the content and conduct of essential courses. Thus the time may come when such interests demand formal steps to protect students and the integrity of the classroom.
CURRENT URL http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jul/13/books/bk-sample13
Making knowledge accessible to all By Steven B. Sample, Steven B. Sample is president of USC and author of "The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership." Warren Bennis, a distinguished professor of business administration at USC, is author of "Geeks and Geezers: How Eras, Values and Defining Moments Shape Leaders." and Warren Bennis, Steven B. Sample is president of USC and author of "The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership." Warren Bennis, a distinguished professor of business administration at USC, is author of "Geeks and Geezers: How Eras, Values and Defining Moments Shape Leaders." July 13, 2003 Money -- acquiring it, husbanding it, kowtowing to it -- has undergirded American higher education from its beginning. Recently, however, the pursuit of money has become so intense on American campuses that it has prompted a healthy debate as to whether the basic mission of our academic institutions is being defiled by blatant commercialization on the part of universities themselves. Two important new books, "Universities in the Marketplace" by former Harvard University President Derek Bok, and "The University in a Corporate Culture" by University of Denver professor Eric Gould, offer provocative and original perspectives on this debate. Bok is one of the premier elder statesmen of American higher education and still a very active member of the professoriate. For his newest book he dons the robes of Jeremiah and denounces universities for their increasing commercialization, illustrated by compromises in research standards for the benefit of wealthy corporations and compromises in admissions standards for the benefit of star athletes. "By compromising basic academic principles, universities tamper with the ideals that give meaning to the scholarly community and win respect from the public," Bok writes. "[Those ideals] sustain the belief of scientists and scholars in the worth of what they are doing. They make academic careers a calling rather than just another way to make a living." A clarion call to reflect upon the values that sustain the academy is always welcome, and the time indeed may be at hand to establish new safeguards. But in a sense, Bok is attempting to restore a virginity within American higher education that was lost long ago. As Gould notes in his book, "We often forget that U.S. colleges and universities have never been, from their inception, independent scholarly guilds under the control of the faculty." American higher education has always been shaped by an array of market forces. And the money that results from this market-driven approach, when handled well, has purchased freedom and opportunity for the American academic enterprise. It has provided access to advanced education for an astounding number of people who, in any other country, would simply be turned away. Moreover, from a qualitative perspective, it has produced what most observers agree is the finest system of higher education in the world.
CURRENT URL http://articles.latimes.com/2006/nov/01/local/me-levine1
Lawrence W. Levine, 73; historian's work backed multiculturalism in higher education By Elaine Woo, Times Staff Writer November 01, 2006 .main-image li { list-style: none; text-align: center; background:#E5E6DA none repeat scroll 0 0; position:relative; padding: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; } .main-image-info { color:#9A9A9A; font-size:95%; padding:2px 0; text-align:right; vertical-align:bottom; } Lawrence W. Levine, a former UC Berkeley historian and MacArthur "genius" grant recipient whose elegant scholarship bolstered arguments for multiculturalism in higher education, died of cancer Oct. 23 at his Berkeley home. He was 73. Levine advocated a catholic definition of culture in several books written over the last four decades, including "Highbrow and Lowbrow, The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America" (1988). The most admired of his books was "Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom" (1977), an engaging examination of black oral expression -- including spirituals, gospel songs, folklore and humor -- that demonstrated the richness and diversity of black culture from the slavery era to more modern times. "He was really one of the key people who invented the field of American cultural history," said Roy Rosenzweig, founder and director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in Virginia. Levine joined the history faculty at George Mason in 1994 after 32 years at Berkeley. Particularly in "Black Culture and Black Consciousness," Rosenzweig said, Levine demonstrated that intellectual history is "not just the study of Emerson and Thoreau but the study of Negro spirituals and folk tales. These are the intellectual and cultural achievements of ordinary people. He wanted to recover that achievement and analyze it." In so doing, Levine influenced his field by "redefining the content of history," said Leon Litwack, a UC Berkeley historian who knew Levine for 40 years. A former president of the Organization of American Historians, Levine also wrote "The Opening of the American Mind" (1996), which attracted wide attention as a forceful answer to conservative critics such as philosopher Allan Bloom, who fueled the culture wars of the 1980s with charges that political correctness was ruining the university. The title was a deliberate takeoff on Bloom's 1987 bestseller, "The Closing of the American Mind," a complex treatise that blamed contemporary social movements, including feminism and civil rights, for deemphasizing Western intellectual traditions. Levine was born to a working-class family in New York City on Feb. 27, 1933. He helped his father, a Lithuanian immigrant, run a fruit and vegetable store, even while a student at City College of New York, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1955, and at Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree in 1957 and a PhD in 1962. Related Articles Caribbean Benefit Lends Taste of Black Culture Oct 20, 1988 OC HIGH / STUDENT NEWS & VIEWS - Cultures in Spotlight Feb 17, 1994 Youth - OPINION - Malcolm X: a Hero for Today?
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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Ships from and sold by Amazon.com 42 new or used available from $14.95 Average customer review: Product Description "David Horowitz has single-handedly exposed the intellectual corruption that exists within the classrooms of American colleges. Like all forms of corruption, indoctrination flourishes when kept in the dark. Here, Horowitz turns on the bright lights to expose what has become profoundly wrong with our colleges and universities. We are all in his debt." --Ward Connerly, former regent, University of California David Horowitz and coauthor Jacob Laksin take us inside twelve major universities where radical agendas have been institutionalized and scholarly standards abandoned. The schools they examine are not the easily avoided bottom of the barrel. Rather, they are an all-too-representative sampling of American higher education today. Horowitz and Laksin have conducted the first comprehensive, in-depth, multiyear investigation of what is being taught in colleges and universities across the country--public to private, from large state schools to elite Ivy League institutions. They have systematically scrutinized course catalogs, reading lists, professors’ biographies, scholarly records, and the first-person testimonies of students, administrators, and faculty. Citing more than 150 specific courses, they reveal how academic standards have been violated and demonstrate beyond dispute that systematic indoctrination in radical politics is now an integral part of the liberal arts curriculum of America’s colleges. The extreme ideological cant that today’s students are being fed includes: - Promoting Marxist approaches as keys to understanding human societies--with no mention of the bloody legacy of these doctrines and total collapse in the real world of the societies they created - Instilling the idea that racism, brutally enforced by a "white male patriarchy" to oppress people of color and other marginalized groups, has been the organizing principle of American society throughout its history and into the present - Requiring students to believe that gender is not a biological characteristic but a socially created aspect of human behavior designed by men to oppress women - Persuading students that America and Israel are "imperialistic" and "racist" states and that the latter has no more right to exist than the South African regime in the days of apartheid In page after shocking page, Horowitz and Laksin demonstrate that America’s colleges and universities are platforms for a virulent orthodoxy that threatens academic ideals and academic freedom. In place of scholarship and the dispassionate pursuit of truth that have long been the hallmarks of higher learning, the new militancy embraces activist zealotry and ideological fervor. In disturbingly large segments of today’s universities, students are no longer taught how to think but are told what to think. Product Details Amazon Sales Rank: #105557 in Books Published on: 2009-03-10 Released on: 2009-03-10 Original language: English Number of items: 1 Binding: Hardcover 336 pages Features ISBN13: 9780307452559 Condition: NEW Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices Editorial Reviews Review "A professor’s job is not to tell students what to think; it is to help them to think carefully, critically, and for themselves. There is a legitimate place for the catechist, the preacher, the social activist, and the community organizer; but that place is not the university classroom. Professors who seek to indoctrinate their students violate a sacred trust. They should be forcefully challenged and publicly held to account. In One-Party Classroom, David Horowitz does just that. The book should provoke a discussion of the ethics of classroom instruction that is long overdue." --Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University "Definitive proof that, whether they succeed or not, thousands of professors go to work every day with the intention of indoctrinating their students in their personal political prejudices." --Candace de Russy, former trustee, State University of New York " One-Party Classroom shows how far American universities have drifted from academic principles. The politicized courses described here are indeed among the worst cases. What is truly shocking is the unwillingness of university authorities to do anything about them." --Stephen H. Balch, founder and president, National Association of Scholars "Reveals how political activists masquerading as academics dominate our liberal arts colleges. Regents and trustees need to become engaged in this important battle to restore academic rigor, standards, and accountability to our institutions of higher learning." --Tom Lucero, regent, University of Colorado "There is not a university leader in this country who would not be better for confronting the well-reported case studies in David Horowitz’s book." --Frederick Mohs, former trustee, Univers... Review "A professor’s job is not to tell students what to think; it is to help them to think carefully, critically, and for themselves. There is a legitimate place for the catechist, the preacher, the social activist, and the community organizer; but that place is not the university classroom. Professors who seek to indoctrinate their students violate a sacred trust. They should be forcefully challenged and publicly held to account. In One-Party Classroom, David Horowitz does just that. The book should provoke a discussion of the ethics of classroom instruction that is long overdue." --Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University "Definitive proof that, whether they succeed or not, thousands of professors go to work every day with the intention of indoctrinating their students in their personal political prejudices." --Candace de Russy, former trustee, State University of New York " One-Party Classroom shows how far American universities have drifted from academic principles. The politicized courses described here are indeed among the worst cases. What is truly shocking is the unwillingness of university authorities to do anything about them." --Stephen H. Balch, founder and president, National Association of Scholars "Reveals how political activists masquerading as academics dominate our liberal arts colleges. Regents and trustees need to become engaged in this important battle to restore academic rigor, standards, and accountability to our institutions of higher learning." --Tom Lucero, regent, University of Colorado "There is not a university leader in this country who would not be better for confronting the well-reported case studies in David Horowitz’s book." --Frederick Mohs, former trustee, University of Wisconsin Customer Reviews Brilliant, insightful and backed up by research Horowitz presents a well-documented, irrefutable case that the academy has been taken over by the radical far-left. This should be a must read for politicians, policy-makers, administrators, faculty (the sane ones), students and their parents. Unfortunately, the Left is a religion, and those who subscribe to it's tenets (you know, the "open-minded") are impervious to persuasion, argument and debate. They know only that they and their beliefs are superior to all others, that if they and theirs had political power, they would be able to transform the world into a far better place than it is now, and that therefore anyone who opposes, or even questions them -- like Horowitz -- is an inhuman monster who must be smeared, defamed and destroyed. So when you read the one-star reviews of this book by the small-minded and intolerant, take them with a grain (better yet, a gallon) or salt. A Nice Perspective. A quick read that will give anyone a good idea into what some professors and administrators are doing in America's universities. A senior education major myself, I found this book to explain a lot of the agenda's I have witnessed in the political and european classes that I have taken. A great read if you do not mind being shocked at how "undemocratic" some universities can be. Leaves the Far-Left Communists and Socialists with only Ad Hominem Attacks This is a well researched and scholarly work that's a little too superficial. The authors composed this book mainly from on-line information provided by the universities themselves (see the end notes) followed up by personal interviews to check the accuracy and truthfulness of the universities' information. There is almost nothing left to attack except for Horowitz himself -- which I see two reviewers have already done and no doubt many will follow. The review centering on Miami of Ohio misses the mark totally since Horowitz is not contending the students are radicals -- some students are able to resist the university's clever assigning of the single summer reading program book to be a far-left polemic like "Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace", "Nickel and Dimed", "The Things They Carried" and "Dead Man Walking." But anyway, where's the counter-balance? The authors concentrate on liberal arts programs such as Women's Studies, African-American Studies and Sociology with a number of other, ofter oddball, programs thrown in for good measure. The authors carefully point out that the universities studied also have highly-rated (by other leftist academicians) departments and programs although no proof of the excellence of these departments and programs is offered. With 95% of all professors claiming to be liberal, "progressive" or radical, one should look at anything coming out of the AAUP or like organizations with a great deal of suspicion. Nonetheless, the liberal arts programs are widely open to criticism, particularly in light of the grade inflation, lowering of standards and lack of rigor in the vast majority of liberal arts colleges as compared with their pre-1964 programs. The only colleges exhibiting less rigor, more grade inflation, and even a refusal to quantitatively judge student performance are the colleges of education that unfortunately train our children in public schools. Universities today do one of two things: they warehouse young people until their early twenties or radicalize them as workers for the new Supra-National Socialist World Order. They learn political correctness, methods of agitation and intolerance, hatred for the United States, and left-wing myths in American history. Their employment is thus guaranteed in the public-private partnerships (PPPs) that are the favored vehicles to move the US into socialism, government, foundations or universities so they can keep the momentum up towards socialism. It is no accident that many of these programs are supported by far-left contributions such as those by foundations controlled by individuals like George Soros. The authors unfortunately only go part of the way to truly expose what is happening with their narrow focus on the radicalization in specific programs, egregious as it is. The authors are so thorough in their specialty that I found the book rather boring in the sameness of the presentations across their examples, but of course that was by design. The evidence is overwhelming and the reader is properly overwhelmed. Even more depressing is the lack of action on the part of university administrators and the trustees or regents supposed controlling the schools. The reason for this lack of action is made clear -- the administrators come out of the same far-left milieu as the faculty, and the trustees and regents are normally political appointees expected to go along with the university's agenda. At this point there is simply no vehicle to change the situation presented by the authors except a grass-roots rebellion by the American citizenry and their refusal to fund schools and universities that have become more dangerous to the US than any organization of terrorists. Universities are now a closed society, self-regulated, and adverse to any outside criticism or influence. Rather sounds like the Federal Bureaucracy, doesn't it? In spite of the excellence of this work I have three arguments with it. The first is that it focuses on the perversion of "academic freedom" concerning what an instructor can do in the classroom. However, academic freedon was/is a concept that allows a faculty member to pursue any subject of his choice for research and study in order to further mankind's knowledge about all things. The faculty member is expect to perform research in his academic area of training and expertise and further our knowledge in that area by publication and instruction. The basis for publication and instruction must be factual, and if controversial, the material must be counter-balanced either in his course itself or in course offerings presenting the opposing views. Maintenance of this definition of academic freedon is the responsibility of the university administration, deans and department heads. Through academic freedom even unpopular subjects can be studied and researched such as the failure of the majority of Roosevelt's New Deal programs to assist in ending the depression or the overwhelming penetration by Soviet agents in the Federal Government, most notably the State Department, during World War II (See the Venona Project results.) Secondly, the authors do not attack the pernicious unintended consequence of tenure that makes it almost impossible to remove a faculty member for incompetence or using his classroom for political purposes. Tenure was originally structured to give the faculty member security while he pursued possibly unpopular lines of research, but today it simply allows a faculty to do whatever he wants, even shirk his academic duties for an activist's life. Make no mistake, once tenured a professor can normally get by with teaching three sections or courses per semester, do little else, and enjoy his summers and extended breaks in the academic year. A faculty member is normally required to be in his office for only six hours per week, and teaching three sections means only nine hours of classroom time. Do the math. Tenure has worked out to be counter-productive to academic excellence and must be modified although I doubt any modification can be imposed until the US democracy falls. Thirdly, the author let the history departments and education colleges skate by with almost a free pass and totally ignored the leftist teaching in public schools. As many parents have discovered, high school (and lower) textbooks present leftist myths and actively teach against the US. Of course these polemical books in history and social studies usually follow the lead from leftist professors like Zinn or Foner since they are written by ex-students well-indoctrinated by the far-left at the university level. As early as 1950 books began to appear that turned history around -- I remember one in particular that I read as an 11-year old that presented Alexander The Great as a megalomaniac who set civilization back 1,000 years while extolling Karl Marx and his seminal contribution to social justice. The problem now is that most American adults have endured this indoctrination for so long that they have accepted the myths as facts and are unwilling to critically examine their own current beliefs. In a word, the majority of Americans coming through the public schools since World War II have been more or less brainwashed. And in college they simply enroll in a "Laboratory in Liberalism." In short, the authors needed to go much further (in my opinion) in exposing the activities of our universities and instructors at all levels in turning Americans into socially engineered cogs in the New World Order. Perhaps that will be their next book, but this one leaves far too much unaddressed and unanswered to earn five stars. All that being said, I recommend this book to all those concerned about the education of the next generations of Americans, assuming there will be any. Make no mistake about it, you are paying for these programs. Tuition pays an average of about one-fifth of the cost of a college education, and the rest made up by alumni, government grants (your money), endowments and whatever other resources the college can tap. Faith & Freedom Books and Music | Shopping Cart | Faith & Freedom Homepage
CURRENT URL http://avidavis.wordpress.com/category/academic-freedom/
It is not so long ago that I thought everyone shared exactly the same grasp of the concept of academic freedom. Stated plainly it is defined as affording teachers in schools and universities the liberty to teach, pursue, and discuss knowledge without restriction or interference, by either school administrations or public officials. The concept had its origins in Germany in the 1850s and became institutionalized in the United States when the American Association of University Professors laid down its principles in 1913 and later clarified them in 1940. The AAUP Declaration of Principles not only protected teachers, but also protected students who were to be free of ideological coercion from their instructors Since then, it has become a fundamental building block of the modern democratic state - so essential to the maintenance of an open and free society that it is spoken of in the same breathless, sacrosanct tones as freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. But what happens when professors on our university campuses use the shield of academic freedom to promote antisemitism, racial prejudice, Holocaust denial and support for America's enemies? Are they deserving of the same protections afforded others with controversial views? That question was brought poignantly to my attention this week when the communications of a University of Santa Barbara professor's anti-Israel slurs became very public. The facts are these: On January 19, 2009, UC Santa Barbara professor, Bill Robinson, a tenured sociology professor, e-mailed his Globalization class students an inflammatory anti-Israel written article by Judith Stone along with 42 photos of Nazi atrocities which were mirrored by 42 photographs of Israel's purported atrocities in its war in Gaza earlier this year. His introductory comments equated Israel's military operations in Gaza with Nazi atrocities, asserted that Israel was committing genocide and that the state was founded on the negation of another people. When one surprised student emailed asking whether this was an assigned reading, Professor Robinson admitted it had nothing to do with the course, but "was just for your interest, as I should have clarified." Two students promptly dropped the class. They later filed grievances, claiming that Professor Robinson had violated the Faculty Code of Conduct in that: 1. There should be no significant intrusion of material unrelated to the course (II A, 1, b); 2. That faculty members should not use their positions of power to coerce judgment or conscience of a student ((II, A, 4); 3. That faculty should not use University resources for personal, commercial, political, or religious purposes (II, C, 3)). The UCSB Faculty Code of Conduct is perfectly in line, in these matters, with the traditional protections afforded by academic freedom. The Code in fact follows many of the faculty directives of other universities around the country. But Robinson was outraged at what he considered to be a Zionist conspiracy to silence him and strip him of his supposed academic rights. Within days of the filing of the complaint, a new campus organization, the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB sprang into life, with dozens of UC Santa Barbara professors signing on and hundreds of students declaring their support for the beleaguered professor. Robinson, writing in his own defense, focused on what he regarded as the violation of procedural issues and then went on to claim that "I find this complaint to be a potent, ominous, politicized violation of academic freedom. My right, in accordance with the (UCSB Faculty) Code to 'present controversial material relevant to a course of instruction', is being violated. " His supporters, among them noted professors at UCSB, claimed that Robinson is the victim of a witch hunt. At issue, of course, is the question of whether professors can say anything they want, whenever they want and, while providing their students with materials which subscribe to highly controversial points of view, fail to offer countervailing opinions or materials. It should be no surprise that professors such as Robinson, and his counterparts in anti -Israel and anti-American invective such as Norman Finkelstein and Ward Churchill, regularly use academic freedom to mask the propagation of their radical points of view. Nor should it surprise anyone that the radicalization of the campus has not been enough for such men. The desire to offend and to even speak flagrant untruths seems to be now claimed as protected aspects of teaching that comes under the rubric of academic freedom On the right, the complete collapse of academic freedom, wherein conservatives can barely express an opinion nor be taken seriously as competent in their fields, is a fixed belief. Last week, at about the same time I was learning about Robinson's case, a Californian female professor seeking employment out of state informed me that at the interview with the university in question, she had been intensely grilled about her suspected conservative views and affiliations. She instinctively knew that any admission that she harbored such views or affiliations, would have doomed her candidacy. That academic freedom – or its abuse- is being claimed by both right and the left to defend various points of view was made clear to me last year when I was putting the finishing touches on AFA's own academic freedom conference How Free Is the University? In the course of our research we discovered that several other academic freedom conferences had been organized within months of our own. The University of Chicago held a one day conference on October 12, 2007 titled In Defense of Academic Freedom which featured the redoubtable leftist beneficiaries of academic freedom Noam Chomsky, John Mearsheimer and Tony Judt themselves. In early February, 2008, academics at De Paul University, reacting angrily to the tenure denials of Norman Finkelstein and Mehrene Larudee ( who were denied their full professorships, it seems, on the basis of the shoddiness of their research rather than the controversy of their views) ran its own conference titled the De Paul Academic Freedom Conference which featured a number of practitioners of "balanced" political instruction such as Bill Ayres, Asad AbuKhlalil and Juan Cole. A few weeks later it was New York University's turn to join the chorus, decrying the collapse of academic freedom when it ran its own conference First National Teach-In on Freedoms at Risk in America . This time around, the gathering of the persecuted included the aforementioned Norman Finkelstein ( last seen on al Jazeera Television espousing support for a terrorist organization and denouncing Israel) and Lynne Stewart, convicted in 2005 of conspiracy to provide and conceal material support for terrorists. So on the one hand you have conservatives denouncing the absence of academic freedom for their positions, while on the other, you have exactly the same hue and cry is being whelped by radical leftists who feel similarly abandoned in the cold. Newspaper editors often argue that if you are offending both sides equally then you know you are doing a good job. Who is right then? The harsh, brutal answer is that the words " academic freedom" themselves no longer have much meaning for anyone other than historians. That is because academic freedom did not develop as a means of promoting any particular point of view but was a vehicle to assist academics in their quest for truth. On this path, academics should be balancing a wide variety of materials and arguments, the better to test the credibility of any given proposition or theory. In such a pursuit of knowledge and truth 'balance’ is an absolutely critical ingredient -a requirement which really forms the bedrock of the academic freedom philosophy. But with such a highly charged atmosphere on campus these days it is almost impossible to obtain that kind of objectivity from anyone - administrators included. Even in the sciences, where one would believe that the data speaks for itself, politics has intruded, barring any discussion of such sensitive subjects as the theory of intelligent design, the growing evidence against man-made climate change or the discovery of e in the universe of proof for the uniqueness of our planet. Yet the tug of war between the two sides has essentially split the baby in two, rendering the entire concept of academic freedom, rather than a universally accepted philosophy, now more of one of personal preference to be decided on an individual basis. The concept of academic freedom probably then needs an overhaul ,to be replaced by an entirely new philosophical construct - one that is primarily based on the demands for balance and the objective pursuit of truth. How such a philosophy can be discussed or constructed, let alone agreed to in the oxygen starved atmosphere of the modern university campus, remains to be seen. But while we are waiting for the academy to be rehabilitated, one thing remains clear: any academic - liberal or conservative, radical leftist or fundamentalist right winger, who espouses any personal point of view without at least considering an opposing position, cannot be trusted. His or her written work should not be taken seriously; their teachings should be regarded as suspect and their scholarly failings rightfully exposed. Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky should take note. And so should Professor William Robinson at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Leave a Comment � | Academic Freedom | Tagged: Meaning of academic freedom , Multiculturalism , U.C Santa Barbara
CURRENT URL http://bill.srnr.arizona.edu/ssaa/fire091400.htm
FIRE Brings Down New Age Loyalty Oath. "Requirement #14" No Longer Mandatory at Monterey Peninsula College. 9/14/00. MONTEREY, CA - In a resounding victory for freedom of conscience and academic freedom, with implications for countless campuses, Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) has eliminated Requirement #14 of its "Course Proposal Outlines." In doing so, it vindicated the rights of a courageous professor who stood tall for liberty. Requirement #14 forced all professors to address diversity and multiculturalism: "Include a description of how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class and gender issues." MPC did not count on David Clemens and FIRE. Administrators at the California college had informed their faculty that Requirement #14 was mandated by the California Education Code. When this wholly false claim was exposed, Pat Lilley, Chair of the Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC) pleaded with the President Kirk Avery of MPC to keep the CAC's politicized notion of "diversity" as part of the standard course outline. "Requirement #14 imposed one fashionable intellectual agenda, among many, reflecting a new orthodoxy on many campuses," said Thor Halvorssen, FIRE's Executive Director; "it created, in effect, a 'loyalty oath' as contrary to academic and intellectual freedom as one that asked how a course would address issues of Americanism, family values, and the bounty of capitalism." Professor of English David Clemens led the battle against Requirement #14. Clemens refused to go along with the multicultural loyalty oath and submitted a course outline for his English 38- on literature, technology, and human nature- with an objection to the Requirement. His course was not approved by Lilley and the committee, which explained to him that correct teaching of certain texts must emphasize "sexist males." Clemens was then criticized and attacked by the administration (including letters in local newspapers). Undaunted, he contacted FIRE and let his colleagues know his views: "With this all-encompassing, coercive dictate, MPC stifles innovation, attacks academic freedom, and degrades instruction by forcing teachers to 'address' social issues which are not relevant to the subject matter they are teaching. This turns all classes into one vast sociology or cultural studies program." FIRE mounted a campaign against Requirement #14 that included letters to administrators, trustees, and alumni. It argued the immorality of this politically correct loyalty oath, its violation of standard canons of academic freedom, and, in MPC's case, its unconstitutionality. Clemens, FIRE noted, was the object of two abuses: the College wished to dictate what sociological issues he must address in teaching literature; and it wished to force him to introduce materials that he believed irrelevant to his subject. In response to Clemens's persistence and FIRE's campaign, the President of MPC's academic senate, on September 6, advised ruled that Requirement #14 was voluntary, and no longer would be a requirement for the adoption of any course. "We are pleased that MPC has reconsidered its illiberal, immoral, and unconstitutional Requirement #14, restoring academic freedom to its faculty and students. Academic life does not create ideological fiefdoms from which to coerce dissidents or skeptics," Halvorssen said. FIRE's letters to the College trustees of this public institution reminded them of the Supreme Court's ruling in the landmark case of West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943): "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith [in it]." "I am happy that no more teachers will have to conform to an intrusive and unbearable regulation;" Clemens wrote to FIRE; "Thank you for an eloquent and ringing defense of academic freedom." Clemens has resubmitted his course proposal to the school with Requirement #14 left blank. It is a powerful silence that reflects a restoration of academic freedom and of the rights of free minds in a free society. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a nonprofit educational foundation. FIRE unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, freedom of expression, the rights of conscience, and religious liberty on our campuses. FIRE's website , provides documentation of and links to the MPC case and explains FIRE's views of the assault on liberty and dignity in higher education. Contact: Thor L. Halvorssen, FIRE: 215-717-3473, Email David Clemens: 831-375-6491, Email: Pat Lilley, Chair, Curriculum Advisory Committee: 831-646-4247, patricia_lilley@mpc.cc.ca.us Kirk Avery, President, Monterey Peninsula College: 831-646-4060, kirk_avery@mpc.cc.ca.us Mark Clements, President, Academic Senate: 831-646-4231,
CURRENT URL http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/7/11/business/4291353&sec=business
Saturday July 11, 2009 Has undergraduate education lost its way? WHAT ARE WE TO DO By TAN SRI LIN SEE-YAN Tan Sri Lin See-Yan forwards the poser of how people educated in some of the finest and smartest global universities are responsible for some of the financial problems since 2000. THE excesses since 2000, especially the latest financial meltdown from Wall Street to the city of London, and from Paris and Frankfurt on to the other end of Asia, Tokyo, have broken the public trust. Madoff-proof is the new by-word. Yet, those responsible are educated in some of the finest and smartest global universities. It just doesn't make sense. What went wrong? I know it's always difficult to generalise. So, let me pick the best � Harvard University. Also, I happen to know more about the goings-on at this university than any other. I have been associated with it through a number of formal Harvard appointments as an active alumni since 1993, both at the university in Cambridge and in Asia. As I see it today, Harvard's challenges are not unique � they are as relevant to us in Malaysia as they are to the best British, French, German and Japanese counterparts. Harvard College (its undergraduate wing) has an overarching role to educate students to be independent, knowledgeable, reflective, and creative thinkers with a sense of social responsibility. Towards this end, it provides students with the knowledge, skills and habits of mind to enable them to enjoy a lifetime of learning and to adapt to changing circumstances. It does all this through repeated reaffirmation of its commitment as America's oldest university (since 1638) to a liberal education in the arts and sciences. Harvard strives to be the best in many things; it often succeeds. Yet, over the years, it has allowed its key mission to drift; from education towards increasingly, stakeholder satisfaction, developing more and more as an international brand, and assuming the role of an education market-enterprise: i.e. from harvard.edu to harvard.com, so to speak. Mind you, Harvard remains consistently the first-rate world-class research university. Developmentally, youngsters at ages 17-23 are ripe to become immersed in life of the mind, and to draw energy and inspiration from their evolving independence. And, as they begin to shift the burden of responsibility from dependency on parents to caring for themselves and society. Yet, it would appear universities seem oblivious to the opportunity to shape their lives. Why this drift? Relentless competition for research excellence has produced a university system optimised for research. Of course, this brought untold prestige and prosperity through scholarly discoveries and scientific inventions. But, I think, at a price to the real quality of undergraduate education. For example, there are no KPIs (key performance indicators) for effectively imparting knowledge and inculcating committed habits of mind to make students wiser and productive adults. University structures rarely consciously promote responsible citizenship and an obligation to leave the world a better place. Professors are rewarded for academic excellence. But no marks for helping students find meaningful lives, and a sense of their eventual place in society. Simply put, no one was looking at the big picture. No one was monitoring for systemic failure � from the students' point of view. T.S. Eliot (Harvard class of 1909) wrote in the Hollow Men: �Shape without form, shade without colour. Paralysed force, gesture without motion�. Herein lies the entrepreneurial challenge to the rest of world: How to capture the creativity of top US research universities, like Harvard, without importing their aimlessness as well. What universities forgot It is not that the great universities have been complacent. Indeed, over the years, deep and profound changes have taken place; viz. curriculum: now certainly richer, deeper and broader, but without clearly identifiable ideals; grading: now more disciplined even though grade inflation still exists but grades are now more credentials for employment and graduate schools, rather than instructional feedback from teacher to student; extra-curriculum activities have become broader and more diverse with competition going beyond the required intellectual undergraduate ideals; unfortunately, they are now greatly motivated by eventual materialistic incentives. In the process, I think great universities including Harvard have forgot their basic job: to turn restless 17- to 19-year-olds into stable 21- to 23-year-old adults; to help them grow-up; learn who they are; search for a larger purpose in life; and leave university as better human beings. The only trouble is that the greater the university, the more intense is market competition for faculty, students and research funds. Increasingly, at the university level, there is less serious talk of developing good character, of building personal strength, integrity, kindness, cooperation and compassion. Indeed, so totally has the goal of scholarly excellence overwhelmed the university's education role that they forgot both aims need not be in conflict. It is not a zero-sum-game. Curriculum reform The answer must lie mainly in curriculum reform. Education should be more than what we learn. Pedagogy in the world's best universities is often good; also, often not so good. Frankly, with age, we only remember the brilliant teacher but not what he actually taught. �Education is what is left after all that has been learnt is forgotten.� (James Conant, Harvard president, 1933-53). At Harvard, the undergraduate mission remains largely intact: to transform teenagers, whose lives have been so structured by their families and schools, into adults with the learning and wisdom to take responsibility for their own lives and for civil society. The intent is to reflect this idealism in any new curriculum in order to realise their potential � they won't be able to (and can't) get it anywhere else. Fortunately for Harvard, its strength lies in having the best students, first-class faculty and excellent research. Emphasizing strength of character and scholarly excellence, the new curriculum is intended to help students understand complexities of the human condition, challenge them with issues that are disturbing in society, come to grips with the basic questions of life, and fit seamlessly into its multi-talented, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-national student body. In the process, the idea is to turn dependent adolescents into wiser adults. Dignity, honour and responsibility In my view, restoration of the right balance between scholarly excellence and its education role requires developing in students a philosophy of life that brings dignity, honor and responsibility to oneself. For Malaysia, this means helping them to believe in themselves as individuals, and not to see themselves first as members of any identity group. This simply entails creating community out of diversity. The building of self-understanding and confidence in one's own principles remains key to the educated person and leader we all want to emerge from our universities. Within this context, universities have proceeded to redesign curriculum that includes seven basic requirements: (i) more flexible purposeful-course requirements; (ii) written and oral communication; (iii) foreign language; (iv) quantitative skills; (v) basic science; (vi) moral reasoning; and (vii) specialisation. Hopefully, to be able to engage the increasingly complex world, new graduates should by then have the ability to compose a literate and persuasive essay, know-how to interpret a famous humanistic text, capacity to link history to the present, understand foundation science and scientific methods to unravel mysteries of the real world, and enough quantitative reasoning to sharpen analysis of problems. In essence, tomorrow's world will not accept graduates not knowing the difference between a gene and a chromosome. Or, not familiar with select Nobel Prize winning works in literature. The building of confidence involves a capability to speak cogently, persuade others, and reason on moral and ethical issues. They are also expected to know how to collaborate with others on divisive issues, and to engage each other. Balance between the sciences and humanities After World War II, the sciences and humanities became the foundation for curriculum thinking. The sciences were regarded as the transforming force, while the humanities were seen as both the conserving element and the secular instrument for moral uplift. In the US at least, the power of the disciplines has since become overwhelming; they have become increasingly autonomous and self-justifying. There is little choice in this. Students will need to know how to use disciplines outside their academic context; indeed, to put a �human face� on whatever they learn. They must appreciate the global context and temporal depth of the human experience. And, develop and build capacity to analyse without being intimated by the disciplines. Like it or not, science will grow in stature. As a practical matter, the basic understanding of science and technology is a crucial element of being an educated person. At the same time, how can universities nurture and inspirit the humanities especially when humanists today feel increasingly marginalised? Critics retort the humanities have lost their way by indulging in obscure post-modern theorising about race, gender and class. Such tensions are easily exacerbated by the growing emphasis on science. This leaves humanists feeling more and more neglected. This should not be. New advances in the sciences offer possibilities of prolonging human life, destroying human life, transforming human life artificially in ways that challenge the very meaning of what it is to be human. With such a prospect, traditional focus of the humanities on questions of value, of meaning, of ethics, is now more important than ever before. Unfortunately, they do not lend themselves to testable theories or to empirically verified results. If we are to make sense of the thrusts life-sciences place upon us, we need a society in which scientific advances are made to serve humane purposes. Obita dictum Any meaningful reform is complex and difficult. Former Harvard president Derek Bok compared just such an exercise in his time to moving a cemetery. But I cannot see a higher priority than this awesome task at real undergraduate reform. Our world is shaped by leaders, good and bad � even the mediocre. They say we get the leaders we deserve. Yet, leaders develop their thinking, their ideas and beliefs, their biases, attitudes and capacities for change, including their advisors, at the universities. Let's give our future leaders a fair shake. We all deserve better. Former banker Dr Lin is a Harvard educated economist and a British chartered scientist who now spends time promoting the public interest. Feedback is most welcome. Please email to starbizweek@thestar.com.my . More News Business Headlines Japan auto production sinks in July World's 2nd largest retailer, Carrefour, reports first-half loss FBM KLCI marginally down at mid-day Tengku Datuk Azmil Zahruddin made MAS MD/CEO Toyota closing first major plant ever Trading of MAS shares suspended Asian markets up in early trade Further evidence US recession ending Japan said Friday unemployment at record high US Fed chief Bernanke's personal bank account struck by ID theft Oil prices rise slightly in Asia Friday (update) US stocks in longest winning streak since four months Tengku Azmil likely to take over as MAS chief Pension models and the pitfalls Sime Darby to triple capital expenditure to RM7bil China, India replacing US as main consumer of goods produced in the region Farewell, Prof Ismail Acquisition of Ramunia yard bodes well for Sime Darby LTAT's sale of GBH stake puzzles observers Institute seeks funds for financial services industry training Dialog gets Saudi supply base job Iskandar authority seeks Govt aid for research centre Telcos major contracts expenditure to exceed RM5.6bil 3G key to DiGi revenue growth TdC: No plans to sell remaining stake in DiGi Axiata posts best quarterly profit since listing High operational costs hurting MAHB profit Litrak sees lower profit in FY10 due to high financing costs Nestle posts higher earnings Corporate results in brief Trading volume down on waning interest Carlsberg net profit down 22% More Islamic products from HSBC in pipeline IATA: Weak air traffic recovery Vanke to raise US$1.6b via new share offer China wealth fund to raise overseas investment Japan pension fund posts profit Bank of China Q2 profit rises AIG shares surge on word of talks with Greenberg Go Most Viewed Most E-mailed Tengku Datuk Azmil Zahruddin made MAS MD/CEO Toyota closing first major plant ever Tengku Azmil likely to take over as MAS chief Trading of MAS shares suspended Farewell, Prof Ismail Oil prices rise slightly in Asia Friday (update) Further evidence US recession ending World's 2nd largest retailer, Carrefour, reports first-half loss Pension models and the pitfalls Sime Darby to triple capital expenditure to RM7bil Pension models and the pitfalls Telcos major contracts expenditure to exceed RM5.6bil Tengku Datuk Azmil Zahruddin made MAS MD/CEO Tengku Azmil likely to take over as MAS chief Further evidence US recession ending Japan said Friday unemployment at record high Farewell, Prof Ismail World's 2nd largest retailer, Carrefour, reports first-half loss Sime Darby to triple capital expenditure to RM7bil Toyota closing first major plant ever
CURRENT URL http://blog.lib.umn.edu/wpayne/libed/2007/10/draft_of_liberal_education_mis.html
Main | May 2007 Liberal Education Task Force Year End Summary � October 2007 Draft of Liberal Education Mission Statement The Goals of a Liberal Education A liberal education prepares individuals to lead productive and socially responsible lives in a diverse and rapidly changing world. Liberal education at UMD helps students develop competencies that can be adapted for use in any occupation and by virtually any individual. Liberal education at UMD is not restricted to any particular part of the curriculum but is woven through each student’s course of study, including core requirements and requirements for the major. The goal of liberal learning is for students to be “Aware, Prepared, and Committed�?: Aware: • Of the foundations of knowledge and inquiry about nature, culture and society • Of the past and its relevance to the present and the future • Of diverse cultural values • Of the ethical implications of ideas and actions • Of contemporary global issues Prepared: • To identify, analyze and solve problems, demonstrating critical and analytical thinking competency within and across various fields of knowledge • To think creatively, demonstrating intellectual curiosity, imagination and flexibility • To communicate effectively through writing and speaking • To work productively independently and through collaboration • To access, evaluate, and make use of information gathered through multiple methodologies Committed: • To life-long learning • To civic engagement and social responsibility • To knowledge and competence across cultures Posted by William Payne on October 8, 2007 2:42 PM | Permalink TrackBack TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/49647 Comments This is just a test and an invtation for all who stop here to post a comment. Thanks! Posted by: Bill Payne | October 22, 2007 9:40 AM I appreciate all of the research the Liberal Education Task Force has conducted, but I'm wondering when they're going to get to the hard questions. Questions such as: 1. Why are so many liberal education courses taught beyond the level of understanding of the non-majors typically taking the course? 2. Why do so many liberal education course have such large enrollments? 3. Why are liberal education courses so often assigned to the least experienced faculty? Until we fully embrace the concept of liberal education, and provide the resources to deliver quality classroom experiences, students are not going to buy into the idea of taking courses outside their major. If we don't want to teach these courses, why would anyone want to take them? I would imagine if liberal education courses didn't bring in so many tuition dollars, we would have eliminated them long ago. Posted by: Mark Harvey | November 16, 2007 11:20 AM This is a very nicely crafted statement, but I'm not sure if it actually tells us very much about what liberal education is really achieving (or not). My own concern is that there are departments that seem to be engaged in offering "paths of least resistance" through the liberal education requirements, so that you get students with very nice grade point averages who learn next to nothing. I won't name names here, but any of you who have thought about liberal education for more than a few minutes know what I'm talking about. I would be deeply grateful if this committee would list every liberal education course in every category sorted by the percentage of students who get As in that class for a given semester. This might tell us a lot about the state of liberal education at UMD. My other concern is that I can construct selections of courses that very nearly satisfy the liberal education requirements and don't come close to meeting the goals you imply in your mission statement. I think if you are going to have a mission statement that implies quite a bit, you need to back it up by reducing these paths of least resistance, and imposing some overall standards on classes that are offered to all students on the premise that such classes will do what you describe in the mission statement. It is possible to satisfy the liberal education requirements at UMD without taking a foreign language AND without taking any kind of history AND without taking any kind of literature classes AND without taking any classes in economics or political science. This is not to say that every student should take classes in all these areas, but to be able to satisfy something called "liberal education" without taking anything in any of those areas seems to set a very low standard which doesn't reflect so well on UMD as a whole. So, my suggestion for this committee would be to 1) survey the distribution of grades in liberal education classes and post the results of that survey, so that students who want an easy A can find the right classes without having to rely on word of mouth, and so that students who aren't looking for the easy way out don't find themselves stuck in such classes by accident and 2) come up with course selections that meet the lib ed requiements but do not meet the goals implied by your mission statement. If you find more than a few (and I think you can) then I think you need to reduce the level of ambition implied in the mission statement, or consider changing the lib ed requirements in some way so that *any* selection of courses that satisfy those requirements will meet the goals of your mission statement. Posted by: Anonymous | November 18, 2007 10:16 AM This is a very nicely crafted statement, but I'm not sure if it actually tells us very much about what liberal education is really achieving (or not). My own concern is that there are departments that seem to be engaged in offering "paths of least resistance" through the liberal education requirements, so that you get students with very nice grade point averages who learn next to nothing. I won't name names here, but any of you who have thought about liberal education for more than a few minutes know what I'm talking about. I would be deeply grateful if this committee would list every liberal education course in every category sorted by the percentage of students who get As in that class for a given semester. This might tell us a lot about the state of liberal education at UMD. My other concern is that I can construct selections of courses that very nearly satisfy the liberal education requirements and don't come close to meeting the goals you imply in your mission statement. I think if you are going to have a mission statement that implies quite a bit, you need to back it up by reducing these paths of least resistance, and imposing some overall standards on classes that are offered to all students on the premise that such classes will do what you describe in the mission statement. It is possible to satisfy the liberal education requirements at UMD without taking a foreign language AND without taking any kind of history AND without taking any kind of literature classes AND without taking any classes in economics or political science. This is not to say that every student should take classes in all these areas, but to be able to satisfy something called "liberal education" without taking anything in any of those areas seems to set a very low standard which doesn't reflect so well on UMD as a whole. So, my suggestion for this committee would be to 1) survey the distribution of grades in liberal education classes and post the results of that survey, so that students who want an easy A can find the right classes without having to rely on word of mouth, and so that students who aren't looking for the easy way out don't find themselves stuck in such classes by accident and 2) come up with course selections that meet the lib ed requirements but do not meet the goals implied by your mission statement. If you find more than a few (and I think you can) then I think you need to either tone down the mission statement, or consider changing the lib ed requirements such that any selection of courses that meets the lib ed requirements will also meet the goals of your mission statement. Posted by: Anonymous | November 18, 2007 10:20 AM This statement looks fine to me. The issues raised in the other postings (course selections, difficulty of material, my perceptions of grade inflation in some courses), however, seem valid and must be addressed. Also, we need to do a better job "selling" our students on the value of the lib ed component of their education here at UMD. Posted by: Steve Castleberry | November 26, 2007 2:48 PM First I would like to thank you and the committee for your hard and scholarly work on the issue of liberal education at UMD. A liberal education is the cornerstone of the Western Idea of a University and is one of Western civilization's many gifts to humanity. To me, a liberal education has three components or outcomes (as it is now fashionable to say): 1. To teach students what it means to be a human being (how do we relate to the natural world? how do we relate to each other? how do we express ourselves? where did we come from?) 2. to teach students how to discern excellent from mediocre practice in a variety of disciplines; 3. to become excited about great ideas. I used to think that someone with a broad and solid liberal education could intelligently discuss at least one play of Shakespeare and also discuss the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. If they can understand and discuss those two important poles of understanding, then they can discuss most other topics. But Bob McFarland has convinced me that it is more important to understand the difference between mean and median of a statistical sample these days than the Fundamental Theorem, especially given the misuse of those terms in political debate. While I generally am not fond of the view that we are an economic engine and a job training center, I do think that we should expect our graduate to have a few practical skills. I would say these should include ability to use a standard word processor (Word)and a standard spreadsheet (Excel). Having said that, I must also say that I find the current "lib ed requirements" a detriment to liberal education (and that's putting my feelings about them as mildly as I can). I have never heard an undergrad speak of the liberal education they are getting hear as opposed to the "lib ed requirements", and few seem to be excited about great ideas. I think this speaks more to our curriculum than to the students ability to learn. Everyone (including myself) talks about getting the "lib ed requirements out of the way." This is not the attitude towards a liberal education that we should be encouraging, but it is the attitude that is almost inevitable given our current system. The system is far, far, too complicated. It is far, far, too prescriptive. A liberal education should encourage students to explore ideas across a wide variety of topics and try to synthesize them. It should not prescribe a set of courses in 10 areas with gold stars and red diamonds. The fact that we are now considering a computer program that will gather data from other computer programs to help students schedule their classes to meet these and major requirements should give us pause as to whether we are doing the right thing. Having more flexibility in taking more courses in fewer broader areas (sciences, literature, arts, history/social sciences) will both encourage students to explore on their own (and thereby get excited serendipitously) as well as relieve the complications of scheduling. It will likely save money on that new computer program. I also think that most majors require too many credits. One or two fewer required courses (5-6 credits) will also provide the students with more flexibility. This will probably be controversial, but if we are going to put our money where our intentions are, then we cannot continue to load students up with required courses in their majors. I would like to applaud your committee in suggesting that we think of a liberal education vertically as well as horizontally. In how textbook Contemporary Algebra (this ain't high school algebra anymore, Dorothy) Joe Gallian says every course should contribute to someone's liberal education. If Joe can make group theory a part of everyone's liberal education, then we can all do better in our own courses. Courses are much more interesting to both the students and us when we place the material in a broader social, philosophical, and historical content. For example, when I teach Kolmogorov's Theorem in my graduate Mathematical Ecology class, I talk about the great flowering of Soviet mathematics in the 1930s, Kolmogorov's role in it and why he is one of the greatest mathematicians ever, and how everything came tumbling down as Lysenko convinced Stalin to send population ecologists and geneticists applying mathematics to crop production to prison in Siberia for doing "capitalist science." Surely, in engineering classes we can talk about what constitutes good design; in English classes we can Discuss Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle as a superb example of Victorian travel literature; and so forth. Finally, I would like to propose that non-science majors not be required to take a laboratory class. I can see the reason for having them do so, but at the same time I wonder what they get out of dissecting dead grasshoppers and dropping rocks on their feet. Classes in which we discuss the great ideas of our disciplines and why they are important to who we are and where we are going as a people should be offered by every science department. Instead, what we seem to be doing is taking our standard majors introductory class and watering them down. I see no reason why every science and engineering department cannot offer such a class. Hope these help and I look forward to the meeting Thursday. John Pastor Department of Biology University of Minnesota Duluth James I. Swenson Science Building 207 1035 Kirby Drive Duluth, MN 55812-3004 Posted by: Bill Payne | November 27, 2007 3:08 PM As others have, let me begin by thanking the Lib Ed Task Force for taking on this large and unwieldy challenge. You have done excellent work and it is appreciated. My concern here regards the draft mission statement. Specifically, the use of "productive" in the opening sentence seems unnecessarily didactic, especially given the second sentence's focus on vocational advantages. Doesn't the phrase "socially responsible" imply "productive?" Perhaps "fulfilling" would be a reasonable substitute word choice. Personally, I'd prefer the word "creative." I would like to believe that our lib ed program makes students aware of options and opportunities for thought and exploration that they may otherwise not have seen. Posted by: Jerry Pepper | November 27, 2007 3:48 PM Thanks to the committee for all their efforts and good work in this most important of projects. In looking over some of the other postings, one I was impressed with was John Pastor's since he provides what he believes to be important overriding goals of liberal education. One reason why I liked this was that I believe that articulating overriding goals should be the first step in guiding the direction we go with lib ed on campus--and themes, and then categories, should derive from them. Secondly, I liked the contentof John's goals which are to: "1. To teach students what it means to be a human being (how do we relate to the natural world? how do we relate to each other? how do we express ourselves? where did we come from?) 2. to teach students how to discern excellent from mediocre practice in a variety of disciplines; and 3. to become excited about great ideas." I pargicularly like the third, and would merely add that an imporant part of the "excitement" that lib ed can create is that they can give studetns exposure to ideas that are completely new to them. As one studnt in the survey you conducted said: "[My lib ed courses] gave me a chance to co-mingle with others outside my department who typically had a completely different way of thinking about something." I also have some comments about the 7 draft themes you have discussed in the committee: 1. I thik that "quantiative reasoning" should be included (and I want to note that emphasizing this doesn't at all diminish the importance of "quantitative reaearch and reasoning; instad its inclusion recognizes the reality of life in the 21st century that all citizens need to have a good ability to interpret quantitative data--including something as "basic" as interpreting survey information about Presidential candidates). It may have been the intent of the committee to include quantitative reasoning under "Information & Quantitative Literacy", but I find this category to be too broad, and vaguely defined, to be useful. 2. "Critical thinking" should also be included. (to be continued in another posting) Posted by: Mike Raschick | February 14, 2008 11:23 AM (continued from a posting I entered a couple of minutes ago). 3. "Moral Reasoning" is, in my opinion, too narrow of a concept to serve as a campus-wide theme. I believe (?) that it is grounded primarily in Psychology and Education. A broader them might be something like "Ethical/Moral decision-making". I suspect (?) that this concept crosses most academic disciplines. 4. I wonder whether "Historical Perspectives" could be re-worded to more fully capture the richness and importance of "learning from history" (I'll bet that an historian could help with the wording). Finally, I think that it's critical that you get active involvement of as many faculty as possible in settting goals and themes for UMD liberal education. I know that it's always a tremendous challenge in large universities like UMD to get the active involvement of large numbers of individual faculty members. However, it vitally important to do this else policy changes won't get translated into meaningful changes in individual lib ed classes across campus. For instance, I see the danger departments modifying lib ed course descriptions so that they include the "lingo" of what your committee ultimately recommends--but the courses lacking the true spirit of what you're tryuing to accomplish. Most importantly, lib ed courses will become more "exciting" to students only when individual faculty are "excited" about liberal education and what you're trying to accomplish on a campus-wide basis. I don't know how to invove large numbers of facuty in the process--or even how successful you've already been in doing this. However, it might (?) include somehing like asking all facutly who currently teach lib ed courses (through surveys and/or through members of your committee visiting department meetings) what makes their own lib ed courses most "exciting","relevant", and "enriching" to students and to themselves, and what could be done to make them more exciting, relevant,and enriching. Mike Raschick Social Work Posted by: Mike Raschick | February 14, 2008 12:01 PM Thanks to the committee for all their efforts and good work in this most important of projects. In looking over some of the other postings, one I was impressed with was John Pastor's since he provides what he believes to be important overriding goals of liberal education. One reason why I liked this was that I believe that articulating overriding goals should be the first step in guiding the direction we go with lib ed on campus--and themes, and then categories, should derive from them. Secondly, I liked the contentof John's goals which are to: "1. To teach students what it means to be a human being (how do we relate to the natural world? how do we relate to each other? how do we express ourselves? where did we come from?) 2. to teach students how to discern excellent from mediocre practice in a variety of disciplines; and 3. to become excited about great ideas." I pargicularly like the third, and would merely add that an imporant part of the "excitement" that lib ed can create is that they can give studetns exposure to ideas that are completely new to them. As one studnt in the survey you conducted said: "[My lib ed courses] gave me a chance to co-mingle with others outside my department who typically had a completely different way of thinking about something." I also have some comments about the 7 draft themes you have discussed in the committee: 1. I thik that "quantiative reasoning" should be included (and I want to note that emphasizing this doesn't at all diminish the importance of "quantitative reaearch and reasoning; instad its inclusion recognizes the reality of life in the 21st century that all citizens need to have a good ability to interpret quantitative data--including something as "basic" as interpreting survey information about Presidential candidates). It may have been the intent of the committee to include quantitative reasoning under "Information & Quantitative Literacy", but I find this category to be too broad, and vaguely defined, to be useful. 2. "Critical thinking" should also be included. (to be continued in another posting) Posted by: Mike Raschick | February 14, 2008 12:14 PM
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� Friday fragments | Main | Celebrating ice � Davenport on Elon Charles Davenport Jr. writes today about "an episode of intolerance at Elon." Discussion? Posted by Doug Clark on January 25, 2009 8:38 AM | Permalink Comments (30) To report abuse of the comment feature on this site , please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page. Andrew Brod said: I have two comments. First, I'm a fan of Joe Malone, Jr. Standing up took guts, and (assuming that he did indeed do it in a respectful manner), I applaud him for that. As for Charles Davenport, he's found a great example, but one example doesn't make a trend. As any well educated person should know, "for example is not therefore." And so he's forced to use such weasel phrases as "many professors [stifle] diversity of the intellectual variety." Many? How many? He's described his example pretty well, but he has no way of knowing (other than his anti-liberal bias) that this describes the overall state of higher education. Posted on January 25, 2009 9:26 AM John Futrell said: Mr Brod, your argument is very weak. The ideology of the Arts and Sciences Academy in this nation is well documented and is obvious to any reasonably objective person. This was largely true thirty-five years ago when I attended a college one would usually consider conservative. You are aware of the group of 88 at Duke University, aren't you? Posted on January 25, 2009 1:53 PM Andrew Brod said: My argument isn't weak at all. Look at Davenport's column one more time. He says (a) studies show that college professors tend to be liberal, (b) the liberalness of professors doesn't necessarily mean that they give their students a liberally biased education, and (c) here's an example of a liberal professor doing just that. After applauding the kid who stood up to the liberal professor (and can't you conservatives ever take yes for an answer?), I noted that Davenport's argument proves nothing about the broader point. The problem with the conservative argument about college professors is that they cite the figures about liberal political leanings and then assume (and let me emphasize that, they assume ) that this extends into their teaching. But there's no evidence of which I'm aware that shows that college students are getting systematically biased educations because of this. In other words, the conservative argument lacks this final logical step. If you reply that it's obvious that the political leanings of so many professors leads to liberally biased higher education, then fine. You're making an assumption. But neither your assumption nor Davenport's example gets a passing grade for simple logic. Your Group of 88 allusion is similarly irrelevant. Yes, those Duke professors rushed to judgment and did so in a manner that you and I might agree was unfortunate and politically influenced, if not biased. I don't defend them. But again, there's no evidence that their public statements about the Duke lacrosse fiasco affected any Duke student's education by one iota. Posted on January 25, 2009 4:33 PM Connie Plato Mack jr said: Discussion?*Doug What for? The so-called conservative mind set on Campus is not important anymore. Conservatism whatever that means is simply another poltical myth like Liberalism that is control by the genric political establishment in order to divide and create phony chaos among the misunformed public with massive misinformation programs. If one choses a university or College for their educational resume and feel that their conservative principles have been assaulted by Liberal eliteism, one can simply transfer to another University proving that Free Markets do work or to end the issue is to demand a refund for failure of Liberalism to educate.. Posted on January 25, 2009 5:05 PM Joe Guarino said: Doug, I am getting ready to send my two sons off to college over the next 18 months. I thought Charles Davenport wrote a gutsy column. He described a phenomenon that we know exists-- probably more in some schools than others. The landscape for students who are traditional and/or Christian is especially treacherous. In addition to the typically permissive/decadent social/moral environment that exists at many schools, students are sometimes taught in a way that undermines or even discriminates against their value systems, or the value systems their families hold. This is a very unfortunate gauntlet through which students and their families must pass. But the academic community has dropped the ball in terms of creating a more hospitable environment for these students. And contrary to the implications in Andrew Brod's statements, it does not take a majority of professors to create a bad situation for these students. A minority of professors who abuse their prerogatives can create a chilling environment. Posted on January 25, 2009 5:14 PM Doug said: Thanks for the comments. Complaints of liberal bias on college campuses are heard so frequently that one tends to assume that there's truth to them. I do agree with Andrew that we tend to make a lot of assumptions in these discussions. What about the corporate environment? Conservative biases? Maybe new college grads have to make a quick culture adjustment. Just an assumption. Posted on January 25, 2009 7:25 PM Andrew Brod said: Joe Guarino's arithmetic is of course highly convenient. He claims that only a few liberal professors conducting politically biased courses are necessary to poison an institution. And voila! There's no need to care about the actual numbers! The absence of that tricky little thing called evidence is no longer a problem. And so we add sloppy math to sloppy logic. And what if the small number of biased professors are conservatives? Here's the thing about the conservative anti-university jeremiad. Yes, it appears that most professors are liberals, but for all we know, the majority of those who take the next step and extend that bias into their classrooms are conservatives. We don't know that this is true, of course. But there's just as much evidence for it as what the conservatives claim. And according to Joe Guarino's "new math," it may take as few as one single right-winger in the classroom to create the chilling effect he fears. Or perhaps a chilling effect is okay when it's a conservative doing the chilling. Posted on January 25, 2009 8:42 PM Andrew Brod said: Doug makes an excellent point. Just as higher education is home to more than its fair share of liberals, I believe the evidence shows the opposite is true of such institutions as the military and the corporate world. Well, so what if most corporate executives and military people are conservatives? Now, one might respond that those other institutions aren't engaged in the education of our youth. To which I reply, hello? The military is very much engaged in the training of those of our youth who enter the military. Continuing with the military, one might respond further that politics has nothing to do with training someone to be a soldier, sailor, etc. And I'm inclined to agree. But that takes us back to the question of whether the people let their politics affect the way they do their jobs. Without good data on the subject, I'm going to assume that military officers do their jobs, pure and simple, and leave their politics aside when they train and lead our young people. It'd be fair to extend the same courtesy to college professors. Because as I said above, there's no data to indicate otherwise. Posted on January 25, 2009 9:10 PM Joe Guarino said: Mr. Brod responds from within the system. But I am troubled by one small detail: we do not seem to be plagued with students complaining about conservative bias in their university professors. The complaints seem to be almost unidirectional. It is not unusual to hear about political correctness limiting classroom discussions. And when you have a number of loose cannons, like this particular professor who is the subject of Davenport's column, and it is known this type of professor exists, then it becomes hazardous for students to speak freely. This is a reasonably well-known phenomenon-- it certainly existed 30 years ago when I began my studies at NYU-- and wise students adjust their behavior and speech accordingly, or risk various negative outcomes. Did I have any courses that were grossly politicized? Only one. But the vast majority of my courses were in the sciences, which tend to be less politicized. It is my understanding that gross politicization of university courses sometimes affects some types of departments more than others. But I am a bit concerned when academics try to downplay the seriousness of incidents such as these. Posted on January 25, 2009 10:25 PM Andrew Brod said: If Joe Guarino will read my comments once more, he'll see that I did not "downplay the seriousness" of the incident under discussion. I applauded the kid who stood up to the liberal professor. I love it when students do that. What I won't take seriously is the claim--made repeatedly by conservatives without any solid data to back it up--that this is some kind of higher-education epidemic. For what it's worth, if you talk to liberal students, you'll hear about conservative professors trying to push conservatism on them. I've gotten it from both directions in my economics classes. The lefty kids don't like it when I explain why, say, minimum-wage or rent-control laws are socially problematic. They ask, but aren't low rents and high wages good? It's fun, though occasionally frustrating, to work with the kids whose politics prevented them from seeing what the economic analysis was trying to tell them. And that's another lesson here. Very often it's the students who come into class with a political bias. Posted on January 25, 2009 10:47 PM skeet club savage said: The problem is is not liberal vrs. conservative per se here. By defintion, you want professors to show different viewpoints and broaden the experiecnce of their students. Broad views lead to more liberal thought, almost by defintion- a selective force that would probably favor professors becoming more liberal. Problems arise when people in power (in this case, a professor with power over grading etc.) try to club people over the head with their views, either conservative or liberal. (in this case being "scolded" or being told to alter your behavior) Both kinds of thought have an equal risk of becoming totalitarian. Posted on January 26, 2009 9:19 AM Paul Daniels said: Andrew and others: History did not start today. To expect anyone complaining of left-wing bias to extol the entire history of this phenomena to make the point that our colleges and universities are overwhelmingly liberal and that more and more professors are becoming intolerant of ideas they don't agree is unfair (by design, I think). Anyone genuinely interested in liberal bias at colleges, something that I experienced first hand simply because my professors disagreed with a letter to editor that I wrote, (there, now you have two examples - do you need the professors' names as well?) there is certainly enough information readily available if one cares to look (and, this information tends to come from a number of sources, unlike the vague generalities we get from advocates for "victim" groups). Having said this, I trust that you will requiring these same high standards of proof to other allegations of bias. No more of the generalities about gender, ethnicity, or sexual preference biases that cloud so much of our thinking and invariably require us to adopt government programs, we must have hard data. Paul Daniels Posted on January 26, 2009 9:26 AM skeet club savage said: Education as opposed to indoctrination is a liberal process. This can't be denied. At one time "conservative" thought had it the world was flat etc. You don't want youth to go to a college to reinforce what they've been taught up until that point. When I went to college I didn't even know what a Buddhist was. Had no knowlege of Islam etc. By defintion; professors almost have to be liberal to educate. Again the problem is when they coerse people to believe their beliefs instead of letting the individual evolve their own belief system Posted on January 26, 2009 10:02 AM Paul Daniels said: Skeet: Classical liberals like Adam Smith and others are the intellectual forefathers of modern conservatives. These great men were "liberal" in the sense that they were open to new ideas that challeged old notions like merchantilism. It was probably also this sort of "classical liberal" thinking that brought folks to understand that the world was not flat (by the way, I am not sure that most educated people really believed that the earth was flat). At a time when professors were paid based on the number of students that took their course, Adam Smith was paid more than most of his peers despite the difficulty of the subject matter. I suspect that if Smith coerced students to adopt his position, he would not have had so many students. The point is that professors need to be curious and open minded. That doesn't mean, however, that they adopt positions based on politics instead of science, nor does it mean that they punish students who disagree with them. Rather, a good professor should encourage, not squelch debate. Posted on January 26, 2009 10:44 AM Andrew Brod said: Paul, I agree with both of your comments. Government programs should be based on good data and/or objective analysis. No arguments from me. I don't much care whether the data point in a liberal or a conservative direction. Whatever works, baby. (Though I admit that liberals and conservatives often define "what works" differently.) And of course professors should encourage debate instead of squelch it. I like it when a squelcher's actions are reported and held up to public ridicule, as in Davenport's column. I loved the comment by the kid's dad, that the blame should be on him and his son's high-school teachers, "who fostered free thinking and debate." Posted on January 26, 2009 2:21 PM Paul Daniels said: Andrew: That makes two issues in a row in which we are in accord. Best regards, Paul Posted on January 26, 2009 3:44 PM Joe Guarino said: I am not quite ready for the group hug. Professors are in a position of authority over students, and that authority can be abused. While Mr. Brod cites instances of possible conservative bias in the university setting, he decries a lack of data. So we have little basis for evaluating his claim either. But we sure don't ordinarily hear much about that particular problem. The type of study Brod would like may not be terribly likely to be funded and undertaken in the academic setting, and performed rigorously, for obvious reasons. The instance of politicization I experienced was with respect to a course I took. It was around 1980 or 1981. The course was taught be a professor who spent considerable amounts of time discussing declining natural resources and overpopulation. Perhaps as a deliberate attempt to be provocative, he made a list of the things that are "good". Those things included disease, famine, disasters, abortion, homosexuality and any other forces that cause population numbers to be lower. The problem, according to him, was having too many people around. Naturally, this position upset some members in the class. And they were placed in the position of having to regurgitate that type of thing at exam time, or risk a lower grade. Studies can be done a number of different ways, and they can be expensive. Do you wait until studies are definitive to fix a problem that you know already exists? Particular problem areas? Ethnic/racial studies departments, women's studies departments, departments teaching sexuality. Social work. There are probably others. I agree an atmosphere of open inquiry needs to exist. It does not always. Posted on January 26, 2009 4:14 PM Joe Guarino said: BTW, why was Larry Summers pushed out of Harvard? Posted on January 26, 2009 4:19 PM Doug said: I had a professor in the '70s who had escaped from Hungary during the 1956 revolution, which was crushed by the Soviets. He didn't push anti-Soviet views on students (he taught Russian), but I had a chance to engage him in private conversations and found him a lot more credible on Cold War issues than many of the liberal voices which prevailed on campus in those days. It's incumbent on college students to seek out different points of view. Professors ought to encourage them to do so. Posted on January 26, 2009 4:25 PM Andrew Brod said: Joe, the lack of data was precisely my point... you know, the one you missed? Posted on January 26, 2009 8:42 PM skeeet club savage said: Andrew, curious as to how one would gather data on people's political opinions and prejudices, since these are kind of subjective things. Posted on January 27, 2009 9:57 AM Paul Daniels said: Joe: Your reference to Professor Summers is yet another example of intolerance on our campuses. I don't think we can put Summers in the camp of conservatives, but your point is a very good one. When Summers suggested that men have inherent advantages over women in math he was pilloried by the faculty for his statement and eventually forced to resign from his post as President of Harvard. (Among other things - he also criticized Cornell West for taking three weeks off from class to work on Bill Bradley's campaign, and suggested that West (whom David Horowitz contends is a "third-rate intellectual") also contributed to grade inflation.) As to the credibility of Summer's observation, if you look around the world we see what appear to be natural differences in gifts between men and women. Men do tend to be disproportionately represented in the hard sciences where math is important and women tend to be found in the humanities and social sciences more than in the hard sciences. We know that men are left-brain dominant and women use the right side of their brain more (or vice versa - I never can remember). For this reason men tend to be better with spacial things, like hitting a baseball, for example. Even a layman (like me) could conclude from this that men may have be different from women in this regard. (Women, I am sure from being married to the most wonderful woman in the world, have their advantages as well). The point is that we have politicized our institutions to the point that inquiry is limited to those things that are politically palatable. Dissenters need not apply in many situations. (Just try to get a grant to challenge the notion that global warming is not man-made). Posted on January 27, 2009 10:51 AM Paul Daniels said: That last sentence should have read: (Just try to get a grant to challenge the notion that global warming is [] man-made). Posted on January 27, 2009 10:56 AM Andrew Brod said: Sigh... Paul, real climate scientists don't look for grants "to challenge the notion that global warming is man-made." Real climate scientists look for grants to study global warming. I trust you see the difference. I mostly agree with what you say about Larry Summers, who I believe was pushed out of Harvard by a wave of political correctness. (Look no one's arguing that academia isn't full of liberals.) I think his statements were a little more subtle than your discussion indicates, but that's an issue for another blog. And finally, skeeet, we gather data on people's opinions and prejudices all the time, via surveys. I could imagine a study that links surveys of students with surveys of their professors. I don't know if such a study would be the final word on this topic, but it'd be better than just assuming the answer. Posted on January 27, 2009 2:08 PM David Colin said: Keep in mind. Davenport once told me he dropped out of college. Lets see English,History,Math, Physics, Chemistry Economics ( Karl Marx might come up) etc. you get it. What political bent is required. Posted on January 27, 2009 10:34 PM John Futrell said: In the group of 88 situation at Duke, it wasn't just about the initial statement and subsequent "clarifying" statements in which 87 of the 88 apologized for nothing. Harassment and intimidation extended to the classroom which ultimately resulted in Duke changing two grades given to Lacrosse players by Professor Kim Curtis. One of the students, Kyle Dowd was given an undisclosed financial settlement from Duke because Curtis gave him an "F" only because of his association with the LAX team. Call me stupid Mr. Brod, but I do think the reference to the Duke situation is relevant. However, after reading the blog and your initial rebuttal a second time, I better understand your point. For some very interesting reading somewhat related to this topic, google "Professors denied tenure for conservative views". There are only 17,500 items which probably don't qualify as data even though many involve court settlements. Posted on January 28, 2009 8:17 AM Andrew Brod said: Nice try, Mr. Futrell. I did indeed Google your phrase, and I got 15,800 hits. But then I Googled the same phrase with the word "liberal" replacing "conservative." I got 131,000 hits. Oh my God! Even Google has a liberal bias! Posted on January 28, 2009 9:02 AM John Futrell said: I only got 18,500 hits by substituting liberal for conservative. I relied on my feeble memory from yesterday and transposed the number. Your point is well taken. Posted on January 28, 2009 10:23 AM John Futrell said: I only got 18,500 hits by substituting liberal for conservative. I relied on my feeble memory from yesterday and transposed the number. Your point is well taken. Posted on January 28, 2009 10:23 AM Paul Daniels said: Andrew: Yes, you are right, a scientist should "study global warming." I wish more so-called scientists understood that. I was using shorthand to make the following point: A scientist who is sceptical of global warming expresses his scepticism at his own peril. Grants dry up and he can be ostracized by his collegues. I don't think that there can be any doubt that the theory that global warming is caused by human action has become a political cause and anyone who disagrees with this notion has been condemned as the equivalent of a "Holocaust denier" (In the N&O even). We have, unfortunately a lot of so-called scientists who don't seem to understand the scientific method or the fact that scientists don't, strictly speaking, prove anything. With regard to Summer, given the fact that he is an academic and a politician, I expect that his point was more subtle than I made it except for the thought police who are always on the lookout for slight. (Summers actually suggested that innate ability was only one of three factors accounting for the disparity). 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Justice. A. I liked that quarter best because all it was about were Supreme Court cases like affirmative action and Brown v. Board ... My teaching assistant, who you have in discussions twice a week, was crazy. I remember one day she was talking about how there should be affirmative action in terms of who becomes a Fortune 500 CEO and that they should require that a certain percent of all CEOs in Fortune 500 companies be women. I said I disagree, "Who's to say that a woman is going to be a better CEO than a man? Let's be honest, you know, a lot of women don't become CEOs because most women choose to not work as much 'cause you have no life if you're a CEO to raise a family or anything." But she said, "How can you be a woman and think that? That's totally wrong. That's what's wrong with women in our society because we need affirmative action to get ahead." She was unbelievable. When we talked about investment bankers and people who worked in finance... she said, "Well, I hate investment bankers anyway, I hate them, I hate their whole attitude." And she went on and on how they're terrible people... Q. So Imagination. What is that? A. I really don't know. I had no idea what was going on in that class. And even the TA said she had no idea what it was about... Q. But did you have reading lists? A. Yeah, I have the book. You'd spend a week on Vonnegut or similar writing, or the next week it'd be about graffiti, and another week it'd be immigration, and another week it'd be Vietnam. It wasn't tied together at all, so we never ended up with anything. But I remember for graffiti the professor said how pretty much we don't understand that it's an art form, and it's just a misunderstanding why people don't like graffiti and why police try to cover it up. She said that people are just trying to express themselves, and she never went into how it was vandalism or anything like that. When we talked about the entertainment industry and the show The L-Word , she said that having straight actresses portray lesbians was the same as white people painting themselves black. And so I don't think that anyone agreed with her on that... Do read the whole thing as it neatly illustrates both the worthlessness of most modern liberal arts education, as well as the closed mind and leftwing bigotry prevalant at all too many colleges and universities. Can you imagine a graffiti professor? Can you imagine a teacher taking issue with the position of a paper rather than the quality of the argument? Also, for someone to say they "hate" a certain class of people - I thought colleges were supposed to be the home of broad minded people? Of course, we know better - they aren't. The far left gained control starting in the late 60's, and these days intellectual inquiry is nearly dead on campus. On the bright side, this student was clearly not fooled - and she relates that a lot of her classmates also saw through the scam. On the dark side, a lot of students probably do fall for it - the intellectually incurious and the apple-polishers always willing to please probably buy the whole thing...and thus get the best grades, become TA's and eventually become professors or employees of other (mostly government-subsidised, as colleges and universities are) leftwing bastions, ready to put another generation on the treadmill of leftwing political orthodoxy. My bet is that a majority aren't fooled - going along with Lincoln's dictum that you can't fool all of the people all of the time. But, still, the time spent being indoctrinated in liberal/left orthodoxy is time spent away from learning the truth, so the overall effect is a loss for our society. Not believing the lies, but lacking the truth, people can be at a loss for what to do, and can often fall for leftwing ideas if they are dressed up with a dose of conservatism to make the Marxist poison go down. We see the result of all of this here on the blogs, and out in the larger world - the complete propagandised leftist robots who just rote repeat what their professors spoon-fed them, and the people who weren't fooled but don't know the truth, and are wary of taking it from a conservatism heavily demonised by their education experience. What to do? My view is that our best option is to de-fund liberal arts education at the federal level...no college loans or grants for it. A rather harsh step, but the primary thing we'd be de-funding is really just leftwing propaganda on campus. Force colleges to choose between lefty indoctrination and having actual paying students, the colleges will mostly drop the liberal arts courses...save for those few which are so popular that the kids are willing to pony up for them on their own (and my further bet is that such a devastation of liberal arts would allow center and right people to enter the field on a competitive basis...see who gets the more students: a course on American history taught by a conservative, or a course on Herstory taught by a bitter feminist...) Click here to create an account on Blogs For Victory and post comments! 89 Responses to "Interview With a College Student" Rana Quijotesca says: March 23rd, 2008 at 5:33 pm First of all... I read through the article, and the student said that, though the TA obviously disagreed with the paper, he/she still gave it an A, so it wasn't graded based on the position. Secondly, it is telling that this was a Teaching Assistant (aka: a grad student and not a tenured professor)... TAs tend to be more stupid than professors... Now... you want to defund all "liberal arts" education? Let's see what that would affect at the school I'm most familiar with (UGA): Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Economics (also available in BBA), Mathematics (also available in BS), Social Work, History, International Affairs, Psychology, Philosophy, Religion, Environmental Design, Languages (Romance [individual and general], Slavic, Arabic, Ancient Hebrew, Eastern, African, etc), Linguistics, Education, English. Funding is divvied up by Department, not by degrees, so not only would cuts to liberal arts education cut in to skills that people in other disciplines should have (such as logic and writing skills), but it would cut many programs that serve as stepping stones for Law Degrees and other useful things in society. In my personal experience (almost done with BAs in Political Science [a moderate to liberal faculty] and Economics [a conservative {at least Classical Liberal Economically} faculty]). Of all of the professors I have had, the most opinionated during class hours have been those in the Economics Department. The most opinionated Political Science Professor was a self-admitted moderate Conservative. I am not going to say that my experience is representative of all colleges, but I am going to say that your view, based on instances that are cherry-picked because they coincide with your preconceived notions. Liberals aren't the only ones hurting education... For example, the Republican Secretary of Education of Georgia has gone on record saying that Critical Thinking isn't a necessary skill... In my state... we are training people to be spoon-fed points of view that are not to be questioned... and Republicans are mostly to blame... Rana Quijotesca says: March 23rd, 2008 at 5:37 pm lol... that should say "...coincide with your preconceived notions, aren't either." and the second sentence in the 4th paragraph should be part of the first: "In my personal experience (almost done with BAs in Political Science [a moderate to liberal faculty] and Economics [a conservative {at least Classical Liberal Economically} faculty]), of all of the professors I have had, the most opinionated during class hours have been those in the Economics Department." could have been written better, but whatever. congressive says: March 23rd, 2008 at 5:44 pm This is a perfect example of right wing arrogance. The term 'liberal arts' designated the education proper to a freeman (Latin libera, “free”) as opposed to a slave. Elitist, arrogant, lazy, egomaniacal neocons want to return to a master/slave-class society. Eliminate lower and middle class people's access to a university education including the liberal arts and what do you get? The dark ages, where once again Catholicism rules the earth (and the ensuing plague, bookburning, inquisitions and powerful demigods in big hats). This is a horrible, horrible thing to even suggest. For those uninformed about the nature of liberal arts, see WIKIPEDIA or the website of your choice, where you'll find liberal arts include: theology literature languages philosophy history mathematics logic science All things Mark wants to see taken away from all young men and women stupid enough to have been born into a poor family. andrew says: March 23rd, 2008 at 6:02 pm The liberal in "liberal arts" is meant to imply given freely, a basic part of education, not linked to a particular major. It doesn't have anything to do with politics. That's why completely neutral subjects like chemistry and math can fall into a liberal arts program. If you want to denounce a politically liberal college atmosphere, denounce speciific departments or classes. Just because it contains a word you don't like, doesn't mean it is what you don't like. Denouncing a liberal arts program is saying you don't believe every student should have a wide basic set of required classes. That college should be narrower and more focused on a students major. � Interview With a College Student says: March 23rd, 2008 at 6:09 pm [...] Detik Musik wrote an interesting post today onHere's a quick excerptWhat to do? My view is that our best option is to de-fund liberal arts education at the federal level…no college loans or grants for it. [...] phnx says: March 23rd, 2008 at 6:16 pm "Elitist, arrogant, lazy, egomaniacal neocons want to return to a master/slave-class society. " Congressive, care to provide any evidence to prove this moronic statements are true? Mark Noonan says: March 23rd, 2008 at 6:21 pm congressive, That is what Wikipedia says - but the reality is that anything outside the hard sciences is considered liberal arts these days - so, match and science wouldn't be de-funded...and, I'd prefer not to do it, but I can't see any other way to pry the hard left out of their control of liberal arts. They don't deserve such control on their merits, and even if they were teaching anything worthwhile, there is no justification for one worldview being predominant at a univsersity or college which receives a substantial proportion of its funding via taxpayer dollars. You should undersatnd - and would understand, if you hadn't been cheated of real education by the people in control of liberal arts these days - that the liberal arts were developed by the Catholic Church starting in the 11th century. That Church which you denigrate as anti-intellectual is what revived learning and started to build colleges and universities - and began the then radical concept of educating poor people as well as sons and daughters of the rich. The heights were reached with St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century - and the fact that Thomas' philosophy is scorned as "Scholasticism" with the usual tag line "they debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin", the truth of the matter is that Thomas' Summa cannot be refuted - and those who denigrate his school of thought refuse to try, instead turning to insult and the pretence that, somehow, the 18th century came along and we all got "enlightened" thanks to some agnostic and atheist philosophers who broke through Church censorship to bring logic and reason to the process of education. No one would be more pleased than myself to have as many people as possible receive a liberal arts education - and just as soon as those in charge allow it, I'll back them to the hilt. Mark Noonan says: March 23rd, 2008 at 6:26 pm Rana, The mere fact of condemning opinion indicates a narrow minded, propagandistic view of education. You can't teach truth if you, yourself, are unwilling to be challenged. Gozer the Carpathian says: March 23rd, 2008 at 7:18 pm Indoctrination U. Good movie, available for download, check it out. :) Okay plug said I think we can all agree that not EVERY teacher in the university system is this messed up. Nor EVERY teaching assistant. Though a fairly large number is. The fact that we don't have to look very long or hard to find example after example of these wacky leftist diatribes and classes (hell check the catalogs on some of these schools!) should give us pause. It'd be one thing if you could find a similar number of right wing wacko classes (how about a gun rights 101 or something?) then I would fall more into the "It's just individuals" arguments. As it stands there's far too many points leaning left for me to think it's all just individual acts. (No I'm not saying there's a conspiracy either, just trends and slants) Diane Tomlinson says: March 23rd, 2008 at 7:29 pm Noonan is it out of bounds to ask if you went to some really neat-o Catholic school like Georgetown? A liberal arts education in the Cal-State sytem is closed minded because it isn't a Christocentric education. America isn't a nation that would be willing to become a bunch of subjects in a Christian Dominion whether that leadership was Catholic or Protestant. Hey that wouldn't be a bad plot for a cool novel. Say that America did have a Dominionist revolution and the two factions went to war? It would be like northern ireland except with F-22s and M1 tanks and Tomahawk missiles! How cool would that be!? Oh yeah not too cool for the women and children huh? Yeah sure the Bible bots being created coming out of Regent and Patrick Henry are far superior to an education at a place like say Harvard or Berkeley or Duke or even Cal Poly SLO. Colleges should be liberal with a thing called knowledge and not closed like the dominionist crap traps like Farris' joint and that Bible College Monica Goodling attended. JPL says: March 23rd, 2008 at 7:34 pm Mark, I'm with you 100% on this issue. A bachelor of arts degree from a "prestige" liberal arts school these days is a load of leftist crap, I mean, indoctrination. Believe it or not, I'm so happy my son's in art school, where he's actually getting a more socially productive education than he would in a prestige liberal arts school, because they're teaching him a practical trade along with essential math, science and history, and not plying him with Marxist group-think. And I'm not saying this because I'm anti-higher ed. I have BA and JD degrees from the very top national schools, it's just that I'm more than a little ashamed of some of the crap going on at my alma maters today. So to anyone out there with a smart, creative, intellectually curious, and independent-minded kid approaching college age: Forget the "prestige" schools. Encourage your kid to look at colleges where he or she can achieve without being taught to hate Western civilization. Some of them are religious-based, others are strictly classical (such as St. John's in Annapolis), and others are trade or art schools, but they're out there. Find the one that's right for your kid. Believe me, it will save your child 25 years of "unlearning" all the crap he or she would otherwise be force-fed in a "prestige" liberal arts school. JPL says: March 23rd, 2008 at 7:37 pm Oh, did I mention that Diane Tomlinson is a close-minded idiot? Mark Noonan says: March 23rd, 2008 at 7:46 pm Diane, Just what the heck would be a "Christo-centric" education? I'm talking about an education which would concentrate a bit more on Aristotle and Chesterton as opposed to Marx and Menchu. An education not conducted by people who hate investment bankers (why hate them? What have they done to you?). An education not conducted by people who see a racist/sexist/homophobe behind every action on the Judeo-Chrsitian West. Its the difference between discussing what happened during the Inquisition, and why, as opposed to just using it as a two-dimensional prop to condemn all religious belief. A liberal arts education is an education where truth is to be sought - not propaganda imposed. Diane Tomlinson says: March 23rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm How can I be a closed minded idiot when I was taught by the most enlightened people in the Universe, The Jesuits? Marquette '89. Those brilliant men also taught me that just because you disagree with another person's opinion doesn't make you right or smarter than them, it just means you disagree. I just feel there's more to the college experience in the modern age than the trivium and the quadrivium of the 11th Century I mean come on Noonan at least move into the Renaissance. Diana Powe says: March 23rd, 2008 at 8:03 pm How paternalistic and socialistic of you, Mark. Those poor feeble-minded college students must be dutifully "protected" by conservatives from the malevolent leftists who control the liberal arts curriculum. After all, they're just empty intellectual vessels waiting to be filled with some predigested knowledge. How do you know that? "All these people who must have gotten liberal arts educations comment on my blog and for some reason they don't agree with me ! Plus, I think they're stupid. " Diane Tomlinson says: March 23rd, 2008 at 8:04 pm A Christo-centric education would be one that feels it has to toss out elements of leftist thinking or historical principles that have shaped the human experience in the 20th Century in favor of the idea that Christian religion and its teachings can solve all the problems of the world today. While many of these principles have failed in macro aspects many or their micro aspects have merit and should be explored especially in the context of womens studies and economics. Regent, Bob Jones and Patrick henry teach that sort of curriculum which is targeted at creating law students, doctors and political scientists that will take their dominionist teaching into the public sphere. It's just another prong of the pitchfork that leads to the federal judiciary. Because, as a group of PHC students I interviewed in 2005 said, save for corporations, "it's the appellate courts stupid." There's no way to not get a little of the professor with the lecture. I had a statistics professor that hated Richard Nixon and used to spend the last ten minutes of every class railing about how much he loathed the man. But he loved Ronald Reagan. But that's the UP for you and yet another reason why I didn't stay in my native Iowa because there I would have gotten a guy who loved Nixon AND Reagan. While the Leninist experiment in the Soviet Union may have failed commune based economics such as those practiced by Grameen Bank have proven very efficacious across the Third World. Actually investment bankers haven't done a thing to me but the point is made that there is a stream of rogues out there in the baking and finance industry that do not care what harm they do if they turn a profit. I point you to bear Sterns as anexample of a house that got caught. Mark Noonan says: March 23rd, 2008 at 8:07 pm Diane, Certainly - especially given that the Renaissance was brought to you largely courtesy of the Roman Catholic Church...as were hospitals and other such good works. I'm sure the Jesuits who educated you were worthy priests, but I am now reminded of the recent words of a young Jesuit - "we will inherit the ruins"; meaning, the younger Jesuits will take over and rebuild what was destroyed by the older Jesuits, now passing from the scene. I'll note in passing that with people like Maguire at Marquette, one wonders just what you might have learned there... Your mindset is misinformed by the fact that we can use a microscope and a telescope in 2008, and they couldn't do so in 1208. But what does a microscope or telescope do for you? Just show you more details about what is true - it doesn't add to truth, nor make new truth. Thomas Aquinas was a human being, and thus just as potentially intelligent as any human being today - that he didn't know about, nor even imagined, an airplane (and he probably would have been horrified by things like atomic bombs and automatic weapons) doesn't alter his intelligence, nor his ability to discover truth. What I say, forthrightly, is that in the 8 centuries since Aquinas, no one has ever been able to successfully refute his arguments - in other words, no one has been able to demonstrate by argument or by scientific discovery that Aquinas got it wrong. That is a pretty strong assertion on my part, but I'll bet that I'll never be proven wrong. Now, this doesn't mean I want all college students to read the Summa, but what it does mean is that just because someone thought up an idea in 2008, it doesn't mean that it is superior to ideas of 1908, 1808, 1708, etc. Furthermore, I am absolutely determined that we not allow lies to be implanted in order to make some feel good about themselves - one of the most glaring examples of this is the case of Rigoberta Menchu, who wrote a completely fraudulent story of her life, and yet is still hailed in higher eduction as a great contributor to intellectual life...the truth is the truth; teach what happened, and let the students discover the truth. Mark Noonan says: March 23rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm Diane, Ok, now that I have your definition of "Christo-centric", I can state with firmness that I'm not looking for such a thing...if some private college wants to do that, that is perfectly fine...but for colleges which receive government money, I just want there to be a free quest for truth...can't get that at a liberal arts college these days, for the most part...and, as usual, you are now slowly drifting away from the subject and trying to argue against some Christian colleges rather than either defending or attacking liberal arts colleges. Careful, Diane; I won't allow you to turn this thread into a discussion of Bob Jones University...what they do there is not at issue; what is done at our public-funded univesities, that is what is at stake. Diane Tomlinson says: March 23rd, 2008 at 8:17 pm I think Aquinas would have been fascinated with the power generated by the atomic detonation but he would not have trusted men of any time with its might. I hope I have studied enough to surmise that he would have felt flying in a plane as a religious experience so great he might have to confess of his pleasure. this is what kind of man i saw Aquinas as. Itend to agree that ideas of today on terra are no better than ideas of 1008 if they are rooted in the Truth. But the question remains, as any good Jesuit would say, who's Truth? Think about what will come of the war in Iraq from a purley logical standpoint. Let's say they can set aside their differences and the war comes to an end with a destruction of the remnants of al Qaeda there and the powersharing leads to oil revenue sharing. 400 years down the road much of our bickering here on the Internet will be overlooked in favor of the new Arab democracy that was created by the US in the 21st Century. But only you here on Terra would know how close to disaster the effort was on many occasions. I think the ability to understand both sides of an argument is what is most being weaned out of freshman college students these days in favor of either the liberal or the conservative dogma of professors. Personally, and for reasons solely my own, I tend to be more wary of the right wing indoctrination over the left. The real world will cure rabid liberal youth while it seems only something on the order of a high velocity .357 round can change the mind of a deeply rooted right wing Christian school graduate. TiredofLibBullSh** says: March 23rd, 2008 at 8:39 pm Regardless of the origin of "liberal" in liberal arts, today's liberal arts courses are dominated by the socialist, uh progressive, left. My wife took a course that was titled "Religious Writing in Literature". The course was not limited to one religion. The course was instructed by an ATHEIST!!! What was an atheist doing teaching this class??? Most of the time, the classes would degrade into an argument between the instructor and several class members. Of course, the atheist (and liberal) denied the existence of any supreme being, which went against the theme of the course. Here, the instructor gave poor grades for those who disagreed with him. My wife had to suck it up and agree with this bozo in order to get an acceptable grade in the course. She worked for the university so she had to receive a C or better in order to receive the tuition waver. If not, she would have to pay for the course herself. This was a private university and tuition was not cheap even for a single course. There are those instructors who do not bring their propaganda into that classroom, but there are those that do. These dangerous instructors are becoming more plentiful and their actions are harmful to higher education. There was a time that these instructors were fighting the "establishment", now they are the "establishment" and have no room to give for what they themselves expected when they were in school. TiredofLibBullSh** says: March 23rd, 2008 at 8:51 pm Another incident, which relates to the questionable racial attitude of Obama and his "pastor", was from one of my history courses in college. I, unfortunately, had an African-American professor for a history course. This professor had a chip on her shoulder when it came to any material related to slavery. When the discussion turned to the slave trade (which happened quite frequently), a fellow African-American student raised her hand and informed, to the dismay of the instructor, that her great-great grandfather was A SLAVE TRADER, a free man of color, who sold slaves in the heart of New Orleans. The instructor tried to dismiss the students claims, but the student said that she had the ledgers for these sales transactions. Needless to say the instruct quickly changed the subject back to the relevant discussion we were supposed to be having. Luckily, I took the course Pass/Fail so the low grade I received, for not buying the instructor's indoctrination attempts (her version of history was not what I had learned before) would not affect my GPA. I could do this for any non-major required course. This was another incident in which the instructor's social and political views affected the quality of the course being taught. Again, class discussions were not at free and informative other courses were, where the instructors were more open to other's ideas. Almiranta says: March 23rd, 2008 at 8:52 pm OK, so Diane T has spouted her anti-religionist viewpoint again, irrelevant to the thread but evidently a real obsession with her, and Diana has just chimed in with typical Powe blather. Both ignore the fact that so-called "higher" education these days is a joke. "Liberal" arts schools do whatever they can to block student access to speakers who are not ardent, radical, Liberals. Or do the Double-D's conveniently forget the actual violence used to try to silence David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, the founder of the Minutemen, or any of dozens of other conservative speakers on supposedly "liberal" campuses around the country? The University of Colorado at Boulder had a tenured professor of "ethnic studies"--hired on an affirmative action basis because of his Native American background and his artistic achievements, both later found to be false---teaching that America killed Native Americans by giving them blankets puposely infected with smallpox organisms. This canard has been disproved over and over again, yet it was "taught". And oh, by the way, he also taught that students should be violent in their oppositon to the leadership of this country, and gave them tips on how to be domestic terrorists. "Higher" education has become indoctrination into radical Liberal agendas. When the Ward Churchill thing broke in the press, radio stations around the country were swamped with calls from college students telling stories of being instructed to write about the evils of this country and being failed when they did not find anything evil to write about, and calls from students who simply lied and pretended to go along with radical teachers' goofball ideas just to pass and get out of the classes. Aside from possibly Bob Jones University, BYU, and Oral Roberts U., I'd be hard pressed to find any university indoctrinating conservative issues and viewpoints--and anyone going to those schools does so for the very reason that they espouse conservative and religious points of view. There is no deception there. But students at state schools and Ivy League schools have the right to believe they will be given different sides of different points of view, and be taught to think and not just regurgiate talking points of some radical political movement. And I would suggest that anyone who can say that a Jesuit would ask "who's" point of view wasn't paying much attention. Spankyshand says: March 23rd, 2008 at 8:57 pm I sometimes wish you had a chance to breed Mark. (and then again, I'm glad the bloodline stops-at least yours- here). Your child, if you would let them have their own personality may lean left. Hopefully way left. This way you would have the chance to be exposed to youthful intelligent yearning to change the world from your elitist neocon warmongering "pious" point of view. The worst case scenario is that you mind control the young adult into the abomination you have become. Dear God let there be liberal arts. I'll pay my taxes toward it with glee. Right along side with the ROTC. Stick your head back in the hole. Warmonger. Happy Easter hypocrite jackson says: March 23rd, 2008 at 9:02 pm I think it's really amusing how the Bush Administration hired some 150 Regent University graduates, and that most of them were under the impression that loyalty to bush is more important than adhering to the law or defending the constitution. But when they get into trouble or want to dodge subpoenas, they hire real lawyers from those damn liberal law institutions. Diana Powe says: March 23rd, 2008 at 9:03 pm Now Almiranta wants to head the State Committee For Educational Purity. "We must have Standards to protect Our Youth from indoctrination ! To the bastions! More Enemies without!" The right-wing psychological need for persecutors proceeds apace. Almiranta says: March 23rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm Diana, you are simply silly. What I WANT is actual education. That is to say, teaching facts instead of personal agendas, exposing students to various ideas and philosophies, encouraging students to think for themselves instead of demanding that they meekly accept propaganda from any teacher in any subject, and providing them with an accurate and factual understanding of the history and laws of our country. Your hysterical rant is just proof of the panic experienced by the most rabid and fervent Leftists when there is any suggestion that they might lose their grip on the educational process and actually let it become what it was intended to be. I've seen you post a lot of crap, but this sets a new low even for you. A "State Committee for Educational Purity" is proably the goofiest of a lot of goofiness you have produced. On the other hand, standards to protect out youth from indoctrination sound like a pretty good idea. That is to say, standards of accuracy and open-mindedness. Pretty spooky to a hard-core Red like yourself, ain't it? The last thing you and your ilk can handle is objectivity and exposure to fact. And it is the Left which is so invested in the victim/villain paradigm. Sounds like your bleat about a "psychological need for persecutors" is a little too close to home for you Lefties to have you trying to stick it onto anyone else. But thanks for making my point for me--the radical Left is deeply invested in retaining control over education, and absolutely freaks out when anyone suggests a more moderate and balanced approach to teaching our young. Remember, when the State gets rid of religion, replaces the family, and controls education, it achieves the major goals of socialism and gains control. And what has popped up in just this one thread? Diane ranting against religion and Diana losing it when I suggest infusing education with a little more ......education. But you've both earned a nice red star for your enthusiastic efforts..... But do try to learn to actually read what is written, and to process that information more accurately. Such grotesque misrepresentation of what is actually said makes it look like--well, like you got a proper leftist indoctrination instead of an education. Greg-O says: March 23rd, 2008 at 10:37 pm Diane Tomlinson wrote: "Colleges should be liberal with a thing called knowledge and not closed like the dominionist crap traps like Farris’ joint and that Bible College Monica Goodling attended." While I agree that colleges should be dispensers of knowledge, the snobbery that was shown to Monica Goodling only highlights similar snobbery received by students in colleges today. "Indoctrinate U" is an excellent examination of this, and all the brow-beating in the world isn't going to stop those who insist their professors leave their political views outside the classroom door. Speaking of Goodling, and her alma mater, "that Bible College" Regent University, the URL below shows that they are turning out top-notch graduates. Of course, being the Boston Globe, you have to read towards the end of the article to get to the heart of the matter. http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/04/08/scandal_puts_spotlight_on_christian_law_school/ What? says: March 24th, 2008 at 12:00 am So Mark, Would your ciriculum of truth include works by Marx and Hobbes (a sworn atheist)? If so, how woud you teach them? Would your courses in history deal with the spotted past of Catholic Church? Simply put Mark, I don't see how you could be the purveyor of truth. Everything on this website indicates you have already decided what you believe and that you would teach to those beliefs. Some professors teach to their politics, some do not. What bothers me about this thread is that conservatives show little faith in students' ability to think for themselves. What frightens me is Mark's solution. He would rather deny an affordable college education to millions of American than have them learn something he disagrees with. Extraordinary. Also, that TiredofLibullshit actually has a college education is amazing. This man tried to argue Fox News is unbiased. A high school drop out on meth could see the bias. Diana Powe says: March 24th, 2008 at 12:04 am Speaking of someone supposedly "losing it" and writing about things after not reading, please do quote back to me some of my writing "against religion", Almiranta. What? says: March 24th, 2008 at 12:20 am On another note, it is not the knowledge I acquired at college that I most value about my four year experience. The fact I learned to write well is what I most value. I also appreciate that I learned how to develop my own ideas and argue them pursuasively. So many people simply read books, spew out the premise and call themselves intellectuals without ever challenging the premise or adding to it. There is no value in that. The actual knowledge I acquired was interesting, but knowing historical dates and events is not going to do me much good in the real world. What? says: March 24th, 2008 at 12:29 am Actually, I should not be too surprised by Mark's willingness to defund public education. This is the same man who said knowing how to read wasn't all that important. Mark Noonan says: March 24th, 2008 at 2:41 am Diane, If you had a Jesuit saying "who's truth", then I'm sorry for you...there is only one truth, God, and all things which are true ultimately adhere to that. Be that as it may... If, 400 years from now, people are looking into our times, and even (perhaps) going through blog transcripts to see how regular folks were viewing things, what they will want to know - if they are wise - is whether or not we sought truth. We're all dead at that point, so playing games with when someone died won't matter to a truth-seeker in the 25th century...what will matter is how much truth we tried to bring out, or hide. Mark Noonan says: March 24th, 2008 at 2:44 am what, Do you have any sense of the nuances of things? You lefties were all about nuance in 2004 - what happened to that? Being able to read isn't the most important thing in the world - its not un-important, as you imply I claimed. What is always important in the world is whether or not a person is trying to get to the truth of the matter...especially in this Age of Lies we live in, the quest for truth becomes exceptionally important. The problem with you on the left is that you too often over-concern yourself with the trivialities of life, and let the larger issues slide. Mark Noonan says: March 24th, 2008 at 3:12 am what, Just noticed that other comments on the thread I wanted to answer were also by you: So, here goes. Would your ciriculum of truth include works by Marx and Hobbes (a sworn atheist)? If so, how woud you teach them? Would your courses in history deal with the spotted past of Catholic Church? Simply put Mark, I don’t see how you could be the purveyor of truth. Everything on this website indicates you have already decided what you believe and that you would teach to those beliefs. I didn't say that I would set curriculum - in fact, I'm entirely un-interested it what, precisely, is taught. There is a such a thing as academic freedom, you know? I'm only interested in whether or not truth is the goal. You can have the whole school be nothing but Marxist teachers who will tell the students endlessly that in their considered opinion, Marx had it right...and as long as they allow the students to pursue truth unfettered, such professors would be doing their job. Here is a sample of our problem: African-American Atlas: Black History and Culture -- An Illustrated Reference. Molefi K. Asante and Mark T. Mattson. 1998. REF E185 A79 1998 Excellent historical atlas provides information on African peoples and cultures from pre-history to the present. Long, informative, and decidedly afrocentric essays accompany each chapter (e.g., the section on twelfth century African presence in Mexico and Central America, presented here as fact), along with many illustrations and maps. An indispensable and provocative resource. Did you catch that? "The section on twelfth century African presence in Mexico and Central America, presented here as fact". Any claim that Africans were in Mexico in the 12th century is, my friend, a lie - and this entry is from an Iowa State University website called: Diversity & Ethnic Studies Recommended Websites & Research Guides In other words, the University recommends this resource, even though it contains a laughable lie, because for the University, getting it "right" on diversity is more important than presenting the truth. Now, if it is a private college receiving no taxpayer funds, then I don't care if they teach that white people were invented by an evil African witch doctor - but at a taxpayer funded school, lies must be as far as possible banned, and the pursuit of truth strongly encouraged. How are we to get to truth when the university, itself, spreads lies? And don't try to tell me - or anyone else - that this is an isolated example...I just went searching for it and it took only a very short time to find this...if I search more, I'll find more (I've read enough on the subject to know that some really fabulous lies have been told, especially in African studies). Truth, truth, truth - that is what we want, right? But as long as the left dominates in the liberal arts departments, the truth will be suppressed and lies will be broadcast...because that is the way the left always works when they are in charge (big defenders of academic freedom until they control a voting majority on the faculty; that is the left in a nutshell). We have to get them not out of the schools - they are free to teach whatever they darn well please - but out of control of the schools. De-funding them is the best means to do this - not a nice means; not a kindly means, but the best means. pelirrojo says: March 24th, 2008 at 5:40 am Mark, this thread doesn't really interest me (your views on the left running universities lost me when you said lefties are too lazy to go into hard sciences, a laughable lie), but that last comment does interest me. "Any claim that Africans were in Mexico in the 12th century is, my friend, a lie" Personally I haven't looked into it (nor care to), but curious, how do you know any such thing is a lie? have you proven its impossible for africans to travel? Have you even looked at their evidence? (ok maybe they don't present it, they'll reference it). If you haven't then I'm afraid you're avoiding the truth...... congressive says: March 24th, 2008 at 8:11 am This is a test. This is only a test. 1. Sh**. 2. LibBullSh**. Just waiting to see which one gets deleted. IrishFiddler says: March 24th, 2008 at 10:25 am Mark, I would be careful presenting the Summa Theologiae as irrefutable. After all Saint Thomas Aquinas argues against the Immaculate Conception. On the contrary, The things of the Old Testament were figures of the New, according to 1 Cor. 10:11: "All things happened to them in figure." Now the sanctification of the tabernacle, of which it is written (Ps. 45:5): "The most High hath sanctified His own tabernacle," seems to signify the sanctification of the Mother of God, who is called "God's Tabernacle," according to Ps. 18:6: "He hath set His tabernacle in the sun." But of the tabernacle it is written (Ex. 40:31,32): "After all things were perfected, the cloud covered the tabernacle of the testimony, and the glory of the Lord filled it." Therefore also the Blessed Virgin was not sanctified until after all in her was perfected, viz. her body and soul. http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/TP/TP027.html#TPQ27A2THEP1 That being said, I think Saint Thomas Aquinas is right more often than not. IrishFiddler says: March 24th, 2008 at 10:27 am As a side note I intend to attend a liberal arts college: Thomas Aquinas College in California MorrisMajor says: March 24th, 2008 at 10:59 am Wow, quite a leap from one disgruntled TA to all liberal arts education. I guess all you need is one good anecdote and the whole discussion is closed. Tractatus says: March 24th, 2008 at 11:43 am The right-wing psychological need for persecutors proceeds apace. Well, yes. Contemporary movement conservatism is based in no small part on an ongoing victim/persecution complex. Education, the media, the arts-everything that says things they don't like is "biased" and is an affront to conservatives. It's how they stay motivated-just look at the hysteria in this thread. It also explains whatever shortcomings conservatism might have. It's not that conservatism has its failures (witness Noonan repeatedly making the ridiculous assertion that conservatism "works every time it's tried"-he's created his definition, and the facts must bend to fit it!), it's that this vague enemy called "liberal bias" is to blame. Dasein Libsbane says: March 24th, 2008 at 12:10 pm Back to the subject; UC San Diego (which is not in the Cal-State system) is not unique in it’s adaptation of Liberal Arts as a forum for leftists ideology. In most of the disciplines it is difficult in the best of circumstances to find a teaching candidate that isn’t ideologically on the left. With few exceptions, the disciplines taught in liberal arts are right-brain (creative) endeavors. Teaching itself is a right-brained activity. My particular area of expertise and the subject I taught at an extension of the university cited in the article, is accounting; a singularly left-brained (logic and discipline) activity. Most of us don't bring ideology or politics into the classroom; there's not point to it; balace sheets don't care who is in control of Congress. Those with the Liberal Arts degrees who make teaching a career are by and large those that cannot, or will not use the degree to further a career in any activity that would constrict their intellectual autonomy. I’ve been on a number of search committees and my observations are consistent with those of other institutions; candidates for positions in liberal arts are academicians with little or no experience outside of academia. The greatest achievement the search committees can look for is publications, not results as those would be subjective whereas publications are generally accepted as expertise regardless of the nature of the publication; a treatise on the Nazi influence on plumage coloration of birds in captivity carries as much weight as developing a taxonomy of the entire list of genes found in the Neuospora genome. (Hint: one is academic masturbation, the other offers new targets for control of plant and animal pathogens.) It is my belief, based on inductive reasoning of working at one such institution and having a daughter enrolled at a state university, that the colleges and universities don’t make a conscious effort to operate leftist indoctrination facilities; they can’t help it, conservatives just don’t apply for these jobs. Once ensconced in these bastions of internally driven thinking, the teachers (from chair to TA) cannot have their methods questioned because of the vague academic freedom theory that holds that once in the classroom, the instructors role is to direct the students to intellectual awakening even if the student resists the notion, or especially if the student resists. Getting back to UCSD; I attended the graduation of Marshall’s college last year, it was hysterical; they give phony awards to themselves celebrating diversity and intellectual curiosity as if those things prepare the students for life in any real fashion; the majority of last year’s graduates are still in the San Diego area; either attending post-grad classes, working for the U, or hawking burgers and fries by night and surfing by day. jackson says: March 24th, 2008 at 2:24 pm I have a bit of a problem with people of "faith" deciding what is taught as "truth" in our educational institutions. I spent much of my youth volunteering in 3rd world countries with Catholic Relief Services, and come from a family that’s so conservative that Jesuits are the liberal fringe. But 9/11 made me question everything I was taught, when I contemplated the ultimate motivation of young men who happily killed themselves and others in the name of their "faith". I’m not saying faith is necessarily a bad thing. It’s indoctrinated and agenda oriented faith that I have a problem with, and we see that everywhere, not just over there. A strong faith can indeed move mountains, but a blind unquestioning faith can bury us under them. Absolute faith is akin to absolute power, with the same ability to corrupt absolutely. I've always thought that the louder people protest and the more fervently they preach, the more intellectually insecure they are in their positions. Knowledge drives out "belief". For example, now that we know what powers the sun and why it rises, there's no longer a need to create a "faith" to explain it, like many of our ancestors did. When you have such a tenuous hold on a belief that supports your entire world view, anything that contradicts it MUST be a liberal lie. Like the notion of a non-geocentric universe was. I don't mean to pit faith against science, because there's plenty of crossover in both camps. The worlds of Physics and Medicine are full of faith based theories with their vocal proponents fervently looking for proof of their conclusions. The prevalence of wackos does not discriminate. But educational institutions must keep a liberal slant, because I think that's the only way to make progress and get to the truth. I’m not saying that liberals are not selective and sometimes elitist and exclusionary in their leanings, I’m saying that they’re more likely to accept evidence that they are wrong when presented with the truth, instead of refusing to consider it because it’s in opposition to their beliefs.. EVIDENCE of truth, not just the teachings of those who came before us, or anecdotes ancient or otherwise. Look at Einstein, who shook up the traditional world of Physics with his radical genius. In his later years he became stuck on the conservative notion that "God does not play dice with the universe". While a wonderful idea, it was a position he stubbornly held, and it prevented him from seeing or accepting the truth of the strange and spooky quantum world, which we now know to be real. Conservatism has it's value in society, but in academia liberalism must rule. felix the cat says: March 24th, 2008 at 4:44 pm Mark Noonan claims that reading isn't all that important. This would work for him because it would make it sooooo much easier to indoctrinate the illiterate. That's the reasoning behind book burnings. As John Adams, one of Marks constitution hero's said: "Dare to read, to speak, to think and to write". So much for a "liberal" education that Mark despises. TiredofLibBullSh** says: March 24th, 2008 at 6:22 pm “Dare to read, to speak, to think and to write” ..... especially AGAINST a liberal instructor or professor and dare I say liberal politician! Almiranta says: March 24th, 2008 at 8:46 pm DIANA POWE.......Please read this. I typed it very verrry slowly so you have a chance at getting through it. "OK, so Diane T has spouted her anti-religionist viewpoint again, irrelevant to the thread but evidently a real obsession with her, and Diana has just chimed in with typical Powe blather.? "Diane T is Diane Tomlinson. Her name is Diane. It ends with an E. Just to be sure, I included her last initial. If I meant to reference you, Diana Powe, I probably would have used the initial P as a further identifier. Diana, the name ending with an A, has not been accuses of being anti-religionist, but merely of constantly spouting mindless blather. Now, go through that again. Maybe someone can help you with the hard parts. I saw you once get the vapors when somone confused you with Diane T by switching the E and the A, so I know you have the basic capability to recognize your own name--at least sometimes. Try now. kimberly4victory says: March 24th, 2008 at 9:19 pm Uh oh, Almiranta. I have posted several times to Diane, when I really meant to post to Diana. And, I am sure I've done the opposite as well. LOL! Almiranta says: March 24th, 2008 at 9:29 pm kimberly, Diana Powe is just super-sensitive about my remarks, so much so that she has decided to take a comment that was not only directed to Diane but clearly so, with her last initial included to make it clear, and get the vapors over it. All she does is illustrate her blind dedication to all things radically Left, and her inability to process information---and I've always felt the two were linked. I don't like the teachings of Marx and Lenin and so on, but I think they should be part of a true liberal arts education. Students need to be exposed to different ways of thought, if they are ever going to learn to think for themselves. My objection to what passes for a liberal arts education in way too many colleges these days is that it has the exact opposite goal of trying to stimulate independent thought. And we can see the results right here on this blog, as Lefties repeatedly post things that have been disproven over and over again--because they want them to be true, because they believe that they are true in spite of the facts at hand, because their "education" has made them swallow insanities like "fake but accurate". I strongly recommend Thomas Sowell's "Conflict of Visions" for both Left and Right ideologues--it's a fascinating study of the different visions that underlie our political positions, a nonjudgmental approach to understanding the basic differences in the way people view the world. What? says: March 25th, 2008 at 12:05 am Mark, The Age of Lies? Please. That is a bit dramatic don't you think? Then there is this: "The problem with you on the left is that you too often over-concern yourself with the trivialities of life, and let the larger issues slide." Sorry, I have don't know what you are talking about here. You have to tell me your argument or else I cannot respond to it. Is the Iraq War a triviality? How about gay rights? The economy? Also, I have no idea what you meant with your nuance comment. You are reading in something that is not there. Next up the Iowa State thing, First off, You are overreacting. You point out one book mentioned amongst many and conclude that all of Iowa State is run by crazy liberals. For this you want to de-fund all public universities in the country. Again, extraordinary. If you are going to propose such a radical agenda, have something beyond antedotes to support it. Second, Absolute truth, if there is such a thing, is reached through the process of trying out ideas and either rejecting them or accepting them as true, even if they supplant conventional wisedom. For example, there was a point in time Americans believed Columbus was the first European in the Americas. This has since been challenged and, I believe, refuted. Galileo's theory on heliocentrism is another example where conventional wisedom was overthrown, in that case by a single man. Now, I don't currently believe that there were Africans in the Americas in the 12th century, but if someone wants to present evidence to the contrary I am willing to look at it. If it is compelling than I will accept it, if it is not I will reject it. This process of inquiry is how our knowledge has developed and has given us the understanding of our world that we have today. It is, in short, the mechanism by which we reach the truth you claim to seek. You, however, seem less interested in the truth than simply confining history to your particular understanding of it. You would be with the people who rejected heliocentrism before even hearing Galileo's argument. But again what saddens me, Mark, is that you have so little faith in your fellow Americans to think on their own. Do you really think that little of your fellow citizens? I believe the average college student can choose what he or she believes to be truth. The person might even realize their are several truths to one story. Higher education is about learning to think and to analyze the world around you and make your own conclusions. You are right, there are always going to be professors who try to bully their students into accepting their point of view. Lord knows I had a couple of them and it sucks. But the fact that the universities are not perfect is not a crime worthy of destroying them. Mark Noonan says: March 25th, 2008 at 2:28 am what, As an example - a triviality is worrying if there are "enough" black students at a university; the larger issue is whether or not the students are getting a real education. And, also, as I said - don't try and put this off as some isolated incident...finding that example took mere seconds of searching. You know darn well that it is one of 10,000 such examples, pervading our entire higher education system. But even if it were the only one - IT IS A LIE!!! No, what, you don't get to say "well, I'll listen to the evidence" - there is no evidence! Anyone who even remotely suggests such a thing is either an idiot, or a con artist. Why do we know this? Because anyone with even a cursory knowledge of African history knows that AFRICANS WEREN'T SEA-GOING PEOPLE!!!! The site of Alexandria was around for the entirety of ancient Egyptian civilization...it took Greeks to make a port out of it. Why didn't the Egyptians? Because they didn't go in for sea travel. For sub-Saharan Africans it is even more stark - the dearth of navigable rivers prevented development of more than rudimentary water craft - and thus there was no base of knowledge to build larger and seaworthy ships. Additionally, sub-Saharan Africa is notoriously deficient in natural harbors...when European traders first arrived off the west African coast, they invariably had to get into rowboats to go ashore because there was no place to put in a seagoing ship. Africans visiting the Americas? How did they bloody get there!?!?!?! Its a stupid suggestion - and only someone on the make would assert it. In this case, the desire is to weave together a fantasy about Africa which some how makes it the equal to Europe in global impact. Sorry, ain't gonna happen - I don't care how much someone decides to hate the Europeans, they are the people who wound up having the largest impact on the world...and not just by a small margin but by a massive, overwhelming and earth-shaking margin. These are easily ascertainable fact, and they reflect no discredit on those people who didn't have a big impact - its just something that happened, and it has to be dealt with, as is. And yet, this is just one example of many - a huge amount of lies presented not just as truth, but as long-suppressed truth, so its really cool and important to hear it, and believe it. And the attitude has infected the larger culture - I once saw a television documentary which claimed that there was a female Pope named Agnes...this story being a bit of anti-Papal propaganda from the Reformation and without even the slightest basis in fact...but it was presented as fact in a "history" tailored to showing how women had a huge impact on our society. Higher education is, indeed, about learning to think - but thinking must be based on fact. If its not, then its perfectly worthless mental masturbation. Mark Noonan says: March 25th, 2008 at 2:37 am Irish, I find no contradiction between that and this: In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin." The subject of this immunity from original sin is the person of Mary at the moment of the creation of her soul and its infusion into her body. The term conception does not mean the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body was formed in the womb of the mother, and the father had the usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the immaculateness of the generative activity of her parents. Neither does it concern the passive conception absolutely and simply (conceptio seminis carnis, inchoata), which, according to the order of nature, precedes the infusion of the rational soul. The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused into the body. Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul. The formal active essence of original sin was not removed from her soul, as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her soul. Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin. The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam -- from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death. Though perhaps people with better knowledge can correct me. Tractatus says: March 25th, 2008 at 1:21 pm Higher education is, indeed, about learning to think - but thinking must be based on fact. If its not, then its perfectly worthless mental masturbation. So does this mean you're going to stop beating off ("intellectually" speaking)? What? says: March 25th, 2008 at 2:04 pm You are hopeless, Mark. As I have already pointed out, you have not even been presented with the evidence and you dismiss it. You want to make sure your version of history is not attacked or even questioned. Again, refer to my discussion on Galileo. You can make your argument against Africans in the Americas, but first you need to apporach the contrary evidence and address it. You have refused to do that. This makes you closeminded. I frankly agree with your take on Africans in the Americas but I am willing to entertain other theories. This makes me more interested in the truth than you. Next, you have done exactly what every person does when they use antecdotes to back up a propostion. You cite one and then assume that there are thousands more just like it and call it a day. Mark, that is both aweak argument and intellectually dishonest. If you can show me studies (not from the Heritage Foundation) saying a majority of people coming out of college believe something that is patently false (the Nazi's won WWII), then I would show concern. You cannot do that. I also want to address the articles take on graffiti art. The author clearly would rather see the students studying more traditional art forms. But which art form is more relevant in today's world? A painting of some unknown duke created 300 years ago or the art work made by living people who are part of a urban subculture? Talk about Eurocentric. Finally, Mark, despite what you said earlier, you are against the unbiased teaching of Marxism. You call it "Marxist poison." You have clear ideas of what you want taught. You need to look at what you write in your article and make sure you aren't changing your stance in your comments. In conclusion, you have no interest in inquiry or truth. You want to indocrinate our nation's college students with conservative orthodoxy . You are the evil you claim to protest. jackson says: March 25th, 2008 at 2:12 pm "What", in #50, provides a rational argument for making decisions based on the gathering of evidence, and keeping an open mind when conclusions cannot be determined as beyond any doubt. Very academic. Mark, in #51, adamantly states his conclusion based on his limited knowledge, and belligerently fights for his position, resorting to insults and ridicule to raise his credibility and shame the opponent. A prototypical neocon. I spent several years in Africa, mostly on the east coast. I once visited a small island off the coast of Mombasa, called Lamu, during a full eclipse of the sun(with a bad hangover). It was very different from the rest of mainland Kenya, in history and architectural remains. Reminded me a bit of the once-portugese port of Goa, accross the indian ocean near Bombay- or now Mumbai. Lamu has been visited by sea travelers for about 2000 years, settled sometime after the 8th century, and the present town dates back to the 1300's. Lamu has archeological remains of an 8th century mosque, and on the smaller island of Shanga, there are remains of Persian pottery and Chinese stoneware. I've read accounts of 1st century merchants describing their travels in the indian ocean and down the African coast, describing wealthy kingdoms engaging in trade. I won't even get into the most ancient kingdoms of Ethiopia(Queen of Sheba, remember?) and Eritrea. Not exactly known for their seagoing history, but definately had no shortage of ancient experience and influences from seagoing peoples in and out of the horn of Africa. There are plenty of accounts of North African Moors traveling by sea down the west coast of Africa. If you look at a map, West Africa is about the same distance from Brazil as Goa is from Lamu across the indian Ocean. There are also accounts of a 400 ship fleet from the kindom of Mali heading west to a new land in the 1300’s. There’s no shortage of circumstantial evidence of pre-columbianic travel to the americas, from cultures all over the world. Check it out on Wiki, for example. Not clear proof, but interesting nonetheless. Now don't get your knickers in a twist, Brian, nobody's challenging your sense of Eurocentric superiority and the dominant influence of Europe in global history. No one is trying to equate Africa's cultural influence with that. But don't be a fool and completely rule out the mere possiblity of Africans being present in South America before you think they were. Are you really THAT insecure? Maybe you just resent those damn pagan Afrocentric anthropologists pointing to evidence that Africa is actually the Cradle of Man, because it clashes with your 6000 year old world theory? Or is it that you might share mitochondrial origins with Africans, yet you're resentful because you don't seen any evidence of that in your pants? What? says: March 25th, 2008 at 3:21 pm Jackson, Mark, if you have not noticed, thinks he has a monopoly on historical interpretation. What is amazing is that his understanding of history supports his politcal beliefs perfectly. Now, I wonder which conclusions Mark reached first, his politcal ones or the ones on history? Considering he claims to have been a conservative since the Goldwater era, I think we know the answer. And Tractus, No, Mark will never stop beating off (in the intellectual sense) as long as there are people out their who have the gall to disagree with him. majoriot says: March 25th, 2008 at 3:23 pm I suppose she could watch Fox News to even it all out. jackson says: March 25th, 2008 at 4:58 pm Good points all round, what! Sounds colonial British, that. I'm going to resist continuing in that vein (too bad, I had a good one about nocturnal Omissions), because I know where Mark is coming from. I used to be one of him. Until I started thinking for myself. You can do it too, Mark. It's a little painful at first, but you'll feel much better about yourself later, once you jettison the last vestiges of brain thunking denial and take a good look at what you've been spoon fed all your life. We have support groups. Mike says: March 25th, 2008 at 5:01 pm It is not possible to separate conservatism and anti-intellectualism. Mike says: March 25th, 2008 at 5:08 pm Imaging what would be on the ideal conservative college curriculum... -Trickle-down economics 1301 -Intro to xenophobia -Staying in the closet 1401 (requires a lab) -Seminar in incompetence jackson says: March 25th, 2008 at 5:41 pm Ha! How about: -Cronyism 302 -Jingoism as policy 402 -Governing with the ten commandments 101 -Democrats and Racialist Marxism 201 (professor plumb bob) What? says: March 25th, 2008 at 5:46 pm Jackson, I agree. I believe in Mark. That is why I patiently frustrate him with my "trivial" "liberal" thinking. I think he has a long way to go but I am willing to stick it out. Glad to see someone else is here to help. And Mark, How do you know I am a liberal? I never told you who I plan to vote for. McCain is not off the table at this point. Mike, I like your joke but there is intelligent conservatism, it is just not evident in the kind peddled by FOX News personalities or radio show hosts. The Rushes, Hannitys and Coulters of the movement drown out any intellectual voices with sensationalism and name-calling. Sadly 30% of America seems to enjoy this brand. jackson says: March 25th, 2008 at 6:17 pm Electives: -Vocalizing through the rectum -The persecution of the Zygote -A brief history -Endangering species- a matter of taste. Mark Noonan says: March 27th, 2008 at 1:15 am what, It doesn't occur to you that my views might be based on history? Think about it - in the example provided, its very simple for you to look up whether or not Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, had sea-going ships. Once you ascertain the fact that it didn't, its clear my view is not just an opinion, but an indisputable fact. And once you grant that I'm right on one thing, you might even grant that I'm right on others. 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A Personal Inquiry into the Scholarship of Teaching Michael Arnzen, Ph.D. You are here: Home > 2003 December > Friday 5 > Is Grade Inflation a Myth? December 5, 2003 Is Grade Inflation a Myth? Posted by Michael Arnzen at 19:44 in Theory . At a recent meeting of our Faculty Senate, we received another good statistical presentation on grade inflation, updating us on where we stand since last year. The good news was that Seton Hill has actually seen a decrease in the overall GPA awarded compared to last year... this (probably) means that teachers aren't frivolously giving away A grades and crumbling to all the pressures that we've talked about before in this forum (when I recommended the American Academy of Arts and Sciences article called �Evaluation and the Academy: Are We Doing the Right Thing? Grade Inflation and Letters of Recommendation� ). Or is it all meaningless? Is grade inflation a myth? An imaginary concept that is used to serve political or administrative ends? An abstract concept that preys upon faculty paranoia about being too easy? We're talking, after all, about numbers that imply a correlation but have no causality; we're talking about speculative trends and hypothetical reasons behind them. Our Senate meeting concluded with a surprisingly vociferous debate about the "unreality" of grade inflation and some faculty were adamant that such numbers really don't say or mean anything. I've always felt that grade inflation (well, "compression" technically) is a reality of college life today, if only because so many students seem to feel entitled to high grades because they've been getting them over and over again. I believe that this is a nationwide phenomena. But I thought I'd do some web research on this topic, just to see what others have said against the notion. In The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation , education author Alfie Kohn takes issue with the statistical research about inflation and writes that "The burden rests with critics to demonstrate that those higher grades are undeserved, and one can cite any number of alternative explanations" for what appears to be inflated grades. (This is true: the statistical data suggest trends, but higher GPAs could very well evince what education is supposed to provide: high achievement!) But Kohn is more interested in the epistemological issues at work here: how the truth is obscured by discourse about grade inflation and that learning often drops out of the picture altogether. He suggests that conservative pressures on institutions from outside forces often motivate charges of grade inflation, and outlines the major assumptions about college learning that undergirth the arguments of those who claim grades are inflated: The professor's job is to sort students for employers or graduate schools. This assumption is predicated on the notion that teachers are "gatekeepers" into a profession, involved with rating students on the likelihood of their later success, rather than actually educating of individuals. Students should be set against one another in a race for artificially scarce rewards. This assumption buys into the notion that grades are ways of setting students into a competitive enterprise, competing to be the best of class, rather than developing on their own terms. This assumption usually has that strange statistical assumption of "the bell curve" lurking behind it, which assumes before the fact that in any given group you will have an average set and only a few winners and losers, and that the teacher's job is to sort out who fits where along the spectrum. Harder is better (or higher grades mean lower standards). Like the assumption that competition between students is good, this assumption sees grades as a carrot that dangles before the horse: a puritanical work ethic lurks behind this assumption, and professors come to see themselves as "bosses" who are making their students "work harder" rather than learners. Grades motivate. This is a common enough assumption that I think all teachers share: that grades motivate students to learn. But the research that Kohn presents suggests that it doesn't motivate the students as much as other factors and that grading may actually be a disincentive to motivation. Obviously, these assumptions could very well be a reality. But the point Kohn raises is important: that if we are presented with evidence that suggests we need to change our grading habits, perhaps we should question why that is so, and not be bullied by statistics which can be interpreted in multiple ways. Other articles on the "myth" of grade inflation include Tom Scocca's "The Great Grade Inflation Lie" from the Boston Phoenix in '98 (which challenges the logicality of the very idea of "grade inflation") and Education Week's article, There's No Such Thing as Grade Inflation from '96. I agree, of course, with the idea that we need to be skeptical and reasonable when it comes to grade inflation -- especially when it comes to institutional controls and any teacher policing that might be motivated by it. Evaluation of student performance should never become monolithic and standardized -- academic freedom encompasses grading criteria, in my opinion. But at the same time I don't think we should write grade inflation off as a complete myth. Talking about grading standards and trends can only benefit teachers. Open dialogue about different practices and standards among colleagues, whether locally or globally, can only enlighten us. Whether we shed light on the assumptions that motivate our grading or on the areas where our grading could be a little more stringent, looking at how we grade allows us to become more conscious of what we're doing when we're grading, and therefore better at it. Trackback Pings You can ping this entry by using . Comments John Carlo Manigualte placed a response to this topic here . Posted by Mike Arnzen at 21:49 on December 7, 2003.
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The Hypocrisy of Academic Freedom Costin Alamariu April 08, 2005 Columbia Daily Columbia Unbecoming is, on the whole, just a series of complaints having to do mainly with manner or etiquette in the classroom, but the real issue has to do with the meager and politicized content that professors choose to teach. As Efraim Karsh, head of the Mediterranean Studies department at King’s College, University of London, implied on March 6 in Uris Hall, Massad’s classroom hysterics are not the real problem. The real problem is a polite and affable man like Professor Khalidi, who nevertheless peddles political propaganda in class, propaganda masquerading as real scholarship. Two articles in the March 23, 2005 issue of Spectator are typical in that they contain a defense of the status quo at Columbia and a dismissal of the charges in Columbia Unbecoming, on the grounds that this film or — more generally, this fiasco — has politicized classroom discussion at our University. This way of proceeding is patently dishonest to anyone who has been aware of the already explicitly politicized nature of American academic life, especially in the humanities, since the 1970s. It is not the students in Columbia Unbecoming who have politicized the MEALAC department. This department, like nearly all others of its kind at other universities and like other departments within Columbia itself, has long replaced disinterested scholarship with political activism. Now that others who disagree have entered the political arena and wish to struggle against entrenched activists like Massad or Khalidi on their own terms, these professors and their allies are speaking of academic freedom. But, as recent events show, the academic defenders of academic freedom cannot be trusted. A few weeks ago, Harvard’s faculty of the arts and sciences passed an unprecedented no-confidence motion against President Lawrence Summers.Why? Last January, Summers raised some very reserved questions to a private body of faculty about whether there might be innate differences between men and women in their intellectual abilities and preferences. Despite considerable studies on just this subject since at least the 1970s — a fact well-known to anyone outside the sanctimonious and provincial humanities faculties — Summers’ questions were deemed too free for academic discourse. To start, a professor in the audience stormed out and claimed nearly to have fainted, or worse. Despite self-abasing Soviet-era-style public apologies on three different occasions, Summers nearly lost his job — he still might — and was bullied into appointing two different task-force groups to investigate the matter of women’s employment in the sciences at Harvard. The presidents of three other universities have written to express disapproval of the questions he raised. In the face of this academic abuse of disinterested inquiry, this stifling of Summers’legitimate intellectual questioning, did the defenders of Massad’s academic freedom at Columbia rise to defend Summers? Could one even them doing so?Consider another, less-well-known incident. Last September 15, at DePaul University in Chicago, Professor Thomas Klocek entered a discussion with students who ran a booth for the organization Students for Justice in Palestine. The disagreement was heated, but by all accounts the most Professor Klocek may have done was to resolutely stand up for Israel in the face of equally resolute accusations. The students at the booth, however, felt aggrieved and filed the usual litany of complaints, chief among them being, of course, racism. Professor Klocek has been suspended by DePaul — and, again, none of the champions for academic freedom among Columbia’s faculty or administration has said a word about this. As a matter of fact, it is an event altogether ignored by academia at large — we are to assume professors at other universities have been too busy sending letters to Harvard to complain against Lawrence Summers’ heresy. Professor Massad’s behavior in the classroom — not to speak of private meetings or political rallies — has been far worse than Summers’ or Klocek’s, but, far from being suspended, he is instead being defended and honored by other professors. He will not be censured or punished.These inconsistencies do not really amount to hypocrisy, because hypocrisy would mean that Massad’s allies believe in academic freedom but do not apply it consistently. Rather, I deny that they believe in academic freedom at all. In academia, it is a phenomenon that has become routine, as one can judge from the rise of multiculturalism. Academic multiculturalism has never had anything to do with the careful scholarly study of non-European cultures but with the lionization of intellectual figures like Frantz Fanon or Edward Said. It is not a scholarly school of exegesis; it is a political movement, founded with the intent of forwarding a narrative of Western and capitalist oppression and third-world victimization. Far from having anything to do with the careful study of content of, say, Confucian classics or the intricacies of the relationship between Shintoism and Buddhism in Japan — important subjects that take years of mastery of foreign languages and the close reading of primary texts — a multicultural class is more likely to be focused on the jargon-laden theories of mostly Western, post- or crypto-Marxist intellectuals. In fact, the scholarly study of foreign cultures is itself often considered an imperialist act on the part of Eurocentric Orientalists. The expression of this agenda in the MEALAC department and its analogues at other universities is anti-Zionism, since Israel is considered the last bastion of Western colonialism. To this line of thinking, academic freedom does not mean freedom for the likes of Summers or Klocek but only for Massad and Ward Churchill. It is considered diverse to invite Churchill to speak but not diverse to allow Summers to raise questions in private. The fake issue of diversity is being manipulated to allow a routine abuse of academic integrity in the name of a nebulous academic freedom. In general, the attempt to paint the ideas of the likes of Churchill or Massad as radical, unique statements of dissent — which must be carefully shaped by the University in a homogenous society increasingly ruled by fear — is itself a piece of transparent and even risible propaganda. Massad’s ideas are not unique, radical, or interesting. One can find the same radical ideas posted on little stickers in subway stations or blared through megaphones in Union Square; one need not pay to hear them in class. Students take on an enormous financial burden to attend a university like Columbia for four years, and they deserve better than the shrill slogans of a Massad or Churchill. Columbia has an obligation to provide a high-quality education to its students, an education full of rich content� — not to subject its students to unprofessional bullying in the classroom and then to graduate incompetents well-trained in the conventional pieties of the day.The provincialism and lack of general knowledge among graduates of this country’s best universities are unbelievable. It is the result of an academic life more concerned with indoctrinating students with pseudo-Marxist pabulum than training them to be careful thinkers and readers with a broad base of knowledge. This is especially worrisome in Middle Eastern Studies departments: given the chaotic situation in that area, a generation of students trained in the languages and rich history of this region, with its conflicting traditions an overlapping hierarchies, is desperately needed. It is neither good scholarship nor prudent practice to graduate another generation of students trained mainly in moral indignation and obsessed with the small state of Israel and with the details of politically motivated academic fictions like the formation of Palestinian identity. The creation of departments like the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race — which offers a course of study recently approved as a result of a hunger strike of protest — with names redolent of 1930s-era Blut und Boden movements and theories, are not the way to go. Tenured professors, secure in their positions, aware of what constitutes good scholarship, and witness to this routine abuse of academic integrity in the name of very temporal and very conventional political projects, can and ought to do something. One Response to "The Hypocrisy of Academic Freedom" How to Get Six Pack Fast Says: April 15, 2009 at 3:43 pm | Reply This topic is quite hot on the Internet at the moment. What do you pay attention to while choosing what to write about? Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Name (required) E-mail (will not be published) (required) Website Notify me of follow-up comments via email. 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Why the World Journalism Institute? . . . Smearing Christian Judges A Faithful Journalist: Peter Jennings A Monumental Story -- and How the Press Chose to Cover It Are Journalists Really Just Objective Observers? Books of the Times Child Snatchings Are Hot Button Issue for Media Coercion is just as harmful—and ineffective—in culture as in politics Confessions of an Alienated Journalist Crack Babies Talk Back Don't Give Up On These People Eason Jordan vs. the Blogosphere EPIC 2014 Evan Harvard Finds The Media Biased Framing blogs Gallup: Public Confidence in Newspapers, TV News Falls to All-Time Low God, Satan and the Media Hijacking Christianity . . . Hug an Evangelical Hype, hoaxes, hacks . . . and science Ideas -- Kicking the Secularist Habit. A six-step program Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? 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In many Western democracies, ethnic and racial minorities have demanded, and sometimes achieved, greater recognition and accommodation of their identities. This is reflected in the adoption of multiculturalism policies for immigrant groups, the acceptance of territorial autonomy and language rights for national minorities, and the recognition of land claims and self-government rights for indigenous peoples. These claims for recognition have been controversial, in part because of fears that they make it more difficult to sustain a robust welfare state by eroding the interpersonal trust, social solidarity and political coalitions that sustain redistribution. Are these fears of a conflict between a "politics of recognition" and a "politics of redistribution" valid? This volume is the first systematic attempt to empirically test this question, using both cross-national statistical analyses of the relationships among diversity policies, public attitudes and the welfare state, and case studies of the recognition/ redistribution linkage in the political coalitions in particular countries, including the United States, Britain, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, and in Latin America. These studies suggest that that there is no general or inherent tendency for recognition to undermine redistribution, and that the relationship between these two forms of politics can be supportive as well as competitive, depending on the context. These findings shed important light, not only on the nature and effects of multiculturalism, but also on wider debates about the social and political foundations of the welfare state, and indeed about our most basic concepts of citizenship and national identity. As a ground-breaking attempt to connect the literatures on multiculturalism and the welfare state, this volume will be of great interest to a wide range of scholars and practitioners who work on issues of ethnocultural diversity and social policy.
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Mike Barnes went to the 25 th reunion of the class of 1972. He had st arted teaching at UD in 1968, so this was the first he knew for four years here. He told the alumni he met that he had been appointed to hold an endowed chair. But many people on campus have been affected by the Alumni Chair in the Humanities, the position Barnes now holds. August became the first holder of the job in 1993. With solid scholarly credentials in Victorian literature and in men's studies, the professor of English also brought to the position long-standing respect from students and colleagues, a sense of tradition and an appreciation for change. Not bad attributes for someone holding a chair in the humanities, for, as August says, "The humanities thrive on controversy." Now a professor emeritus, August praises UD for what h e says is a radical approach. When the chair was established in 1993, "postmodern ideology was then all the rage in universities," August says. "To some extent it still is." Postmodernism, August says, has had two effects on the humanities, leading either to skeptical nihilism or turning the humanities into politicized propaganda, where "everything is run through the sausage grinder of race, class and gender-as postmodernists see these issues." The University of Dayton, on the contrary, August says, "reaffirmed the significance of the humanities and their centrality to a liberal education." UD holds to a radical statement: Humanities are about asking the big questions about humanity. What is it to be human? August s ees the humanities chair as allowing professors to be much more creative in how they teach and explore the humanities. The chair administers a fund that supports minicourses, symposia, sessions in dorms, speakers, panels, performers and artists. "It helps," he notes, "to have money."
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Handling Issues of Conscience in the Academy J. BUDZISZEWSKI One doesn't become confused about wrong and therefore start committing it; rather one commits wrong, knows it is wrong, and therefore finds a way to confuse and reassure himself about it. My personal conviction is that half of the issues of conscience in the Academy have their origin right here. With my topic, �Handling Issues of Conscience in the Academy,� I have a certain puzzlement about where to begin. Of course, the modern Academy enters into many activities and allows itself to be drawn into many entanglements. You might therefore expect a discussion about issues of conscience in curriculum design, issues of conscience in faculty governance, issues of conscience in scholarly research � or even in higher education financing, or in the relationship of the Academy with Government. Any of these might be good topics. However, I will adopt the convenient assumption that I should discuss a matter that I know something about, and so my topic will be issues of conscience that arise in university teaching. Where in teaching might these issues be supposed to arise? Presumably in teaching those sensitive subjects where the conscientious convictions of different students, or of students and teachers, are likely to come into conflict. We all know what these sensitive subjects are supposed to be: feminism, homosexuality, multiculturalism, euthanasia, abortion � I�m sure you can complete the list for yourselves. I confess, though, that I have a problem with this way of thinking. To speak of a student�s conscientious convictions is to suppose that he has a conscience. I believe he does, but let us take a moment to remember what conscience is, or what it was once supposed to be. In the language of the Bible, conscience is the interior witness which accuses us when we have done wrong and approves when we have done right; it is a reminder of the law written by God on every heart (Romans 2:14-15). In the language of natural law, conscience is the built-in habitus or inclination of the created human intellect by virtue of which we know the first principles of practical reason; it is the participation of the rational creature in the eternal law. ( Summa Theologica I-11, Q.91, art.2, Q.94, art.1) These two ways of speaking are complementary. They share the belief in certain fundamental precepts of morality that are not only right for all, but at some level even known to all, conscience being the faculty by which we know them. I assume, because you have asked me to examine issues of conscience, that you agree with me that students have a conscience. Yet haven�t we � I mean the collective we, the Academy � haven�t we been earnestly telling students for several generations that they have no such thing? Freudians have said there is no conscience but only superego, behaviorists that there is no conscience but only inhibitions. Anthropologists have said there is no conscience but only mores, sociologists that there is no conscience but only socialization. Now at last come those Johnnie-come-latelies, the postmodernists, telling the students that there is no conscience but only narratives. These ways of speaking share the belief that nothing is known to everyone � least of all, fixed moral principles! What superego, inhibitions, mores, socialization, and narratives have in common is that they leave us with nothing in common. The reason is that they are not written on the heart by God, not built into the created intellect, but merely pumped in from the outside by parents, teachers, policemen, propagandists, and behavioral conditioners, to serve their various private ends. To put the matter in the simplest terms, we must choose between two tales about conscience. One is that there is such a thing, the other is that there isn�t. Now I mentioned that I have a problem with speaking about issues of conscience. You may think that I have already described it by drawing attention to the question of whether conscience exists. No, that was merely to set the stage. The problem is that it is difficult to make sense of issues of conscience � meaning a clash of conscientious convictions � under either hypothesis, whether the hypothesis that conscience is real or the hypothesis that it is not. To put this another way, neutralism is merely bad-faith authoritarianism. It is a dishonest way of advancing a moral view by pretending to have no moral view. I�m sure you see why it is hard to make sense of the clash in the latter case. If there is no conscience, then there are no conscientious convictions, and if there are no conscientious convictions, then obviously conscientious convictions cannot clash. What may look like a clash of conscientious convictions will always be a mere clash of inhibitions, or of narratives, or of conditioned reflexes or some such thing. There is nothing of moral interest here; the only question is the empirical one: who shall have power to indoctrinate. But it is almost as hard to make sense of a clash of conscientious convictions in the former case � that is, if conscience does exist. Conscience, remember, is the interior witness to principles which are the same for all. But if they are the same for all, then how can mine clash with yours? You understand the dilemma? According to one story, there can be a clash but it is not conscientious; according to the other, there is a conscience but its convictions cannot clash. This is a very old riddle, and it was both posed and solved, if you will believe me, in the later middle ages. We are all accustomed to distinguishing between the conscious and subconscious mind. Well, the Scholastic philosophers did not put it that way, but they made a similar distinction. They had two words for conscience, not just one, reflecting a real difference between two aspects of the mind. For conscience in the sense in which we have been speaking, they used a late Greek word, synderesis . Besides synderesis , though, there is conscience in another sense, which they called conscientia . Forgive me, but you must remember these definitions. synderesis is the interior witness to universal basic moral law, the deep structure of moral reasoning, and it cannot err. conscientia is the surface structure of moral reasoning, the working out of applications and conclusions from the universal basic moral law, and it can err. In fact it can err in at least four different ways: through insufficient experience; through insufficient skill in reasoning; through inattention; or through the perversion of reasoning � a broad category including perversion by passion, by corrupt habit, by corrupt custom, by congenitally impaired disposition, by depraved ideology, and by self-deception � the latter corresponding to the case where we pretend to ourselves that we don�t know what we really do know, either about the facts, or about the rule itself. You see the situation. The knowledge of the universal basic moral laws which lies in synderesis cannot err and so does not allow for clashes. But the conclusions and applications from this law which lie in conscientia do err and so do allow for clashes. Even so, a clash in conscientious convictions � convictions derived by conscientia � is fundamentally different from a mere clash in inhibitions or narratives or what have you, because beneath these convictions there is something gripping, profound, and true, however it may have been twisted and falsified on its dark and winding path into present awareness. In order to take the idea of a clash of conscientious convictions seriously � in order to believe that they pertain to conscience, but at the same time that they can clash � I think we have to adopt some such account as this. Let us say, then, that an �issue of conscience� is a clash of just this sort: a disagreement which arises from an error, not in synderesis , but in conscientia ; a disagreement which arises because even though the universal basic moral principles are both right for all and at some level known to all, at least one of the parties has a distorted understanding of their applications and conclusions. I hope you will forgive me for having taken such a long time to work that out. The payoff, the consolation, is this: we are finally ready to consider how issues of conscience might be handled in the Academy. Many educators believe that the right way to handle issues of conscience is to be neutral among competing convictions. I disagree, because there is no such thing as neutrality. As Joseph Boyle has observed, any ground on which conflicts between moral perspectives can be arbitrated �will in fact be some moral perspective and the illusion that it is neutral will have the effect of disregarding [some] moral views.� (Joseph Boyle, �A Catholic Perspective on Morality and the Law,� Journal of Law and Religion 1 (1983) 233-34) To put this another way, neutralism is merely bad-faith authoritarianism. It is a dishonest way of advancing a moral view by pretending to have no moral view. The question of neutrality has been profoundly obscured by the mistake of confusing neutrality with objectivity. A most interesting point is that this mistake is made by both �modernists� and �postmodernists.� Modernists assume (1) that neutrality and objectivity are the same thing, (2) that objectivity is possible, and therefore (3) that neutrality is possible too Postmodernists assume (1) that neutrality and objectivity are the same thing, (2) that neutrality is not possible, and therefore, (3) that objectivity is not possible either. A plague on both their houses. I suggest the premodern view that neutrality and objectivity are not the same, and that objectivity is possible but neutrality is not. To be neutral, if that were possible, would be to have no presuppositions whatsoever. To be objective is to have certain presuppositions, along with the manners that allow us to keep faith with them. We presuppose that we exist, that our students exist, and that we exist in a really existing world. We presuppose that perception is not wholly illusion, and that the consequent relation � �if this, then that� � does correspond to something in reality. We presuppose that nothing can both be and not be in the same sense at the same time. We presuppose that good is to be done and truth is to be known. We presuppose that we should never directly intend harm to anyone. And so forth. In the language of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, we presuppose the inescapable first principles of practical and theoretical reasoning and the conclusions which flow immediately from them. In the language of the Bible, we presuppose those things which the Creator has made plain even to those who reject the more particular revelations of Scripture. In saying these things are plain, of course, I do not mean that we cannot deny them. I only mean that we can�t not know them, whether we admit that we know them or not. They cannot be proven, of course, but they do not depend on proof, because, like axioms in geometry, they are that on which the proofs themselves depend. I said earlier that objectivity means not only having these presuppositions, but also having the manners that allow us to keep faith with them. What manners? Oh, you know the ones I mean: manners like letting the other fellow speak. Because neutrality is impossible, I suggest a different way to handle issues of conscience in the Academy � a way which is admittedly not neutral, but which is, I think, objective. The key is to remember the conclusion we reached before: an issue of conscience is a disagreement which arises because at least one of the parties has taken a false step somewhere along the way from synderesis to conscientia ; somewhere along the way from the knowledge of universal basic moral principles that are both right for all and at some level known to all, to beliefs about their applications and conclusions. If this is true, then at bottom, handling issues of conscience means handling the problem of error and specifically, error in conscientia . Somehow we expect him to chatter about such matters as sexual ethics and family policy before he has begun a family, economic justice before he has paid taxes or labored for his bread, and the lessons of history before he has discovered his mortality. Such a plan is well adapted to the production of clever men and women, but hardly to the formation of wise ones. If the real problem is error, then we can imagine two different ways of handling it. One is attacking its symptoms, the other attacking its causes. Attacking the symptoms, of course, would mean attacking the errors themselves. Although this is sometimes appropriate in the classroom, as an exclusive methodology of teaching, it would leave something to be desired. In the first place, it would require that the teachers themselves be error-free. In the second, it would offer no assurance that corrected errors would not simply be replaced by new ones. Attacking the causes might be more promising. We saw previously that the causes of erroneous conscientia , erroneous applications and conclusions from universal basic moral law, include such things as insufficient experience, insufficient skill in reasoning, inattention, and perversion of reasoning. Let�s take each of these in turn. The obvious solution to the first cause of erroneous conscientia , insufficient experience, is experience. It was for this reason that the ancient thinkers thought certain subjects should be delayed until the years of youth had passed � say, until the age of thirty-five. Needless to say, we do not follow this advice, but it might be better if we did. True, the ancient philosophers wrote in an aristocratic social order in which an adult of the leisure class could afford to take up a new study, yet their insight survives transposition into our own time and place. Consider: the typical university liberal arts student of our day is unmarried, dependent on his parents, and thinks of his last birthday as a long time ago. Somehow we expect him to chatter about such matters as sexual ethics and family policy before he has begun a family, economic justice before he has paid taxes or labored for his bread, and the lessons of history before he has discovered his mortality. Such a plan is well adapted to the production of clever men and women, but hardly to the formation of wise ones. The obvious solution to the second cause of erroneous conscientia , insufficient skill in reasoning, is training in practical logic. I do not mean training in abstract philosophical logic, which has become a discipline for specialists. Rather, I mean acquiring the habits of orderly thought. Here the outlook is brighter, because we can begin to teach these habits as early as puberty. The mystery is why we cannot take the trouble to do it. We expect far too much of our young people in some ways, yet far too little in others. Nineteen-year-olds on the parental dole are encouraged to speculate about Plato�s proposals for the abolition of the family, yet not one in ten has been taught what an argument ad hominem is and why it should be avoided. Some of our colleagues even teach them to commit the common fallacies. �Whatever a man says is sexist,� �whatever a white says is racist,� �whatever a rational thinker says is logocentric� � that sort of thing. The obvious solution to the third cause of erroneous conscientia , inattention, is attention. The wisest ethical teachers and thinkers have not built elaborate deductive systems from flights of fancy like a presocial state of nature. Rather, they have appealed to everyday knowledge we already have but do not notice. This includes not only the knowledge of universal basic moral law, but also some matters of nearly universal experience. For instance, hedonists may say that pleasure is the greatest good, but in real life everyone discovers that mere satisfaction doesn�t satisfy. Anyone who finds hedonism a plausible theory despite this fact is inattentive. He hasn�t connected the dots. The good teacher helps connect them. That is why Aristotle always began his ethical inquiries by cross-examining common opinion. Now it may seem that we follow Aristotle�s method, because we are always asking our students what they think. In reality that is a parody of his method. Common opinion means not the opinions of the moment among the young of a single generation, but the opinions widely shared or widely reputed wise throughout all generations. Despite, or because of, what is misleadingly called multiculturalism, our students know little beyond their own time and place. We could do much better. As to the fourth cause of erroneous conscientia , perversion of reasoning, there is no obvious solution, because the problem lies not only in the intellect but in the desires, the emotions, and the will. This is why Aristotle, who had the luxury of choice, refused to accept students who had not been well brought-up. His reasoning was that habits of virtue must come first, otherwise the theory of the virtues will not be understood. For example, you cannot expect a young person to follow a discussion of self-control � of when to partake of a pleasure and when to abstain � unless, under the discipline of others, he has already been habituated to the acts that self-control requires. He may think that he knows what you are talking about, but he doesn�t. He will want to argue about things that are not in doubt, like the geometry student who wants to know why parallel lines don�t meet. Perhaps, he reasons, we just haven�t extended them enough. If this kind of objection is indulged, then no time is left to consider the things that really are in doubt. Now it may seem that we follow Aristotle�s method, because we are always asking our students what they think. In reality that is a parody of his method. For another way reasoning can be perverted, remember what we said previously about conscience in the sense of synderesis , of knowledge of the universal basic principles of moral law. All of us have done things that are gravely wrong. If it is really true that the foundational principles of the moral law are not only right for all but at some level known to all, then the conscience of the offender is inevitably burdened. Ideally, guilty knowledge leads to repentance. In a person of weak character, however, such knowledge is more often suppressed. The offender tells himself that he doesn�t know what he really does know. We tend to think that suppressed knowledge is the same as weakened knowledge with weakened power over behavior. On the contrary, pressing down guilty knowledge doesn�t make it weak any more than pressing down a wildcat makes it docile. One of the possible results is a terrible urge to rationalize the evil deed, even to recruit others to join in it. One doesn�t become confused about wrong and therefore start committing it; rather he commits wrong, knows it is wrong, and therefore finds a way to confuse and reassure himself about it. My personal conviction is that half of the issues of conscience in the Academy have their origin right here. What then can we do to ameliorate the perversion of reasoning in the Academy? I am not sure, but while we are looking for ways to make things better it would be good to avoid making them worse. One thing this means is taking the students� conscience in the sense of conscientia a little less seriously, but taking their conscience in the sense of synderesis a good deal more seriously. I remarked at the outset that for several generations we have been drumming into students that they have no synderesis . And do you know what? Some of them finally believe us. Please understand me: we haven�t destroyed their synderesis . synderesis is indestructible. �As to those general principles,� said Thomas Aquinas, �the natural law, in the abstract, can nowise be blotted out from men�s hearts.� But at the same time that they know the general principles, they convince themselves that they do not. This is the very kind of perversion of reasoning that we were considering earlier, but with this difference: it is practised not to suppress a single burning point of guilt, but as a total system of thought. The mind becomes double. Here is what I mean by the double mind. You see, because the fellow doesn�t believe in synderesis , he is a relativist. If he could be a relativist all the way down, his synderesis would be killed and he would not think in moral terms at all. He would neither make nor acknowledge moral demands. But because synderesis is alive and active after all, he cannot be a relativist all the way down. Consequently, his very relativism expresses itself in moral form. This is how it thinks: there are no moral duties and no moral rights; therefore no one has a right to make moral demands of me; people do make moral demands of me; these demands must be unreasonable; unreasonable demands are unjust; those who are making them are wrong; they have a duty to desist; I have a right to demand it of them. Putting all of this together, we see that other people have all the duties, and the student has all the rights. Because they think the same way, clash is inevitable. You can get a lot of issues of conscience from a state of mind like that. And then the other cycle begins: guilt, suppression, rationalization, recruitment. What does it mean in these circumstances to take conscientia less seriously and synderesis more so? It means mocking relativism. It means blowing the whistle on self-deception. And it means honoring the experience of honest guilt. To illustrate these three principles I will close with three stories. Mocking relativism One day a student approached me after class. He reminded me that I had mentioned moral law during the lecture, then said �Last semester I learned that there isn�t any moral law. Every society makes up its own right and wrong, its own good and bad, its own fair and unfair � and each one makes up something different.� I answered, �It�s a relief to hear you say that, because I�m lazy and I hate grading papers. At the end of the semester I�ll be able to save myself some work by giving you an F without looking at your papers at all. Since you don�t believe in moral standards like fairness that are true for everyone, I know you won�t object." He shot me a startled glance � then admitted that there are true moral standards after all. Blowing the whistle on self-deception �Morals are all relative anyway,� said a student to one of my colleagues. �How do we even know that murder is wrong?� My colleague answered the student�s question with another: �Are you in real doubt about the wrong of murder?� �Many people might say it was alright, � the student replied. �But I�m not asking other people,� pressed my colleague. �Are you at this moment in any real doubt about murder being wrong for everyone? � There was a long silence. �No,� said the student; �no, I�m not.� �Good,� my colleague answered. �Then we needn�t waste time on morals being relative. Let�s talk about something you really are in doubt about.� A moment passed while the lesson sank in � and the student agreed. Honoring honest guilt I often assign Aristotle�s Ethics . A quiet young man came to my office one day and said, �Professor, I�ve got to tell you that I�m getting scared.� I asked him, �Why are you scared?� He replied, �Because you�re scaring me. I�m shaking.� I asked him, ��How am I doing that!� He replied, �It�s Aristotle. In this book of his he keeps talking about virtue.� I asked him, �So?� He replied, �It�s making me realize that I don�t lead a virtuous life. And I�m shaking.� So we spoke of the grace of God. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Budziszewski, J. �Handling Issues of Conscience in the Academy.� The Newman Rambler 3, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1999): 2-9. Printed with permission of The Newman Rambler. The Newman Rambler is published semi-annually by the Newman Centre of McGill University. Visit the Centre�s website at www.rc.net/montreal/newmancentre . E-mail: newmancentre@yahoo.com This lecture was the both the 1999 Newman Lecture on the Idea of the University, for the Newman Centre, and the 1999 Beatty Memorial Lecture, for the College of Education, at McGill University. THE AUTHOR J. Budziszewski (Boojee-shefski) earned his doctorate from Yale University in 1981. He teaches at the University of Texas in Austin, in the Departments of Government and Philosophy where he specializes in the relations among ethical theory, political theory, and Christian theology. The focus of his current research is natural law and moral self deception. J. Budziszewski is a former atheist, former political radical, former shipyard welder, and former lots of other things, including former young and former thin. He's been married for more than thirty years to his high school sweetheart, Sandra, and has two daughters. He loves teaching. He says he also loves contemporary music, but it turns out that he means "the contemporaries of Johann Sebastian Bach." He deserted his faith during college but returned to Christ a dozen years later and entered the Catholic Church at Easter 2004. Among a number of other books, he is the author of How to Stay Christian in College , What We Can't Not Know: A Guide , The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man , and Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law . J. Budziszewski is on the advisory board of the Catholic Educator's Resource Center. Copyright � 1999 The Newman Rambler
CURRENT URL http://chicagoweekly.net/2009/06/04/core-values-taking-a-stand-for-liberal-education/
Core Values: Taking a stand for liberal education Written by: John Thompson Add comments “To paraphrase Sir Richard Livingstone, ‘The sign of a good university is the number of subjects that it declines to investigate,’” Robert Maynard Hutchins wrote in 1953, 24 years after his tenure as the fifth president of the University of Chicago began. What Hutchins meant was that a proper university should be oriented around a few select subjects that have proven essential to social integrity and personal development throughout history. It should do so while ignoring intellectual fads and contrived fields made up to entertain dilettantes or credential lesser talents. Hutchins’s ambitions are signaled elsewhere in his writings: “The university should renounce any ambition to increase the ability of its graduates to acquire external goods…Instead, it should see to it that in the college or in the university itself students might first learn how to deal with ideas. This means an education in disciplines designed to teach the student how to discover, analyze, and utilize ideas. At the same time he should become acquainted with the principal ideas which have directed the activities of mankind. These are to be found in books.” Certain of these books would be “Great,” and they would form the basis for a Common Core Curriculum at Hutchins’s university, a model from which the University of Chicago has regrettably strayed. The subject of the Core curriculum excites many passions, from Chicago purists to reformists who want to strike the idea of “Great Books” from the educated consciousness. Recently, the Chicago Maroon undertook a multi-part commentary on the current requirements of the Common Core, though the editorials ended up rather bloodless. (This is due, I suspect, more to the requirements of the editorial form than the convictions of the editors.) The Core as envisioned by Hutchins was stricter than the form followed today, which resembles glorified distribution requirements in comparison. Hutchins mandated that students not only take classes across disciplines, but that they read virtually the same books (the “Great Books”), selected for their enduring influence on human thought and activity. Since then, the Core has become more elastic, partly due—one imagines—to marketing concerns (a college becomes more enticing to potential enrollees when they don’t need to worry too much about being challenged in subjects outside their interests) and partly to academic politics. A generation of professors educated in the latter half of the 20th century—when work by “dead white men” fell out of fashion—have complicated what counts as seminal work. The result is that humanities courses like “Human Being and Citizen” (where you read a lot of Greek philosophy) are offered alongside “Media Aesthetics” (where you learn from latter-day geniuses like the Wachowski Brothers). This is the bloody crossroads where Hutchins’s Core, firmly oriented toward the goal of educating the country’s intellectual leaders, clashes with the democratic need for inclusivity. The excitement attending the Core is fitting, given that the Core itself was passionately conceived. While Hutchins’s desire for a picky university bears traces of Chicago’s frontier asceticism, Hutchins’s pedagogical mission brims with messianic zeal. “I am afraid, therefore, that I am proposing some notable sacrifices on the altar of reform. The first few generations of graduates of my educational system might suffer the same fate as the martyrs of the early church,” Hutchins writes in his 1943 book “Education for Freedom.” “They might be that phenomenon horrible to American eyes, financial failures. Yet it is possible that if the one college and the one university for which I hope could persevere, the blood of martyrs might prove to be the seed of an enlightened nation…They might become a light to this country, and through it to the world.” Hutchins’s vision shares a few characteristics with millenarian strains of religion, promising short-term persecution and ultimate vindication. Most upsetting, I think, to opponents of Hutchins and his curriculum is the implication that this kind of university education is meant for a select few. (Hutchins could be insufferably snobby. He once told the Economic Club of Detroit, “The whole apparatus of football, fraternities, and fun is a means by which education is made palatable to those who have no business in it.” If the University of Chicago is “where fun comes to die,” Hutchins is implicated in killing it.) More than that, Hutchins presumes that only a few works in the history of humanity are worthy of dissemination and study, representatives of what Matthew Arnold called “the best which has been thought and said in the world.” Surely modernity has shown us that human experience is too diverse to be represented by a few books, opponents to Hutchins may contend. Today, Hutchins’s curriculum is too biased, too elitist, too contrary to the American project, too indefensible. And yet we may need it now more than ever. At its best, the Core embodies rigorous grounding in the fundamentals underpinning broad fields of study, including the humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences. Utility is what usually justifies education in America, and sometimes this extends to its breadth. The world’s problems often require an array of skills and knowledge to be confronted, since no single thing is exclusively the purview of the humanist or of the scientist. More importantly, we all tacitly assume that education is somehow positively connected to economic prosperity. Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz reiterate this correlation in their recent book “The Race Between Education and Technology,” showing how the United States has grown richer as it has become more literate. But as Andrew Hacker reminds us in the New York Review of Books, it may simply be that countries are educated because they are rich, and not rich because they are educated. Innovation and its attendant economic success usually come from outside the academy. Bill Gates loves talking about how he dropped out of Harvard. But then, Hutchins’s Core was never meant for practicality, or even as an introduction to the specific, provincial concerns of different disciplines. This was its revolutionary contribution. Its focus was on the first principles informing each, the timeless standards by which enduring work in all the disciplines has been judged. In science, these standards can be learned through rigorous attention to the rules of evidence that show us, for example, that F = ma, and mathematics can assist by showing us the schematic logic behind this fact. The humanities and social sciences deal with the less material considerations of who we are and how we live. Together, the first principles of all these disciplines can inform the others. Science can tell the humanities what counts as evidence of reality in the physical world. The humanities can show science its methodological limits. A student will be able to do this after reading Descartes and taking serious physics. He or she will not gain these skills by deconstructing “The Matrix.” In this regard, the Core is especially troubling because it insists on a hierarchy of works, especially in the humanities, where determining the “best which has been thought and said” might not only be difficult but possibly offensive. (Theories of dark matter and energy to the contrary, science has determined through relentless trial and error which principles are enduring.) Hutchins was aware of this, but did not apologize. For him, the best that has been thought and said—the Great Books—was accepted to the point of being self-evident: through time, these were the books still being discussed and dissected and implemented in the formation of individual and social character. Yet in the critical upheaval of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the idea of a “best” has been undermined by claims that the cultural legacy of the past was politically and historically contingent. Roland Barthes, perhaps more than anyone other than Susan Sontag, also showed how low culture could be scrutinized like the traditional high culture, and broad pushes for more expansive interpretations of “literature” were introduced into curricula nationwide. Surface evidence of this new kind of scholarship in the UofC’s Core is the presence of such courses as “Reading Cultures” and “Media Aesthetics.” Such change had the paradoxical effect of making everything sacred precisely because nothing was. All ideas are equal, putting the University’s culture of ideas in a bind. In the humanities, it means that we are allowed to argue about ideas as long as we waive the right to be correct. We get a modern education at the cost of conviction. To ignore the importance of conviction is to ignore reality outside the academy. A year after graduation, it is the urgency of Socrates’s moral mission, and not the post-structuralist musings of Lyotard, that have proven essential to my conduct as a person—indeed, as a “human being and citizen.” We all know that ideas, like people, are not in fact equal. Already, there are signs of a backlash against the inclusivity of recent traditions, critical and pedagogical. In the most recent issue of the literary magazine Tin House, Christopher Beha writes, “We are a generation removed from Sontag and Barthes; it is no longer illuminating or even especially charming to watch heavy intellectual machinery brought to bear on trivialities.” Trivialities are especially unimportant in an age where torture is seriously discussed as a military tactic, banks are bailed out while homeowners are not, and when we can gain health from stem cells at the cost of ignoring the definition of “human.” In this light, taking a nutrition class to fulfill a biological sciences requirement seems like a laughable waste of time and talent. Hutchins intuitively understood what value lay in analyzing trivialities, and so he set the best young intellectual machinery to work on Plato and Aristotle and Newton and Marx. He wanted to provide scholars with the best resources available, to give them an education in the best that has been thought so that they could make the best use of their time. It takes courage to claim some ideas are better than others, and it takes a university with balls to institute a curriculum devoted to the ones it considers best. This does not necessarily imply the omission of other cultural traditions. It means that the the “Analects” of Confucius should be considered as a transforming text that resonates today, and not because it is “Chinese.” It means that Sappho should be considered for the enduring beauty of her thoughts on love and gender, and not because she is a “gay woman.” This kind of education—broad, deliberate, courageous—is exemplified by Hyde Park’s most famous son. In his brief time in office, President Barack Obama has demonstrated thoughtfulness and moderation. His judgments are informed by moral sentiments without being dominated by them (sometimes to the point that his conviction regrettably waivers, as with the issue of closing Guantanamo detention facilities); he understands the stakes of all sides in serious debates; at bottom, he is concerned with ideas, and with ideas in books, and he deftly deploys serious words for serious purpose in ways his predecessor could not. Obama is the president who declared in his Inaugural Address, “The time has come to set aside childish things”—notably quoting from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, a part of a book that 33 percent of the world’s population still considers the supreme best of what has been thought and said. Whether directed at debates about terrorism or reading Great Books, the notion reminds us that every generation lives in extraordinary times, all the more reason to seek once again, in Hutchins’s words, “the revelation of the possibilities of the highest powers of mankind.”
CURRENT URL http://chrisnavin.wordpress.com/category/education/
From Stanley Fish At The NY Times Blog: What Should Colleges Teach? Filed under: Current Events , Education , Literature , Media , Politics , Public Debate -- chr1 @ 6:52 pm Tags: Education , Humanities , NY Times , Stanley Fish , Writing Full post here . Fish reminds us of a simple idea: college writing courses ought to focus primarily on writing...: "...the students spent much of their time discussing novels, movies, TV shows and essays on a variety of hot-button issues — racism, sexism, immigration, globalization." Perhaps at the cost of their writing skills. Yet, is Fish just going after the easy targets (where political and ideological aims often take precedence) in quoting the ACTA report ?: "Thirty-five years ago there was no such thing as a gay and lesbian studies program; now you can build a major around it. For some this development is a sign that a brave new world has arrived; for others it marks the beginning of the end of civilization." "It probably is neither; curricular alternatives are just not that world-shaking." Perhaps not. He highlights what he seems to consider the most insightful bit of wisdom the report (with its own aims) has to offer: "An “important benefit of a coherent core curriculum is its ability to foster a ‘common conversation’ among students, connecting them more closely with faculty and with each other.” He seems pretty pragmatic. Addition : Of course, as Camille Paglia points out, movies, T.V., popular music etc. arguably is the culture for a great many Americans. Fish also feels the need to defend his justification of writing in the post. See Also On This Site : Conservative Briton Roger Scruton suggests keeping political and aesthetic judgments apart in the humanities: Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment Fish suggested keeping politics out of academia during the Ward Churchill affair: From The Stanley Fish Blog: Ward Churchill Redux Martha Nussbaum tried to tackle the humanities problem a while back: From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’ Leave a Comment August 13, 2009 From The Chronicle Of Higher Ed Via A & L Daily: "Myths Or Facts In Feminist Scholarship? Filed under: Current Events , Education , Literature , Politics , Public Debate -- chr1 @ 8:00 pm Tags: Christina Hoff Sommers , Feminism , History , Ideology , Nancy Lemon , The Chronicle Of Higher Ed Full article here . (Once archived, no longer free) As the A & L daily notes, that's Nancy K.D. Lemon vs Christina Hoff Sommers . Sommers started the criticism here . I think one piece of the puzzle is Roger Scruton's argument here , which suggests a failure to keep aesthetic judgment apart from political judgment in the humanities...: “And since there is no cogent justification for women’s studies that does not dwell upon the subject’s ideological purpose, the entire curriculum in the humanities began to be seen in ideological terms .” This can spill out into our politics...and we get many people on the right criticizing entire institutions of higher learning...and many on the left mixing race, gender politics and humanities into theories which clearly have ideological aims and political consequences. Though of course, Lemon is on the faculty at Berkeley Law... From the comments section : " I f, in the interest of advancing her cause, she [sic, Lemon] perpetuates fallacious reasoning, she forfeits her position as a scholar and becomes a mere advocate-something any of us can be, because there are no standards to advocacy. If she pretends to something better, she has to BE better. The same holds true for Sommers, and those who can root out fallacious reasoning on her part are right to do so. See Also : From The Chronicle Of Higher Ed Via A & L Daily: Christina Hoff Sommers “Persistent Myths In Feminist Scholarship” Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment... Revisiting Larry Summers: What Did He Say Again? You could just try reading Shakespeare, and go from there... Thanks to iri5 Leave a Comment July 10, 2009 From The Chronicle Of Higher Ed Via A & L Daily: Christina Hoff Sommers "Persistent Myths In Feminist Scholarship" Filed under: Current Events , Education , Media , Public Debate -- chr1 @ 6:40 pm Tags: Christina Hoff Sommers , Feminism , The Chronicle Of Higher Education Full post here. Sommers asks the following in her critique of a feminist textbook:: "All books have mistakes, so why pick on the feminists? My complaint with feminist research is not so much that the authors make mistakes; it is that the mistakes are impervious to reasoned criticism." I think she picks on the feminists because she is something of a feminist. See Also On This Site : Revisiting Larry Summers: What Did He Say Again? ... A Few Thoughts: Where Is Feminism Headed? J.S. Mill Leave a Comment June 9, 2009 Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment Filed under: Art , Current Events , Education , Literature , Music , Philosophy , Poetry , Public Debate , Science -- chr1 @ 7:39 pm Tags: Education , Humanities , Roger Scruton , Sciences , The American Spectator Full article here : So what's lacking in the humanities? Roger Scruton has some keen insights: "The works of Shakespeare contain important knowledge. But it is not scientific knowledge, nor could it ever be built into a theory. It is knowledge of the human heart" So forget the recent, and rather desperate, attempts to make the humanities into a science (however...it's been done before with some success). Scruton suggests it's been a long slide for the humanities to arrive where they've arrived: "In the days when the humanities involved knowledge of classical languages and an acquaintance with German scholarship, there was no doubt that they required real mental discipline, even if their point could reasonably be doubted. But once subjects like English were admitted to a central place in the curriculum, the question of their validity became urgent. And then, in the wake of English came the pseudo-humanities—women’s studies, gay studies and the like—which were based on the assumption that, if English is a discipline, so too are they ." And now that we're left with somewhat balkanized and politicized departments of English, these departments have become a target of the political right, dragging many people into a nasty fight that eats up political capital: "And since there is no cogent justification for women’s studies that does not dwell upon the subject’s ideological purpose, the entire curriculum in the humanities began to be seen in ideological terms ." So how to restore the vision? Scruton advises to restore (and not eschew) judgment: " Of course, Shakespeare invites judgment, as do all writers of fiction. But it is not political judgment that is relevant. We judge Shakespeare plays in terms of their expressiveness, truth to life, profundity, and beauty." This is deep insight and I think the better part of Scruton's thinking in the article comes when he resists his own political (anti multi-cultural, pro-conservative, pro-church of England conservatism) impulses. Here are the last few lines: "It will require a confrontation with the culture of youth, and an insistence that the real purpose of universities is not to flatter the tastes of those who arrive there, but to present them with a rite of passage into something better." One could argue that this is necessary though how to arrive there is in doubt. Here's a quote from George Santayana : " The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool ." ----------------------------------------------- On another note : Despite the importance of beauty, the refinement of our experiences through poems and prose, the difficult work of cultivating"taste" for ourselves as well providing a rite of passage for our youth: Aren't we still attaching the humanities to something else? We know the humanities will never be a science. Politics is always in conflict with the arts. Much philosophy is indifferent to the humanities at best. In fact, Plato banned them from his republic ( good overview here ). One target here may be somewhat political as well: anti- social constructionism and anti- multiculturalism , though I am speculating. Just some food for thought. See Also On This Site : Philosopher Of Art Denis Dutton of the Arts & Letters Daily says the arts and Darwin can be sucessfully synthesized: Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’ Martha Nussbaum says the university needs to be defend Socratic reason and still be open to diversity: From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’ Stanley Fish also says keep politics out of academia: From The Stanley Fish Blog: Ward Churchill Redux... Scruton again has deep insight, but will Christian religious idealism have to bump heads with Islamic religious idealism?: From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism Thanks to iri5 Leave a Comment April 29, 2009 From Scientific Blogging: The Humanities Are In Crisis-Science Is Not Filed under: Education , Media , Politics , Public Debate , Science -- chr1 @ 8:31 pm Full post here . A brief response by our author to this NY Times Op-Ed piece: "Graduate education in the humanities may have its problems, but don't try to tar science with the same brush ." and: "The humanities aren't sciences, they don't solve problems like sciences, and they shouldn't try to be sciences." Is the public lens currently being focused on the problem in a way that does justice to neither the humanities nor the sciences? On This Site : From Bloggingheads: Shakespeare and The Second Law Of Thermodynamics ... Stanley Fish At The NY Times Blog: ‘The Last Professors: The Corporate Professors And The Fate Of The Humanities’ ... From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’,,, Natalie Angier In The NY Times: Curriculum Designed To Unite Art And Science. Leave a Comment April 25, 2009 From Bloggingheads: Shakespeare and The Second Law Of Thermodynamics Filed under: Art , Education , Literature , Poetry , Public Debate , Science -- chr1 @ 11:47 am Tags: Bloggingheads , Literature and Science Full discussion here . Literature and poetry are deep, and of obvious lasting importance. Perhaps the current platform upon which great works are read in our universities is lacking...but I also wonder what the direct comparison of literature with the natural laws hopes to achieve? An ancient debate. See Also On This Site : Hasn't the study of literature already modeled itself on the natural sciences? How To Study Literature: M.H. Abrams In The Chronicle Of Higher Ed What should a liberal education consist of anyways ?: From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’ Stanley Fish At The NY Times Blog: ‘The Last Professors: The Corporate Professors And The Fate Of The Humanities’ A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection An example of where I think the NY Times went wrong: mixing race, current events, politics and literature in the same shallow pan. Please let works of art be deeper than that: From The NY Times: A Brief Interview On Toni Morrison’s New Novel. -Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’ Leave a Comment April 6, 2009 From The Stanley Fish Blog: Ward Churchill Redux Filed under: Current Events , Education , Media , Philosophy , Politics , Public Debate -- chr1 @ 6:13 pm Tags: Politics , Stanley Fish , Ward Churchill , University Of Colorado , Little Eichmanns Full post here . Fish has been following the Churchill case for some time. He suggests that we keep politics out of academia: "How did a garden-variety academic quarrel about sources,evidence and documentation complete with a lot of huffing and puffing by everyone get elevated first into a review of the entire life of a tenured academic and then into a court case when that academic was terminated ...?" He sums his own thoughts up best: "I am not competent to judge Churchill’s writings and I express no view of them. And I have no doubts at all about the integrity of the committee members. They just got caught up in a circus that should have never come to town ." Related On This Site: How do we get politics out of the humanities, and perhaps restore and deepen the liberal arts?: Stanley Fish At The NY Times Blog: ‘The Last Professors: The Corporate Professors And The Fate Of The Humanities’ ? ... How might he disagree with Martha Nussbaum : From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’ ... Stanley Fish At The NY Times: Psychology And Torture. Plato? Leave a Comment January 19, 2009 Stanley Fish At The NY Times Blog: 'The Last Professors: The Corporate Professors And The Fate Of The Humanities' Filed under: Art , Current Events , Education , Literature , Media , Philosophy , Poetry , Politics , Public Debate -- chr1 @ 8:18 pm Tags: Frank Donoghue , Humanities , Stanley Fish , The NY Times Blog Full post here . If you've studied in a humanities department, you've probably noticed a divide between what you read and wrote there and the culture at large: movies, videos, music videos, songs, broadcast news etc... which (as Camille Paglia argues ) is the culture for a majority of Americans. The author Frank Donoghue , whom Fish reviews, argues that it's a losing proposition to even try and work against this tide, mostly for financial reasons: “Such a vision of restored stability,” says Donoghue, “is a delusion” because the conditions to which many seek a return – healthy humanities departments populated by tenure-track professors who discuss books with adoring students in a cloistered setting – have largely vanished. Except in a few private wealthy universities (functioning almost as museums), the splendid and supported irrelevance of humanist inquiry for its own sake is already a thing of the past . The departments are not self-sustaining, and it's evident from within. I would argue that much of Donoghue's thinking has likely been influenced by the idea that because there is a lack of a central vision of what liberal learning ought to consist of (in part due to the influences of Continental postmodernist thinkers, the tail end of Existentialism etc. again this is a Paglian view of things, with some Allan Bloom throw in)... ...as a result a result race identity, gender politics, and all manner of other interests (many politically left) have helped filled the void. I won't argue that these groups don't contain a lot of truth as many other on the political right are doing. I will argue that from the current state of Humanities departments... these ideas are informing our politics and shaping public opinion...and the political and idealogical reactions to them (on the right)...for better or worse. So does Donoghue have a solution?: "In his preface, Donoghue tells us that he will “offer nothing in the way of uplifting solutions to the problems [he] describes.” In the end, however, he can’t resist recommending something and he advises humanists to acquire “a thorough familiarity with how the university works,” for “only by studying the institutional histories of scholarly research, of tenure, of academic status, and . . . of the ever-changing college curriculum, can we prepare ourselves for the future.” " Not really, though what he does offer seems practical. --------------------------------------------------- As mentioned : I have some doubts about Fish's larger interpretation of affairs...a tendency to view the arts, humanities, and philosophy itself through a certain lens. (Fish teaches a course on conservative philosophy..hopefully in the better sense of that word...conservare...). Many people, especially on the political right, have been motivated by similar interpretations ( sophistry?) of what's going on... See Also On This Site: Martha Nussbaum saw this coming a while ago, but is her platform broad enough?: From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. ’ A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection ... Stanley Fish In The NY Times: More Colorado Follies ... From The Boston Globe: Literature Needs To Embrace Science ... Also : Should You Bother To Get A Liberal Arts Education? Allan Bloom, Camille Paglia and Anthony Kronman ... How To Study Literature: M.H. Abrams In The Chronicle Of Higher Ed . by kinkazzo Poor Old Harold Bloom Leave a Comment December 27, 2008 Elizabeth Spelke On Bloggingheads: Towards A Coalitional Mathematics? Filed under: Education , Literature , Music , Philosophy -- chr1 @ 1:20 pm Tags: Bloggingheads , Elizabeth Spelke , Joshua Knobe , Psychology Full diavlog here . A very interesting discussion. Just a few thoughts : 1 . Spelke is a psychologist at Harvard, who suggests that some of her research may hint at a biological basis for social grouping in humans ( babies perhaps show preference for people who speak their own language, or people who resemble their own caregivers as gateways to the social world and shared knowledge they seek to join and there may be some biological reasons for this ). 2 . One of her solutions is to eventually point toward math (what joshua knobe here calls coalitional mathematics, or what is a rather long and philosophical view of mathematics...not as fixed, but as and ever changing body of the deepest knowledge we have that we can transcend and that can transcend many of the other limitiations that bind us). So we use music, language, similarity at a very deep level to define ourselves as members of a group and the value of Spelke's work as she sees it is in mapping a metaphysical realm that can highlight such limitations... 3 . Despite the value of Spelke's work, I'm left with the question of why not just study math, or science...or even philosophy...instead of psychology? --------------------- Richard Feynman was apparently not too impressed with psychology, and explains why here in " Cargo Cult Science." Something to talk about anyways... See Also On This Site : A few doubts about philosophy and metaphysics: From Bryan Magee’s Talking Philosophy On Youtube: Geoffrey Warnock On Kant Leave a Comment December 16, 2008 From The Atlantic: Clive Crook On Malcolm Gladwell Filed under: Current Events , Education , Media , Politics , Public Debate -- chr1 @ 9:47 pm Tags: Clive Crook , Malcolm Gladwell , The Atlantic Full post here. Crook hasn't exactly finished Gladwell's new book "Outliers," but he sums up his thoughts pretty well: "As for the idea that nature and nurture are both involved in determining one's success or failure-am I asked to believe that this is a new insight, for heaven's sake ?" It's a rant...but... See Also : Is something Charles Murray and Malcolm Gladwell have in common the use of political ideas to guide education? At least Charles Murray makes it clear from the start...: Race and IQ: Malcolm Gladwell On The Flynn Effect ... Charles Murray In The New Criterion: The Age Of Educational Romanticism
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PHILADELPHIA -- America's oldest natural history institution has no intention of going the way of the dinosaur, but its nearly two centuries in existence have been almost as bumpy as the hide of a Carnotaurus. The Academy of Natural Sciences, battered by budget problems, is crafting a multimillion-dollar plan to refurbish its exhibits, replenish its coffers and reinvigorate its staff in time for the venerable museum's 200th birthday in 2012. Undoubtedly a tall order, but it's in keeping with the rule that applies to the millions of plants and animals in its esteemed collection: Adapt or die. "It does need money to meet its operational needs; it does need money to grow, but it is not failing," said William Brown, the academy's new president. "It is not going to fail." The academy was founded in 1812 by a group of intellectuals with the progressive idea of presenting a secular and scholarly view of the world. Though visitors know it for the dinosaur skeletons, behind the scenes exist myriad research projects and a collection of 17 million fossil, plant and animal specimens including Thomas Jefferson's fossils and plants collected by Lewis and Clark. In 2006, it came as a shocker to many in the outside world when the academy sold more than 18,000 specimens from its renowned mineral and gem collection to a private dealer for $1 million. The deal made front-page headlines and infuriated scientists, who considered it akin to pillaging. Brown said the academy's precarious position is far from unique in an age of increasing competition for philanthropic dollars, research money and the public's leisure time. "I would say our difference is that we show off our flaws with exuberance," he said with a laugh. "We have tended to be extremely good at publicly disclosing the worst things going on, and that's OK, but most other (museums) don't do it." Upon his arrival in January, Brown halted the proposed sale of 7,300 exotic metals and crystals donated by William S. Vaux 125 years ago, when Philadelphia was considered the cradle of mineralogy. Now, curators are planning to bring the historic collection into public view for the first time in many decades. "They've never been able to take the assets they started out with -- assets we'd all give our eye teeth for -- and realize them as much as they could," said Dr. Hans-Dieter Sues, associate director for research and collections at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and vice president of the Natural Science Collections Alliance. A five-year plan approved in June calls for doubling the current $60 million endowment and making roughly $30 million in improvements to exhibits, infrastructure and research labs. It also includes hiring new curators and scientists and expanding its environmental work through Asia (China and North Korea are specifically being discussed) to Eastern Europe. Brown has a reputation as a skillful fundraiser and is credited with similarly rescuing the Bishop Museum in Honolulu where he previously worked. He said he believes he can do the same in Philadelphia. "This is an amazing institution with a great history," he said. "If we do it right, there's no reason we can't be as good as anybody in the world." The institution is all too familiar with money troubles: It struggled with a "wholly inadequate" endowment as far back as 1900, Sues said. "It started out as a number of scholars basically supporting the whole thing, but at the end of 19th century, it was kind of left to its own devices," he said. Despite recent staff cutbacks and budget deficits, academy scientists continue research around the globe in hot topics of climate change, biodiversity, water quality and invasive species. In 2006, academy paleontologist Ted Daeschler and his colleagues made world news with the discovery of a fossil called an evolutionary missing link from fish to land animals. This year, scientist Clyde Goulden received Mongolia's highest foreigner honor for his decade of groundbreaking ecological research there. "Environmental issues, in which the academy has a strong track record, are a particularly good opportunity for natural history museums to grow," Sues said. "It's an issue that often comes with an agenda one way or the other," he said of environmental research, "but museums don't have an ax to grind and can be the most credible conveyors of information to the public." The kind of growth that Brown and his colleagues envision takes much money, so the academy is planning a private, foundation and corporate fundraising campaign beginning with the 100th birthday in November of Ruth Patrick, a pioneer of environmental research and water ecology who has been at the academy since 1933. Stiff competition for donation dollars means cultivating new prospects through such initiatives as annual fundraising dinners, special appeals, luncheons and dinners, receptions and trips for donors. It also means offering naming rights and marketing to an audience beyond the uber-wealthy about bestowments and endowment gifts, Brown said. He said the museum wants to make its iconic dinosaurs and wildlife dioramas more interactive and informative with high-tech gadgets such as smart phones, and showcase selections from its unrivaled collection of bird specimens (many from John James Audubon himself), fossils and mollusks. Many have never been publicly displayed. With 2012 fast approaching, and a long and expensive to-do list, Brown doesn't delude himself about the magnitude of the work ahead. "I'm not saying any of this is easy. It's tough," he said. "But its for a really good set of causes and objectives. ... We have so many important contributions to make." ------ On the Net: The Academy of Natural Sciences: http://www.acnatsci.org
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Chronicle Forums News & Opinion => Discuss Chronicle Articles => Topic started by: litcrittr82 on June 30, 2008, 01:52:03 PM Title: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: litcrittr82 on June 30, 2008, 01:52:03 PM From The American Scholar via aldailly: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.html Deresiewicz's article touches on a number of discussions in constant circulation on the fora, namely those about the purpose and mission of the university, the preparation that a college education provides, and the class issues at work in admissions and learning processes. There's really a lot of discussion fodder here, but I want to start with what Deresiewicz's thesis--that an elite education is about reproducing elites, rather than shaping innovative minds--means for those oversaturated disciplines at the low end of the funding spectrum (the humanities). I'm also curious about what those in the sciences would say about the state of innovation in their fields; i.e., whether structural trends that inhibit innovation are less inhibiting in the sciences, where research is more lucrative and funding more plentiful. I suspect that part of the reason for the humanities 'crisis' is the conspicuous absence of any real earth-shakers since, for example, the French post-structuralists in literary study and philosophy, people like Hayden White in (sort of) history, Judith Butler in gender studies, David Halperin in classics, etc. I'm not trying to form a comprehensive list here, nor am I commenting on the quality of this scholarship; but it seems to me like the '70s-'80s was the last really big boom of radical humanities scholarship. I suspect that we're not innovating much these days in part because of what Deresiewicz argues in this article: students aren't being conditioned to take intellectual risks, or to be searchers. We're writing the same theses and dissertations over and over again. We're professionalized too early, scared into achieving success in the narrowest of terms, and penalized by the system when we transgress its narrow (and classist) parameters. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: fiona on July 01, 2008, 01:46:47 AM This is a vast topic, but I'll take a stab at one small part of your posting. You say that there haven't been "earth-shakers" in the humanities lately. I agree, but I think it doesn't have to do with the quality of minds in the humanities, but with some other things: 1. There are fewer and fewer tenure-track slots. If you're an adjunct, you don't have time or energy or encouragement to write breakthrough stuff. 2. No one much cares about what humanities people "discover." Intellectual breakthroughs (outside the sciences, where there's still coverage) used to be front-page news, and the latest literary novels were discussed by everyone. Not many people care now. 3. Hate to say it, but I don't think the best and the brightest go to grad school in the humanities anymore, if they ever did. The slog is too long and the rewards are too vague. It's the less bright who either don't know how bad the job market is, or they don't care. I think the brightest undergrads are more apt to go to business school or go right into jobs. The Fiona Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: litcrittr82 on July 01, 2008, 11:02:00 AM Quote from: fiona on July 01, 2008, 01:46:47 AM This is a vast topic, but I'll take a stab at one small part of your posting. You say that there haven't been "earth-shakers" in the humanities lately. I agree, but I think it doesn't have to do with the quality of minds in the humanities, but with some other things: 1. There are fewer and fewer tenure-track slots. If you're an adjunct, you don't have time or energy or encouragement to write breakthrough stuff. 2. No one much cares about what humanities people "discover." Intellectual breakthroughs (outside the sciences, where there's still coverage) used to be front-page news, and the latest literary novels were discussed by everyone. Not many people care now. 3. Hate to say it, but I don't think the best and the brightest go to grad school in the humanities anymore, if they ever did. The slog is too long and the rewards are too vague. It's the less bright who either don't know how bad the job market is, or they don't care. I think the brightest undergrads are more apt to go to business school or go right into jobs. The Fiona Glad you picked this bit, because it's exactly what I hoped to discuss. I left the topic too broad in my original post for fear of shortchanging the article. I want to comment on your third point, because I see things a slightly different way. It's true that a lot of top humanities students seek more lucrative jobs right after college, but quite a few seem to apply to grad. school in the humanities a couple years later after working on other things. I'm at the age where a lot of people I know who took corporate jobs or nonprofit jobs or did Teach for America right out of college are starting to apply to grad. school now. As the article suggests (and I agree), the way we define 'brightest and best' is really part of the problem. If 'brightest' means overacheiving, career-oriented, resume-padders, then surely many of the 'brightest' are going into lucrative jobs or business school. But I think the best 'searchers' do opt for grad. school because they aren't content in 'office' jobs; and they find themselves sharing space with the grade-oriented overacheivers in grad. school as well. Once in grad. school, it seems, the 'searchers' become conditioned to fall in line and strive for narrow definitions of success; they're (over)professionalized, just like the overacheivers; and they cease to be searchers by the time the program is over. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: kedves on July 02, 2008, 06:45:47 PM litcrittr82, I'm responding to the article by Deresiewicz, which does not include of all the topics that you discuss. Your focus is on the future of the humanities in universities; his goal seems to be to explain his own feeling of class discomfort. The issues you raise are interesting; the claims he makes are suspect. I don't see any evidence for the widespread phenomenon of inter-class linguistic or cognitive incompetence that he says exists. As evidence, he provides himself. He sounds like a participant in Monty Python's "Twit of the Year" race: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss Perhaps "twit" is harsh, but he says that he is incapable of chatting with a skilled laborer about anything at all (making small talk with a plumber). I don't know what other word to use. He's generalizing from an N=1, assuming that his experience and his problems are shared by everyone in his group. He doesn't well support this claim. He claims that he sees his problem in other people, but I don't trust his observations to be systematic or accurate. His class-panic social impairment might be a rare condition. I did not see the phenomenon he describes when I taught at an Ivy. I met very smart, very driven, in some cases extremely anxious students who were interested in and knew about a much wider world than the one he describes. Yes, there is grade inflation throughout undergraduate education, more at elite universities than elsewhere, but I found that it produces the opposite effect from the one he describes. Instead of making students feel entitled, it makes them stressed. When your undergraduate experience is a competitive prelude to professional school, every A- is devastating. This grade anxiety is just about the only thing that makes this group less than lovely to teach. He's concerned that the students he observes on a walk across campus dress alike; he assumes that if they do, they are alike. This reasoning is flawed in many ways, but let's start with: You're 35, Deresiewicz. Before heading out to gather observations, wouldn't it be a good idea to learn the subtle ways that "kids these days" claim and present their identities? He's also overlooking the increasingly international undergraduate composition of elite (very expensive) universities. I don't follow his reasoning about the relevance of this supposed homegeneity. I have found Ivy students to be more knowledgable about many types of social difference, if that's his point, than students farther down the social ladder (and with different experiences) who seem to feel more need to draw boundaries between their group and others. There's also a problem of correlation vs. causation with his argument. He's a twit; he went to Yale. Therefore, going to Yale causing twitdom. Could it not be that he was always a twit and Yale had no effect on him? On a larger scale, let's assume that higher education is a machine that maintains the class system. We could agree that it performs this social function at every level of the higher education-social class complex, from community college to the Ivy League. It does not necessarily follow that if higher education were missing from or different in our society, the social class system would fall apart. Something would replace it--something less valuable to the individual and to our society, in my opinion. Yes, elite universities give intellectual and social advantages to those who already possess those advantages. The result might be intensified advantage in terms of status or power, but in economic terms, it's not there. The percentage difference in future earnings following an elite B.A./B.S. vs. a less expensive degree is less than the percentage difference in tuition costs. At the same time, saying that higher education functions to perpetuate social class does not imply that it does so perfectly or that this is its only function. Undergraduate students sit in classroom seats for four or five long years. We--faculty, departments, colleges, universities--have some power to determine what their experience will contain, and so do the students. That's what worries people who are concerned about "the liberal faculty." litcrittr82, as I understand it, you and fiona are discussing the production of knowledge by members of humanities departments and the process by which graduate education creates new scholars. I'm in the social sciences and not competent to comment on that. However, independent of intellectual discovery, the preservation and communication of existing knowledge are important parts of the mission of universities. At the graduate and faculty levels of elite universities, I see some of the preciousness or social distance that concerns him, but some of this might be caused as much by their urban location as by the other characteristics of department members. I'm sorry to write at such length. I wanted to respond to your good ideas--and he just annoys me. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: eumaios on July 03, 2008, 12:04:11 AM Well, I'll have to read the article again, if I can bear to, but my first impression is that Deresiewicz seems to have learned that a) snobbery begets snobbery; b) rich people aren't necessarily smart; c) people who are book-smart can be stupid in lots of other ways; d) people like to keep to their own kind; e) many privileged people are neither creative nor inclined to take risks; and f) Ivy League humanities professors don't know how to have conversations with plumbers. Huh. I'm not an intellectual and I didn't have an elite education, but it seems to me that if a person works checkout in the right supermarket, pumps gas at the right service station, or waits tables in the dining room of the right resort hotel, he'll probably know those things by the age of seventeen. By "right" I mean patronized by well-heeled folk. Next item. Deresiewicz seems to think that an elite education should produce people who constitute a genuine intellectual, artistic, moral, and ethical elite, an elite in the best sense of the term. Maybe it should and maybe it shouldn't. But when has it, particularly in the United States? How many of our--America's--best writers, thinkers, leaders, inventors had elite educations? Ben Franklin, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Thomas Edison, John Browning, Samuel Morse, Frederick Douglass, Ernest Hemingway, H. L. Mencken--how many elite educations in that bunch? When someone majors in English at a good university, he studies the work of authors who for the most part had third-rate (or worse) formal educations. That has always struck me as funny; it seems not to strike some people at all. We have the set of people who accomplish big things and think big thoughts. And we have the set of people who had elite educations at elite institutions. In literature, the sets intersect a wee bit, but not much. In other fields in the humanities, they intersect a little more. In the social sciences, the sets probably intersect still more. In the hard sciences, I suspect that the sets have considerable overlap. Formal education--classes, professors, exams, papers, degrees--has and always has had little to do with the qualities of which Deresiewicz speaks. People learn wisdom, virtue, judgment, and taste on their own. Most people outside university humanities departments seem to know this. Plumbers know it, in my experience. litcrittr82's original post asks some interesting questions about the state of the humanities, and the Fiona gives some good answers. Here's another possibility, at least in English and perhaps in other disciplines: The field is just plain worn out. The soil is exhausted. What people in English departments do is not like what chemists, biologists, and physicists do. Every day, biologists learn how much more there is to learn. Biologists deal with realities that exist independently of them, and they are forever learning new things about smaller and smaller--yet astonishingly complex--pieces of those realities. Literature and composition scholars pretend to split hairs that they pretend exist. The English discipline has been self-referential twaddle for generations, a self-perpetuating employment agency. Maybe there just isn't anything left to say. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: kmellendorf on July 05, 2008, 07:17:40 PM eumaios- Excellent observations. Another factor to consider is the function of FILTER. One of the major functions of higher education, at least in hard science, is to filter out those that don't have the needed stamina and creativity. Only an undergraduate education in hard science will get you into graduate school, but not much else. Getting into, through, and then out of graduate school will give you permission to apply for positions. Getting the part-time positions will give you permission to try something more. Another comment: I cannot speak for all fields, but I do understand the physics side of education. I now teach physics at a community college. One thing I learned in college (University of Chicago) was to appreciate an ability to serve in ways only a good education allows. I was not trained to be greedy or to want it all. My college taught me to lead others to where they might not yet know how to reach. A person who has been run through the ringer many times is much better prepared to help others get ready for such an experience. You may not be the great thinker, but you will be able to recognize the great thinker and point him in the "right direction". Whether you appreciate such abilities is part of whether you actually made it through the filter. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: daurousseau on July 07, 2008, 10:20:10 AM Elites aggregate around common cultures. Alexander Cockburn and the British politicians he attacks can both quote from the classics. People who used to call the shots in America knew their Wallace Stephens and Hemingway. The counter-culture rallied around rock n roll, drugs and sex. John Brockman tries to catalyse a culture with edge.org. The communications industries seem to have succeeded in atomizing the cultures of the elites. Technology may someday newly aggregate them. Let's say you walked into a party in some elite place like Manhattan, up there overlooking Central Park in a living room the size of your house back in Urbandale. Around you are the leaders from science, business, academe, the literary world, musicians and artists, politicians and media. Is there any subject in the world you could broach with confidence that an interesting conversation would ensue? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 07, 2008, 11:06:08 AM Didn't "innovation" in humanities already reach an apogee? How much of further "innovation" the society can support? How much of this crap, of the meaningless definitions, of the fraudulent inventions of new terms etc., etc.. etc. that even a plumber sees as crap, can be sustained? Ask this plumber if he knows what "gender" (this absolutely universally adopted word) is. He doesn't know, and humanities don't know. The book was recently published: "Why Women Must Rule The World." I watched the interview with the author: clearly humanities have completed the process of abandoning any pretence of having a connection with facts or science and have adopted the unchallenged freedom to preach crap. Clearly, all the moneys that could be swindled for peddling crap have been swindled. Every bit of culture and every bit of civilization has been deconstructed. I am afraid to ask this question - What else is now contemplated? A 9/11 and the war on terrorism in the departments with the waterboarding of the dead white men? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 11:29:34 AM Quote from: pyshnov on July 07, 2008, 11:06:08 AM Didn't "innovation" in humanities already reach an apogee? How much of further "innovation" the society can support? How much of this crap, of the meaningless definitions, of the fraudulent inventions of new terms etc., etc.. etc. that even a plumber sees as crap, can be sustained? Ask this plumber if he knows what "gender" (this absolutely universally adopted word) is. He doesn't know, and humanities don't know. Doesn't the same thing apply to the sciences? The "plumbers" often think that studying fruit flies is an exercise in state-funded welfare as well. There are monies at stake! Quote from: pyshnov on July 07, 2008, 11:06:08 AM The book was recently published: "Why Women Must Rule The World." I watched the interview with the author: clearly humanities have completed the process of abandoning any pretence of having a connection with facts or science The humanities have never been about facts in the way you seem to think. The humanities are about interpretation. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 07, 2008, 12:32:57 PM robert_smithson: Quote The "plumbers" often think that studying fruit flies is an exercise in state-funded welfare as well. Yes, but the plumber can seek education that will give him an explanation. The explanation (for example, of "gender"), that you think is the business of humanities, cannot be given in "radical humanities", contrary to the situation in hard science. Quote The humanities have never been about facts in the way you seem to think. The humanities are about interpretation . Interpretation of what? Of facts, of course? So, the facts should be stated correctly, first. And when you innovate, so to speak, a new term, it should be a finding of a new fact existing in nature or, more precisely, in the interpretation of nature which we call science . And, how about the effort to propel social "studies" into "social sciences"? You cannot bypass science in universities. Well, it appears you actually can. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 12:43:03 PM Quote from: pyshnov on July 07, 2008, 12:32:57 PM Interpretation of what? Of facts, of course? So, the facts should be stated correctly, first. And when you innovate, so to speak, a new term, it should be a finding of a new fact existing in nature or, more precisely, in the interpretation of nature which we call science . And, how about the effort to propel social "studies" into "social sciences"? You cannot bypass science in universities. Well, it appears you actually can. Conjecture is allowed in the humanities. Some areas call the process "art" or "poetry," some call it "philosophy" or "theory." I'm not saying there are no fact(s) involved, but reducing the process to observed fact alone is a good way to turn it into... science . Like those who demand creationism be taught in science class, you seem to be demanding that the humanities can only be legitimate when they are science. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 01:03:56 PM interpretation ? Why ? The humanities are about knowing interesting stuff, that's all. A specialist of Shakespeare who knows everything about Shakespeare's life and works doesn't have to "interpret" anything to be an oustanding, fascinating scholar. On the other hand, anybody can write sentences like "the heterodiegetic nature of pluri-focalised, metacritical analysis (Foucault, 1984) subsumes the inter-relational network of epistemic references, within the boundaries of the discourses (Derrida, 1997), provided said discourses aren't obliviated by the transgendered serendipity of metacognitive difference/differance, and as far as the fragmented infradiegetic-semiotical nodes (Irigaray, 1991) obey the topological nature of G�del's theorem (Virilio 2004)". In other words, the humanities are dying mostly because they are darn boring. However, money also matters. The famous historian Gaston Maspero, specialist of ancient Egypt, was given a boat, a crew, money aplenty, complete freedom, and all the time he required to pursue his works. Without any administrator on his tail. Without having to prostitute himself for good teaching evals. Without struggling to get an elusive tenure. It was in the late 19th century, early 20th. As a result, he wrote the most splendid books you can imagine about ancient Egypt (for he also was a splendid, stylish, crystal-clear writer). No historian today would dream of such lavish working conditions. This said, the big question : are we, humanists, poor because we are boring, or are we boring because we are poor ? edit : I wrote this post before pyshnov's reply about facts. I completely agree, event though I am an humanist. Buzzwords aren't new facts. They're only new, meaningless words. Words, words, words. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 02:03:53 PM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 01:03:56 PM The humanities are about knowing interesting stuff, that's all. A specialist of Shakespeare who knows everything about Shakespeare's life and works doesn't have to "interpret" anything to be an oustanding, fascinating scholar. Isn't this what you are lamenting here: Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 01:03:56 PM In other words, the humanities are dying mostly because they are darn boring. Not sure I understand how the first example is not party to the complaint. Simple discovery of facts without context (otherwise known as "trivia") is not equal to good scholarship, IMHO. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 02:34:01 PM I guess the definition of "boring" and "not boring" is different for everyone of us. I'll take the same example. A scholar like Maspero, who explains to me how people used to live 5000 years ago near the banks of the Nile River, who explains this to me in practical terms, in a language of incredible beauty, will make me weep of pleasure. He doesn't interpret anything. He just says how things used to be for our predecessors on this beloved earth. On the other hand, some guy who does nothing but pile up buzzwords, all of them meaning "hey, look how smart I am ! I can interpret anything ! I use words that you don't know !", will only bore me to death. The narcissistic stance of the thinker thinking about his own thoughts drives me crazy. I see the humanities as a tribute paid to our fellow humans for what they did, for what they wrote and sang, for the music they played, for the gods they believed in, for the lives they lived and the deaths they died. They are important. They matter. But my own, petty, selfish "interpretation" ? Why ? Who cares ? Not even me. Boring. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 02:46:05 PM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 02:34:01 PM I guess the definition of "boring" and "not boring" is different for everyone of us. But my own, petty, selfish "interpretation" ? Why ? Who cares ? Your description of Maspero's work sounds as though it would be appropriate for a lovely coffee table book. The point is that, even in your example, Maspero has to explain to us why we should care, which is one of the models of interpretation I was speaking of earlier. I would agree with you that buzzwords thrown about for their own sake are meaningless-- just as historical facts thrown about without context are trivial. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: hollow_man on July 07, 2008, 02:50:17 PM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 02:34:01 PM I'll take the same example. A scholar like Maspero, who explains to me how people used to live 5000 years ago near the banks of the Nile River, who explains this to me in practical terms, in a language of incredible beauty, will make me weep of pleasure. He doesn't interpret anything. He just says how things used to be for our predecessors on this beloved earth. The re-telling of ancient history is all about interpretation of evidence. But surely you know that. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 03:13:43 PM Quote from: wasteland on July 07, 2008, 02:50:17 PM The re-telling of ancient history is all about interpretation of evidence. But surely you know that. Right. This part Quote from: wasteland on July 07, 2008, 02:50:17 PM He just says how things used to be for our predecessors on this beloved earth. does not happen without interpretation. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 08, 2008, 12:14:01 AM frenchdoctor, of course you know "L'homme c'est rien, l'ouvre c'est tout". That's not what they think today, but only that can produce beauty. You say - boring, no, it's ugly! Your quotation is a pearl, but the one you can find abundant in any department in any university, it's not a rare pearl. Did you hear of the joke perpetrated by Dr. Sokal about a decade ago? If you didn't, google for it! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: frenchdoctor on July 08, 2008, 05:59:11 AM Quote from: pyshnov on July 08, 2008, 12:14:01 AM Did you hear of the joke perpetrated by Dr. Sokal about a decade ago? Yes, of course ! I'm still laughing about it sometimes ! The french specialists of interpretations (the ones that love to theorize their own theories) insulted Sokal, saying he was some sort of traitor sold to the evil, imperialistic american capitalism. The relationship between his joke and american imperialism is anyone's guess. In short, their defense was as laughable as their theories. However, it's rather sad that Sokal's book was mostly ignored by the french intellectuals. It didn't change anything. You still have to quote Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze and Guatari every two sentences to sound trendy. Hundreds of dissertations repeat the same buzzwords every year. It's not research anymore, but mass production of lingo. Quote Your description of Maspero's work sounds as though it would be appropriate for a lovely coffee table book. The point is that, even in your example, Maspero has to explain to us why we should care, which is one of the models of interpretation I was speaking of earlier. I don't know what you mean by "coffee table book" (sorry, english isn't my native language). Maspero was an extremely knowledgeable erudite, who knew everything about ancient Egypt and told about it in an exquisite style. His poetic prose reminds me of Proust's. I know that writing well is considered as a weakness in today's academia. Even in the humanities, splendid prose is seen as a lack of seriousness. I don't care. Today's scholars are just jealous because they don't know how to write anymore. So, "lovely" if you want. I'd say "beautiful". Is that such a flaw ? And Maspero didn't have to "explain why we should care". Beauty explains itself. Could you explain why we should care about, let's say, the pyramids, Paul C�zanne, Bach, da Vinci, Gutemberg's Bibles or Shakespeare's plays ? Why this urge to theorize the obvious ? Why wasting your time on details, when the essential thing awaits ? And, by the way, the oeuvre exists outside our own interpretations. All scholars could die tomorrow, it wouldn't change a single thing about the oeuvres themselves. In the past few decades, academia has inversed the relationship between creators and commentators. Before, when Prof. Somebody was working on Shakespeare, the important thing was Shakespeare. Today, when Prof. Somebody works on Shakespeare, the important thing is Prof. Somebody's own interpretations. The oeuvres aren't the core of our researches anymore, but a mere pretext for self-glorification. To me, this means the death of the humanities. (at least, a scientist knows that 2+2=4 regardless of his own personal interpretations . We should listen to scientists more often, instead of insulting them like french theoricists did with Sokal.) As the French poet Ren� Char used to write : "Il fallait boire, Narcisse, et non te mirer !". Stop looking at yourself, Narcissus, drink at the source ! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: hollow_man on July 08, 2008, 10:06:13 AM I guess I have to take back what I said, frenchdoctor. You don't appear to understand the interpretive element in ancient history after all. Popularizers like Maspero are well and good, as long as you understand the limitations of the data that underlies their work. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 08, 2008, 10:40:39 AM As in Hamlet, the forest must go against the destroyers! The real problem, however, is the absence of good literature. I don't know why it is so. Do the authors exist and are just not seen in the sea of garbage? I don't think so, I think good authors need refined air and good readers that has all been killed by savages. === (Sorry, it's not what I wrote, but - oeuvre. French was my second language, fifty years ago.) === Some great mistake probably comes from the manner of reading. Someone invented the fast reading skills and this became popular. When I read, I silently pronounce words in my mind, and that gives me the feeling of text. If that feeling is not pleasant, I drop the book. I just need half a page or less. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 08, 2008, 01:51:37 PM There's a methodology involved in at least some of the humanities that some appear to think is the same as opinion. As for the rest, I guess I'd have to clarify my own statement about interpretation by adding "of culture." My original point was in objection to Pyshnov's claim that the humanities should be more strictly about facts, which then got changed to "interesting stuff" and then "beauty," now finally, "good literature." It is unfortunate that some have such difficulty differentiating between the process and the product. The connective tissue, I think, that brings together philosophy, history, archaeology, et. al., and the arts is that all are i nterpretations of culture. All do use facts to some extent, and every interpretation is not equally valid. Methodology and education do make a difference on one's interpretive abilities! But since we apparently need no more innovation herein, I guess the article is wrong on its face. We should not be encouraging the intellectual reach for new knowledge and new understandings, but should instead be continuing to promote and calcify the established canons of beauty (western only, of course) and populism. At that point, yes, pyshnov and frenchdoctor are right--there is no more need for humanities people. We can all go be Sister Wendies and Thomas Kinkades and Josh Grobans, because those established, non-innovative models are the "right" ones. Good thing so many populist scholars of the past--like Vasari, for example--had all the "FACTS." Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: litcrittr82 on July 09, 2008, 01:52:08 PM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 08, 2008, 05:59:11 AM Quote from: pyshnov on July 08, 2008, 12:14:01 AM Did you hear of the joke perpetrated by Dr. Sokal about a decade ago? Yes, of course ! I'm still laughing about it sometimes ! The french specialists of interpretations (the ones that love to theorize their own theories) insulted Sokal, saying he was some sort of traitor sold to the evil, imperialistic american capitalism. The relationship between his joke and american imperialism is anyone's guess. In short, their defense was as laughable as their theories. However, it's rather sad that Sokal's book was mostly ignored by the french intellectuals. It didn't change anything. You still have to quote Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze and Guatari every two sentences to sound trendy. Hundreds of dissertations repeat the same buzzwords every year. It's not research anymore, but mass production of lingo. 1) This is directed generally, since the culprits are many: I think most of us can agree that being dismissive about the humanities, i.e. calling it a wholly obsolete field of study and practice, is shortsighted and foolish. Those who dismiss the humanities entirely almost always cite the Sokal hoax, then launch into unsophisticated complaints about jargon, theory, etc. They take the worst, most embarassing moments in an intellectual history and hold them up as symbolic of humanist tradition itself. This kind of tactic is akin to, in my view, a humanist pointing to those scientists who 'prove' and teach creationism as a vetted theory while arguing for the obsolescence of science. My point here is that we don't get anywhere, it seems, by doting on Sokal (or creationism) when discussing innovation between and among the sciences and humanities. 2) Re. innovation, the issue is precisely that people (both within and outside the humanities) still refer to Deleuze, Derrida, and Lacan as 'trendy.' These thinkiers, while important, are certainly not at all trendy in any field of study. This touches on my initial point about humanities scholars writing the same theses today as they did 20 years ago. I don't think this problem is at all rooted in humanities topping out as a field, or humanities scholars running out of neologisms with which to mislead and befuddle us. What is the root of this problem? I have speculated: over-professionalization ('my advisor scared me into writing on Lacan because that's how she got her job, and that's damn well how I'll get mine'); devaluation of analytical and hermeneutic work ('I'm in school to become a doctor, not to learn Shakespeare; Shakespeare doesn't matter, doctors save lives'); funding issues ('I'm an adjunct, my research doesn't make money, and I don't have the money or freedom to innovate.'). Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 09, 2008, 02:13:19 PM litcrittr82, sorry, I could not get what was your logic aimed at "Those who dismiss the humanities entirely..." I just hope you did not include me in "Those..." Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: litcrittr82 on July 09, 2008, 02:31:49 PM Quote from: pyshnov on July 07, 2008, 11:06:08 AM Didn't "innovation" in humanities already reach an apogee? How much of further "innovation" the society can support? How much of this crap, of the meaningless definitions, of the fraudulent inventions of new terms etc., etc.. etc. that even a plumber sees as crap, can be sustained? Ask this plumber if he knows what "gender" (this absolutely universally adopted word) is. He doesn't know, and humanities don't know. The book was recently published: "Why Women Must Rule The World." I watched the interview with the author: clearly humanities have completed the process of abandoning any pretence of having a connection with facts or science and have adopted the unchallenged freedom to preach crap. Clearly, all the moneys that could be swindled for peddling crap have been swindled. Every bit of culture and every bit of civilization has been deconstructed. I am afraid to ask this question - What else is now contemplated? A 9/11 and the war on terrorism in the departments with the waterboarding of the dead white men? pyshnov, I think above fits you nicely into that lot of 'Those...' You seem to dismiss the idea that innovation even applies to the humanities. You take as an example a popular memoir by a non-academic (former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, Why Women Should Rule the World), and you call this humanities scholarship? You blame the humanities for the obfuscation (or creation?) of 'gender,' without commenting on the not-uncontroversial study of the same in psychology, neurology, biology, etc. By your method, I could take the worst pseudo-science and hold it up as an example of the sciences, interrogate the sciences with those same loose standards, and unquestioningly accept humanities methodology as correct and true. I would be splitting open the wedge between the two cultures and getting us nowhere by being dismissive of that other culture in reference to mine. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 09, 2008, 10:03:49 PM I think you have hit on the reasons for over-professionalizing, litcrittr82. Personally, I think the lack of institutional support is less of an issue than the stagnation of important scholarship; but where the lack of support may have an impact is the density of the job market itself, where the pressure is on doing what will give you the best chance at a job more than taking the risks that are so intrinsic to true innovation. (And by the way, the lack of institutional support in the humanities is not limited to adjuncts; nor is the lack of understanding of what humanities scholars do or how they are assessed in any way unique to this board). As far as the article goes, there is a perception at schools such as mine (closer to the Cleveland State variety), with faculty from some top schools but no Ivies, that the "norm" humanities Ivy graduate either will not bother applying for a job at the Cleveland States of the world or will possess such an inflated sense of their own importance that they would be impossible to work with. I've resisted buying into such generalizations, but the author has not deflated them by any means. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 10, 2008, 10:25:54 AM litcrittr82, you are right. I had wrong impression that the author is in academia. I guess I could find more nonsense in academic writings. You refer to "study of the same in psychology, neurology, biology, etc." No doubt, there are other "studies" of the same, and those in hard sciences are even more fraudulent. The point is that "gender" is accepted as reality and the "studies" are funded and popularised and taught in schools and universities and (no kidding!) officially serve as a proven basis of law . There are policing bodies in the govt. and virtually every "workplace" that operate with "gender" as if it were some real thing. And, there are victims of this policing too. People are horribly intimidated : I never heard a case when someone accused of "gender discrimination" would call this nonsense a witchhunt. The "studies" became a tool for persecution of innocent people by politically correct criminals, not less than this. This is going on when even the definition for "gender" is absent. I never dismissed the possibility of innovation in social studies. I just pointed out that the prominent current innovations are politically motivated fabrications. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 10, 2008, 10:41:25 AM Quote from: pyshnov on July 10, 2008, 10:25:54 AM I never dismissed the possibility of innovation in social studies. You most certainly did: Quote from: pyshnov on July 07, 2008, 11:06:08 AM Didn't "innovation" in humanities already reach an apogee? How much of further "innovation" the society can support? How much of this crap, of the meaningless definitions, of the fraudulent inventions of new terms etc., etc.. etc. that even a plumber sees as crap, can be sustained? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: litcrittr82 on July 10, 2008, 10:53:37 AM Quote from: pyshnov on July 10, 2008, 10:25:54 AM I never dismissed the possibility of innovation in social studies. I just pointed out that the prominent current innovations are politically motivated fabrications. I understand more where you're coming from now, and I agree to an extent that political correctness and its various modes of policing can act as major barriers to fruitful and innovative scholarship. I'll add, though, that we'd be hard pressed to find much of anything that can operate outside of political influence. The humanities are overtly politicized for so many reasons, not the least of which is that the subjects of humanities scholarship are humans, with all the same variables and inconsistences that make politics a necessarily contentious business. We have this image of the sciences as somehow apolitical, objective, etc.; but we're only kidding ourselves. The sciences are every bit as political, just not as overtly so. But what about sacred space, reproductive rights, and climate change: A rock will never care what a geologist writes about it, but a person or a society may well care tremendously. A human embryo doesn't care what the embryologist does, but grown humans have killed over that branch of science. The atmosphere doesn't care what causes global warming, but legislators do. Each of these processes are undoubtedly informed and influenced by political climates, politicized monies, and powerful people. Sure, you won't find a biologist talking about gender as performance and queering the body, and you won't have a classroom of students get bent out of shape over lab methods, but that doesn't mean the sciences aren't subject to politically motivated fabrication and fraud. In this way, one could argue, the humanities are less politically malignant because of their transparency, or their outright acceptance of political influence. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 10, 2008, 10:56:08 AM Sorry, forgot to say that this "gender" fabrication serves, also, to arbitrarily hire and fire people, to artificially prop up the careers of some and ruin the careers of others, to fraudulently distribute or fraudulently deny public funds, to build reputations and to ruin reputations. It's a multi-billion dollar business in the hands of crooks. It hurts society very much, this communist "innovation'. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 10, 2008, 11:24:49 AM litcrittr82, you are right in that you are trying to judge the situation with some objectivity; I agree that humanities are not an exception when it comes to politicising science. But, I think it's time for speaking out and turning back the clock that is clearly in total disrepair. I don't think that politics is inevitable in science. For the last 200 years, political influence and interference was considered, by every minimally educated man, an obscurantism, a denial of science. Why it changed? Why such cowardice in responding to this "change" and to these "agents of change" while it is so clear that they are fraud? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 10, 2008, 12:03:52 PM Quote from: pyshnov on July 10, 2008, 11:24:49 AM For the last 200 years, political influence and interference was considered, by every minimally educated man, an obscurantism, a denial of science. Why it changed? Why such cowardice in responding to this "change" and to these "agents of change" while it is so clear that they are fraud? I'll venture a guess that Deleuze and/or Derrida are somehow responsible, even for the politicization of the sciences. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mdwlark on July 10, 2008, 04:54:09 PM Just dropping in for a minute, then I'll keep quiet and just listen. All this time I thought I had a gender, and now, thanks to pyshnov, I find out I was mistaken? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mdwlark on July 10, 2008, 10:44:36 PM I lied. I'm not through talking. Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 01:03:56 PM On the other hand, anybody can write sentences like "the heterodiegetic nature of pluri-focalised, metacritical analysis (Foucault, 1984) subsumes the inter-relational network of epistemic references, within the boundaries of the discourses (Derrida, 1997), provided said discourses aren't obliviated by the transgendered serendipity of metacognitive difference/differance, and as far as the fragmented infradiegetic-semiotical nodes (Irigaray, 1991) obey the topological nature of G�del's theorem (Virilio 2004)". In other words, the humanities are dying mostly because they are darn boring. I don't think I could write a sentence like that, let me see... A bunch of folks are having conversations about cause and effect, and one guy (we will use �guy� because his gender got obliviated several posts ago) Anyway, where was I, this one guy does a bird's-eye-view voice-over critiquing their conversations from many perspectives, this guy can really come up with a lot of different criticisms, man, he's not limited to one perspective, no sir, but he stays on topic just the same, and he does all this without joining in the fray himself, so he should forget literature and go into politics, don't you think, man, but his oratory could get wiped out by the sheer differences between these points of view when they, not the people, mind you, the points of view, coincidentally but fortuitously change gender themselves (there is a lot of that going on in literary criticism, San Francisco, New York, and even a bit in Peoria) and things start really falling apart when, now think chic voice so that we have gender equality, this other voice, a chic voice, speaks in fragmented symbols which get right to the heart of the matter while still being unable to account for everything in the conversation let alone in the ordered universe, causing some guy named G�del to start smiling and nodding. Well, I think I improved it, but it is still boring. ......This is why you haven't hired me, isn't it? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on July 11, 2008, 12:16:21 PM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 01:03:56 PM anybody can write sentences like "the heterodiegetic nature of pluri-focalised, metacritical analysis (Foucault, 1984) subsumes the inter-relational network of epistemic references, within the boundaries of the discourses (Derrida, 1997), provided said discourses aren't obliviated by the transgendered serendipity of metacognitive difference/differance, and as far as the fragmented infradiegetic-semiotical nodes (Irigaray, 1991) obey the topological nature of G�del's theorem (Virilio 2004)". In other words, the humanities are dying mostly because they are darn boring. Yes! Yes! Yes! The kind of crap you quoted above is one of the reasons I left a fully-funded French PhD program. It was the "you have got to be kidding me" factor--as in, "You take this kind of stuff seriously? You have got to be kidding me." Here's what the late, great John Gardner had to say on the matter (my favorite line is boldfaced): "No depressed and angry writer at the present moment can fail to notice, if he raises his weary head and looks around, that fools, maniacs, and jabberers are everywhere� mindless, tasteless, ignorant schools of criticism publishing fat journals and meeting in solemn conclave, completely misreading great writers, or celebrating tawdry imitation writers to whom not even a common farm duck would give his ear ; other schools maintain, with much talk of Heidegger, that nothing a writer writes means anything, the very existence of his page is an amusing accident, all the words are a lunatic blithering (for all the writer's care), since language is by nature false and misleading." - Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist . I burst out laughing when I read that in his book. It was also quoted in this article, which I found by googling "Gardner farm duck," and enjoyed: http://web2.ade.org/ade/bulletin/n099/099022.htm (http://web2.ade.org/ade/bulletin/n099/099022.htm) Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: litcrittr82 on July 11, 2008, 02:17:41 PM Quote from: ideagirl on July 11, 2008, 12:16:21 PM Yes! Yes! Yes! The kind of crap you quoted above is one of the reasons I left a fully-funded French PhD program. It was the "you have got to be kidding me" factor--as in, "You take this kind of stuff seriously? You have got to be kidding me." French must be a special case for obvious reasons. Most humanities stuff that I've read over the past couple of years isn't wholly obscurantist, though. With things like philosophy and lit. theory, it's pretty hard not to have complicated writing, just as it's hard to write about quantum physics (something that sounds complicated but I know absolutely nothing about) without holding onto some jargon, some abstraction, some esoteric terminolgy. I still think we're being too hard on the humanities with these generalizations, most of which seem to be coming from the worst examples of humanities writing. I IMO, finding ways to write about abstractions and gaps and blindspots in our *human* experience of the world is a difficult but necessary task, and we seem to lose all patience very quickly with those who try to do it. We intuit that writing about things that are distinctly human--things like stories--should be simple, whereas writing about things that are foreign and nonintuitive, like thermodynamics, should be complicated and brainy. But this is really a big mistake; our intuition fails us miserably in this case. Sometimes the things that are nearest to our experience are in fact the most foreign when we try to undestand them in a systematic way. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 11, 2008, 04:41:38 PM My old prof used to say that those who use the term "jargon" employ it as a scare tactic to avoid learning the language of the discipline. You can hold up Heidegger if you wish, but the vast majority of western philosophical thought could be dashed from the same not-populist-enough, not-relevant-enough critique. Is Derrida harder to read than Kant? Couldn't Barthes be considered as an example of the kind of writing that apparently does not exist any longer? Once again, we are left to fend off those who seem to think that "challenging" writing is the same as "bad" writing and that "intricacy" is the same as "irrelevance." Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: litcrittr82 on July 11, 2008, 04:55:35 PM Quote from: robert_smithson on July 11, 2008, 04:41:38 PM My old prof used to say that those who use the term "jargon" employ it as a scare tactic to avoid learning the language of the discipline. You can hold up Heidegger if you wish, but the vast majority of western philosophical thought could be dashed from the same not-populist-enough, not-relevant-enough critique. Is Derrida harder to read than Kant? Couldn't Barthes be considered as an example of the kind of writing that apparently does not exist any longer? Once again, we are left to fend off those who seem to think that "challenging" writing is the same as "bad" writing and that "intricacy" is the same as "irrelevance." You make a really strong point, and an apt comparison as well between, say, Kant and Derrida in terms of writing. Something similar could be said about Nietzsche--that his writing is a major turnoff, but his material is invaluable. Or Husserl. Which philosophers was Derrida reading in grad. school? Go figure. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mdwlark on July 11, 2008, 05:26:05 PM In spite of my sarcasm, (I should only post 100% sober and before midnight) I have really enjoyed reading this thread. I converted from a humanities BA to social science, where they drink cheaper wine from cartons and eat grocery-store cheddar cheese. In social sciences, of course, we are jargon-free, and engage in clear, supported lines of reasoning at all times. I would like to see humanities swing back toward center a little, and get back to using philosophy to inform their reading of literature and not using literature as incidental, supportive material for their philosophy. You might not realize how far from your roots you have traveled, since Brooks and Warren. It is interesting to see the experts reflect on that. I hope the discipline is about to redefine itself. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on July 11, 2008, 05:32:04 PM Quote from: robert_smithson on July 11, 2008, 04:41:38 PM My old prof used to say that those who use the term "jargon" employ it as a scare tactic to avoid learning the language of the discipline. If hu meant that as a blanket statement, I think that's BS. Certainly some people may be guilty of that (not that I've ever met any), but usually when jargon is used as a derogatory term, it's either because the intended audience cannot be presumed to know the jargon, or because the text or oral presentation in question could have been expressed with perfect clarity and precision without using jargon . Jargon exists in order to express things that can't be economically expressed any other way--if I talk to another lawyer about "equitable defenses," I'm using that term of art/jargon because (1) I'm talking to a fellow lawyer, i.e., to someone I can presume understands it; and (2) there is no more precise and succinct way to say what I'm saying. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on July 11, 2008, 05:33:01 PM Quote from: mdwlark on July 11, 2008, 05:26:05 PM I would like to see humanities swing back toward center a little, and get back to using philosophy to inform their reading of literature and not using literature as incidental, supportive material for their philosophy. Right on, brother, or sister. Or "huster"? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 11, 2008, 05:41:30 PM Quote from: ideagirl on July 11, 2008, 05:32:04 PM Jargon exists in order to express things that can't be economically expressed any other way--if I talk to another lawyer about "equitable defenses," I'm using that term of art/jargon because (1) I'm talking to a fellow lawyer, i.e., to someone I can presume understands it; and (2) there is no more precise and succinct way to say what I'm saying. Of course that's true, but she meant that "jargon" is very often used as a means of dismissing something as incomprehensible in the best case and irrelevant in the worst. It is not seen by most as a neutral term. But I'm sure you knew this, just as we all did. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: spork on July 12, 2008, 12:26:59 PM This is one of the best threads ever. If only we could incorporate discussion of lesbians, it would be perfect. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on July 12, 2008, 12:54:19 PM Brief threadjack-- I have to tell, you, spork, I have always admired your "caring in context" tagline. Hilarious! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mdwlark on July 13, 2008, 02:15:48 AM Quote from: spork on July 12, 2008, 12:26:59 PM This is one of the best threads ever. If only we could incorporate discussion of lesbians, it would be perfect. On this thread only the arguments have gender, not the people. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 13, 2008, 06:10:52 PM ideagirl, you are a hero. As a hero, you have, after you left and left for a known reason, more enemies than friends. But I have another issue in mind: aren't you supposed to know at least what the discipline you chose is about when you entering PhD program? That isn't your fault, but a common situation when one says: "I want the degree, then, I will see what I will do." In the past, one had to work doing some research and to come to some ideas and, then, ask if these ideas can be a foundation for a dissertation. Presently, even a position that can give such pre-dissertation experience is absent. From nobody, one becomes a Doctor of something. The obvious fact here is that one adopts someone else's ideas, including jargon etc., and, in this shape, becomes a scientist. What is now a post-doc position should become a pre-PhD position. Returning to the debate about nonsense in humanities comparing to nonsense in hard science, I remembered a terrific example of nonsense in hard science. I was present at an informal meeting with an editor of the most prestigious biological journal, a scientist of the top rank. He said that in his lab people sit on the floor and "meditate" around the dish with animal eggs, trying to come to new ideas related to embryology. Yap! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on July 15, 2008, 10:50:36 AM Quote from: pyshnov on July 13, 2008, 06:10:52 PM But I have another issue in mind: aren't you supposed to know at least what the discipline you chose is about when you entering PhD program? That isn't your fault, but a common situation when one says: "I want the degree, then, I will see what I will do." Sure, but how exactly are you supposed to gain this knowledge beforehand? If you take a lot of classes in the identical field at a university in the same country, okay, you can get an idea, but that's not always how people come to a particular graduate program. I studied a closely related but different field, in a different country, before starting the PhD program. Specifics: I did an undergraduate degree in French Studies at a UK university. French Studies includes French literature, of course, but that's just one component; the rest is language (medieval, early modern and modern), history, sociology, anthropology, pop culture, yada yada yada. And the literature component consisted mostly of reading the actual literature--Moliere's plays, Sartre's autobiography, etc.--and only tangentially reading critical commentary on it. So there I was, happily studying the actual country of France in all its complexity, and then I start this graduate program and... I'm supposed to dedicate hours and days and weeks of my life to commenting on people commenting on Derrida?!? What?!? Remind me why I'm supposed to care???? I now think that what I should've done back then--"should've" in the sense that it would've been what I was actually interested in--is a PhD in cultural anthropology focusing on France. But *shrug* I had no idea. And I'm not even sure that kind of program would've been such a great fit, because the hyper-theoretical types have invaded that discipline as well. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: frenchdoctor on July 15, 2008, 01:01:57 PM Ideagirl, when I'll be president-for-life and unchallenged despot of an university, I'll want you in my faculty. Quote from: robert_smithson on July 11, 2008, 04:41:38 PM Couldn't Barthes be considered as an example of the kind of writing that apparently does not exist any longer? Barthes is one of my favorites. A genius, an absolute genius. For example, here is an excerpt of one of his masterworks, S/Z . The first sentence is the text he is theorizing, a Balzac shortstory. S2 "et cach� sous les plis onduleux d'un rideau de moire" ACT "cachette" : 1 : �tre cach�. Therefore, the fact of being hidden, thanks to this smartly theorized semiotical exegesis, means that the character (on a deeper level, unreachable by ordinary readers) is actually hiding. The whole book is written the same way. Barthes states the obvious to a completely ridiculous degree. Give Barthes a sentence like "the cat is eating the mouse", and his semioanalysis will be something like : CHAR 1 : cat CHAR 2 : mouse ACT : eating : eat : ingesting food. In the 70', he was considered as one of the most brilliant thinkers in France. LSD can do bad things to you. To answer the question, very few people take Barthes seriously today, even in France. However, many people who are academics now were hired during the Barthes era, so they owe their careers to him and his theories. It's hard to say "I owe my career to completely inane theories". So people prefer to remain dicreetly silent. That's one of the worst effects of the French centralized, sovietic system. There is no pluralism in french academia. When somebody leads, everyone has to follow. When Sartre was the king, it was unthinkable not to be existentialist. Then Barthes came, and all the careers depended on the way people theorized his theories. When Bourdieu was at his peak, everyone had to put some sociology in his works (all classical writers suddenly became filthy bourgeois oppressors). Today, Philippe Meirieu and his fellow psycho-educationalists lead the game, so everybody has to accept the fact that teaching something is an abject form of mental torture, that all students deserve A+, that they are all creative geniuses, and so on... Don't forget french system is entirely centralized. For example, the Agr�gation is mandatory to teach in the humanities and is a nationwide exam : programs and questions are the same for everyone. Paris 5th arrondissement is the place where everything is decided (just imagine what would be US academia if all important academics of the country were living in the same few streets of NY). Everyone who takes possession of this citadel rules everything. When it happens, if you don't follow the mainstream, you're out of the game. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on July 15, 2008, 01:39:30 PM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 15, 2008, 01:01:57 PM Ideagirl, when I'll be president-for-life and unchallenged despot of an university, I'll want you in my faculty. Awesome! I'll be there. But since we're at this early stage of negotiations, allow me to make this humble request: please try to ensure that your university is in a physically gorgeous location, such as the Alps. Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 15, 2008, 01:01:57 PM Barthes states the obvious to a completely ridiculous degree. Give Barthes a sentence like "the cat is eating the mouse", and his semioanalysis will be something like : CHAR 1 : cat CHAR 2 : mouse ACT : eating : eat : ingesting food. In the 70', he was considered as one of the most brilliant thinkers in France. LSD can do bad things to you. How do you say "high five" in French? I would say it to you in response to this, if the expression existed. "Bravo" just doesn't do the trick. I do admit we had to read some Barthes during my undergraduate degree. I found him ridiculous. But one Barthes book won't kill a person. I have vivid recollections of one detail from an essay--something to the effect of, in a movie set in ancient Rome, the male actors have short bangs (bangs = frange ),* and these short bangs function symbolically to tell the viewer that we are in ancient Rome. I was like, thanks, Roland, for that penetrating insight!!! Tell me more! What about the togas they're all wearing? Do those also function symbolically to tell us we're in ancient Rome?!? Oh Roland, you are opening whole new worlds of understanding to me! * Like so: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/images/juliuscaesarantony1.JPG (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/images/juliuscaesarantony1.JPG) Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: frenchdoctor on July 16, 2008, 06:44:00 AM Ha, Roland "Captain Obvious" Barthes... If you can find it, an old book explains how Barthes does. Its title is "Nouvelle Critique ou Nouvelle Imposture ?", and the author is Raymond Picard. Picard was a real, serious scholar, excellent specialist of Racine, who was beffudled to see people actually take Barthes seriously. Of course, Barthes only answer was (you guessed it) : "you're an evil imperialist sold to the system", or something like it (*). Another scholar, much less serious but also much more funnier, is Ren� Pommier, who wrote pamphlets against french thoricists. You can find them on the net : http://rene.pommier.free.fr/ (http://rene.pommier.free.fr/) On the left, click on "Barthes". I have my own theory. You know why Barthes was such a hero ? The answer is : eyebrows. Look at some of his pictures. His eyebrows say "I'm a genius" in a clear, loud voice. It's written on his face. Oh, for a scholar, to be blessed with such photogenic evidence of greatness ! ------------------ (*) One of the funniest characteristics of powerful, influent french intellectuals is that they always claim to be rebels, renegades, in open revolt against the "system". Barthes, Sartre, Bourdieu... all had splendid academic careers (ENS, Coll�ge de France), they were famous, had plenty of disciples and followers, were read by many people, they were mediatic heroes (to an uncanny degree : Sartre fascinated the crowds like a rockstar)... and yet, if you listen to them, they talk as if they were the Che Guevara. They hate the system, but they are the system. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on July 16, 2008, 09:51:51 AM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 16, 2008, 06:44:00 AM I have my own theory. You know why Barthes was such a hero ? The answer is : eyebrows. Look at some of his pictures. His eyebrows say "I'm a genius" in a clear, loud voice. It's written on his face. Oh, for a scholar, to be blessed with such photogenic evidence of greatness ! My god, you're right: http://daughterofben.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/roland-barthes2.jpeg (http://daughterofben.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/roland-barthes2.jpeg) But I see more than "I'm a genius" in those eyebrows. I see, "I am a genius at getting laid. I will write books so that nubile young women from the University of Paris will think I am a genius, a rebel, a philosopher and an intellectual, and therefore they will sleep with me. I will invite them to my office or to a cafe and make obvious intellectual comments in a mysterious tone of voice, so that the young women will think they must not have fully understood me and will therefore think I am a genius; then I will slowly take a drag from my cigarette while giving them a lanuid penetrating gaze from beneath my Genius Eyebrows; then I will slowly exhale the smoke in a sensual yet intellectual manner; and then they will sleep with me. This is what my life is all about ." Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: pyshnov on July 16, 2008, 12:37:06 PM While I have nothing to add to the discussion of French literature, I would like to note that French Art shows very French distinct features. They are SMART. Often, there is lack of scholarly executed detail, but it is amply covered with FREEDOM OF EXECUTION, with smart strokes giving ORIGINALITY with great TASTE and never a stupid passage. Classics might call this superficiality, but you cannot avoid to love it. You forgive the sentimentality because it's just a nice play with sentimentality. Etc., etc. Probably, now, this way to do art is overexploited; the French enthusiasm can easily lose the substance of admiration. If there are 10 books of critical analysis (even full of excellent witticisms) for 1 pour vaudeville, that's the end of literature. A very interesting (and political) book, including angry, and I wouldn't know if justified - discussion of French literature, is: "The Stupid XIX th Century" by Leon Daudet, NY, Payson & Clarke, 1928. But you don't need this English translation. I love the book. The author was later imprisoned. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 06:47:46 AM An interesting article. And probably mostly true. But all those "A's"! Would some kind soul point the writer to Strunk and White: "It's a fine dog that catches its own fleas". Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 06:55:25 AM I wanted to get into an Ivy-League school, and I deserved to. But I did not. Still rankles to this very day. So the article makes me feel pretty good. Still, as a parent, I want my kids to get into one of those places---all those connections to money and power ... Yes, I know money and power don't bring happiness, but I would rather have the choice of whether to discard them or not vs. not having them. Bush might be a mediocrity, but he *is* the President of the USA; and I think that's a pretty good gig. I will ow go back to resnting those who did well solely on the basis of their connections, while, I, deserving stalwart that I am, go relegated to the lower ranks of the species Homo Sapiens. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 07:06:33 AM The problem with humanities is very evident from a quick reading of those writing here about the problem with humanities: The original article is written in clear, plain English---although "It's a fine dog that its A's from its As"---but as soon humanities folks get in, all we have is a bunch of mumbo jumbo whose sole purpose si to hide the fact that these days research in humanities is a bunch of mumbo jumbo. I know thsi is a bit harsh, but I really can't think of one good reason why universities continue to support departments in humanities. (That also goes for social "sciences".) We live in a world of global warming, starvation, AIDS, etc., and so much taxpayers' money is going to people who are engaged in little more tha self-pleasure! Feel free to contradict, but in English please! A story: Some years ago I encountered a student whose thesis was an enquiry into whether Alfred Tennyson had been influenced by Indian cuisine (not Indian literature!). I thought I would spare her a few yeas of mindless labour and gave her an immediate answer: NO. She went ahead and completed her thesis. The anwer: NO. This would ba a fable, or a parable, or something, were it not for the fact that it is a true story. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 07:15:13 AM Quote from: eumaios on July 03, 2008, 12:04:11 AM Next item. Deresiewicz seems to think that an elite education should produce people who constitute a genuine intellectual, artistic, moral, and ethical elite, an elite in the best sense of the term. Maybe it should and maybe it shouldn't. But when has it, particularly in the United States? How many of our--America's--best writers, thinkers, leaders, inventors had elite educations? Ben Franklin, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Thomas Edison, John Browning, Samuel Morse, Frederick Douglass, Ernest Hemingway, H. L. Mencken--how many elite educations in that bunch? Generalization from N=12? Periodically, in a Physics class, I've had some lazy bum remind me that Einstein failed some important examination, and see how well he did! My response: It is certainly possible that you are the next Einstein; but, from many years of observation, people who fail this basic course never seem to get very far in the science program. Never mind. I was thinking of sending my kids to university, but after counting the number of people who never went to university but still did quite well ... Step forth, Bill Gates! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 08:10:51 AM Quote from: pyshnov on July 07, 2008, 11:06:08 AM Didn't "innovation" in humanities already reach an apogee? How much of further "innovation" the society can support? How much of this crap, of the meaningless definitions, of the fraudulent inventions of new terms etc., etc.. etc. that even a plumber sees as crap, can be sustained? Ask this plumber if he knows what "gender" (this absolutely universally adopted word) is. He doesn't know, and humanities don't know. The book was recently published: "Why Women Must Rule The World." I watched the interview with the author: clearly humanities have completed the process of abandoning any pretence of having a connection with facts or science and have adopted the unchallenged freedom to preach crap. Clearly, all the moneys that could be swindled for peddling crap have been swindled. Every bit of culture and every bit of civilization has been deconstructed. I am afraid to ask this question - What else is now contemplated? A 9/11 and the war on terrorism in the departments with the waterboarding of the dead white men? Most of what goes on in humanities departments is misguided self-pleasure. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with that, as is the case with just about any kind of self-pleasure, but there is a serious issue when people insist on doing that for a living and try to argue that they are, somehow, providing a useful service to society. Except for a very small number of people involved, "humanities", social "sciences", etc. should be restricted to the class of weekend hobbies. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 08:18:40 AM Quote from: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 11:29:34 AM Doesn't the same thing apply to the sciences? The "plumbers" often think that studying fruit flies is an exercise in state-funded welfare as well. There are monies at stake! Not quite. The plumber can enjoy the benefits of computer technology, use his mobile phone, enjoy football on his plasma-screen TV, etc. But the plumber is, in any case, an extreme example. I, like may of my colleagues, have had "intellectual" conversations with the humanities folks, gone to their seminars, read their journals ... and in every case the conclusion is about the same: people take a perfectly understable idea, that can be explained in perfectly plain language, and warp it up in the total gibberish. What next, somebody asked? Well, how about deconstructing deconstruction---from a gender-free, race-free, class-free, *-free, perspective, with special revelance to the praxis of terrorism? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 08:28:08 AM Quote from: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 11:29:34 AM The humanities have never been about facts in the way you seem to think. The humanities are about interpretation. Interpreting what? Some years ago I happened to be talking to a Ph.D student (literature) who happened to be writing a thesis on books by a fellow I happened to know---well, I had met him at a few parties and discussed his writings. Anyway, the thesis was on the meaning of a particular thread that the student claimed could be found in the fellow's books. I told him: Look, I have met the man; he is a nice, friendly fellow; why not just give him a call and ask him what he meant? I got the impression that I had ben very rude. The fellow is still very much alive, and people are still writing PhD theses on how to interpret his works. But, according to him, hardly anybody every actually asks him what he means/meant! In any case, why do the "interpretations" have to be jargon-laden gibberish? Who actually reads them, apart from others engaged in similarly misguided activities? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 08:35:08 AM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 01:03:56 PM interpretation ? Why ? The humanities are about knowing interesting stuff, that's all. A specialist of Shakespeare who knows everything about Shakespeare's life and works doesn't have to "interpret" anything to be an oustanding, fascinating scholar. I read Shakespeare, and I understand him. What I never understand is the babble that claims to be telling me what Shakespeare is about. Quote On the other hand, anybody can write sentences like "the heterodiegetic nature of pluri-focalised, metacritical analysis (Foucault, 1984) subsumes the inter-relational network of epistemic references, within the boundaries of the discourses (Derrida, 1997), provided said discourses aren't obliviated by the transgendered serendipity of metacognitive difference/differance, and as far as the fragmented infradiegetic-semiotical nodes (Irigaray, 1991) obey the topological nature of G�del's theorem (Virilio 2004)". No, humanities are dying because people are simply tired of being fed baloney and told that they aren't smart of they don't buy it. Humanties people are especially easy to con when some scientific words are throw in. Sokal did a pretty good one on them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair Deconstruct that! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 08:38:09 AM Quote from: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 02:03:53 PM Not sure I understand how the first example is not party to the complaint. Simple discovery of facts without context (otherwise known as "trivia") is not equal to good scholarship, IMHO. What is a "context"? Isn't there always a context? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 08:39:06 AM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 02:34:01 PM I guess the definition of "boring" and "not boring" is different for everyone of us. I'll take the same example. A scholar like Maspero, who explains to me how people used to live 5000 years ago near the banks of the Nile River, who explains this to me in practical terms, in a language of incredible beauty, will make me weep of pleasure. He doesn't interpret anything. He just says how things used to be for our predecessors on this beloved earth. On the other hand, some guy who does nothing but pile up buzzwords, all of them meaning "hey, look how smart I am ! I can interpret anything ! I use words that you don't know !", will only bore me to death. The narcissistic stance of the thinker thinking about his own thoughts drives me crazy. I see the humanities as a tribute paid to our fellow humans for what they did, for what they wrote and sang, for the music they played, for the gods they believed in, for the lives they lived and the deaths they died. They are important. They matter. But my own, petty, selfish "interpretation" ? Why ? Who cares ? Not even me. Boring. Excellent example! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 08:50:31 AM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 01:03:56 PM However, money also matters. Precisely. People have to make a living, and, as long as they are not engaged in criminal activities, why not. The real problem is when such people start to take themselves seriously and expect the rest of the world to buy into and pay for their self-indulgence. My small kid reads Harry Potter and enjoys it for what it is. I read Harry Potter and enjoy it for what it is. Where do PhD theses "interpreting" Harry Potter come in? Quote edit : I wrote this post before pyshnov's reply about facts. I completely agree, event though I am an humanist. Buzzwords aren't new facts. They're only new, meaningless words. Words, words, words. Precisely. Mindless jargon that purports to "interpret" rather plain facts are a waste of everything around us. Humanities (or what passes for it in universities) is going nowhere because increasingly questions are being asked about the integrity of the emperor's tailor. The only way forward is for the "humanists" to become honest. They have had a pretty good run, but nothing lasts foerever. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 08:54:32 AM Quote from: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 02:46:05 PM though it would be appropriate for a lovely coffee table book. The point is that, even in your example, Maspero has to explain to us why we should care. Really? Shakespeare has done his thing and is gone. Many people read and enjoy his works without ay explanation on his part. And the same goes for many real "humanists"---they just do it; the unreadable and unread explanations are the domain of those who can't. Get back to work, I say. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 08:55:49 AM Quote from: robert_smithson on July 07, 2008, 03:13:43 PM Quote from: wasteland on July 07, 2008, 02:50:17 PM The re-telling of ancient history is all about interpretation of evidence. But surely you know that. Right. This part Quote from: wasteland on July 07, 2008, 02:50:17 PM He just says how things used to be for our predecessors on this beloved earth. does not happen without interpretation. People, please stop. Nobody is buying. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 09:09:11 AM To Frenchdoctor: My current university is very much into "interdiscipliary" research. Promotions, performance bonuses, internal research grants, etc. are very dependent on such things, including the "prestige" of the journal in which one publishes, the number of publications, etc. As always, I aim to please. My colleagues on the other side of the university have been very happy to have a scientist take them seriously and offer to collaborate with them. The folks at the top of the university are very happy to see such a fine example of reaching-out; their generous grant has enabled a lot of summer-travel to seek iternational collaborators. We have just submitted some fine papers interpreting the mind (or whatever) of that fine French mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki. I can't understand a word of what my co-authors have writte, but they sure have deconstructed something!. They can't understand a word of what I've written; but, then, neither can I. Everyone is happy. Sokal would be proud of me. I'll keep you posted after I see the proofs. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 09:12:28 AM To "humanists": Please stop "interpreting". Contribute! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 09:31:28 AM Quote from: litcrittr82 on July 09, 2008, 01:52:08 PM 1) This is directed generally, since the culprits are many: I think most of us can agree that being dismissive about the humanities, i.e. calling it a wholly obsolete field of study and practice, is shortsighted and foolish. Those who dismiss the humanities entirely almost always cite the Sokal hoax, then launch into unsophisticated complaints about jargon, theory, etc. They take the worst, most embarassing moments in an intellectual history and hold them up as symbolic of humanist tradition itself. This kind of tactic is akin to, in my view, a humanist pointing to those scientists who 'prove' and teach creationism as a vetted theory while arguing for the obsolescence of science. My point here is that we don't get anywhere, it seems, by doting on Sokal (or creationism) when discussing innovation between and among the sciences and humanities. You miss the point. Sokal is, and will alays be, a hero because he spoke for many of us who are sick and tired of being sold baloney and told we are philistines because we question the gibberish in which it is wrapped. If the humanities "research" wishes to go forward and to lift itself out of the pit of contempt into which it has, quite deservedly fallen, there is only one way: stop peddling snake-oil and get back to work. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 09:37:17 AM Quote from: litcrittr82 on July 09, 2008, 02:31:49 PM pyshnov, I think above fits you nicely into that lot of 'Those...' You seem to dismiss the idea that innovation even applies to the humanities. There is defnitely innovation in the humanties---just look around you. The problem is with those who, instead of innovating, are busy deconstructing, interpreting ... and doing just about everything except real work. In particular, most of us are pissed off by the insulting attitude that we should, for some unstated reason, accept all this nonsense on the grounds that it is "academic research". Intellectual masturbation is like ay other kid of masturbation: do it if you must, but, please, don't bother the world with the details. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 09:53:47 AM Beauty and jazz: I like jazz. I listen to a lot of it, read about it, etc. There have been numerous articles, academic theses, books, etc. written on the beauty of jazz, how to interpret the music, etc. Unlike the case of Shakespeare, who died before an appropriate question could be put to him, we are fortunate to have on record Duke Ellington's answer to the question, " What is good jazz? ": "If it sounds good, then it very probably is good." Interpret that. Within or without context. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 10:00:35 AM Quote from: litcrittr82 on July 11, 2008, 02:17:41 PM like thermodynamics, should be complicated and brainy. Herein lies the problem: You don't understand it; so you think it must be brainy. Therefore, if you want to appear brainy, you must write things nobody understands. That is what is killing the humanities. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 10:13:09 AM Quote from: robert_smithson on July 11, 2008, 04:41:38 PM Once again, we are left to fend off those who seem to think that "challenging" writing is the same as "bad" writing and that "intricacy" is the same as "irrelevance." Slice it any way you like, baloney is still baloney. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 10:15:31 AM Quote from: mdwlark on July 11, 2008, 05:26:05 PM I would like to see humanities swing back toward center a little, and get back to using philosophy to inform their reading of literature and not using literature as incidental, supportive material for their philosophy. Once again, please. In English this time. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 10:19:22 AM Quote from: spork on July 12, 2008, 12:26:59 PM This is one of the best threads ever. If only we could incorporate discussion of lesbians, it would be perfect. Lesbians are old news. What we need is to relate it to the War Against Terror. Perhaps Bin Laden went astray because of an improper interpretation of The Bard. Oh, and don't forget Global Warming---deconstructed, of course. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 10:22:47 AM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 15, 2008, 01:01:57 PM Ideagirl, when I'll be president-for-life and unchallenged despot of an university, I'll want you in my faculty. Impossible. We just sent her an offer to be our next Provost. Naturally, she will have to interpret the offer in an appropriate context. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 10:28:33 AM Quote from: ideagirl on July 15, 2008, 10:50:36 AM I'm supposed to dedicate hours and days and weeks of my life to commenting on people commenting on Derrida No, no, no. That's not very smart or worthy of a PhD. Here it is: There are a lot of people commenting on Derrida. Then, there are a lot (but slightly fewer than the preceding lot) commenting on people commenting on Derrida. Then there are ... people commenting on people commenting on Derrida. In this pyramid of commentators, the trick is to get in at the right level: comment of the small number directly below you. Actually, if I were to to a PhD again, it might be on the pyramid of people commenting on people commeting on ... OK; that's my last gin-and-tonic for the night; I turn in over to the French. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 10:34:02 AM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 15, 2008, 01:01:57 PM Today, Philippe Meirieu and his fellow psycho-educationalists lead the game, so everybody has to accept the fact that teaching something is an abject form of mental torture, that all students deserve A+, that they are all creative geniuses, and so on... See, this is why I like the French approach--always deep. Here at my university, we do it because the top tells us that if too many students fail, the university will lose its funding and we will be out of jobs. Now, thanks to Philippe Meirieu, I have a perfectly sound intellectual basis for passing the lazy buggers. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: madhatter on August 11, 2008, 03:14:44 PM Oh, look. Someone's just discovered the internet. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: hollow_man on August 11, 2008, 06:09:42 PM Wow. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: sciencephd on August 11, 2008, 07:57:55 PM Quote from: madhatter on August 11, 2008, 03:14:44 PM Oh, look. Someone's just discovered the internet. hahahaha ! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 11, 2008, 11:45:08 PM Quote from: madhatter on August 11, 2008, 03:14:44 PM Oh, look. Someone's just discovered the internet. This is better than trying to justify baloney. Not much, but a notch up. Next! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: hollow_man on August 12, 2008, 12:17:24 AM Quote from: mingus on August 11, 2008, 11:45:08 PM Quote from: madhatter on August 11, 2008, 03:14:44 PM Oh, look. Someone's just discovered the internet. This is better than trying to justify baloney. Not much, but a notch up. Next! Mingus, Perhaps people are waiting to reply until you respond more fully to the first three pages of the thread. I think there were a few sentences in there that you did not comment on. Can you elaborate? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 12, 2008, 01:48:01 AM Quote from: hollow_man on August 12, 2008, 12:17:24 AM Quote from: mingus on August 11, 2008, 11:45:08 PM Quote from: madhatter on August 11, 2008, 03:14:44 PM Oh, look. Someone's just discovered the internet. This is better than trying to justify baloney. Not much, but a notch up. Next! Mingus, Perhaps people are waiting to reply until you respond more fully to the first three pages of the thread. I think there were a few sentences in there that you did not comment on. Can you elaborate? No. Next! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: madhatter on August 12, 2008, 10:04:22 AM There are still hundreds and hundreds of posts out there that you haven't individually responded to. Step to it! Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 12, 2008, 02:27:02 PM Quote from: madhatter on August 12, 2008, 10:04:22 AM There are still hundreds and hundreds of posts out there that you haven't individually responded to. Step to it! Sorry, I ran out of gin-and-tonic last night. I will catch up after the weekend trip to the boozer's. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on August 12, 2008, 02:40:03 PM Quote from: mingus on August 12, 2008, 02:27:02 PM Quote from: madhatter on August 12, 2008, 10:04:22 AM There are still hundreds and hundreds of posts out there that you haven't individually responded to. Step to it! Sorry, I ran out of gin-and-tonic last night. I will catch up after the weekend trip to the boozer's. The genius only appears when liberated by the right muse, apparently. Why don't you make like your namesake and just punch 'em all out? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on August 12, 2008, 04:44:32 PM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 02:34:01 PM I see the humanities as a tribute paid to our fellow humans for what they did, for what they wrote and sang, for the music they played, for the gods they believed in, for the lives they lived and the deaths they died. They are important. They matter. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 07, 2008, 02:34:01 PM But my own, petty, selfish "interpretation" ? Why ? Who cares ? Maybe not your interpretation of others--but what about what you write and sing, the life you live...? You're one of these marvelous humans too... Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on August 12, 2008, 04:46:15 PM Quote from: mingus on August 11, 2008, 09:53:47 AM " What is good jazz? ": "If it sounds good, then it very probably is good." Interpret that. Within or without context. *High five* Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on August 12, 2008, 04:48:53 PM Quote from: mingus on August 11, 2008, 10:22:47 AM Quote from: frenchdoctor on July 15, 2008, 01:01:57 PM Ideagirl, when I'll be president-for-life and unchallenged despot of an university, I'll want you in my faculty. Impossible. We just sent her an offer to be our next Provost. Naturally, she will have to interpret the offer in an appropriate context. I think the most appropriate context might be... let's see... the mountains above Lausanne? The Pacific coast near Monterey? Hokkaido? Now THOSE are some contexts I'd be interested in! Does your offer come in one of those contexts?? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on August 12, 2008, 04:51:35 PM Quote from: mingus on August 11, 2008, 06:55:25 AM Yes, I know money and power don't bring happiness, but I would rather have the choice of whether to discard them or not vs. not having them. Yep, yep yep yep. I hear what you're saying because I'm a Capricorn--'nuff said. Denzel Washington, a fellow Capricorn, was once quoted as saying, "Money can't buy happiness, but it makes a hell of a downpayment." Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: ideagirl on August 12, 2008, 04:53:19 PM Quote from: mingus on August 11, 2008, 07:06:33 AM A story: Some years ago I encountered a student whose thesis was an enquiry into whether Alfred Tennyson had been influenced by Indian cuisine (not Indian literature!). I thought I would spare her a few yeas of mindless labour and gave her an immediate answer: NO. She went ahead and completed her thesis. The anwer: NO. This would ba a fable, or a parable, or something, were it not for the fact that it is a true story. Oh jesus god . Our tax dollars (via PhD funding) at work. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 12, 2008, 09:05:24 PM Quote from: robert_smithson on August 12, 2008, 02:40:03 PM Quote from: mingus on August 12, 2008, 02:27:02 PM Quote from: madhatter on August 12, 2008, 10:04:22 AM There are still hundreds and hundreds of posts out there that you haven't individually responded to. Step to it! Sorry, I ran out of gin-and-tonic last night. I will catch up after the weekend trip to the boozer's. The genius only appears when liberated by the right muse, apparently. Why don't you make like your namesake and just punch 'em all out? Am not good at punching; I prefer strangling. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on August 12, 2008, 10:07:55 PM Quote from: mingus on August 12, 2008, 09:05:24 PM Quote from: robert_smithson on August 12, 2008, 02:40:03 PM Quote from: mingus on August 12, 2008, 02:27:02 PM Quote from: madhatter on August 12, 2008, 10:04:22 AM There are still hundreds and hundreds of posts out there that you haven't individually responded to. Step to it! Sorry, I ran out of gin-and-tonic last night. I will catch up after the weekend trip to the boozer's. The genius only appears when liberated by the right muse, apparently. Why don't you make like your namesake and just punch 'em all out? Am not good at punching; I prefer strangling. I could have guessed that. Try not to strangle the chicken so much in public, ok? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 12, 2008, 10:55:29 PM Quote from: robert_smithson on August 12, 2008, 10:07:55 PM Quote from: mingus on August 12, 2008, 09:05:24 PM Quote from: robert_smithson on August 12, 2008, 02:40:03 PM Quote from: mingus on August 12, 2008, 02:27:02 PM Quote from: madhatter on August 12, 2008, 10:04:22 AM There are still hundreds and hundreds of posts out there that you haven't individually responded to. Step to it! Sorry, I ran out of gin-and-tonic last night. I will catch up after the weekend trip to the boozer's. The genius only appears when liberated by the right muse, apparently. Why don't you make like your namesake and just punch 'em all out? Why not? Am not good at punching; I prefer strangling. I could have guessed that. Try not to strangle the chicken so much in public, ok? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: robert_smithson on August 12, 2008, 10:58:25 PM Wow, great response. What amazing computer literacy. Too drunk to type, perhaps? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: mingus on August 12, 2008, 11:37:17 PM Quote from: robert_smithson on August 12, 2008, 10:58:25 PM Wow, great response. What amazing computer literacy. Too drunk to type, perhaps? Thank you. I thought I made it clear that I am out until I hit the boozer's this weekend. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: iprof on August 14, 2008, 02:53:10 AM Quote from: fiona on July 01, 2008, 01:46:47 AM This is a vast topic, but I'll take a stab at one small part of your posting. You say that there haven't been "earth-shakers" in the humanities lately. I agree, but I think it doesn't have to do with the quality of minds in the humanities, but with some other things: 1. There are fewer and fewer tenure-track slots. If you're an adjunct, you don't have time or energy or encouragement to write breakthrough stuff. 2. No one much cares about what humanities people "discover." Intellectual breakthroughs (outside the sciences, where there's still coverage) used to be front-page news, and the latest literary novels were discussed by everyone. Not many people care now. 3. Hate to say it, but I don't think the best and the brightest go to grad school in the humanities anymore, if they ever did. The slog is too long and the rewards are too vague. It's the less bright who either don't know how bad the job market is, or they don't care. I think the brightest undergrads are more apt to go to business school or go right into jobs. The Fiona I dont know if I would equate intelligence with greed? Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: daurousseau on August 14, 2008, 01:26:19 PM Quote from: iprof on August 14, 2008, 02:53:10 AM Quote from: fiona on July 01, 2008, 01:46:47 AM This is a vast topic, but I'll take a stab at one small part of your posting. You say that there haven't been "earth-shakers" in the humanities lately. I agree, but I think it doesn't have to do with the quality of minds in the humanities, but with some other things: 1. There are fewer and fewer tenure-track slots. If you're an adjunct, you don't have time or energy or encouragement to write breakthrough stuff. 2. No one much cares about what humanities people "discover." Intellectual breakthroughs (outside the sciences, where there's still coverage) used to be front-page news, and the latest literary novels were discussed by everyone. Not many people care now. 3. Hate to say it, but I don't think the best and the brightest go to grad school in the humanities anymore, if they ever did. The slog is too long and the rewards are too vague. It's the less bright who either don't know how bad the job market is, or they don't care. I think the brightest undergrads are more apt to go to business school or go right into jobs. The Fiona I dont know if I would equate intelligence with greed? Just chiming in with anecdotal evidence: the stream of doctoral students in business that I encounter every day are, on average, stupid. Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: kiana on August 14, 2008, 01:35:44 PM Quote from: ideagirl on August 12, 2008, 04:53:19 PM Quote from: mingus on August 11, 2008, 07:06:33 AM A story: Some years ago I encountered a student whose thesis was an enquiry into whether Alfred Tennyson had been influenced by Indian cuisine (not Indian literature!). I thought I would spare her a few yeas of mindless labour and gave her an immediate answer: NO. She went ahead and completed her thesis. The anwer: NO. This would ba a fable, or a parable, or something, were it not for the fact that it is a true story. Oh jesus god . Our tax dollars (via PhD funding) at work. Reading a book many years ago (I forgot the name of the book, but it was by Rory Foster, a vet known as Dr. Wildlife), he mentioned speaking to a young and eager wildlife biology student. She mentioned her research study, which was to find out what happened to ducks which were wounded, but not killed when hunters shot at them. Their method of finding out was to break the wings of a bunch of ducks and turn them loose. In Minnesota. With winter coming on. What the $#^)$%$#^$#^ do you *think* is going to happen to a duck with a broken wing when the water freezes? (Yes, the results of the study were that many died quickly to predators, while some survived until the water froze and then died.) Title: Re: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" Post by: trentsands on August 14, 2008, 01:38:57 PM Quote from: kiana on August 14, 2008, 01:35:44 PM Quote from: ideagirl on August 12, 2008, 04:53:19 PM Quote from: mingus on August 11, 2008, 07:06:33 AM A story: Some years ago I encountered a student whose thesis was an enquiry into whether Alfred Tennyson had been influenced by Indian cuisine (not Indian literature!). I thought I would spare her a few yeas of mindless labour and gave her an immediate answer: NO. She went ahead and completed her thesis. The anwer: NO. This would ba a fable, or a parable, or something, were it not for the fact that it is a true story. Oh jesus god . Our tax dollars (via PhD funding) at work. Reading a book many years ago (I forgot the name of the book, but it was by Rory Foster, a vet known as Dr. Wildlife), he mentioned speaking to a young and eager wildlife biology student. She mentioned her research study, which was to find out what happened to ducks which were wounded, but not killed when hunters shot at them. Their method of finding out was to break the wings of a bunch of ducks and turn them loose. In Minnesota. With winter coming on. What the $#^)$%$#^$#^ do you *think* is going to happen to a duck with a broken wing when the water freezes? (Yes, the results of the study were that many died quickly to predators, while some survived until the water froze and then died.) We live in a culture in which the knowledge that is merely known or thought is powerless. It must be documented. Powered by SMF 1.1.9 | SMF � 2006-2008, Simple Machines LLC
CURRENT URL http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110001046360/en
現代アメリカにおける教育の古典的理念と文化の多元性 : マーサ・ヌスバウ� 著,Cultivating Humanityに寄せて [in Japanese] Multiculturalism and Classical Ideas of Liberal Education : A review essay on Martha C.Nussbaum's Cultivating Humanity : A classical defense of reform in liberal education (Harvard University Press, 1997) [in Japanese]
CURRENT URL http://cms.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1297&Itemid=54
Testimony of Anne Neal, President of the American Council of Trustees and�Alumni � 17 January 2006 Filed under: Pennsylvania , Pennsylvania Academic Freedom Hearings Testimony of Anne D. Neal, President American Council of Trustees and Alumni Before the Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Public Hearing, January 10, 2006 Philadelphia , PA I want to thank the chairman and members of the Select Committee for allowing me to speak to you today. I am president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a national education nonprofit. My organization was founded in 1995 and is a bipartisan network of college and university trustees and alumni across the country dedicated to academic freedom, academic excellence and accountability in higher education. Since our founding, we have had occasion to evaluate colleges and universities in terms of academic freedom and academic offerings. And what we have discovered shows-beyond a shadow of a doubt-that the lack of intellectual diversity is the greatest problem facing higher education. This committee's willingness to explore the issue and to determine what action, if any, is exemplary and I hope that it will serve as a model for legislatures across the country. Let me begin by saying that lack of intellectual diversity is not a new problem, nor is it a matter of a few isolated incidents or abuses, as some of the witnesses would have you believe. As early as 1991, Yale President Benno Schmidt warned that "The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and liberate the mind." In his last report to the Board of Overseers, retiring Harvard President Derek Bok warned: "What universities can and must resist are deliberate, overt attempts to impose orthodoxy and suppress dissent... In recent years, the threat of orthodoxy has come primarily from within rather than outside the university." A decade and more have passed since these comments were made and I wish that I could say to you that the situation had improved. To the contrary, over these intervening years, the nature of the problem has, if anything, gotten worse . Rather than fostering intellectual diversity-the robust exchange of ideas traditionally viewed as the very essence of a college education-our colleges and universities are increasingly bastions of political correctness, hostile to the free exchange of ideas. In recent months, members of the academy have themselves conceded challenges. The Association of American Colleges and Universities has issued a statement on Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility that states: "Some departments fail to ensure that their curricula include the full diversity of legitimate intellectual perspectives appropriate to their disciplines. And individual faculty members sometimes express their personal views to students in ways that intimidate them. ... [T]here is room for improvement." Columbia president Lee Bollinger, after outside pressure, in early 2005 admitted students had legitimate complaints about intimidation in the classroom and issued new and revised grievance guidelines. David Ward, President of the American Council on Education, has admitted to the press that some institutions have no grievance procedures in place and should have. Meanwhile, surveys by Klein, Rothman, McGinnis and others documenting the politically monolithic character of the faculty have mounted, with no countervailing data of any kind. A study released in late December by Professor Dan Klein found that social science professors are overwhelmingly Democratic, that Democratic professors in those disciplines are more homogeneous in their thinking than Republicans; and that Republican scholars are more likely to work outside the academy than their Democratic counterparts. On the question of political affiliation, the survey showed an immense imbalance in the breakdown of Democrats to Republicans ranging from 21.1:1 among anthropologists; 9:1:1 among political and legal philosophers; 8.5:1 amongst historians; and 5.6 to 1 amongst political scientists. A 2005 study by Stanley Rothman, S. Robert Lichter and Neil Nevitte, Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty , found that 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges describe themselves as liberal and 15 percent conservative. According to the study, the most one-sided departments are English literature, philosophy, political science, and religious studies, where at least 80 percent of the faculty say they are liberal and no more than five percent call themselves conservative. "The American College Teacher" a major study by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, that has never been challenged, features some questions on politics. The last survey, in 2001, found that 5.3 percent of faculty members were far left, 42.3 percent were liberal, 34.3 percent were middle of the road, 17.7 percent were conservative, and 0.3 percent were far right. Those figures are only marginally different from the previous survey, in 1998. According to a paper published last fall in The Georgetown Law Journal, politically active professors at top law schools overwhelmingly tend to be Democrats. The study by Northwestern Professor John McGinnis and two co-authors, which covers the faculties of the top 21 law schools listed in the 2002 U.S. News & World Report graduate-school rankings, finds that just under a third of the professors at those institutions contributed at least $200 to a federal political campaign in the past 11 years. Of that politically active group, 81 percent contributed "wholly or predominantly" to Democratic campaigns, while just 15 percent did the same for Republicans. This lack of diversity in political registration would, quite frankly, be irrelevant, were it not for the fact that some of the ideals that encourage intellectual openness command less allegiance in academe than they once did. Today, the notion of truth and objectivity is regarded by many professors as antiquated and an obstacle to social change. In this postmodern view, all ideas are political, the classroom is an appropriate place for advocacy, and students should be molded into "change agents" to promote a political agenda. The University of California recently abandoned the provision on academic freedom that cautioned against using the classroom as a "platform for propaganda." The president of the university argued in a letter to the Academic senate that the regulation was outdated. Faculty imbalance, coupled with the idea that the politically correct point of view has a right to dominate classroom and campus discussions, has had fearful consequences for university life. While threats to the robust exchange of ideas come in many forms, they have typically manifested themselves in the following ways: Disinviting of politically incorrect speakers; Mounting of one-sided panels, teach ins and conferences, sanctions against speakers who fail to follow the politically correct line; Instruction that is politicized; Virtual elimination of broad-based survey courses in favor of trendy, and often politicized courses; Reprisal against or intimidation of students who seek to speak their mind; Political discrimination in college hiring and retention; Speech codes and campus newspaper theft and destruction. I know that previous witnesses have highlighted many of these threats and various incidents are set forth more fully in the report referenced in your packets. Many of our campuses have become, as one observer put it, islands of oppression in a sea of freedom. There is no way this kind of one-sided coercive atmosphere can be conducive to a solid education. Students-the next generation of leaders-are not empowered to think for themselves by being given only one side of the story. The lack of intellectual diversity is depriving an entire generation of the kind of education they deserve and every legislator, every parent, every taxpayer in Pennsylvania should be outraged since our system of government-our democratic republic-relies upon an educated and thoughtful citizenry. Now, for decades, higher education leaders have denied that there is an intellectual diversity problem-and you have heard from this contingent already. The head of the American Association of University Professors, Roger Bowen, called one study on the political affiliations of faculty wrong-headed, arguing that such affiliations are of little consequence in the classroom. Geoff Nunberg at the University of Pennsylvania claimed that "these studies assume an inescapable connection between having a point of view and having a bias ... That's a convenient assumption for people ... particularly if they want to take it as a justification for trumping up the evidence for their own side." The American Council of Trustees and Alumni resolved to study the issue as objectively and systematically as possible. We went to those who really know what goes on in the classroom and are most affected by it-the students. We commissioned the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut to undertake a scientific survey of undergraduates in the top 50 colleges and universities as listed by U.S. News & World Report . These include Ivy League schools like the University of Pennsylvania, national research universities such as Carnegie Mellon and small liberal arts colleges like Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr and Haverford, as well as public institutions such as the University of California and Michigan. We were interested in finding out whether in fact professors introduce politics in the classroom. It goes without saying that faculty members are hired for their expertise and are expected to instruct students on the subject of their expertise. If they are teaching biology, they should be talking about biology. If they are teaching Medieval English literature, we expect them to be lecturing on Chaucer, not Condoleezza Rice. That indeed is a principle that has been adopted in the 1940 AAUP statement on academic freedom and that has been adopted by numerous institutions of higher education, at least on paper. The Temple University faculty Handbook, by way of example, provides that "Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject." Notwithstanding these principles, our survey found that a shocking 49 percent of the students at the top 50 colleges and universities say that their professors frequently injected political comments into their courses, even if they had nothing to do with the subject. The survey next turned to the atmosphere in the college classroom. Did students, many of whom were exposed to these subjects for the first time, feel free to raise concerns and question assumptions? Did they feel free to make up their own minds without feeling pressured to agree with their professors? Once again, the answer was deeply disturbing. 29 percent of the respondents felt that they had to agree with the professor's political views to get a good grade. The survey also explored whether students were being exposed to competing arguments on the central issues of the day. Were book lists balanced and comprehensive? Did students hear multiple perspectives, rather than just one side, of an argument? Again, a disheartening response. 48 percent reported campus panels and lecture series on political issues that seemed "totally one-sided." 46 percent said professors "used the classroom to present their personal political views." And 42 percent faulted reading assignments for presenting only one side of a controversial issue. Meanwhile, 83 percent of those surveyed said student evaluation forms of the faculty did not ask about a professor's social, political or religious bias. These findings are particularly noteworthy when we look at the characteristics of the respondents. First of all, the students voicing concerns are not a small minority. Nearly half of the students surveyed reported abuses. Second, although self-described conservative students complained in higher numbers, a majority of the respondents considered themselves liberals or radicals. Third, only 10 percent of the respondents were majoring in political science or government. The vast majority were studying subjects like biology, engineering, and psychology-fields far removed from politics. Given the results of this scientific survey, one simply cannot claim any longer that faculty are not importing politics in the classroom in a way that affects students' ability to learn. Based on social scientific evidence as well as discussions with professors, administrators, trustees, and higher education experts, it is clear that: (1) Today's college faculties are overwhelmingly one-sided in their political and ideological views, especially in the value-laden fields of the humanities and social sciences; and (2) This lack of intellectual diversity is undermining the education of students as well as the free exchange of ideas central to the mission of the university; and It is urgent that universities effectively address the challenge of intellectual diversity. Fortunately, there is considerable consensus on the principles at stake. As early as 1915, at its founding, the American Association of University Professors issued a "Declaration of Principles" that stressed the importance of impartiality in the classroom and the right of the student to learn as well as the faculty to teach: The teacher ought also to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own. It is not the least service which a college or university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues. In 2005, responding to concerns that have been raised about intellectual diversity, the American Council on Education released a major statement, endorsed by 30 higher education organizations, on "Academic Rights and Responsibilities." "Intellectual pluralism and academic freedom are central principles of American higher education," the statement declares. Among the "central, overarching principles" that are "widely shared within the academic community" are the following: Colleges and universities should welcome intellectual pluralism and the free exchange of ideas. Such a commitment will inevitably encourage debate over complex and difficult issues about which individuals will disagree. Such discussions should be held in an environment characterized by openness, tolerance and civility. The statement underscores the need for an intellectually open campus in which neither students nor faculty suffer reprisal based on their political views: Academic decisions including grades should be based solely on considerations that are intellectually relevant to the subject matter under consideration. Neither students nor faculty should be disadvantaged or evaluated on the basis of their political opinions. During the past two years, ACTA has reviewed a wide range of materials and had extensive discussions with professors, administrators, and trustees around the country. In these discussions, a number of principles governing both the definition of the problem and the search for solutions surfaced repeatedly. Put in one way or another, almost everyone agreed with the following nine points: First , students are better educated if they are exposed to multiple perspectives. Second, no professor should use the classroom to proselytize. Third , professors should give a fair presentation to alternative points of view. Fourth , professors should never intimidate or treat unfairly students with a "dissenting" point of view. Fifth , campus panels and speakers series should give students more than one side of the great issues of the day. Sixth , intolerant students should not be allowed to trash campus publications or impose a "heckler's veto" on invited speakers. Seventh , political and ideological bias in hiring, promotion, and tenure is unacceptable. Eighth , intellectual diversity among the faculty is desirable, but must be achieved only in ways that protect such values as academic freedom, shared governance, and academic standards. Ninth , universities-faculty, administrators, and trustees-should take the initiative in meeting the challenge of intellectual diversity, in part to avoid "solutions" forced on them from the outside. The fact that there is a high degree of consensus on principles argues well for success in meeting the challenge of intellectual diversity. Indeed, higher education has issued a statement underscoring that consensus. But has it done anything to implement it? In the wake of the ACE statement, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni considered vigilance important and surveyed all 30 signatories, heads of major public universities in each state including Pennsylvania, as well as the presidents and chancellors of the top 25 national universities and the top 25 liberal arts colleges. ACTA asked them what they had done to implement their statement. The answer received? -next to nothing. The closest they come to action is more talk. The University of Oregon's President, David Frohnmayer, reported a "work session" with his deans. The president of one of the signatories, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, reported that the association would be issuing a statement that will be "consistent" with the June statement and would discuss the issues further at its annual meeting. Not one, not one , of the institutions covered by the pledge reported a single concrete step beyond meetings and statements . It was all words, and no deeds. University administrators and faculty continue to insist that they, alone, are able to correct the situation in the classroom. But all reasonable people agree with ACTA that simply saying one believes in intellectual diversity and pointing to existing policy is not enough. We would not be here today if all existing practices and policies were sufficient or were being followed. After Harvard president Larry Summers made the impolitic observation that researchers might explore whether biological factors affect the propensity of women to go into math and science, it took only a matter of weeks for Harvard to appoint diversity deans and to appropriate millions of dollars towards women and sciences. Why, then, is it so hard for universities to take similar steps when it comes to intellectual diversity? Our colleges and universities are filled with offices and administrators whose entire job is to foster a diversity of backgrounds-on the grounds that a diversity of backgrounds will provide a diversity of viewpoints essential to a strong liberal education. If diversity of views is the educational holy grail, then what is the academy afraid of? You and I have heard or read the testimony of a number of speakers already in the course of these hearings and, quite frankly, they are simply in denial that there is a problem. They have said, in effect, that they are not going to do anything. Bob O'Neill said yesterday continue to trust us. You have to make it clear that this is not acceptable. It would not be acceptable if they problem were racism; it would not be acceptable if the problem were gender discrimination. It is not acceptable when the problem is political harassment and viewpoint discrimination. We agree with the academy that the responsibility for correcting the current situation should fall first and foremost to colleges and universities themselves and that governing boards have the ultimate obligation address those concerns. We agree that the law is a blunt instrument and state legislatures and the federal Congress are not well-positioned to prescribe specific remedies. However, in the face of years and years and years of denial by many in the academy, legislators must not bury their heads in the sand, must not shrink from holding hearings to educate the public as you so boldly do today, and most importantly, must not shrink from making it crystal clear that universities ensure the free exchange of ideas and classrooms free of political abuse-if they wish for government to stay out of their business. That is why I am calling on you today to act. Faced with growing legislative pressure on this issue, the higher education establishment issued the ACE statement, figured it would pretend to have a quick conversion, endorse intellectual diversity, get those "yahoo" legislators off their backs and go back to business as usual. DO NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THIS CHARADE. It is now incumbent on you to keep the pressure on, step in-in a way that is sensitive to academic freedom and shared governance-and demand action. As legislators, responsible for public funding and oversight of Pennsylvania's institutions of higher learning, we submit it is up to you to ensure that those institutions are fostering an atmosphere in the classroom dedicated to valid educational ends. And, to be sensitive to the concerns raised by the academy, we ask not that you impose curricular or other requirements but that, instead, you give a specific mandate to trustees-public officials who have not only the right, but legal obligation, to ensure that their institutions are dedicated to valid educational ends-to provide the legislature with a public annual report outlining steps taken to ensure a robust exchange of ideas and to implement the ACE statement. A major obstacle to change has been a fear that any effort to encourage intellectual diversity would violate one or another academic norm-a concern raised by many of the speakers who have addressed this committee and elsewhere. ACTA has been sensitive to this concern and has discussed it with professors, administrators, and trustees. Based on these discussions, we have pulled together a set of practical suggestions that provide a starting point for concrete steps universities can take to address the problem. These various approaches are set out in our report, Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action , located at our website, and they include such specific steps as: Adoption by the board of trustees of the Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities issued by the American Council on Education and other higher education organizations on June 23, 2005; conduct of a self-study to assess the current state of intellectual diversity on campus; incorporation of intellectual diversity into institutional statements, grievance procedures, and activities on diversity; encouragement of balanced panels and speaker series; establishment of clear campus policies which ensure that hecklers or threats of violence do not prevent speakers from speaking; inclusion of intellectual diversity concerns in university guidelines on teaching; inclusion of intellectual diversity issues in student course evaluations; development of language in hiring, tenure and promotion guidelines to protect individuals against political viewpoint discrimination; establishment of clear campus policies to ensure student press freedom; establishment of clear campus policies to prohibit political bias in student-funded groups; elimination of any speech codes that restrict, or may have a chilling effect on, free speech rights; and creation of a university ombudsman on intellectual diversity. Notably, Temple President David Adamany himself said yesterday that he saw areas where temple could improve: directing students to grievance policies; taking steps to make sure students know their rights; perhaps modifying grievance procedures. A reporting requirement will underscore the legislature's urgent interest in progress without the threat of any heavy-handed legislative intrusion. Indeed, by calling upon trustees to provide an accounting to the public they serve, the legislature will endorse the academy's insistence on institutional solutions rather than legislative intervention. Any board that fails to guarantee the free exchange of ideas and the student's right to learn on its campus is not doing its job and deserves the criticism of taxpayers, students and parents who are paying for education, not indoctrination. Intellectual diversity is not just something desirable in theory; it must be protected and promoted by actions-and not just words-if the academy is to provide a rich education for its students. In the face of years and years of inaction, I submit it is up to elected officials to make sure the academy puts up, or holds its peace. [1] General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure (1915), 1 AAUP Bull 17 (1915), cited in Freedom and Tenure in the Academy , William W. Van Alstyne, Editor (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 402. -- Related Articles Final Report of the Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher�Education Breaking the Law at Penn�State Pennsylvania’s Academic Freedom�Reforms Recent Articles Conservative Club Derecognized Over�Horowitz Ward Churchill: ‘I Want My Job Back’ The Campus War Against Israel and the�Jews Previous: New York Academia vs. the Academic Bill of Rights Next: Academic McCarthyism in Pennsylvania
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The following is an "op-ed" written by a professor at Penn State to the Penn State listserv. It is a typical academic attack on the Academic Bill of Rights in general and the Pennsylvania hearings on academic freedom in particular. It is empty of intellectual argument or content. Notice how classically its argument conforms to the structures of McCarthyite accusation. It is entirely based on guilt by association. Neither the substance of the hearings or the legislation are addressed. And the virtues of the academy are merely asserted and assumed . All misspellings and grammatical (and logical, and factual) errors are the professor's. - The editors. Sender: Penn State Abington Discussions ABINGTON@LISTS.PSU.EDU From: Karen Halnon kbh4@psu.edu Subject: Steve, George, and the Crusade for Academic Freedom To: ABINGTON@LISTS.PSU.EDU Attached is a recent op ed piece I just wrote on the subject. Political Bias in the Crusade for So-Called Academic Freedom Karen Bettez Halnon, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology Penn State Abington House Resolution (HR) 177, known as the "Academic Freedom Bill," is presently under consideration in the Pennsylvania state legislature. If made into law, the bill would establish a State Committee to oversee the hiring, firing, curriculum content, and political affiliation of faculty members at any Pennsylvania college or university receiving state funding. The Committee would also handle student complaints of professorial bias, in which case, the accused professor would have 48 hours to prepare a defense, given before the Committee in Harrisburg. A number of other states, �e.g., Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Colorado, California, Washington, and Tennessee� have passed, or are seriously considering legislation that will redress the alleged liberal bias that allegedly dominates the nation's colleges and universities, and in the process is allegedly depriving conservative students of "academic freedom." The goal, it appears, is to establish nation-wide legislative oversight of intellectual life, correcting for alleged inadequacies of educational administrators. Complicating claims that academic freedom bills, including HR 177, are non-partisan initiatives intended to eliminate rather than promote political bias is the perspective of the primary initiator of HR 177. David Horowitz is publisher of Fox News friendly FrontPage.com and President of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC). Created in 1989, CSPC and has received over $13 million in grants from private sources through 2003. For example, during recent years 2001 and 2003, CSPC received $1,670,000 from The Bradley Foundation (which funds anti-labor, anti-corporate regulation, and welfare-reform projects); and $1,025,000 from The Scaife Foundation (which is also a major funding source for the powerful right-wing think tank, The Heritage Foundation). (See http://aaupuc.org/horowitz.htmhttp://aaupuc.org/horowitz.htm ). An offshoot of CSPS, also created by Horowitz, is the politically conservative national organization called Students for Academic Freedom. It has 150 campus chapters nation-wide, and coordinates grassroots Academic Freedom Bills. In general, Horowitz is explicitly and vehemently anti-leftist, pro-Bush, and pro-war on Iraq, and portrays anti-war dissenters as anti-American backstabbers who are undermining the cause of freedom, jeopardizing national security, and inviting more terrorism. Further indicative of bias in the crusade for so-called "Academic Freedom" is the composition of the Select Committee charged with examining the academic atmosphere in Pennsylvania public state higher educational institutions. It is composed of a majority of Republicans. An amendment to HR 177 was proposed that would require an equal number of Democrats on the Select committee, but was voted down by the Republican majority. Playing a central role as initiator-activist of academic freedom bills, Horowitz testified before the Pennsylvania State House Select Committee at Temple University on January 10th. This hearing followed others that were held in Harrisburg and at the University of Pittsburgh. Two additional committee hearings will take place in central Pennsylvania in May. It cannot go without saying in conclusion that liberal arts education does tend to cultivate tolerance, respect for difference and diversity, critical thinking, the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and a sense of worldliness and civic responsibility. A liberal arts educated person is one who prizes freedom of thought and expression, and who makes principled arguments in favor of things such as equality and social justice. One might imagine that intellectuals, nation-wide, are speaking out in brief and at length based on their knowledge of growing injustices, and their sense of civic responsibility. As education leaders they may be countering and correcting for what they know is not "fair and balanced" in the media mainstream. If this is so, the solution is not censoring educators with intellectual and social conscience, but initiating broad societal changes that will bring integrity to the meanings of liberty, freedom, and democracy. -- Related Articles As a Republican, I'm on the�Fringe Have Academic Radicals Lost Their�Minds? The Academy Fails�Again Recent Articles Conservative Club Derecognized Over�Horowitz Ward Churchill: ‘I Want My Job Back’ The Campus War Against Israel and the�Jews Previous: Testimony of Anne Neal, President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni
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Blacklist in the�Academy � 08 May 2007 By Foundation for Individual Rights in Edcuation TheFire.org GLENDALE, Ariz., May 7, 2007--The Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) has placed a professor on forced administrative leave and has recommended that he be terminated for e-mailing a Thanksgiving message to his colleagues last November. On the day before Thanksgiving, Professor Walter Kehowski sent out the text of George Washington’s "Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789" and a link to the webpage where he’d found it--on Pat Buchanan’s web log. After several recipients complained of being offended by the e-mail, MCCCD found Kehowski guilty of violating the district’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy and technology usage standards. Kehowski then contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help. "It simply boggles the mind that a professor could find himself facing termination simply for e-mailing the Thanksgiving address of our first president," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "This situation is an embarrassment to MCCCD and would be laughable if a professor’s most basic rights and very livelihood weren’t on the line." On November 22, 2006, tenured mathematics professor Walter Kehowski at Glendale Community College--part of the MCCCD system--sent an e-mail containing Washington’s "Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789" to all MCCCD employees using a district-wide listserv designated for "announcements." Within weeks, five MCCCD employees filed harassment charges against Kehowski, claiming his message was "hostile" and "derogatory" because it contained a link to Buchanan’s website , where the conservative Buchanan had also posted his criticisms of immigration policies. MCCCD’s Initial Assessment found on January 3, 2007 that Kehowski was guilty of violating MCCCD’s EEO policy and policies limiting e-mail usage to messages that "support education, research, scholarly communication, administration, and other MCCCD business." These policies also prohibit "[m]ailings to large numbers of people that contain unwanted solicitations or information." However, MCCCD employees commonly use the "announcements" listserv to send out unsolicited information. Recent e-mails sent over this very listserv include an advertisement for purchasing goats for orphans in Uganda, quotes about Women’s History Month, and a reminder about the health benefits of eating bananas. To FIRE’s knowledge, not one of the senders of these e-mails has been forced to cease teaching or threatened with dismissal. On March 9, MCCCD Chancellor Rufus Glasper placed Kehowski on administrative leave and recommended to the MCCCD Governing Board that he be dismissed. Kehowski has since appealed that decision and will defend himself at a hearing before a panel of three faculty members on June 5. That panel will then make recommendations for Chancellor Glasper to present before the Governing Board. FIRE wrote to Chancellor Glasper on April 25 to protest the actions against Kehowski, stressing that e-mailing a proclamation from George Washington or including a link to Pat Buchanan’s website does not constitute punishable harassment. FIRE reminded Glasper that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that for workplace expression to be considered "harassment," it must be "severe or pervasive enough to create an objectively hostile or abusive work environment." Sending a link to a website, which readers can either visit or simply ignore, does not fit this exacting standard. FIRE further wrote that even if the Thanksgiving e-mail was unsolicited, numerous other employees had sent unsolicited, non-work-related announcements over the same listserv. Chancellor Glasper responded with a letter on April 30, but failed to address any of FIRE’s concerns. "It is dark day for free speech and common sense in Arizona. If the MCCCD believes at all in the importance of the right to free expression, or even just in basic fairness, it will undo its illiberal actions and exonerate Professor Kehowski immediately," Lukianoff said. FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process rights, freedom of expression, and rights of conscience on our campuses. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty at Glendale Community College and elsewhere can be seen by visiting www.thefire.org . You can visit the website for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education here . -- Related Articles Recent Articles Conservative Club Derecognized Over�Horowitz Ward Churchill: ‘I Want My Job Back’ The Campus War Against Israel and the�Jews Previous: Roger Williams Science Students Forced to Watch Environmentalist Propaganda Film to Graduate Next: Chikkkano Studies Gets a New Five-Year Plan
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The Academy’s Zeitgeist—Standards of Scientific Investigation:Exploring the Impact of Scholarly Work Module by: Carol Mullen , Janice Fauske . E-mail the authors User rating ( How does the rating system work ?) Ratings Ratings allow you to judge the quality of modules. If other users have ranked the module then its average rating is displayed below. Ratings are calculated on a scale from one star (Poor) to five stars (Excellent). How to rate a module Hover over the star that corresponds to the rating you wish to assign. Click on the star to add your rating. Your rating should be based on the quality of the content. You must have an account and be logged in to rate content. : Poor Fair OK Good Excellent (0 ratings) (Login required) Summary: The academy’s zeitgeist—standards of scientific investigation—has recently come to the fore in the national arena as the dominant moral and intellectual framework for educational research. In this article, we explore the re-emergence of standards of scientific investigation as a significant shaping force in education and the scholarly culture, particularly in regard to the fields of leadership and administration. With the recent advent of politically based decrees of quality defined exclusively by traditional standards, alternative approaches to exploring human issues, however rigorous they might be in the qualitative realm, tend to be marginalized. Traditional, experimental studies that involve large-scale statistical research design and randomization have been authorized, making single-subject research, naturalistic inquiry, self-study, and other qualitative research practices unlikely candidates for federal funding. For this discussion on “authorized” and “unauthorized” perspectives of research, we explore the impact of regulatory practices within the academy. Note: This MODULE has been peer-reviewed, accepted, and sanctioned by the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) as a scholarly contribution to the knowledge base in educational administration. Defining the Problem The U.S. federal government has recently codified standards for scientific investigation. Leading initiatives feature the National Research Council’s (2002) publication Scientific Research in Education, as well as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 (U.S. Department of Education, 2004). Such seminal works decidedly favor traditional, experimental scientific inquiry in educational research, policy, and practice, radically narrowing the scope of what counts as quality and rigor. This is particularly problematic in the social science disciplines, where the exploration of human behavior dominates research agendas. While difficulty in quantifying human behavior, interaction, and perception within educational settings is historically well documented, the enhancement of our collective theoretical and practical knowledge in the social sciences nonetheless continues to be highly valued (Becher, 1989). We argue, then, that the new governmental publications’ standards for educational research have restricted the kinds of inquiry that are viewed as legitimate in our field. Moreover, these have encouraged regression in our thinking by diminishing the importance of qualitative study and mixed method design. Consequently, educational researchers and pubic educators must dramatically increase our investment in traditional quantitative research and diversify grant-seeking strategies within this arena if we are to remain viable in seeking federal grants. As one serious effect of this trend, alternative voices and distinct methodologies are overlooked, privileging certain knowledge forms over others. A Retrospective of Scientific Inquiry in Education Favoring certain methods, foci, and forms of research is not a new phenomenon. In the past millennium, scholars in many disciplines have successfully perpetuated certitudes for controlling the scientific process and empirical investigation of a range of human circumstances (Becher, 1989; Lakatos, 1999). These scholars, characterized as modernists and structuralists, interpreted the rules of conduct for scientific investigation in an earnest attempt to assure standards and rigor in research (Feuer, Towne, & Shavelson, 2002). Gardner (1999)claims that the development of such standards and disciplines has allowed systematic investigation and discovery of knowledge that has profoundly affected as well as improved the existence of humankind. By describing and classifying, experimenting and replicating, scientific investigation and its patterns of logic and order have produced classification systems that perpetuatea view of the world that, in essence, standardize a single theory or norm (Feuer, et al., 2002). Principles of structuralism manifest, for example, in bureaucratic theory, are so pervasive in modern thought that they often go unquestioned and unacknowledged, in part because they offer comforting promises of order, organization, and certainty (Cherryholmes, 1988). In effect, the doctrine of traditional scientific investigation has been a “sanctuary” of stability to researchers across disciplines, making education one of its principal homes. In the past 30 years, postmodernists in education (e.g., English, 2003; Peters & Lankshear, 1996; St. Pierre, 2002) have challenged the prevailing modernist/structuralist views. Postmodern scholars see this worldview as promulgating a web of asymmetrical power that favors certain groups and ways of knowing. Becher (1989) describes modernist/structuralist scholars as having a tenacious hold on scientific investigation, much the same as elite designers set the standards for current fashion—regardless of whether the garments fit the wearers, the form and style are strictly dictated and widely accepted. Individual expressions and alternative styles are hence rendered unpopular and even objectionable; similarly, alternative voices and innovative research have been deemed “unauthorized” in light of trend-setting governmental publications. Some social scientists argue that the “scientific nature” of research has been debased, resulting largely from the overpowering of social and critical inquiry by conventions of scientific investigation(e.g., Eisner, 1997; Feuer, et al., 2002). The ensuing tension has been exacerbated by the definitions of research appearing in highly influential governmental works. Reactions have ranged from skepticism (Berliner, 2002), to critique (English, 2004), to fear (St. Pierre, 2002). Controversy will likely become even more vehement with the new federal pronouncements of what “counts” as legitimate inquiry in education. Calls for conceptual diversity in educational scholarship (Eisner, 1999;English, 2004) embody the growing unease with empiricism, modernism, and structuralism as paradigms restricting educational scholarship. Influential Governmental Publications First, regarding the NRC report (2002), scholars in science, engineering, and medicine serving on the Committee on Scientific Principles for Education Research created a “lighthouse” model that is expected to guide the work of educational researchers. The committee sought, in its own words, to depict “what constitutes good science” and “‘scientifically based’ education research for the policy communities [committed to] improving education policy and practice” (National Research Council, 2002, Foreword, p. vii). The NRC Committee’s report recommended six “scientific principles” as standards of quality for research: (1) Pose significant questions that can be investigated empirically; (2) Link research to relevant theory; (3) Use methods that permit direct investigation of the question; (4) Provide a coherent and explicit chain of reasoning; (5) Replicate and generalize across studies, and (6) Disclose research to encourage professional scrutiny and critique (pp. 3-5). The language chosen by the NRC does, in fact, encourage the selection of methods appropriate to the research question and does not specifically exclude qualitative research. However, these criteria have been formulated as rules for acceptable scientific investigation without recognizing the constructed and subjective nature of their very making, in addition to the conformist, if not coercive, effects of their enforcement (English, 2004). We believe it is problematic that a group of mostly noneducators had been charged with creating perspectives for the educational research community. English (2004) further argues that the mindset at work in the NRC report is teleology, the doctrine of final causes. Teleologymeans that not only causation but also ultimate purposes (e.g., the common good) drive an individual or culture (New Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language, 1993, Lexicon Publications). Such a stance promotes noncritical or self-affirming thinking about the value systems inherent in scientific standards for quality research. English’s (2004) deconstruction of the NRC’s premises highlights its alliance with logical empiricism: The model itself establishes nonnegotiable rules for scientific inquiry, governing, in a nutshell, issues of significance, coherence, and replication in the development and implementation of studies. Similarly, the language of the NCLB supports only one view of research activity—that it is to be quantitatively based and that it will satisfy the “measurable objectives” outlined in the legislation. Whether in the context of applications from state agencies for school–community partnerships, teacher recruitment, the professional development of early childhood educators, or another related context, the “strategies and activities” proposed are to be “based on measurable objectives” and explainedrelative to “student academic achievement” (see e.g., subpart 4 (B) and (2)). The Act decidedly leans toward traditional, large-scale quantifiable methods, which means that, without vigilance and activism, qualitative, postmodern, and other alternative methods and ways of knowing will henceforth be seen as even less credible and relevant. Appropriate qualitative research methodologies fall outside the expectations for governmentally funded research. With its tendency toward qualitative method that is often criticized as less rigorous, educational research as a whole has been accused of sliding down an already tilted slope away from traditional science inquiry (Erickson & Guttierez, 2002). The debate centerson two issues—favoring quantitative over qualitative research and maintaining rigor regardless of method. Because of the widely held perception of declining standards in research, various groups have beenprompted to re-establish criteria for judging the efficacy of research. Thompson (2002) is among those who have observed a spreading distaste for discussions of methodology at the AERA convention where the “standardless” paradigm of “proof by assertion” appears to have silenced more rigorous forms of data analysis. Though educational research groups have not been systematically included in discussions with the National Research Council, AERA has spoken out on the issue. This leading professional association supports the value of increased quality in educational research, but from a perspective that is inclusive of a variety of methods. The AERA Executive Council’s (2003) Resolution on the Essential Elements of Scientifically Based Research asserts “that there are multiple components of quality research, including well-specified theory, sound problem formulation, reliance on appropriate research designs and methods, and integrity in the conduct of research and the communication of research findings” (p. 1). The resolution further states that “a fundamental premise of scientific inquiry is that research questions should guide the selection of inquiry methods.” The AERA Council categorizes randomized trials as only one sound methodology for conducting research and expresses “dismay” that the U.S. Department of Education has jeopardized other scientific methods and their usefulness by focusing on this “one tool of science” (p. 1). Hence, the standards debate raises several critical questions briefly explored here. First, we ask, how are emergent scholars socialized into the educational research process? Second, we wonder, has the peer review process served emergent scholars and alternative voices in their quest to be heard? Finally, we express our concern that the government-led view of qualitative based research as inadequate for producing valuable scientific data could have a serious impact on the new generation of scholars within the academy and, without doubt, on funded research within public schools. Implications for Emergent Scholars An essential component of effectively conducting quality educational research is dissemination of the findings and implications to appropriate audiences. In the academy, this dissemination regularly involves publishing in scholarly journalsthat are “refereed.” The influence of prevailing notions regarding what constitutes high quality research can both shape and limit the scope of funding, as well as what is ultimately accepted for dissemination to educators. Thus, the longitudinal impact of political–bureaucratic influences on scholarly endeavors should not be underestimated. Following, we discuss certain patterns in publication as related to emergent scholars and critique the peer review process itself. The concern over excluded voices, a constant problem deserving ongoing vigilance within the social sciences, has been exacerbated with the new political–bureaucratic trends in educational research. Postmodernists reject the singular vision of reality perpetuated by metanarratives, including those handed down by influential decision makers. Postmodernists oppose the damage this does to traditionally disenfranchised groups, including the marginalization of their knowledge and histories by “official narratives” (Peters & Lankshear, 1996). Standardized research reports and perspectives on scientific inquiry negate storytelling accounts of local events and daily experiences, rendering “counternarratives” and “counterpractices” deviant. The voices in education that are either excluded altogether or marginalized as “unscientific” are often newcomers, persons of color, women, disabled persons, nonspeakers of English, and international citizens. The proliferation of diversity-focused movements (e.g., The Holmes Scholars), committees (e.g., UCEA’s and especially AERA’s committees and Special Interest Groups on social justice, gender equity, scholars of color, and international relations), and new journals (e.g., Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies) attests to the continuing effort to liberate “unheard” voices within powerful sociopolitical contexts. A strong commitment to diversitywithin and across educational communities inclusive of traditionally underrepresented populations depends on the support of different forms of inquiry. A deep, cultural shift in the publishing culture can enable social justice commitments and intellectual freedom agendas to thrive in higher education (Mullen, 2003). This epistemological view of reality breaks with “the underlying assumptions of modernity” and “rejects the idea of differentiation based on order and hierarchy” (English, 2003, p. 42). Indeed, as Larson and Ovando (2001) urge, by questioning and changing “the received logics of our time,” educators can reach beyond the borders of personal experience (p. 2). Barriers to Scholarly Publication Focusing on the unheard in educational research raises concerns of whether peer review can provide an opportunity for mentoring within a context that perpetuates the status quo. As a related topic, we wonder why writing for publication has generally excluded women and minorities as part of their socialization. Insufficient networking and relative newness to the academy and positions of leadershipare dynamics thatcertainly figure in their experiences (Kochan & Mullen, 1999). What about the role and process of mentoring itself? Engstrom’s (1999) mentoring study of 18 prolific female scholars from 13 academic institutions revealed few stories of mentoring assistance—the women mostly attributed their accomplishments to hard-earned knowledge through trial-and-error experiences. Not surprisingly, there was no mention of editors as mentors. Similarly, but international in scope, Dinham and Scott’s (2001) surveystudyconcerning publishing support for a large sample of doctoral holders, including women, reinforcedthe need for proactivementorship (e.g., scholarly guidance, networking, and publishing interventions). Although one would naturally expect that the graduate degree would result in dissemination of the research, this proved to be the exception. This area of scholarly development constitutes, at best, an afterthought in the supervisory relationship. As many more stories and studies suggest (e.g., Kochan & Mullen, 1999), new scholars often have mostly unsatisfying experiences with publishing guidance. Mentorship within professional contexts could steer new scholars toward publication, but this still appears to be a somewhat novel idea, at least in practice.The days when assistant professors could begin their publishing careers after being hired are largely gone. A collective responsibility is necessary for helping to facilitate the scholarly endeavors of graduate students and junior faculty. Higher education institutions will improve with this goal of enhancing the same for untenured faculty (e.g., Sorcinelli, 1994). Even more novel is the idea that professional associations and journals can perform fundamental and compensatory mentoring and networking functions. Publications by beginning scholars and on critical educational topics have gradually begun to emerge in various refereed journals. But with the new tide of scientific inquiry sweeping the nation, the degree to which new scholars andpractitioners will be encouraged to experiment outside the purview of the recently endorsed scientific perspectives is questionable. Beyond this, editorial boards can purposely include new scholars and practitioners, and from a range of qualitative and quantitative domains, even dedicating entire issues to their voices—a practice that challenges elitism in the academy, or at least normative cultural mores. Sponsorship of specific groups—racially diverse individuals who represent international ideologies and places—represents a promising development in the mainstream literature, as in journal exclusives dedicated to scholars of color (e.g., Kochan & Mullen, 1999). New trends in journal publishing include not only such special issues but also calls for publishers to support traditionally disenfranchised persons in leadership roles. These social justice commitments suggest that a new movement may be afoot in the academy, as reflected in the concerted effort of some editorial teams to diversify the decision-making structure and nourish the mentoring culture of their internal operations (AERA Council of Editors, 2004). For example, the editors of Educational Researcher have announced in their mission statement that their “commitment to inclusion and diversity further extends to those who are new to the field” (Foster & Hood, 2004, p. 3). The coeditors specify that senior scholars will support “rising scholars” with review practices extended to coauthoring opportunities; significantly, they also encourage broader participation in such endeavors. However, providing such assistance to new scholars also perpetuates a form of indoctrination in the academy, ironically sustaining the status quo, if left unidentified in the mentoring process. The status quo in the publishing world is a significant barrier not only to many new scholars but also to those with experience. Fullan’s (1999) insight is that scholars and practitioners must empower themselves to create their own meanings of change as they implement reforms. It will surely become increasingly difficult to transcend the narrow prescriptions Fullan describes with the robust agenda that has been formulated to infuse the academy with a much more restrictive idea of educational research. Transformation of the academy will require a collective realization of the need for change from within the editorial community. It is essential to acknowledge that inequities and privileges, as well as cliques and invisible rules, characterize and constrain our publishing culture, and hence many of our scholarly outlets. The importance of developing vigorousnetworking connections with experienced scholars cannot be overstated. New scholars, although talented, often require mentoring assistance to become published authors, especially where controversial or countercultural topics are involved. Perils of Peer Review The role of senior faculty as reviewers and editors dovetails with a collective responsibility for mentoring new scholars as well as protecting space for alternative voices in academe. Senior scholars often regulate what studies get funded or published through the peer review process at numerous levels. Thus, the role of senior scholars in directing research agendas has tremendous influence at both higher and K–12 educational levels (Becher, 1989). In addition to peer reviewing, these senior scholars sit on landmark decision-making committees, including influential grant-funding and national committees for the review of scientific research. Such processes result in the norms and expectations for scholarship in our fields, including educational leadership and administration. Peer review evolved in the academies of the 17th and 18th century as a “system for certifying knowledge” and has become a primary professional and “social mechanism through which a discipline’s ‘experts’ maintain control over new knowledge entering the field”(Berkenkotter, 1995, p. 245). Most peer reviews coordinated by journal editors in the social sciences are “blind,” giving reviewers freedom to be candid with impunity. But efforts to ensure high quality in the ongoing production of knowledge have simultaneously become a means of social control. Isolated pockets of reviewers can exert such force as to shape research agendas for entire fields of study (Becher, 1989). The peer review process also has a related purpose of guiding emerging scholars in research and publication (Arlington, 1995; Gebhardt, 1995). However, the potential for peer review, both blind and open, to achieve this second purpose is underdeveloped. Talking to almost any author of scholarly publications will elicit anecdotesof peer review gone bad that have failed, particularly in the teaching/mentoring dimension. One such tale involves a session at the 2003 University Council of Educational Administration (UCEA) conference entitled “Discussing the Undiscussables” wherein panel members grappled with the rites of passage that junior faculty must often endure. One “undiscussable” item identified the fear thatfledgling authors have with regard to sharing their manuscripts with senior faculty, particularly those in their home departments who evaluate their progress, including tenure and promotion. While the session focused on how one university contended with such deeply entrenched emotions through proactive mentoring practices, some senior professors in the audience expressed concern that their less established colleagues had not sought out their opinions on scholarly work in progress. Several junior faculty responded that, in their own institutions, open engagement of their work could prove risky, and so they preferred a “blind” peer review process for academic journals. In addition to problems around sharing work in its early stages, many faculty have concerns about the efficacy of the blind review process. Some also question the integrity of the “blindness” standard that is to be taken on good faith (Armstrong, 1996; Burd, 1992; Campbell, 1999). With a powerful story of a conference session on professional publishing, Coates (1995) draws attention to the pretense of objectivity in reviews: [T]he editor of a university press was asked to comment on the value of peer reviews. He replied that he relied heavily on external evaluations, so much so that he often sent a manuscript to four or five reviewers before he got the kind of review that he wanted. The editor made no effort to hide the fact that, if he was very keen on a particular manuscript, he would send it to reviewers whom he expected to be sympathetic, and, if they responded negatively or in a halfhearted manner, he might well seek out additional reviews until he had an appropriate set. … Senior scholars, familiar with the reality of academic publishing, chuckled; junior scholars, still believing in the mystic of the academy, were horrified. (A40) Experienced authors and reviewers were tacitly aware of the duplicitous nature of “blind” review, whilethose less experienced underestimated the potential for manipulation of the publication process. As a consequence, the anonymity, integrity, and protection sought by junior authors may be at best, sporadic, and, at worst, a myth. Further, the partiality of the editors and reviewers toward quantitative or qualitative methods, a particular political view, or certain institutional affiliations influences what is published and, more importantly, what research is valued. In addition to editorial manipulation of the process, difficulties can ensue in assuring blind review when the number of authors writing on a given topic is limited. Reviewers are allegedly selected for their expertise in the field, and as reviewers begin to recognize one another’s or particularauthors’ work, the review process can become biased. Favorable and unfavorable reviews depend partly on the attitude of the reviewer as collegial (receptive) or competitive (combative). Unfortunately, as Coates (1995)reports, stories abound of retaliation from authors of rejected manuscripts who learn the identity of their reviewers. Even when anonymity in blind review is preserved, the politics of social control predispose reviewers toward certain research topics and manuscripts. Research can thus become aligned to a political agenda in response to availability of funding for certain research interests over others (Becher, 1989). Federal grant opportunities, for example, can influence researchers to stray from their primary research focus in order to pursue funding, potentially hindering the development of meaningful and longitudinal research emphases. In addition, reviewers and editors often define the conventions in preferred foci and method in scientific investigation. Authors who embody these predetermined interests are more likely to be published and funded on grant proposals (Becher, 1989; Fauske, 2004). Such a process can easily politicize what on the surface appears to be objective, blind review (Campbell, 1999). Innovative or challenging voices and alternative views can be marginalized, with little accountability for reviewers. Moreover, the selection of blind reviewers is problematic at several levels. Matching the appropriate reviewer to the content of the manuscript is challenging. Unlike some disciplines in the hard sciences, fields such as educational leadership and administration are not a single linguistic community but rather a collection of social science–based perspectives and approaches (Becher, 1989). Selection of critical readers for a study of teacher evaluation, for example, would require its own peculiar set of academic reviewers and perhaps review processes. Just as the academy’s gatekeeping function of the review process can limit the inclusion of new scholars, this potential mismatch between manuscript and reviewer can further restrict the new voices that are represented, with the added effect of inhibiting mentoring opportunities. Even when reviewers are inclined to exercise the second function of reviewing—mentoring emerging scholars—they have few guidelines for engaging in the process (Gebhardt, 1995; Kochan & Mullen, 1999). Authors know thefrustration of receiving reviews that are out of sync or even directly contradictory. One reviewer might describe the work as “an excellent piece of scholarship,” suggesting that it be “published expeditiously,” while another may declare that “he or she would not want to be considered a part of a discourse community in which such obfuscatory language and jargon passed for intellectual dialogue” (Berkenkotter, 1995, p. 246). Such dissension can present sticky dilemmas. Editors and authors must decide which of the reviews is more cogent, andthe former must weigh the merits of publishing a promising work that a senior scholar has scathingly reviewed. Thus, the traditional review process does little to mentor or instruct emerging scholars. Call for Reform Many scholars have called for revision of how peer review is both envisioned and conducted in publishing and review of grant proposals along several interrelated lines: (1) Established scholars may reject “new ideas and can do serious harm to scientific progress” by not encouraging innovation (Armstrong, 1996, p. b3). (2) Reviewers spend less than 6 hours per review on average, partly because the reviews are anonymous and their reputations on not on the line (Armstrong, 1996; Burd, 1994). (3) Reviews may be biased against minorities and women or controversial research topics(Burd, 1994; St. Pierre, 2002). (4) The limited ability to ensure truly blind reviews and competitiveness among those with like research agendas may produce negative assessments or idea-stealing (Chilton, 1999; Coates, 1995). (5) The intentional selection of sympathetic or antagonistic reviewers by journal editors can decidedly guarantee or inhibit publication(Coates, 1995). (6) “Personal relationships between the peer review panelists” and the authors may positively but unfairly influence decisions (Burd, 1994, p. a21). Burd (e.g., 1992, 1994) reports challenges to the peer review process for approval of grant applications at four U.S. federal agencies: National Institutes of Health, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, and National Science Foundation. Accusations of biases and political favoritism in awarding grants from these organizations have been widely publicized. As Campbell (1999) explains, the National Institutes of Health’s response has taken the form of a rubric that reflects openness to different kinds of research. The call for reform of peer review for federal agencies has been accompanied by a parallel call for peer review for scholarly publication. Some senior scholars who have been both the reviewer and the reviewed perpetuate the content and tone of reviews they themselves have received (Gebhardt, 1995). Those whose manuscripts have been harshly assessed may in turn provide acrimonious reviews for others, just as those receiving constructive reviews may replicate that tone. Not surprisingly, authorswho have manuscripts under review value longer, more constructive feedback with a positive, constructive tone (Chilton, 1999). In response, some editors have called for a more collaborative process in which the author, after having his or her work blind reviewed, receives assistance in strengthening the work (Kochan & Mullen, 1999). This type of non-blind interaction more closely resembles the “helpful, nonthreatening way” that our classrooms are intended to operate (Armstrong, 1995, p. 250). And this form of academic coaching promotes scholarly exchange (Coates, 1995). Such collaborative views and solutions can keep intact the quality and social control functions of the peer review process. But they also set higher expectations for the full participation of senior scholars who have little formal training and few incentives for conducting reviews (Chilton, 1999). Academics receive little recognition for scholarly review, rendering this aspect of work hidden and underappreciated. Although necessary and desirable, the expanded collaborative/mentoring process would require more time, seemingly without any extrinsic reward. Postscript The debate on quality in scientific investigation continues. It will likely become even more heated as critical questions of rigor, standards, and interpretations of quality in research remain unanswered. Given the history of debate and the process of peer review as a central means of safeguarding standards of rigor, where do we in educational research circles find ourselves? Position statements that are methodologically inclusive can serve to guide as well as intensify multiple voices in educational research, yet the relative impact of grassroots and organizationally led groups in comparison to such national leaders as the National Research Council is small. Moreover, the power of educators to influence funded, recognized, and ultimately published research may be made inconsequential. Current federal trends adversely affect academic review, rigor, and mentoring while promulgating the exclusion of certain voices and the privileging of others. References AERA Council of Editors: Scheurich, J., Mullen, C. A., et al. (2004). A call for more editors of color in all education journals by some members of the 2003 AERA Council of Editors meeting. Educational Researcher, 33(1), 40. Armstrong, J. (1996, October 25). We need to rethink the editorial role of peer reviewers. The Chronicle of Higher Education,40, A18. Becher, T. (1989). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the cultures of disciplines. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Berliner, D. (2002). Educational research: The hardest science of all. Educational Researcher, 31(8), 18-20. Burd, S. (1992, May 20). Role of NEA, NEH peer-review panels questioned.The Chronicle of Higher Education,40, A21. Burd, S. (1994, August 3). Report to Congress criticizes peer-review process at three federal agencies.The Chronicle of Higher Education,42, A26. Campbell, P. (1999, November 19). Plan to revamp NIH peer review process draws mixed assessment. The Chronicle of Higher Education,45, A40. Cherryholmes, C. (1988). Power and criticism: Poststructuralinvestigations in education. New York: Teachers College Press. Chilton, S. (1999). The good reviewer. Academe, 85(6), 54-55. Coates, K. (1995, June 23). It is time to create an open system of peer review. The Chronicle of Higher Education,41, A40. Dinham, S., & Scott, C. (2001). The experience of disseminating the results of doctoral research. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 25(1), 45-55. Eisner, E. (1997). The promise and perils of alternative forms of data representation. Educational Researcher, 26(6), 4-10. Eisner, E. (1999). Rejoinder: A response to Tom Knapp. Educational Researcher, 28(1), 19-20. English, F. W. (2003). The postmodern challenge to the theory and practice of educational administration. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Publisher. English, F. W. (2004, April). “Scientific research in education”: The institutionalization of “correct science” and the triumph of verification over discovery: Some implications for the study of educational leadership.” Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA. Engstrom, C. M. (1999). Promoting the scholarly writing of female doctoral students in higher education and student affairs program, NASPA Journal, 36(4), 264-277. Erickson, F., & Gutierrez, K. (2002). Culture, rigor, and science in educational research. Educational Researcher, 31(8), 21-24. Feuer, M., Towne, L., & Shavelson, R. (2002). Scientific culture and educational research. Educational Researcher, 31(8),4-14. Foster, M., & Hood, S. (2004). Editorial comments. Educational Researcher, 33(1), 3. Fullan, M. (1999). Change forces: The sequel. London: Falmer Press. Gardner, H. (1999). The disciplined mind: What all students should understand. New York: Simon Schuster. Kochan, F. K., & Mullen, C. A. (1999, Fall). Guest Editors of “Opening new doors: Research by Holmes Scholars.” [Special issue]. The Professional Educator, 22(1). Lakatos, I. (1999). The methodology of scientific research programmes (pp. 46-67). In I. Lakatos, J. Worrall, & G. Currie (Eds.), Mathematics, science, and epistemology. London: Cambridge University Press. Larson, C. L., & Ovando, C. J. (2001). The color of bureaucracy: The politics of equity in multicultural school communities. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. Mullen, C. A. (2003). Shifting the odds in the casino of academic publishing through mentorship. In F. K. Kochan & J. T. Pascarelli (Eds.), Global perspectives on mentoring: Transforming contexts, communities, and cultures (pp. 335-357). (Series: Perspectives in mentoring). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. National Research Council. (2002). Scientific research in education. (R. Shavelson & L. Towne, Eds.). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Peters, M., & Lankshear, C. (1996). Postmodern counternarratives. In H. A. Giroux, C. Lankshear, P. McLaren, & M. Peters. Counternarratives: Cultural studies and critical pedagogies in postmodern spaces (pp. 1-39). New York: Routledge. Sorcinelli, M. D. (1994). Effective approaches to new faculty development. Journal of Counseling & Development, 72,474-479. St. Pierre, E. (2002). “Science” rejects postmodernism. Educational Researcher, 31(8), 25-27. Thompson, B. (2002, November). Featured address: Scientific standards in educational policy research. Keynote address presented at the meeting of the Florida Educational Research Association Conference, Gainsville, FL. U.S. Department of Education. (2004, January 16). No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Washington, DC: Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. [Online]. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107-110.pdf. Content actions Give Feedback: E-mail the module authors | Rate module ( How does the rating system work ?) Rating system Ratings Ratings allow you to judge the quality of modules. If other users have ranked the module then its average rating is displayed below. Ratings are calculated on a scale from one star (Poor) to five stars (Excellent). How to rate a module Hover over the star that corresponds to the rating you wish to assign. Click on the star to add your rating. Your rating should be based on the quality of the content. 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The academy’s zeitgeist—standards of scientific investigation—has recently come to the fore in the national arena as the dominant moral and intellectual framework for educational research. In this article, we explore the re-emergence of standards of scientific investigation as a significant shaping force in education and the ... the academy. [Expand Summary] The academy’s zeitgeist—standards of scientific investigation—has recently come to the fore in the national arena as the dominant moral and intellectual framework for educational research. In this article, we explore the re-emergence of standards of scientific investigation as a significant shaping force in education and the scholarly culture, particularly in regard to the fields of leadership and administration. With the recent advent of politically based decrees of quality defined exclusively by traditional standards, alternative approaches to exploring human issues, however rigorous they might be in the qualitative realm, tend to be marginalized. Traditional, experimental studies that involve large-scale statistical research design and randomization have been authorized, making single-subject research, naturalistic inquiry, self-study, and other qualitative research practices unlikely candidates for federal funding. For this discussion on “authorized” and “unauthorized” perspectives of research, we explore the impact of regulatory practices within the academy. [Collapse Summary] There was a match in fulltext. Subject: Social Sciences Language: English Popularity: 71.56% Revised: 2006-03-09 Revisions: New Best Practices in Online Teaching - During Teaching - Introduction (m14943) Author: Larry Ragan Keywords: Best Practices in Online Teaching Course , blended learning , distance education , instructional design , online learning , online pedagogy , online teaching Summary: This module introduces a series of modules focused on strategies that instructors should consider when teaching in an online environment. This module is part of the Best Practices in Online Teaching Course created by Penn State University World Campus as a guide for faculty who are new to teaching in an online environment. There was a match in fulltext. Subject: Social Sciences, Science and Technology Language: English Popularity: 71.84% Revised: 2007-08-27 Revisions: 5 Certificate of Teaching Mastery Course 3: Assessment Practices (m13345) Author: Fred Mednick There was a match in fulltext. Subject: Social Sciences Language: English Popularity: 61.52% Revised: 2006-02-04 Revisions: New Certificate Overview (m13300) Author: Fred Mednick Keywords: classroom , curriculum , development , innovation , methods , pedagogy , professional , teaching Summary: This module is an introduction and overview to Teachers Without Borders' professional development program, always changing and developing, thanks to our global network of teachers in 87 countries There was a match in fulltext. Subject: Social Sciences Language: English Popularity: 78.49% Revised: 2006-03-03 Revisions: 5 Character Education: An Historical Overview (m20338) Authors: Robert Tatman , Stacey Edmonson , John R. Slate Keywords: character education , educational leadership Summary: In this article, we examined the history behind character education because we believe that character education an integral component of the educational enterprise. Major contributors to the importance of character education in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries were discussed. Then we focused on the highlights of the last five ... education programs. [Expand Summary] In this article, we examined the history behind character education because we believe that character education an integral component of the educational enterprise. Major contributors to the importance of character education in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries were discussed. Then we focused on the highlights of the last five decades of the 20th century. Finally, we examined recent developments in character education, with particular interest to character education programs. [Collapse Summary] There was a match in fulltext. Subject: Social Sciences Language: English Popularity: 43.15% Revised: 2009-03-27 Revisions: 2 Chatterbox and Early Literacy in Trinidad and Tobago (m14714) Author: Barbara Joseph Keywords: chatterbox , chatting , code-switching , Creole English , Early Literacy , emergent literacy , Home Language , Language skills , oral skills , parents , print rich environment , reading , reading to , speaking , teachers , Trinidadian English , young children Summary: *The main purpose of this module is to explore for ways in which teachers can develop Early Literacy in young children by making use of their chat skills; also how they can advice parents about developing literacy practices at home and fostering oracy in their children as a basis for ... Tobago) context. [Expand Summary] *The main purpose of this module is to explore for ways in which teachers can develop Early Literacy in young children by making use of their chat skills; also how they can advice parents about developing literacy practices at home and fostering oracy in their children as a basis for Literacy in a creole speaking (Trinidad and Tobago) context. [Collapse Summary] There was a match in fulltext. Subject: Social Sciences Language: English Popularity: 80.78% Revised: 2008-02-15 Revisions: 22 Corporatizing Public Schools (m14492) Author: National Council of Professors of Educational Administration Keywords: NCPEA , school reform Summary: There can be no question that P-12 education was one of the more volatile issues during recent local, state, and federal elections. Reform initiatives were being touted by virtually all of the candidates whose names appeared on the November ballots. Data supporting success of many of these reform initiatives ... U.S. economy. [Expand Summary] There can be no question that P-12 education was one of the more volatile issues during recent local, state, and federal elections. Reform initiatives were being touted by virtually all of the candidates whose names appeared on the November ballots. Data supporting success of many of these reform initiatives, particularly those in great favor with the political right, simply do not exist (see Hudson, 1998; Kohn, 2000; McNeil, 2000; McNeil & Valenzuela, 2000; Nevi, 2001; Ohanian, 2002; Popham, 2001; Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2002a; Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2002b; Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2004). For those willing to carefully investigate the claims most commonly made in support of the corporate-driven reform efforts endorsed by conservatives and conservative groups, it is obvious that “the emperor has no clothing” (Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2004). For-profit schools are in no significant way out-performing their public P-12 counterparts. Standardized instruments for the assessment of student learning toward specific outcomes are frequently unable to document evidence of “true” learning. Corporations that produce such standardized instruments and supporting preparation materials have proven unable to meet “guaranteed timelines” but, nonetheless, continue to generate profits at rates astronomically greater than the growth in virtually any other sector of the U.S. economy. [Collapse Summary] There was a match in fulltext.
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A Community for University Faculty to Discuss and Share with Their Fellows About This community is for university and college faculty (including community college). While there are other academic communities out there and other communities for adjuncts and graduate TAs, there isn't a general community where faculty can discuss amongst themselves the issues and concerns that are often unique to us. While we may share many interests and concerns with students (especially graduate), as professionals who make our living, support our families and devote our lives to the academy, our perspectives and needs are often quite different. There are times when we just want to ask questions of other faculty who share these perspectives and needs. There should be a space where we can do that. Who can join? While the community currently has open membership, we ask that only those people who are full-time or part-time faculty join. This includes lecturers, pedagogy appointments, visiting professors, tenure-track, tenured, emeritus, and other types of permanent faculty (full and part-time). Adjunct faculty are also welcome but grad students who are instructors at their home institution are considered TAs for our purposes. If the community grows beyond easily moderated size and if students begin joining, we may move eventually to moderated membership where you can put in a request to join. We ask that graduate and undergraduate students respect our need for a place of our own. Community Rules : We ask that you lock posts since sometimes anonymity is preferred (especially for junior faculty) and people may sometimes reveal personal information in the course of discussion. This is, however, the OP's choice. As for content, this is not a snark community. This isn't a place where one can just come to complain all the time about what some student in another community said. But, if it brings up a more general concern, then making a thoughtful post to discuss here could be good. In other words, this is a place to post questions or observations that you would like to share with other faculty but not with a more general "academic" audience. Some related and alternate communities:
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Composition Forum 18, Summer 2008 http://compositionforum.com/issue/18/ Politicizing Critical Pedagogies for the Logic of Late Capitalism J. A. Rice In current critical pedagogy theory, the term globalization frequently signifies the rapid homogenization and structural equivalency of material and intellectual differences into a unified, transnational, capitalist rationality. For many composition scholars, this homogeneity signals an interpellation of not just subjects, but any and all differing rhetorical logics. Judi Kirkpatrick, Darin Payne, and John Zuern, for example, argue that global homogeneity accelerates the dissemination of discursive inequality. Citing Manuel Castells&rsquo; work on so-called networked societies, they claim that [given the] flows of people, materials, and goods across borders, over oceans, and through digital networks, the need is ever-present for shared means of effective communication. . .English is a medium (a mediation, really) that might deliver us into a global village but will undoubtedly also homogenize it and, in the process, perpetuate the inequities long bound to discursive privilege. (Kirkpatrick, Payne, and Zuern) Different nations&rsquo; peoples, goods, and cultures can interact, but only insofar as the "flowing" aspects of information are determined by the hegemonic and political functions of the global language. Though the loss of national and cultural autonomy is almost a prerequisite for globalizing processes, the much more pressing aspect here is the structural dependence on the frictionless exchange between so-called identical contexts. Because information can be exchanged according to the same material and rhetorical presuppositions worldwide, qualitative contextual differences are traded for a paradigm of material and epistemological equivalency. Min-Zhan Lu theorizes this equivalent paradigm further, claiming that it primarily limits communication through its emphasis on practical functionality. For globalizing processes, the "acquisition of language is associated with the image of someone first buying or inheriting a ready-made, self-evident, discrete object-a tool (of communication) or a key (to success)-and then learning to use that object like an expert" (25). Accordingly, rhetorical opportunities are restricted to "identifying what english [sic] one needs (lacks) and what that english [sic] should (and should not) look like" (25). Thus, in its effort to accommodate globalization, rhetoric loses its critical dimension. Communication does not mean understanding linguistic structure and conceptual logic--or even the latent and reflexive processes that constitute the particularity of a language. Rather, it equals a business maxim, a mastery of prescriptive rules that govern the strict exchange between similar informational situations. Rhetoric, therefore, focuses less on how to produce systemic changes in language than it does accommodating and representing the hegemonic, functional logics of the market. Critical theories and pedagogies have responded to this fatalist sentiment by accepting the parameters and consequences of globalization in an effort to exhaust its logic. Rather than deeming globalization entirely evil, these theorists see its focus on structural equivalency bringing renewed opportunities for discursive hybridization and rhetorical invention. In his discussion of possible disciplinary redefinitions, Craig Stroupe claims that this shift in discursive possibilities marks a direction we can take to move from a fixation on the particular works, genres, and media, sacred or otherwise, that we have always associated with English studies to a more flexible emphasis on the characteristic social and intellectual uses to which the discipline puts discourses, whether they be heroic couplets or home pages, monographs or menus. (633) Such redefinitions are useful, especially if they signify the transition from the traditional, Arnoldian epistemologies often associated with English studies to the era of globalization&rsquo;s "information economy." Rather than signifying somewhat static canons, rules, and disciplinary conventions, English studies could suggest the reflexive intersections of language and democratic agency. This newfound reflexive capacity offers decisive critical opportunities for many scholars. Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope suggest that, while globalization homogenizes communicative logics, it also provides more direct forms of democratic agency in a post-Fordist and post-Soviet world. Citing what they see as new social and political opportunities, they claim that diversity and identity are "a more fundamental dynamic than [they have] been within not just our living memories, but even our written, civilisational memory" (403). Because agents are able to intervene and redirect their work methods (knowledge workers), inter- and national politics (blogging), and communication (cell phones, text messages, and so on), globalization can offer more personal freedoms to the individual agent. Unfortunately, and much like those theories mentioned earlier, this insinuates that valued notions of diversity must primarily adapt to globalization&rsquo;s given communicative--and by proxy, pedagogical--opportunities. As a result, chances for different systemic, resistant knowledges are sacrificed for the capacity to transform and direct "local" identities within the confines of global homogenization. Though these critical theories and pedagogies show that globalization complicates current classroom situations far beyond traditional humanist concerns of interpretive emancipation, rhetorical freedom, and civic agency, they likewise demonstrate that acceptance of communicative homogeneity does not make room for systemic differences in either rhetoric or knowledge. If globalization homogenizes discursive possibilities and reduces knowledge to practical utility, can liberatory strategies authorize, either pedagogically or theoretically, spaces for effective social and communicative resistance? To what extent are critical pedagogies&rsquo; methods and goals commensurate with the restrictive logic of globalization? Since knowledge production, market applicability, and differential rhetorics produce a new pedagogical horizon, how might teachers develop strategies that intervene, and perhaps alter, hegemonic communicative processes? In an effort to complicate and extend these questions, this article suggests that we fundamentally rethink not only the goals and methodologies for liberatory teaching, but also its practical potential for bringing about viable pedagogical and communicative alternatives in a globalized world. Specifically, this article rejects critical pedagogy&rsquo;s humanist and liberal-democratic methodologies on the grounds that they work with, not against, the globalizing processes of capitalism. In their place, I argue for a return to the speculative dimension historically associated with critical theory and pedagogy. Corporate Pedagogies The impact global capital has on critical education is most symptomatically identified through the prevalence of corporate interests and organization. As Henry A. Giroux points out, corporatization of the university often restructures academic and intellectual issues according to "matter[s] of management, efficiency, and cost effectiveness" ( Beyond 3). In the 2006-2007 fiscal year, for example, the University of Florida&rsquo;s (UF) upper administration and board of trustees began to regulate budgetary problems by implementing massive cuts to those departments not worthy of significant material investment. Departments across the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences experienced various budgetary restrictions: from loss of travel funding, course offerings, and vacant faculty lines (English, Mathematics, Religion, and Philosophy) to gradual and complete departmental closure (German Languages and Literatures). Furthermore, in the areas of intellectual freedom and professional outcomes, corporatization also means that many universities find themselves adapting "management models of decision making [that] replace faculty governance" while putting academics in the unfortunate situation of appearing "less as disinterested truth seekers than as operatives for multinational interests" (Giroux 4). Such a radical move has already taken place at UF: at the end of the 2008 academic year, the provost will be replaced with a chief financial officer that will "be especially helpful as we become more entrepreneurial and identify new revenue sources" ("Official Statement"). Universities&rsquo; general move to a business model in the face of dwindling of material and fiscal resources, challenges to intellectual freedom, and reductions in professional autonomy certainly attest to the influence of corporatization. But so do education&rsquo;s changing ideologies and purposes of knowledge production. In composition, curricular reforms attempt to ensure the practical applicability of knowledge, specifically when they restructure course offerings and content to market demands, like a "Writing for Nursing" course. Of course, adapting courses to economic opportunities is not a new phenomenon for composition or education at large. As Bruce Horner points out "[w]ork in Composition is recognized for, or defined as, the production of economic capital in the form of the commodified literacy skills to meet 'society&rsquo;s&rsquo; demands (including the 'demands&rsquo; of other academic disciplines)" (16). Because it has primarily trained students to communicate academically and professionally, composition has more-or-less always been viewed as the pragmatic workhorse of the university, much to its chagrin (Crowley, Composition 118-131; 250-265). In the corporate university, however, the curricular focus on the acquisition of general "knowledge skills" is replaced with a strict emphasis on careerist models and mentalities. In its rush to address corporate need, Sidney I. Dobrin argues that composition has sought to supplement--and in some cases, circumvent--courses that can teach critical cultural and intellectual skills--the Freshman Year Composition requirement (FYC)--for those courses that better fit specific careers&rsquo; technological and professional requirements, such as Technical and Professional Writing. As Dobrin indicates in his 2007 MLA presentation, because of "curricular shifts, a recognition of capital potential, and perceived student demand, the numbers of sections of technical writing courses offered in a given year [at the University of Florida] has more than doubled while the number of first-year writing classes have been reduced." As a curricular and social consequence, this tightened connection between knowledge and careerism means that our writing courses will normalize "student subjects into a discourse of corporate culture, while providing students with a formal writing instruction that is tied neither to cultural studies, political, critical thinking, nor other similar methodologies frequently found in FYC curricula." Following this logic, the changing function and rhetorical emphases that market divisions and curricular reforms bring to the university implies that, in the demise of material and administrative support, knowledge should save itself by dismissing any educational value outside of its technical and practical utility. If corporate trends continue, then such economic and paradigmatic restructuring of the university&rsquo;s identity and purpose will not only limit teachers of writing to particular conceptions of what can be reasonably taught, but also what teaching writing as a critical enterprise means and makes possible. Because access to, production of, and critical interventions in knowledge production stem from not only ideas, but also how those ideas are practically understood, it seems as though the intellectual work performed in the classroom has a more visible and greater ideological import than before. However, if critical pedagogy believes "that education is a form of political intervention in the world and is capable of creating possibilities for social transformation" (Giroux, Radical 150), then understanding political strategies along well-worn disciplinary or traditional lines may not be enough to resist emerging corporate logics. That is, by primarily disseminating critical consciousness through ideological critique (Berlin), mediated hermeneutics (Freire), or unmediated political activism (Ebert), critical pedagogy&rsquo;s practices are already somewhat limited from the get go. Take, for example, James Berlin&rsquo;s ideological critique. By employing an epistemological taxonomy closely intertwined with ideological processes, Berlin takes great pains to develop strategies and contexts where "students situate the personal actions they invoke within race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic, and age codes and then locate these codes within larger economic and social narratives" (139). Presumably, students will use these newly discovered critical and ethical confirmations to create a more egalitarian social space. But by working to prioritize and secure the ethical worth of critical ideas or popular political movements, critical rhetorical practices like Berlin&rsquo;s use ideological concepts to determine organizational possibilities and goals. Put another way: the student understands their ethical responsibility to bring about desired social change from valuing ideological concepts--freedom, equality, and so on--instead of consistently and contingently struggling with the changing methods of material reality, communicative processes, and economic hegemony. Because they base themselves in an ethical certitude, these humanist critical pedagogies exceed their own theoretical conditions; in doing so, they are less strategies of social change than assertions of it. Unfortunately, this gap between critical method and ethical certitude confirms composition&rsquo;s professional concurrence with globalizing processes more than it does a resistance against them. Disciplinarily, the gap manifests itself via the economic incommensurability between ethical ideals and social change. Consider, for instance, the market demand for composition textbooks that feature Cultural Studies&rsquo; topics. Most of these textbooks devote sections and chapters to thinking about social injustices--from race to the environment--but do so only insofar as these ideological concepts never actually challenge their own market popularity or the pragmatic worth they have for today&rsquo;s "knowledge economy." That is, these ideas should be taught and college writers should be exposed to different ways of thinking about race, gender, the environment, and so on precisely because knowledge of these social injustices are perfectly acceptable to both democratic and capitalist interests. However, the moment these ideas begin to threaten their market practicality or democratic worth--from, say, a chapter that dismisses the Holocaust as fiction to a section on the trends and marketing processes of the textbook industry--they are no longer worth discussion or material investment because they are precisely too controversial and too radical. Marc Bousquet terms this paradigmatic method of approving of "safe" controversies "market pragmatism" (176). He writes that "by concealing its own market idealism underneath a rhetoric of exclusive purchase on 'reality&rsquo;, [pragmatism] ha[s] had a fair amount of success at discouraging the effort to realize any other ideals than those of the market" (176). Since these social problems&rsquo; "reality"--their theoretical configuration, importance, nuances, etc.--can be so effortlessly circulated and discussed in classrooms, forums, and academic message boards, their ethical, cultural, and ideological worth have been realized. Here, the value of a social movement is purely its marketability and democratic worth--not its subversive or controversial foundations. The success of these Cultural Studies textbooks certainly attests how well their ideologies work with globalization, but this success is nothing compared to the lack of textbooks that take either the political constitution or the ideological circumstances of Cultural Studies themes into consideration. Of course, this is not to say that we should not prioritize and encourage struggles against racism, sexism, and homophobia inside and outside of our classroom. But it is to say that if critical pedagogy is to take its premises seriously--the patriarchal, material, heterosexist, and racial suppression/oppression of marginalized viewpoints and voices, broadly conceived--merely combating the various rhetorical practices and ideologies of said institutions at the expense of their organizational and capitalist logics misses the more fundamental difficulty a corporatization of the university presents. Against Liberal and Ethical Certitude Admittedly, part of critical pedagogies&rsquo; compliance with globalization and corporatization derives from how they theorize this gap between communication, knowledge production, and political change. Critical accounts that ground their methodology in ethical ideals rarely take into account the residual logic of a globalizing dynamic; instead, they try to reconcile political interpretations with particular, ideological beliefs. In Toward a Civil Discourse , for instance, Sharon Crowley argues that liberal democracy is endangered by emerging Christian fundamentalist discourses. Because Christian apocalyptic rhetorics "preserve [their] founding belief from threat at any cost," including confronting liberal democratic principles, we must defend against their values of "privilege and isolation in whatever ways we can find or invent" (14; 194). At first glance, this pedagogical methodology seems commendable, if for no other reason than because it admits the shortcomings of liberal ideology: "liberalism is superior . . . if only because history shows that liberalism allows rectification of its typical exclusions" (17). But it is also important to note that liberalism is no better at questioning its own foundations than the discourses it denounces. It never interrogates itself according to its own ideological charges or how its critique of fundamentalist Christianity&rsquo;s "privilege and isolation" might be connected to the larger realities of democracy or capitalism. Rather, by formulating politics as a call to ethical action--as a protection of liberalism--this strategy works as a derivative of a social and political ideal that transcends its own methodological considerations. This means that instead of providing any sort of critical intervention--pedagogical, epistemological, or ethical--these liberal viewpoints assert their position, thereby running the risk of participating in and extending the very oppressive, privileged processes they endeavor to overcome. As a moment in what Fredric Jameson called late capitalism {1} , and as a somewhat unconventional example, consider the correlations between liberatory arguments like Crowley&rsquo;s and the recent attacks against academic freedom from conservative organizations like David Horowitz&rsquo;s Students for Academic Freedom (SAF). Horowitz&rsquo;s attacks against the "liberal university" are well known and receive frequent media attention. As Chris Green of the Harris News Service in Topeka, Kansas writes: "During his presentation [to the state legislature], Horowitz said he had learned through a Web search of academic programs in Kansas that some had a 'radical feminist&rsquo; or 'socialist&rsquo; bent . . . The disciplines he named included the women's studies programs at the University of Kansas and Kansas State University and a K-State social work program." Following this statement, Horowitz claimed "No society can survive if its schools become one-sided indoctrination centers against it" (Green). For right-leaning interest groups like SAF, mainstream college education is primarily a question of indoctrination. Professors politically and purposefully indoctrinate students into a leftist ideology through two methods: on the one hand, they teach liberal ideas and modes of thinking that, in the conservative&rsquo;s ideological position, aim at undermining society and/or the very values on which it is founded. On the other hand, liberal classrooms also explicitly disparage a conservative viewpoint or ignore such a viewpoint altogether for a liberal consensus; truth is sacrificed for belief, while objectivity is repressed by radical relativity. Thus, following SAF&rsquo;s viewpoints, in a college education students face a gauntlet of false and ideologically charged ideas rather than critical thinking skills and objective facts. However, more important here is how SAF understands and conceptualizes its problem and struggle along the lines of traditional liberatory arguments. Much like Crowley&rsquo;s definition of liberal activism, SAF uses the familiar public identity and methodology of those "fighting for the marginalized" as a political strategy. Following the rhetoric of many progressive movements, supporters of SAF claim that as representatives of an underrepresented value-system, conservatives are excluded, left out, and reduced to "second class" citizens across university culture. That the plight of Students for Academic Freedom follows the same methodological pattern as our professional pedagogical discussions should not come as a surprise. Similar to those pluralist or multicultural critical theories that call for equal treatment in today&rsquo;s educational landscape, SAF articulates their movement&rsquo;s goals in a manner consistent with Cultural Studies&rsquo; rhetoric and ideology. And because they use these ready-made terms, methodological dynamics, and value-systems of progressive thinking to demonstrate how they are denied public freedoms, they can make a reasonable case for inclusion in the multicultural university. But still more striking are the ethical and methodological similarities SAF shares with, say, WPA-l threads struggling for a public post-Katrina New Orleans rhetoric or Crowley&rsquo;s ideological challenge against Christian fundamentalist discourses. If anything, these similarities speak to the limited and politically stagnant possibilities of critical pedagogies that understand ideological concepts as distinct from constitutive organizational struggle. Conceived as invested moments within a larger, fundamentally liberal-democratic rhetorical sphere, these leftist ideologies help engender and perpetuate conservative ideologies like those of SAF. And because both liberal and conservative ideologies fundamentally seek an ethical goal--both, for example, want equal institutional representation--neither attends to the organizational capacity of that institution or their own institutional investment. Horowitz&rsquo;s conservative organization, then, is not a reaction against a liberatory ethic; rather, it represents the fullest and most realized appropriation of its major principles by conservative thought. Thus, much like the gap between critical method and ethical certitude, these liberatory strategies only address the symptomatic and temporary moments of much deeper historical, cultural, and social injustice. If taken as a matter of ideological interpretation, critical pedagogy&rsquo;s methodological gap is a necessary misrecognition of the relationship between politics and knowledge. Liberatory theories often address what Jeffrey M. Ringer cites as the tension between reconciliations of epistemological interpretations and political ideals. Writing about critical pedagogies&rsquo; idea of freedom, he claims: "We need to understand the ways in which individualistic liberty--what I will refer to as the incomplete or freedom from conception of liberty--limits our ability to conceive of liberty as collective. In naming this as a [Freirean] limit situation, my hope is that we can then transcend it" (763). In Ringer&rsquo;s view, the problem facing liberatory pedagogies stems from the unexamined assumption of what freedom is and how the term&rsquo;s ambiguity limits access to its promises: if a critically informed agent would just understand and reorganize this situation better--make it more visible--we could produce the knowledge to create a better political and philosophical situation. Recourse to such pedagogical pragmatism can help in some immediate situations, but ultimately restricts potential for social change to outdated understandings of critical theory as an assault against false consciousness. Take, for example, the classroom activity M. Karen Powers and Catherine Chaput outline in "'Anti-American Studies&rsquo; in the Deep South: Dissenting Rhetorics, the Practice of Democracy, and Academic Freedom in Wartime Universities." At the outset of the Iraq War, activist fliers appeared around their campus describing the English department as liberally biased and waging a "jihad against U.S. conservative interests" (674). They then brought these fliers into a class and used them "as a means of exploring the work done in that classroom, the desires that frame expectations of higher education, and the fear that emerges when critical inquiry moves beyond those well-trodden expectations and into assessments of the national and international spheres" (675). By treating these fliers as a volatile rhetorical practice, Chaput and Powers&rsquo; students could understand what constitutes cultural and ethical differences, and consequently, understand how those instances toil for and against the larger idea of democracy they may hold. But because students understand critical thinking as an agent&rsquo;s move from false consciousness to one of hermeneutic empowerment, they also confuse critical method with ideological goal. Students, therefore, will collapse contingent, critical struggles with a predetermined ethical obligation; that is, a recognition by, and participation in, democratic processes. Theorist Patchen Markell argues that this aim of recognition is the most appealing, if not only, strategy in critical theories because it campaigns for ethical and cultural access (much like the students of SAF); but in doing so, it does not tackle the oppressive conditions under which such social ills came about in the first place. This strategy, he contends, "conceives of injustice as the unequal distribution of a good called 'recognition&rsquo;. . .treating recognition as a thing of which one has more or less, rather than as a social interaction that can go well or poorly in various ways" (18). By questioning the appropriateness and function of educational boundaries, Chaput and Powers&rsquo; activity promotes democratic recognition because it asks students to identify with and participate in democratic processes, i.e., collaboratively considering the rhetorical effects of conservative discourse in the wake of the Iraq War. But, at the same time, simply analyzing rhetorical effects according to their potency misses Markell&rsquo;s larger point. Working for democratic access, cultural identity, or hegemonic recognition is not enough because such strategies do not attend to how such injustices continually occur; that is, they do not attend to the organizational logic of democratic injustices. In this critical version, the ideological concept and ethical goal ( democracy ) is itself subject to methodological consideration. As such, the invested foundations of this critical theory do not escape its methods. In contrast, the second critique--and I cannot stress Markell&rsquo;s commodity description enough here--the ideological concept and ethical goal attempt to correct the "unequal distribution" of democratic recognition. Because this theory primarily interprets and corrects a ready-made democratic horizon, it can only regulate--not change--the orientations of that paradigm. Thus, much like the critical agencies that ensure globalization, this strategy merely offers interpretations, revisions, and reinforcements of its invested foundations. Certainly, students are affected by unfair and sometimes cruel cultural and ethical practices of various communities in the United States, but this does not mean that critical pedagogies should only use the desire for democratic participation and ideological clarity as a methodological orientation and guarantee. Revealing latent or hidden information to the student of composition does little to further better and alternative democratic realities. If pedagogical theories are part of a symbolic and material world where reflexivity underlines communication and education, then symbolic, ideological, and hegemonic decisions cannot be necessarily conscious or willed. That is, strategies that call for resistance or "recognition" by conscious cultural or ethical organization, interpretation, or participation in dominant language practices may not be possible--or at least progressively productive--for students of critical pedagogies. Conversely, strategies that desire to address and work against global and corporate logics might be more effective if they consider the speculative dimensions of their own critical constitutions. Serious Freedom In his article "Toward a Political Economy of Rhetoric (or a Rhetoric of Political Economy)," Victor Villanueva asserts "[w]e cannot discuss the ideological and thereby rhetorical reproduction of beliefs about gender, race, class, age, nation, religion, or any other of the axes of difference--without a grasp of how such axes are embroiled in the economic" (64). Villanueva&rsquo;s point is clear: discussing the issues of critical struggles without thinking about the larger, systemic conditions that help perpetuate these undesired beliefs fundamentally misses something. In similar fashion, critical and liberatory pedagogies ought to politicize not just the social, cultural, and ethical aspects of democratic goals, but also the very methodologies and theories used to attain those ideals. This politicization would entail jettisoning the privilege ethical and ideological orientations get in critical pedagogies in favor of the speculative dimensions of critical theory. The term speculative plays on what I understand as the theoretical coordinates of Slavoj }i~ek&rsquo;s critique against "liberal-democratic fundamentalism." This paradigm, he maintains, articulates convincing strategies and politics for social change, but still limits critical thinking to a rational, revisionary basis that risks very little. This limitation is especially apparent when considering how these theories&rsquo; methodologies help construct a hegemony of minimal change. He writes the moment we seriously question the existing liberal consensus, we are accused of abandoning scientific objectivity for outdated ideological positions. This is the point on which one cannot and should not concede: today, actual freedom of thought means freedom to question the prevailing liberal-democratic 'post-ideological&rsquo; consensus--or it means nothing. ( Revolution 168) As an inversion of Karl Marx&rsquo;s famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, }i~ek argues that theory has no political, cultural, or ideological allegiance outside of its own invested, self-reflexive capacities. Yet, this also means that theory&rsquo;s capacities continually change through invested speculation. Determining ethical priorities first and devising strategies to meet them is neither critical nor theoretical; in fact, it is a practical exercise entirely commensurate with globalizing practices. Theory should instead continually return to itself and rethink its own conditions and limits, including how it might work with globalizing hegemonies. Critical theory, then, will not revise the world (including itself), as much as it will continually reinvent its methodological conditions and coordinates each and every time it theorizes. This collapsed, continued reinvention of theory&rsquo;s processes and goals is precisely the speculative aspect of critical theory. For critical pedagogies, this speculative dimension implies that if we are to remain critical without commodifying this term as a methodological limitation, nothing--methodologically, pedagogically, politically, culturally, and ethically--should be off limits to critical investigation, including our own presuppositions about those very critical theories. Politically and pedagogically speaking, this means that rather than focusing on matters of inclusion or access, theory will critically redirect the logical or organizational capacities of those ethical and cultural hierarchies multicultural, corporate logics privilege. For instance, the relationships between knowledge production, communication, and political change will not be the only the subjects of critical analysis and theoretical speculation. As a critical instance in theoretical speculation, the invested limitations of theory itself will be continually reinvented as they are strategized. In this view, theory does not inform praxis--it is praxis. But this is just another way of saying that without the capacity to question what makes anything possible, relevant, or valuable, critical pedagogies cease being effective. Practically speaking, a speculative theoretical intervention in critical pedagogies&rsquo; own ethical and cultural analyses would mean a few things. First and foremost, rather than advocating inclusion in the knowledges and democratic politics approved by hegemonic strategies, critical teaching philosophies would interrogate how those very knowledges and politics prescriptively limit their social impact. As a second step, they would reinvent the methods and ethical goals by theorizing new ideological conditions. Some recent composition scholarship has already attempted to realize this practice. Specifically, Jacqueline Rhodes&rsquo;s Radical Feminism, Writing, and Critical Agency: From Manifesto to Modem endorses a contingent, political writing pedagogy over the ethical imperative of a global/corporate educational framework. In this book, Rhodes traces the writing practices of the radical feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, focusing primarily on collaborative writing, especially those instances that produced new ways of communicating. The women of these radical factions wrote in various textual modalities that rhetorically produced networked identities, or at least identities that participated in a more postmodern-esque fluidity. "Radical women&rsquo;s textuality," she writes, "emphasizes the idea of a networked community composed of writerly texts. In their negotiation of structure and fluidity, radical feminist texts emphasize temporary positionality and the use of available technologies" (66). And it is through these lessons of history Rhodes creates a critical, textual pedagogy: "Each textuality demands a bobbing-and-weaving, in-your-face attention to politics and textual form; each makes use of collaborative and often anonymous collective work; each, by virtue of the form of the text itself, is decidedly temporary" (67). For contemporary pedagogical practices, the most important aspect here is that radical women&rsquo;s political logics, identities, and temporary writings collapsed both method and ethic into one critical enterprise. By constantly undermining any popular rhetorical or ethical imperative, these women&rsquo;s speculative modalities of writing structurally changed their reality because their ideas of democracy were defined in conjunction with their critical method. Quite simply, they did not strategize according to the democratic ideals already in place. It is this last point--defying the gap between methodology and idea--that I would like to take a step further and claim a new direction for critical pedagogies. Theories and strategies should not outline identities and methodologies as an ethical ideal, but rather maintain the impossible tension between method and idea. Critical theories, that is, should actually risk everything in the act of theorizing and writing. In one of my advanced argumentative writing courses, for example, we looked at various political texts--from the SAF and Vast Right Wing Conspiracy websites to PETA pamphlets and the Democratic Party&rsquo;s mission statements--and considered not only what they were doing rhetorically, but also how they theorized their social goals. As a second step, students then interpreted those polemic positions that are considered precisely too ideological for corporate marketability and liberal-democratic sensibility: Farrakhan&rsquo;s Black Nationalism, Leninism, Anti-Semitic literature, and so on. Much like Chaput and Powers&rsquo; exercise, and precisely because these ideologies are not taken seriously by corporate interests (no one really wants communism), students were able to better grasp how liberal-democratic methodologies guarantee a particular ethical goal, i.e. democratic recognition. However, as a final step, students were required to collapse and reinvent these political clusters&rsquo; theoretical methods and ethical objectives. Using the speculative movements of critical theory, my hope was that students would realize that every moment of strategy fundamentally alters the conditions of both method and ethical goal. In one particular assignment, students were grouped and required to post arguments about a social movement, political occurrence, or local problem to a class wiki. One student group used the wiki to argue against Barbara Leon&rsquo;s Feminist Revolution article "Separate to Integrate." These students specifically rejected Leon&rsquo;s claim that a separatist feminism is not an end in itself, but a necessary strategy for a feminist integration in society at large (155). Instead, they decided that a separatist feminism, while probably not really feasible, was the only option to move feminist thinking beyond an appropriated identity--or as they put it, "beyond subjective opinions." But perhaps the most politically telling moment in this assignment occurred on the wiki discussion board. One student changed what s/he saw as "harsh language" in an attempt to rectify the group&rsquo;s post with a more inclusive rhetorical strategy. The group responded by changing the language back and pointing out the larger, systemic politic behind their post: You don&rsquo;t understand what we&rsquo;re saying. thsi [sic] is not an issue of conforming to other peoples&rsquo; opinions. Leon&rsquo;s argument doesn&rsquo;t make sense because it tries to get along with the society that excludes women because they are women. This post tries to promote opinions that change the way society thinks about not just women but the relationship between people too. This is much bigger than just hurting peoples&rsquo; feelings. Instead of advocating inclusion in global/corporately approved democratic coordinates, these students continued to reinvent political and strategic conditions within the class wiki. By citing the collapse between method and ethic--"promot[ing] opinions that change the way society thinks about . . . the relationship between people"--these students engendered a new, speculative theoretical and rhetorical ground. This is an interesting yet subtle strategy that should not be confused with those methods that advocate an empowered agency through reclamation of hegemonic practices. These students did not resist hegemonic language and identity by "sticking to their polemical guns"; nor did they emphatically reassert a ready-made, democratically recognized, polemical position. Gaining democratic recognition for feminism was never their strategy. Instead, the students&rsquo; theoretical movement demonstrates what }i~ek calls "politics proper." He writes that "politics proper" is a movement in which "a particular demand is not simply part of the negotiation of interests but aims at something more, and starts to function as the metaphoric condensation of the global restructuring of the entire social space" ( Ticklish 208). The students&rsquo; response to the alteration of their post uses this feminist ideal not as a cultural strategy or guarantee--it is not the means to an end. Instead, they use feminism to draw attention to how the hegemonic organization ("relationship between people") precedes and limits opportunities to change the injustices that the hegemonic system and conceptions of feminism help perpetuate. Because they were unwilling to change the language they used to argue against Leon&rsquo;s article, because they made language (and writing) the very theoretical issue, their project suggests that the relationship between communicative organization and its literal inscription is politics within the parameters of a globalized, corporate university. As a theoretical speculation, as a material inscription, this student strategy reinvents both critical method and idea as continued, dialectical struggles between epistemological possibilities and material categorizations. Yet perhaps the most important point of this strategy is that pedagogy is a contingent, theoretical condition--and not a prescriptive guarantee. Rather than working to build a safe house of knowledge or incorporate an alternative Other into the contemporary cultural, ethical and pedagogical scene, this more radical, politicized critical pedagogy constantly aims at writing change , and does so by constantly risking itself and its goals. Of course, such a strategy would also suggest that critical pedagogues disregard the immediate, pragmatic concerns of contemporary education and social injustice for a theoretical strategy that can guarantee nothing. And that is precisely what political means here: not cultural accommodation, but continued, systemic, reinventions . It is in this sense that critical pedagogues should understand what is possible within the confines of both global capital and corporate university: "critical pedagogy" does not denote acceptable heterogeneities, differential knowledges, or hybridities, but rather this very disciplinary and political (re)inscription. Notes For more on this term, see Fredric Jameson&rsquo;s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, especially pgs. 1-54. ( Return to text. ) Works Cited Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2003. Bousquet, Marc. How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation. New York: New York University Press, 2008. Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. ------. Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. Dobrin, Sidney I. "Technical Writing and First-Year Writing in the Corporate University." Modern Language Association Conference. Chicago, IL, 30 December 2007. Giroux, Henry A. "Critical Education or Training: Beyond the Commodification of Higher Education." Beyond the Corporate University: Culture and Pedagogy in the New Millennium. Eds. Henry A. Giroux and Kostas Myrsiades. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. 1-12. ------. "Globalizing Dissent and Radicalizing Democracy: Politics, Pedagogy, and the Responsibility of Critical Intellectuals." Radical Relevance: Toward a Scholarship of the Whole Left. Eds. Laura Gray-Rosendale and Steven Rosendale. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 141-59. Green, Chris. "Committee considers 'academic bill of rights&rsquo;." Harris News Service. 15 March 2006. 21 March 2006 < http://www.harrisnewsservice.com/archives.html >. Horner, Bruce. Terms of Work for Composition: A Materialist Critique. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Kalantzis, Mary, and Bill Cope. "On Globalization and Diversity." Computers and Composition 23 (2006): 402-411. Kirkpatrick, Judi, Darin Payne, and John Zuern. "Writing in Globalization: Computers and Writing 2004." Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 9.2 (Spring 2005). 21 Nov. 2007 < http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/9.2/binder2.html?coverweb/bridge/0001.html >. Leon, Barbara. "Separate to Integrate." Feminist Revolution. New York: Random House, 1975. 152-57. Lu, Min-Zhan. "An Essay on the Work of Composition: Composing English against the Order of Fast Capitalism." College Composition and Communication 56:1 (2004): 16-50. Markell, Patchen. Bound by Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Marx, Karl. "Theses on Feuerbach." Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy. Ed. Lewis S. Feuer. New York: Anchor Books, 1959. 243-246. "Official Statement." Gainesville Sun 14, March 2008: A4. Powers, M. Karen, and Catherine Chaput. "Anti-American Studies&rsquo; in the Deep South: Dissenting Rhetorics, the Practice of Democracy, and Academic Freedom in Wartime Universities." College Composition and Communication 58.4 (2007): 648-81. Rhodes, Jacqueline. Radical Feminism, Writing, and Critical Agency: From Manifesto to Modem. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Ringer, Jeffrey M. "Liberating 'Liberatory&rsquo; Education, or What Do We Mean by 'Liberty&rsquo; Anyway?" JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition 25.4 (2005): 761-82. Stroupe, Craig. "The Lost Island of English Studies: Globalization, Market Logic, and the Rhetorical Work of Department Web Sites." College English 67.6 (2005): 610-35. Villaneuva, Victor. "Toward a Political Economy of Rhetoric (or a Rhetoric of Political Economy)." Radical Relevance: Toward a Scholarship of the Whole Left. Eds. Laura Gray-Rosendale and Steven Rosendale. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 57-65. }i~ek, Slavoj, ed. Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917. New York: Verso, 2002. ------. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. New York: Verso, 1999. Return to Composition Forum 18 table of contents. Printed from Composition Forum 18: http://compositionforum.com/issue/18/ Composition Forum is published semiannually by the Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition with the support and generous financial assistance of Penn State University.
CURRENT URL http://compositionforum.com/issue/current/black-female-intellectuals.php
Composition Forum 20, Summer 2009 http://compositionforum.com/issue/20/ Black Female Intellectuals in the Academy: Inventing the Rhetoric and Composition Special Topics Course Staci Maree Perryman-Clark Abstract: Using the African American women&rsquo;s intellectual tradition as a framework, this essay investigates a special topics graduate-level course design. It also positions the special topics course as an enabling sight for revising how graduate courses are commonly designed in rhetoric and composition. Through the study of Black women&rsquo;s intellectual tradition, the author emphasizes a focus on the intellectual processes, including an understanding of the pedagogies and research methodologies that Black women explore. The implications surrounding graduate course designs that focus on ethnic minorities and women is a topic worth exploring in published rhetoric and composition scholarship. Despite the hype surrounding so-called multiculturalism and cultural studies courses that seek to include Other rhetorical traditions (Villanueva "Rhetoric"; Reid), there still remains a limited representation of course designs that explore alternative cultural and rhetorical traditions published in disciplinary scholarship. For example, in their most recent (2007) consortium of rhetoric and composition doctoral programs, Brown et al. make no mention of cultural studies courses, cultural studies specialized concentrations, or cultural studies-focused dissertations; nor do they note any required or specialized courses that explore alternative cultural traditions at all, although they do indicate that the majority of the doctoral programs surveyed included ongoing training and orientation sessions and required coursework in composition theory and practice ("Portrait" 337). While training in composition theory and pedagogical practice may be required in most doctoral rhetoric and composition curricula, these curricula need not require an exploration or focus on ethnic minorities and/or women. The limited focus on alternative rhetorical traditions and/or cultural groups in required graduate course training does not mean that scholars have not called for such exploration. Krista Ratcliffe states that graduate pedagogy and TA training should demonstrate not only the presence of rhetorical theory along with cultural studies scholarship but also an awareness of rhetorical theory along with cultural studies pedagogy. This scholarly presence and pedagogical awareness of rhetorical theory, along with cultural studies, must be made overt in graduate classes, TA training and in the undergraduate classroom if students are to see the rhetorical dimensions of their cultural studies critiques; otherwise, students may leave graduate seminars or writing classrooms thinking that they&rsquo;ve learned to write specific kinds of papers rather than understanding that they&rsquo;ve learned rhetorical conventions that they may adapt in other university courses and beyond. (par. 15) The fact that Ratcliffe calls for cultural studies courses and programs to be "made overt in graduate courses" also speaks to the limited representation of these calls in our disciplinary scholarship. If one considers the most recent rhetoric and composition catalog of the profession and Ratcliffe&rsquo;s call for cultural studies exploration in required graduate training, one might infer that cultural studies courses that explore alternative rhetorical traditions, even if taught, remain both under taught and underemphasized in our field&rsquo;s published scholarship. As a result of these often neglected discussions in disciplinary scholarship, I began thinking more critically about the graduate courses I may want to teach as a future faculty member, teacher, and scholar. Although it is perhaps unrealistic to demand an exhaustive exploration of alternative cultural traditions in required graduate rhetoric and composition courses, it might be more feasible to create particular spaces by using the special topics course. Thus began my quest to engage more critically in specific types of graduate courses, including special topics courses, that faculty members often have limited opportunities to teach. I am also interested in thinking about special topics courses as an enabling site for course design because I believe that these courses may provide graduate students with increased opportunities--and more time--to explore alternative cultural traditions and other specialized sets of knowledge less traditionally offered in other courses. Although such cultural traditions may be explored in other required courses, I find special topics courses to be unique sites for centering on these traditions and practices. To provide graduate students with knowledge and exploration in varying subfields, I offer a special topics graduate course design model that investigates the cultural traditions and intellectual practices of African-American female scholars. More specifically, I look at how African-American women&rsquo;s intellectual discourse is situated in the academy, using Black women&rsquo;s scholarship in rhetoric and composition (and related fields) as a lens. I am most interested in African-American women&rsquo;s presence in the academy because while some attention has been paid to African-American women&rsquo;s intellectual practices and processes outside the academy (Logan; Royster; Troutman; Lathan), I find the experiences associated with production of contemporary African-American women&rsquo;s academic scholarship also worthy of exploration. In her own study on the intellectual work and processes performed by Black women academics, Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner argues that "the lives of faculty women of color are often invisible, hidden within studies that look at the experiences of women faculty and within studies that examine the lives of faculty of color" (76). She further notes: "In a similar vein, . . . scholars writing about Black intellectual life focus solely on the lives and works of Black men, ignoring and devaluing the scholarship of Black women intellectuals" (80). Thus, I call for a more critical look at Black women&rsquo;s intellectual processes and experiences within the academy. My decision to focus on the Black women intellectual tradition is also because while many African American special topics courses investigate the study of African American literacy, rhetorical, and linguistic practices that may or may not include a particular focus on women, most courses do not position African American females as the primary agents for initiating these intellectual practices. Put simply, while African American female intellectuals or research participants may be included or studied, the role of the African American female as the primary focus of inquiry is less often considered, or if considered, is not taken up exhaustively over the duration of an entire semester. Even though there are trends in literary theory to design courses that focus exclusively on African American female literary authors, I see this trend less often in rhetoric and composition courses that focuses exclusively on African American female rhetors and scholars. Using the Black intellectual tradition as a framework, this essay investigates my attempt to invent a special topics graduate-level course design, a course I hope to have the opportunity to teach someday. It also positions the special topics course as an enabling site to provide different ways of seeing, different sets of relationships, and different ways of revising how graduate courses are commonly designed in rhetoric and composition. The special topics course, then, becomes an inventive site for thinking about intellectual discourse, alternative communicative practices, and alternative cultural traditions. Through the study of the Black Women&rsquo;s Intellectual tradition, I emphasize a focus on the intellectual processes, including an understanding of the pedagogies and research methodologies that Black women explore and publish with, not the actual publications as products themselves, because I am more interested in the challenges and decisions that confront Black women&rsquo;s scholarship and not on the quality of the products that are published. Such a course seeks to investigate how Black women&rsquo;s intellectual work can be made possible, thus paving the way for future graduate-student scholars. I acknowledge that the Black woman&rsquo;s intellectual presence need not exist only in the academy. As Patricia Hill Collins reminds us, "One is neither born an intellectual nor does one become one by earning a degree. Rather, doing intellectual work of the sort envisioned by Black feminism requires a process of self-conscious struggle on behalf of African American women, regardless of the social location where that work occurs" (13). Nonetheless, I find a look at the Black woman&rsquo;s role in the academy to be quite valuable. Collins also recognizes that Black women scholars [are] in a position to see the exclusion of Black women from scholarly discourse, and the thematic content of their work often reflected their interest in examining a Black woman&rsquo;s standpoint. However, their tenuous status in academic institutions led them to adhere to Eurocentric masculinist epistemologies so that their work would be accepted as scholarly. As a result, while they produced Black feminist thought, those Black women most likely to gain academic credentials were often least likely to produce Black feminist thought that used an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. ("Social" 238) Collins&rsquo;s discussion of Black feminist intellectual practices provides insight into the challenges associated with academic scholarship. On one hand, Black women are expected to produce Eurocentric scholarship typically associated with the academy and academic discourse. On the other hand, when Black women produce scholarship reflecting feminist discourse, they are often pressured to ignore the intersections that exist between race and gender. Those who produce feminist scholarship are often more likely to gain academic credentials than those who produce an Africanized version of feminist scholarship. Joyce Middleton further illustrates the tensions associated with Black women writers and scholars who grapple between assimilation and retaining the oral and rhetorical practices of their home communities. In reference to Zora Neal Hurston&rsquo;s writing, she states: In an assimilationist era, Hurston was especially concerned with the danger of losing the black oral memory--with the way memory is constructed and esteemed in black culture. Other black intellectuals of the time--what she called the "black literati"--were often more concerned with assimilating Western values for written language use and representing the race. Many contemporary writers and scholars, black women and women of color, have revisited these issues, experimenting with oral and written values. (29) Because of these challenges associated with Black women&rsquo;s intellectual decisions about how to write and/or what to publish both inside and outside the academy, I aim to design a special topics course that looks at the ways in which African American women have confronted these conflicts and made significant contributions to academic scholarship, contributions that are often not rewarded in the disciplines where they publish or by the academy at large. A Conceptual Framework for Designing the Special Topics Course In envisioning my new course, I began to lay out the elements I needed to design the course, starting with the course description and required readings I wanted to assign. In order to compose the description and select the required texts, I decided that I needed a conceptual theoretic framework for demonstrating my commitment to studying the African American women intellectual tradition and a list of required readings that reflected this commitment. The theory behind my special topics course draws from Jacqueline Jones Royster&rsquo;s concept of Afrafeminism in Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women , where she indicates that "[t]he task is to make overt connections . . . between the everyday understanding of African American women" (274). She goes on to add that "[a]n Afrafeminist approach, as an enabling site of operation for both thought and action, suggests in rhetorical studies a paradigm shift.The shift begins with a reconsideration of who . . . the agents of the research and scholarship include" (274). My rationale for drawing on Afrafeminism is to urge scholars in rhetoric and composition to begin thinking of yet another paradigm shift, one that posits African American female intellectuals as subjects and agents of research and scholarship, agents who have traditionally been excluded from areas of inquiry, in addition to being traditionally excluded from the academy entirely. I believe that one way to position African American women with greater agency is to begin with a graduate rhetoric and composition course. My course design aims to invent new ways of positioning the African American female intellectual as the primary agent, by first urging students to make explicit connections between the everyday experiences of African American women and the women scholarly intellectuals studied in class, and then, by reconsidering what agents in scholarship should include. One main goal for the course, then, will be to identify and consider African American women epistemologies as intellectual work. Such a consideration poses challenges for both the instructor and students to identify these epistemologies in ways that do not oversimplify or stereotype African American women&rsquo;s intellectual and academic work. The key will be how student intellectuals identify collective identities and community practices associated with the African American women intellectual tradition while considering the many variations that exist in Black women&rsquo;s intellectual practices, including her pedagogy, research, scholastic, and publishing decisions. Appendix 1 identifies the proposed course description used to craft my special topics course. Specifically, its questions ask the students and instructor to make connections between the experiences of African American women and African American scholastic intellectuals. By using an Afrafeminist lens, students will investigate the literate, rhetorical, and linguistic practices employed and studied by African American women, while thinking more critically about how these processes and practices are situated in scholarship and academic discourse. This way, students can also explore and think more critically about non-dominant linguistic and rhetorical traditions. In my own required PhD coursework, there was never a shortage of learning and studying Western dominant linguistic and rhetorical traditions, traditions to which students should be exposed during required core coursework. This special topics course, however, provides another opportunity to explore traditions not exhaustively covered in other required courses. Perhaps it is not enough to read one book or to have an African American rhetoric or African American women week or unit in a fifteen week seminar; such an exploration, I believe, needs its own distinct seminar space. When determining which texts to include in my bibliography, I wanted to select those texts that may speak to the ways in which rhetoric, linguistics, and literacy are understood and positioned in African American scholarship by African American women. As an instructor and African American woman, I understand these areas to be situated in particular pedagogical and methodological contexts, and thus position these themes in relation to pedagogical scholarship and empirical research (although African American women&rsquo;s intellectual processes need not be restricted to these categories of scholarship). Because this course focuses on scholarship by African American women, each required text needed to reflect this focus. The challenge associated with deciding which texts to include was to select texts that employed different research methods and methodologies. Because one purpose for the course is to urge students to make connections between Black women&rsquo;s everyday practices and intellectual processes, some texts needed to reflect research on the literate and rhetorical practices employed by Black women (Logan, Coming ; Royster, Traces ; Troutman; Dyson; Pough; Smitherman. "Testifyin"; Spellers; hooks; Richardson, "Workin"). But not all Black women necessarily conduct research or produce scholarship on Black women, even though they too are part of the intellectual tradition, which is why I chose to focus the course on intellectual processes employed by Black women and not the products or topics on which they publish (Smitherman, Word ; Delpit; Richardson, African ; Moss; Ladson-Billings). Creating a balance between Black women&rsquo;s scholarship on Black women, and Black women&rsquo;s scholarship on additional communicative (primarily racial) practices also helps students confront the processes, decisions, and challenges Black women intellectuals face when publishing, challenges that exist across disciplinary contents. The common threads that informed what to include in the course bibliography also include providing a representation of different ways of doing, seeing, and understanding scholastic discourse. I also wanted to provide a gloss of texts reflecting different research methodologies provided by and made available to graduate students. The course bibliography is noteworthy because the works on classroom-research (Richardson, African American Literacies ), ethnography (Moss, A Community Text ), autobiography (Williams, The Alchemy ), historiography (Royster, Traces of a Stream ; Logan We Are Coming ) critical discourse and/or rhetorical analysis (Smitherman, "Testifying, Sermonizing"; Richardson African American Literacies ; Royster Traces of a Stream ; Logan We Are Coming ), and discourse analysis (Troutman, "African American Women", Richardson, "She Was Workin") all employ methods and methodologies used by African American female intellectuals. As part of the course, I encourage students to consider why Black women adapt and publish using these methods. Are there institutional and/or disciplinary pressures to produce certain types of methodologies over others? Besides the racial/gender conflicts that Black women face when publishing, what other methodological challenges exist when they produce such scholarship? I focus on the challenges associated with Black women&rsquo;s scholarship, as much has been said about its relationship to Black female subjectivity. Royster&rsquo;s Traces of a Stream offers a good example of how African American women must balance the research they do in their home communities with the challenges associated with producing this type of scholarship. She states that "with special knowledge-making potential, African American women intellectuals are challenged to build bridges between afrafeminist insights within the group and the visions and experiences of others" (277). Other bibliographic references speak to the challenges associated with producing scholarship based on research conducted on home communities (Logan; Moss; Williams). I find looking closely at the challenges associated with producing academic scholarship to be valuable for graduate students who will one day go on the market and need to make decisions about the type of scholarship they will need to produce. While it may be counterproductive to provide justification for each bibliographic choice, I do want to highlight a couple that speak to the ways in which methodology, composition pedagogy, and rhetorical theory are deliberately positioned in ways that permit students to identify and examine the many relationships they have with each other. For example, in A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in African-American Churches , Beverly Moss employs ethnographic research methods to study the literate and rhetorical practice African American ministers use to compose the sermon texts. Moss understands literacy in the Black Church in its relationship to rhetorical discourses as "a complex, social process involving multiple levels of participation by rhetors and audience, intertextual relationships (i.e. interdependent relations between oral, written, and sometimes musical texts) and complex belief systems of members of particular communities" (6). In We Are Coming: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth Century Black Women , Shirley Wilson Logan similarly understands the interconnected relationship between literacy and rhetoric in historical and archival research on nineteenth-century African American women&rsquo;s intellectual discourse. She writes: "[African American] traditions of literacy influenced rhetorical practices. Within the context of the fact that North American blacks have their origins in Africa and inevitably retained much of their various cultures, the pull toward an African connectedness justifiably persists" (27). Understanding the ways in which research, composition, literacy, and rhetoric are published and interwoven in the African American women intellectual tradition is one primary factor influencing the required texts that were used to design the special topics course. I focus on interconnectivity when speaking of African American women&rsquo;s intellectual traditions because the relationship between rhetoric, literacy, education, and pedagogy is not easily separated; thus, graduate students shouldn&rsquo;t feel pressured to select one particular subfield as a focus in their own research and scholarship. Similar to the examples I draw from Moss and Logan, we can point to much scholarship on African American Vernacular English, {1} and its effects on African American students writing, as one of many examples of the ways in which education, rhetorical discourse, linguistics, literacy, and pedagogy are all reflected through the study of African American students&rsquo; composing practices (Redd and Webb, A Teachers Introduction ; Gilyard and Richardson, "Students&rsquo; Right"; Smitherman, "Blacker the Berry; Delpit, Other People&rsquo;s ; Moss, Community ). Because African American communicative practices (both oral and written) often embed African-based rhetorical and idiomatic stylistic features (e.g., call/response, signifyin, narrative sequencing, imagery, etc.), we might also expect African American women intellectuals to draw on similar rhetorical and discursive community-based practices in their own scholarship. When reflecting on the many contributions to education and the teaching of writing that Royster and Jean C. Williams offer in "History in the Spaces Left: African American Presence and Narratives in Composition Studies," for example, I would be remiss if my special topics course did not cover and rediscover the ways in which African American intellectuals have not only contributed research to the academy, but also have worked to shape and contribute ideologies about teaching practices, including but not limited to the teaching of writing. While some special topics courses on key scholars in the field--regardless of gender or race--often focus on theory as it applies to their research, many of these courses provide limited opportunity to focus on theory as it applies exclusively to scholars&rsquo; teaching practices. I am concerned with the trend, primarily at research-extensive institutions, to value research over teaching (Park, "Research"), and see a similar trend in many graduate courses--especially those focusing on research methodologies, contemporary rhetoric, and composition theory--to devote more attention to empirical and other forms of theoretical research in the field that does not involve explicit devotion to teaching. This trend, I believe, leaves out many contributions by African American women, particularly those who value teaching as much if not more than they do research. In short, I wanted to make sure that course texts devoted specific foci on both the methodologies and pedagogies employed by Black women intellectuals. Course Design: Using the Special Topics Course to Meet Students&rsquo; Pedagogical, Scholastic, and Research Goals Appendix 2 provides a description of the major assignments and duties. My rationale for assigning each task is primarily to provide opportunities for graduate students to synthesize course material in ways most useful for their own teaching, research, and other professional purposes. With each assignment, students have the option to explore methodologies or pedagogies employed by Black women, as they begin to understand these intellectual processes. Students are also encouraged to make overt connections between the special topics course goals and pedagogical theory and training. (These connections are also explicitly made in the course description.) Select readings and assignments also encourage students to make connections between course material and undergraduate and graduate pedagogy, although students also may use the course to fulfill additional professional needs. The first major writing assignment asks students to submit weekly responses. I would also emphasize that rationales for assigning weekly responses are rarely addressed in the field. Weekly reaction papers are not just busy work; they provide students with opportunities to pull useful concepts and theories for future use. As a graduate student, I pulled a lot of dissertation and comprehensive exam material from my weekly responses to special topics course readings, and therefore suggest that using weekly responses as inventive spaces may be essential for future graduate-level work. The responses served as a filing system for how I understood new ideas and ways of seeing, doing, and researching intellectual practices. These responses I filed electronically under various labels--methodology (theoretical or empirical), pedagogy, literacy, rhetoric, linguistics, feminism, etc.--that for me defined sub-areas for future research. I also hope that weekly responses serve as inventive sites for student to explore new ideas and relationships drawn from course texts. The second assignment, leading class discussions, asks students to engage in oral forms of communication by synthesizing course readings and raising critical questions for class discussion. While requirements designate the types of questions, activities, etc., that students may include, it is expected that activities make connections with their work and experiences as graduate students. Like weekly reaction papers, such questions may also be pedagogical or methodological in nature. Possible activities for leading discussion might include a lesson demonstration, a class study design based on the methodologies used in assigned readings for that week, or an oral or visual performance based on assigned readings. Like writing assignments, I believe that oral discourse is also critical to understanding the ways in which intellectual discourse is situated in African American-centered traditions. The other assignments also provide practical ways for students to file knowledge learned from course material. The book review (see Appendix 3 for a bibliography of possible books) gives students an opportunity to practice writing and submitting work for potential publication. It also provides students opportunities to file references of books they may need to reference or cite later. For book reviews, students may select texts based on particular methodologies or pedagogies that interest them and prepare a review based on the effectiveness of these methodologies and/or pedagogies. The purpose is to use the book review to help graduate students think more critically about the professional and intellectual work they wish to accomplish as graduate students and beyond. The final seminar essay provides professional and other scholastic opportunities for students to situate their work in particular contexts of scholarly discourse. The student can either design his/her own undergraduate or graduate special topics course (teaching/pedagogy), write a conference paper or article presenting on pedagogical or non-classroom scholarship (research), or prepare for his/her comprehensive exam as (s)he works toward the degree. The purpose of making the final project flexible serves to help the student make professional decisions most useful to him/her during a specific stage of his/her career/coursework. If the possible choices for the final project do not suit students&rsquo; professional needs, they may also propose an alternative project that will help them think critically about the relationship between the African American female intellectual tradition and the methodological and pedagogical work they wish to accomplish during their careers. Hence, each of these assignments may serve as possible inventive spaces for trying out new theories and ideas, while still serving a practical purpose. Appendix 4 represents the fourteen-week course schedule and sequence of readings/assignments. Composing the schedule also proved to be quite challenging as I attempted to position the bibliographic schedule in relation to some of the common methodologies I associate with African American women&rsquo;s intellectual discourse. The first topic begins with an understanding of women&rsquo;s autobiographical narrative methodologies in the field. Thus, on the first day students read Logan&rsquo;s "When and Where I Enter" and Royster&rsquo;s "When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own," as both draw on narrative methodologies to confront challenges associated with their students, colleagues, and the academy at large. As it is common for many first-year writing courses to assign a narrative essay at the beginning of the semester, I wanted to begin on the first day with an autobiographical understanding of the challenges that African American women intellectuals encounter within the academy. In doing so, I offer Black women&rsquo;s autobiographical experiences in ways that encourage graduate students to make connections with their own experiences. These connections, I believe, are quite useful conversations to have with graduate students, as we prepare them for the challenges they may encounter as future scholars. Subsequent weeks focus on African American women&rsquo;s contribution to historiography, feminist theory, critical discourse analysis, pedagogical theory, and ethnography; thus, each week is scheduled to focus on a particular methodology employed by Black women intellectuals. In this section, I want to emphasize that the purpose of examining the relationships between course descriptions, required texts, required assignments, and course sequencing is to understand what new ideas come directly from pedagogical and methodological exploration. By creating new opportunities for invention, I sought to discuss my composing process for designing the course materials. I also want to emphasize that through our course descriptions, required texts, and assignments, new ideas and practices emerge that create potential areas of research and scholarship in the field. As a result, additional opportunities and inventive spaces are created within various publication venues. By using African American women&rsquo;s scholarship we can use such experiences to prepare graduate students for the pedagogical and methodological decisions they will make upon degree completion. Conclusions and Implications The purpose of this essay is to offer a pedagogical model for exploring the Black woman&rsquo;s intellectual tradition. I further argue that this model must devote attention to an exploration of Black women&rsquo;s pedagogical and methodological processes, as both require critical intellectual engagement that extends beyond institutional boundaries. I also argue that such a course be used to encourage graduate students to make connections between the Black female intellectual tradition and their own methodological and pedagogical processes and goals, since training in methodology and pedagogy is often required for students to develop a disciplinary orientation to the field. I also offer this essay as a lens for thinking more critically about graduate course designs and pedagogy. The purpose of this exercise is to position Black intellectual traditions in relationship to graduate course design, using the special topics as a useful space and heuristic for examining graduate-level pedagogical approaches. In this demonstration, I hoped to think more clearly about inventive spaces for encouraging both students and instructors to generate new ideas and relationships between subfields and the field of rhetoric and composition studies. I also hoped to provide opportunities for students to put invention in relationship with their own professional and curricular goals. Finally, and more importantly, I sought to pair invention in relationship to the exciting work that African American female intellectuals are doing inside and outside of the field. Placing sistas with more agency permits students and the instructor to explore what the rhetoric of African American female intellectuals is, and what it does. Notes Some sources use the terms, Ebonics, AAVE, BEV, or BE when discussing pedagogical scholarship teaching African American students to write Standard English, while encouraging them to draw on African-based rhetorical and discursive practices at the same time. ( Return to text. ) Works Cited Brown et al. " Portrait of the Profession: The 2007 Survey of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition." Rhetoric Review 27.4 (Oct. 2008): 331-40. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment . Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990. ------. "The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought." Women, Knowledge, and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy . Eds. Garry and Pearsall. New York and London: Routledge, 1996. 222-249. Gilyard, Keith and Elaine Richardson. "Students&rsquo; Right to Possibility: Basic Writing and African American Rhetoric." Insurrections: Approaches to Resistance in Composition Studies . Ed. Andrea Greenbaum. Albany: State U of NY P, 2001. Hardin, Joe Marshall. Opening Spaces: Critical Pedagogy and Resistance Theory in Composition . Albany: State U of NY P, 2001. Park, Shelley M. "Research, Teaching, and Service: Why Shouldn't Women's Work Count?" The Journal of Higher Education 67.1 (1996): 46-84. Lathan, Rhea Estelle. Writing a Wrong: A Case Study of African American Adult Literacy Action on the South Carolina Sea Islands 1957-1962. Diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006. Ann Arbor: UMI 3234565. Logan, Shirley Wilson. We Are Coming: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth Century Black Women . Carbondale: Southern IL UP, 1999. Middleton, Joyce. "Review: Where to Look for Zora." The Women's Review of Books 13.2 (Nov. 1995): 28-29. Moss, Beverly. A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and A Literacy Tradition in African-American Churches . Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P, 2003. Ratcliffe, Krista. "The Current State of Composition Scholar/Teachers: Is Rhetoric Gone or Just Hiding Out?" Enculturation 5.1 (Fall 2003): < http://enculturation.gmu.edu/5_1/ratcliffe.html >. Redd, Teresa and Karen Schuster Webb. A Teacher&rsquo;s Introduction to African American English: What a Writing Teacher Should Know . Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2005. Reid, Shelley. "Starting Somewhere Better: Revisiting Multiculturalism in First-Year Composition." Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 4.1 (2004): 65-92. Richardson, Elaine. African American Literacies . London and New York: Routledge, 2003. ------. "'To Protect and Serve&rsquo;: African American Female Literacies." College Composition and Communication 53.4 (2002): 675-704. Rouen, Duane, Stuart Cameron Brown, and Theresa Enos, eds. Living Rhetoric and Composition: Stories of the Discipline . Philadelphia, PA: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999. Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women. Pittsburgh, PA: U of Pittsburgh P, 2000. Smith, Louise. "Composing Composition Courses." College English 46.5 (Sept. 1984): 460-69. Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America . Detroit and Boston: Houghlin Mifflin and Wayne State UP, 1977/1986. ------. "Testifyin, Sermonizing, and Signifyin: Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the African American Verbal Tradition." Talkin that Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America . London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 251-267. ------. "'The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice&rsquo;: African American Student Writers and the National Assessment of Educational Progress." Paper read at the National Council of Teachers of English held at Pittsburgh November 17 to 22, 1993. Pittsburgh, PA: National Council of Teachers Conference, 1993. Sullivan, Patricia. "Writing in the Graduate Curriculum: Literary Criticism as Composition." Composition Theory for the Postmodern Classroom . Eds. Olson and Dorbin. Albany: State U of NY P, 1994. 32-48. Troutman, Denise. "African American Women: Talking that Talk." Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English . Ed. Sonja Lanehart. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001. 211-37. Turner, Caroline Sotello Viernes. "Women of Color in Academe Living with Multiple Marginality." The Journal of Higher Education 73.1 (Jan./Feb. 2002): 74-93. Villanueva, Victor. "On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism" College Composition and Communication 50.4 (1999): 645-661. Williams, Patricia. The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor . Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991. Appendices Appendix 1: Course Description and Selected Texts This course examines the intellectual practices and processes of African American female academics. It further investigates how African American female intellectual activity situates itself--and is situated rhetorically and linguistically--and how these in turn inform the literate practices employed in the African American community. We will explore analyses of various African-based and African American rhetorical and linguistic practices in rhetoric and composition, in addition to understandings of rhetoric and pedagogy as it is situated by African American women outside of composition studies (including education, women studies, and legal theory). One primary objective of this course is to recover and rediscover African American female contributions to the academy, and how these contributions may speak to the work that we as rhetoricians and educators are called to do. The goals of this course are two-fold. On one hand, I encourage you to make connections between the Black women&rsquo;s scholarship and your own research and scholarship. On the other hand, since the Black women&rsquo;s intellectual traditional also includes a focus on teaching, it is also my hope that you use this course to think more critically about your own pedagogical goals, both as a teaching assistant and beyond. Through our exploration, we hope to consider the following questions: How do Black female intellectuals situate themselves in the academy? How do they approach pedagogy and research in their scholarship? What linguistic, literacy, and rhetorical practices do Black women engage in? What collective practices might they share? What activities does the Black female intellectual engage in in the academy? How 'do&rsquo; she sound and act? What types of scholarship does she publish? What decisions might guide the way she publishes? What might an Afrafeminist framework for understanding intellectual activity look like, and what does it provide us? What methodologies and methods speak to the Black female intellectual tradition? How can I use additional interpretive frameworks from the Black female intellectual tradition to fulfill my own scholastic, professional, and pedagogical goals? Course Texts: Adams, Aesha. "A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in African-American Churches, by Beverly Moss." Composition Studies 32.1. Spring 2004. 15 March 2008. Delpit, Lisa. "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse." Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook , Eds. Cushman et al. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001. 545-54. hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation . Cambridge, MA: South End P, 1992. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994. Logan, Shirley Wilson. "'When and Where I Enter': Race, Gender, and Composition Studies." In Feminism and Composition Studies:In Other Words .Eds. Susan C. Jarratt and Lynn Worsham. New York: Modern Language Association, 1998. 45-57. ------. We Are Coming: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth Century Black Women . Carbondale, IL: Southern IL UP, 1999. Middleton, Joyce. "Orality, Literacy, and Memory in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." College English 55.1 (Jan. 1993): 64-75. Moss, Beverly. A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and A Literacy Tradition in African-American Churches . Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P, 2003. Pough, Gwendolyn. Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere. Lebanon, NH: Northeastern UP and UP of New England, 2004. Richardson, Elaine. African American Literacies . London and New York: Routledge, 2003. ------. "'To Protect and Serve&rsquo;: African American Female Literacies." College of Composition and Communication 53.4 (2002): 675-704. ------. "She Was Workin Like For Real: Critical Literacy and Discourse Practices of African American Females in the age of Hip Hop." Discourse and Society 18.6 (2007): 789-809. Royster, J. J and J. C Williams. "Histories in the Spaces Left: African American Presence and Narratives in Composition Studies." College Composition and Communication 50. 2 (Jun. 1999): 563-84. Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women . Pittsburgh, PA: U of Pittsburgh P, 2000. ------. "When the First Voice You Here is Not Your Own." College Composition and Communication 47.1 (1996): 563-84. Smitherman, Geneva. "Testifyin, Sermonizing, and Signifyin: Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the African American Verbal Tradition." Talkin that Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America . London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 251-67. ------. Word from the Mother: Language and African Americans . New York and London: Routledge, 2006. Spellers, Regina. "The Kink Factor: A Womanist Discourse Analysis of African American Mother/Daughter Perspectives on Negotiating Black Hair/Body Politics." Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations . Eds. Ronald Jackson and Elaine Richardson. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. 223 -43. Troutman, Denise. "African American Women: Talking that Talk." Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English . Ed. Sonja Lanehart. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001. 211-37. Williams, Patricia. The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor . Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991. ( Return to text. ) Appendix 2: Course Assignments and Descriptions Weekly Responses: Each week students will submit (electronic is fine) a 1-2 page response or reaction to the assigned week&rsquo;s readings. These responses need not cover every reading assigned; however, they should provide a glimpse of critical thinking, theories, and/or research methodologies you wish/do wish not to apply/critique for your own personal scholastic inquiry and intellectual activity. Discussion Leaders: Each group will plan to lead discussion once per semester. In pairs or threes, you should prepare to provide a brief overview or summary of assigned readings, in addition to activities and questions you wish for the rest of the class to take up during the seminar period. Groups should prepare a 45-minute to 1-hour presentation (format and technological platforms are totally up to the group, as long as groups arrange for the necessary resources to be provided). I encourage you to provide pedagogical activities that you find useful in graduate courses. Book Review: Each student will write a 5-page book review of a work associated with issues taken up in the seminar for potential submission to an academic journal in his/her chosen field/subfield. Please identify one journal in the discipline, and carefully review and attach the book review guidelines (citation style, word/page limit etc.) for the journal you wish to publish in with your work. For this review, you may choose to tackle the pedagogical or methodological arguments made in your selected book. You will also present a 10-minute oral report on your selected book. A list of potential books serves only as a guide for possible choices. You may broaden these to include works in Latina studies, queer theory, etc. I might also recommend that if you choose a book not listed that you select one published no more than two years ago. For works not listed, please consult instructor for approval. Final Seminar Paper: The final project is fairly open-ended. You may choose to write a seminar paper, a theoretical essay or an empirically-based article to be published, a conference paper, an exam question, or an undergraduate or graduate-level course design (with a syllabus, major assignments, a lesson plan, and a 3-5 page reflective overview). A 1-2 page proposal is required before submitting the final project. An oral presentation of your project will be given at the end of the course. An alternative assignment: You are also encouraged to propose an alternative assignment to the final seminar paper listed above (digital, print, or oral) that helps you meet your pedagogical training and/or research goals. A 1-2 page proposal is required before submitting the final project ( Return to text. ) Appendix 3: Possible Books for Book Review Ball, Aretha F. and Ted Lardener. African American Literacies Unleashed: Vernacular English and the Composition Classroom . Carbondale: Southern IL UP, 2005. Delpit, Lisa .Other People&rsquo;s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom . New York: New P, 1995. Dyson, Anne Haas. The Brothers Learn to Write: Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures . New York: Teachers College P, 2003. Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways With Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms . Cambridge, UK: UP, 1983. hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom . New York: Routledge, 1994. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms . New York: Teachers College Record, 2001. Lanehart, Sonja. Sista Speak!: Black Women Kinfolk Talk about Language and Literacy . Austin: U of Texas P, 2002. Redd, Teresa and Karen Schuster Webb . A Teacher&rsquo;s Introduction to African American English: What a Writing Teacher Should Know . Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2005. Richardson, Elaine . Hip Hop Literacies . New York: Routledge, 2006. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America . Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1994. Royster, J. J. and A. M. Simpkins, eds. Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender and Culture. Albany: State UP of NY, 2005. Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America . Detroit and Boston: Houghlin Mifflin and Wayne State UP, 1977/1986. ( Return to text. ) Appendix 4: Course Schedule Week 1 Introductions: Narrative Methodologies Royster&rsquo;s,"When the First Voice"; Logan&rsquo;s "When and Where I Enter" Week 2 Narrative Methodologies Continued Discussion Leaders Williams&rsquo;s The Alchemy of Race and Rights Week 3 Historiography Royster&rsquo;s Traces of a Stream ; Royster/Williams&rsquo;s "Histories in the Spaces Left" Week 4 Historiography Cont. Logan&rsquo;s We Are Coming Discussion Leaders Week 5 Black Feminist Theory Discussion Leaders Pough&rsquo;s Check it While I Wreck it; Richardson&rsquo;s "To Protect and Serve" Week 6 Oral Reports on Books Week 7 Oral Reports on book WRITTEN BOOK REVIEW DUE Week 8 Black Feminist Theory Cont. Discussion Leaders hooks&rsquo;s Black Looks Week 9 FINAL SEMINAR TOPIC PROPOSAL DUE Critical Discourse Analysis Discussion Leaders Richardson: Richardson&rsquo;s "She Was Workin" Smitherman&rsquo;s "Tesityfing, Sermonizing"; Troutman&rsquo;s "AA ; Middleton&rsquo;s "Orality"; Women: Talkin that Talk; Spellers&rsquo;s "The Kink Factor" Week 10 Teacher-Research and Pedagogical Theory Richardson&rsquo;s African American Literacies Week 11 Pedagogical Theory Discussion Leaders Ladson-Billings&rsquo;s The Dreamkeepers ; Delpit&rsquo;s "The Politics of Teaching" Week 12 Ethnography Discussion Leaders Moss&rsquo;s A Community Text ; Adams&rsquo;s Review of A Community Text Week 13 Final Project Presentations Week 14 Final Project Presentations FINAL PROJECT DUE ( Return to text. ) "Black Female Intellectuals in the Academy" from Composition Forum 20 (Summer 2009) Online at: http://compositionforum.com/issue/current/black-female-intellectuals.php � Copyright 2009 Staci Maree Perryman-Clark. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Bookmark this on Delicious . Return to Composition Forum 20 table of contents. Composition Forum is published semiannually by the Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition with the support and generous financial assistance of Penn State University.
CURRENT URL http://connection.ebscohost.com/content/article/1027897184.html;jsessionid=EB0BB1899A38261E09DBF55CA628ED7A.ehctc1
Journal of Social, Political & Economic Studies; Fall95, Vol. 20 Issue 3, p289 , 10p Document Type: Article Subject Terms: EDUCATION, Humanistic MULTICULTURALISM Geographic Terms: UNITED States Abstract: Discusses the impact of multiculturalism on liberal education in the United States. Decline in educational performance; Decline in... Accession Number: 9601070812 Important User Information: Remote access to EBSCO's database is permitted to patrons of subscribing institutions accessing from remote locations for personal, non-commercial use. However, remote access to EBSCO's databases from non-subscribing institutions is not allowed if the purpose of the use is for commercial gain through cost reduction or avoidance from a non-subscribing institution. Remote access for personal use from these institutions is permissible.
CURRENT URL http://contracabal.org/603-07-00.html
Academic cabals exist as cults, or cloning mechanisms, (religious groups that have no theology). Moreover, they develop an exclusionist cultural bias by enforcing special group interests through coercive persuasion and power brokerage. Academic cloning manifests in political power, self-aggrandizement, and monetary gain. It destroys inconvenient academic freedom through non-selection and non-promotion of faculty members with nonconformist views. This results in qualitative control by those making judgment. Moreover, it supports a cultic instinct toward conformity that eliminates any inconvenient nonconformity (also honest dissent). 1 This insures that cabal members can remain free from critical inquiry and allows them to wallow in their own mediocrity. Subsequently, the conformity destroys any vestige of individuality. The exclusivity forces everyone to become a clone of someone else. It enables those in power to deny freedom of expression to dissenters and allows them to destroy the careers of nonconformists. It also outlaws any behavior that the cabal finds inappropriate. The war cries "inappropriate" and "politically correct" then define synonymously in these totalitarian academic environments. In the cabal, tenure results from luck, connivance (collegiality), and in largest measure humiliation. The tenure process requires constant screening of those who have no power, by those who have power, to check that the candidates have suitable clonic spasms. This guarantees preservation of an existing level of mediocrity and, in the process, deprives many deserving individuals of their academic freedom. It also insures clonic job security that has now become the main reason for tenure to exist. Frequently, tenured cabalists control their graduate students by criteria that insure failure for those students unwilling to accept a sycophantic cloning process. These policies insure very few new PhDs enter the job market to threaten insecure and incompetent faculty members. They certificate those whom they judge to discourse in politically correct terms and to non-certificate others. They control writers to serve the ideological needs of the university administration and, by that, perpetuate the cloning of personnel through censored discourse. Their power derives from language codes and political correctness because they censor statements that do not conform to their standards of acceptance. Consequently, they advocate power to those who define discourse and those that they selectively admit to the cabal. 2 These power-mad, pointy-headed perverts shudder when they read about themselves on the Internet. The term "pointy-headed intellectuals" arose after midwives squeezed and molded infant heads at birth. 3 They gave special attention to children born to academicians to insure that they appeared intelligent. However, their actions forced the grey matter into a conical shape that produced an excess of egotistical and arrogant behavior. The children found it an advantage in later life because the conically shaped heads allowed them to butt their superiors in the quest for special privileges. However, the procedure had the opposite effect to that intended and has created a generation of academic morons incapable of communicating with anyone outside their own special interest group. Not surprisingly, one can recognize the pointy-heads by the way that they immediately attack true genius. 4 For additional identification, they wear pointed black caps that perfectly fit their misshapen heads and give them immediate group identity as dunces. The womyn and womynx among them, because they have superiority, insist upon additional identification to satisfy a need for male pointy-heads to recognize past injustices. In addition to wearing the caps, these amazons viraginously bare their marsupialian, mammary glands. This detracts federal investigators from inquiring into the source of the wealth that they keep in their pouches: wealth acquired from convening academic kangaroo courts that reek vengeance upon unsuspecting males. Now well established as a genus, the pointy-heads have no further need for midwives. They rely entirely upon in vitro cloning for their survival. [ Revelation: Womyn and Womynx ] The parent and child relationship has changed since heterosexual procreation through copulation became infra dig. For centuries, educators have thought that this natural act engendered tenderness toward offspring and helped with their education. However, later research into copulatory motivation shows that copulation has no bearing on tenderness. Evidently, the participants have other ideas to occupy their minds during their brief encounter that do not include education in its traditional sense. As a result, children have no indebtedness to their parents for bringing them into the world and, conversely, parents have no responsibility to pay college tuition. Upon this reasoning, parents should least have the responsibility for educating their children. This task should fall, in loco parentis , to professors who have higher learning and intellect. 5 Hence, the recent university expansion to embrace all children, regardless of intellectual ability, through a program called affirmative action. Unfortunately, since the introduction of affirmative action, education levels have dropped alarmingly because the learning and intellect of cloned professors has diminished commensurate with an increase in illiterate students. Fortunately, grade inflation temporarily compensates so that everyone obtains a degree, depending upon their political affiliation, subservience, and sycophancy, despite their illiteracy. Now, advanced technology has again solved a human problem with a new type of affirmative action known as AIVF (Academic In Vitro Fertilization) that meets totalitarian criteria. AIVF uses conically-shaped eggs fertilized outside pointy-headed, human breeders. This egg-producing task usually falls to graduate student womynx who compete to supply the best quality eggs. This supplies the domestic need also a thriving export market. Payment for their gametic services more than repays student loans and current tuition, it also leaves a little money for mutually feminist pursuits. Womyn deans and associate deans who have fallen from grace and returned to their professorial bolt holes then act as incubators. They receive the fertilized eggs which helps them to regain a modicum of collegial respect. Moreover, spending their research time in stirrups insures that they never again occupy an authoritative position. These demoted administrators welcome incubus as light entertainment and perform a valuable service to the academic community. 6 They also do not birth unwanted children or indulge in abortion. More importantly, they save the expense of rearing children and the indignities of marriage and copulation. AIVF technologists remove the eggs from the breeders, place them in a fluid, then add cryogenically-stored sperm purchased from the Mensa semen bank. Mensa guarantees that their semen meets all the specified intellectual criteria and ideological requirements. Eighteen hours later, technicians pass the fertilized eggs through a growth medium then examine the mix for level of intelligence and gender: male, womyn, or womynx. If fertilization has occurred, they then transfer the embryo or bun to a the incubator's conically shaped uterus or oven. Hence the term "bun in the oven." Frequently, they transfer multiple buns so that they will have plenty to exterminate later if they do not meet the ideological mandates of the special interest group that holds the federal grant money. Another technique involves super ovulation uterine capacitation enhancement. With this process the breeder receives hormone medication that stimulates egg growth in a specific disciplinary orientation, For example, if a particular oligarchy wants to expand its womens' studies department with womynx then special AIVF hormone injections will stimulate aptitude in that discipline and create psychosomatic dependence and sycophancy in the infant. Bioethics, describe ethical issues in the life sciences and in the study of moral issues in the fields of medical treatment and research. Medical ethics traces its roots to several early codes like the ancient Greek Hippocratic Oath. Academic codes provide a foundation for modern ethics. However, the advent of new reproductive technologies have complicated the moral and societal issues related to assisted reproductive technology (ART). The Roe v. Wade decision by the United States Supreme Court has caused much controversy and discussion on academic personhood and the role that the university should play in ideological reproductive decisions. Particularly, how to dispose of fetuses recognized as having a potential for dissent that do not have the level of brain death prescribed by law for extermination. Another problem relates to whether breeders and sperm donors should share in future book royalties and consulting fees. Also, what percentage should accrue to university administrators as bonuses for authorizing procedures and covert disposal of dissent fetuses. The debate about euthanasia has raised a host of other ethical and legal questions. Some relate to the competency of those requesting academic termination decisions. Also, whether these decisions should rest entirely with the official who authorized procreation. AIVF has become increasingly more expensive during the past decade and only major corporations can afford to finance it in collaboration with universities. Another problem arises from distrust of tenured administrators. This distrust has increased because several of them recently provided nerd clones to Microsoft Corporation. This has helped Bill Gates increase his monopolistic stranglehold on the software industry and allowed him to place even more cloned nerds on the University of Washington computer science faculty. In summary, these technologies have improved upon the midwifery methods used previously, however, a few faculty members have begun to question medical ethics. They feel that academic cloning should only take place after decisions by faculty committees composed of the same genus as the proposed clones and not by administrators. This insures true academic cloning that enriches and gives job security to them without having to pander to the ideologies propounded by their administrators. It could also preserve the tenure system because they propose in vitro academic voting systems as the next stage of AIVF development. Political correctness demands that cloned offspring take care that what they say, what they think, and what they do, offends nobody. It encourages them to decide issues, not on the evidence or the merits, but based upon the behavior of the oligarchy to which they belong. They then gain suitable rewards as pC clones for following the ideology taught by the oligarch. Eventually, they obtain a worthless sheepskin designating them "pC pointy-headed clone". [ Political Correctness ] Cloning has moved from the intellectual to the physical. A state family-planning sperm bank in China has confined itself to donors from the academe. It will accept donations only from academics who have achieved at least the rank of associate professor. The agency received many calls from professors willing to donate, however, the agency makes no mention of the academic requirements for women recipients. 7 To meet an urgent demand for sperm for its diversity program, University of Washington has developed rainbow sperm that meets pC criteria for Multicultural Academic In Vitro Fertilization (MAIVF). Parents may wish to submit their daughters for consideration as multicultural breeders and save college expenses. Husbands may wish to grant their deposed wives the privilege and thrill of incubation. Nmesis hopes that his research will encourage university presidents to broaden their minds on this vital subject. He proposes that they apply these cloning principles, in both private and academic life, to increase their income and as an example for the common good. With enthusiasm, Richard L. McCormick, President, University of Washington, can now submit Suzanne D. Lebsock (his wife) as the first subject for incubation. This will assuage some guilt that he must feel for obtaining her a nepotistic professorship despite her scientific fraud. AIVF will probably provide her and her children with job security when the US Department of Justice eventually indicts her husband for misprision and myriad other crimes. Probably, the family will obtain even more state and federal grant money. Moreover, their daughter may become the first to earn a MacArthur Foundation award for exceptionally creative gametic endeavor. [ Oh, What a Tangled Web She Weaves
CURRENT URL http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings/253.html
Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#253 TENURE AND ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE Folks: The article below on the academic benefits of tenure is from the May/June 2000 issue of Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors [ http://www.aaup.org/acahome.htm ] via Postdoctorate.net [ http://www.postdoctorate.net/index.html ] an excellent on-line resource for graduate students and postdocs. Reprinted with permission. Regards, Rick Reis Reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: So Long and Thanks for the Ph.D.! Tomorrow's Academia -------------- 1,862 words -------------- TENURE AND ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE Tenure creates stability-the prerequisite for shared governance and creative scholarship. Managerial administrators who try to undermine that stability endanger their institutions. By Linda L. Carroll Defenders of tenure have traditionally focused on its ability to protect academic freedom. But a close look at its functions shows that it actually does much more: it provides the foundation for academic excellence. To be effective, the work of the university-the objective discovery and dissemination of knowledge-must be protected from outside influence. By vesting the faculty with wide autonomy in pedagogy, research, and institutional governance, tenure serves this function. In addition, faculties confer tenure to recognize the mature professional status of colleagues who have given sustained evidence of an ability to work independently. The American university system's leadership in research and its ability to attract first-rate faculty members and students from all over the world prove the excellence of this combination of academic freedom and professionalism. History's most famous academic freedom case is instructive. After teaching for several years at the University of Padua, Galileo was offered a tenured position there by the Venetian Republic. The republic wanted to reward him for having developed the telescope that would help Venice's efforts to regain maritime preeminence as a link between the Mediterranean and northern Europe and between Europe and the East. But Galileo, tempted by the prospect of a higher salary and the desire to return to his home state of Tuscany, turned down the offer and became the court mathematician of the Medici. What he failed to realize was the extent to which the Catholic Church and Aristotelian philosophers would react adversely to the information about the heavens that his telescope revealed. Stung by blame for the Protestant Reformation heaped on earlier popes, especially Leo X and Clement VII, and fearing the challenges that Galileo's discoveries posed to the authority of the Bible and the scientific texts of Aristotle, Popes Paul V and Urban VIII, together with the Inquisition, twice silenced him. If Galileo had remained in Padua, the Venetian Republic could have protected him. At the time, it was the only state on the Italian peninsula independent enough to resist the church, having been vigorously defended by Galileo's friend, the political theoretician Paolo Sarpi, during a recent papal interdict. The Medici could not, and Galileo's work was lost to the University of Padua and to the world. Like similar cases before and since, Galileo's experience shows that systems of oversight are often imposed in times of contraction and weakness, not in those of expansion and strength. In the United States, the recent trend toward accountability-which is the chief characteristic of what I call the "managerial university"-appears to result from a period of weakness. Managerial University In an article in the January- February 2000 issue of Academe, Richard Ohmann traces the rise of the accountability movement to the conservative reaction against the success of the left in the 1960s and to the economic crisis that began in the 1970s and lasted two decades. Its supporters claim that the managerial university brings many improvements. But instead, with its restriction of faculty autonomy and obsession with short-term financial considerations, it severely damages educational quality. In the managerial university, top-down control, short-term contracts, and limits on faculty governance effectively curb the scope of faculty research and the range of faculty professionalism. These practices suppress precisely those features of the American university system that have produced the excellence for which it is known throughout the world. One way in which the managerial university erodes educational quality is by driving away talented faculty. The relative independence of academic work is one of its greatest attractions for potential faculty members. Many accept considerable financial sacrifice in exchange for the freedom to accomplish their work in the manner they deem best and to act together with colleagues to build an educational community. If academic life ceases to offer this breadth of action, its attractiveness to the most creative and responsible individuals will decline, and the obstacles blocking good work by those who continue in the academy will increase. And if, as expected, faculty salaries remain low compared with those of other professionals, not to mention those in the business world, academic life will lose much of its appeal. Managerial universities weaken tenure and erode faculty autonomy in several ways; one of the most important is post-tenure review. Under post-tenure review, faculty members may not feel free to undertake lengthy projects that cannot be completed in time for a periodic evaluation. And they may not even be free to choose the venue for publishing their work, given that some institutions now deem only certain kinds of scholarly publications acceptable. By imposing collective, external oversight structures, such as department- and college-level review committees, universities nullify the two core activities of faculty members: thinking autonomously and teaching others to think autonomously. Further, the universities thus declare that professors cannot be trusted with their own work and imply that it is suspect or valueless. Some universities that have instituted post-tenure review or other means of restricting the protections of tenure have inadvertently shown how loss of autonomy decreases the attractiveness of academic life: excellent faculty members have left their institutions for others offering the full protections of tenure and a strong faculty role in governance, which the professors see as ensuring their academic freedom against such incursions. Another feature of the managerial university is excessive use of adjunct or multiyear contracts. A university that views its faculty as short-term or part-time employees, gives them little or no say in governance, and subjects them to continuous outcome checks blunts its competitive edge by encouraging timidity and conformity among its faculty. Although short-term and part-time faculty as a group are dedicated to their profession, their institutions provide them with few tools for achieving excellence, in comparison with those available to tenured and tenure-track faculty. The role of the classroom laborer imposed on contingent faculty by their institutions precludes long-term, committed service, sustained contributions to programs, and a role in university governance. Instead, those working under such conditions must focus their attention on securing their next contract or job. Constant turnover robs programs of stability and direction, as a parade of short-term faculty members with different academic backgrounds alters course selection and content. It also damages the relationship between faculty members and students that is critical to the quality of higher education. Professors build ties with students over the course of years, through interactions in and outside the classroom. Eventually, fragmentation of the faculty-student relationship will lead to the erosion of institution-alumni relations and will drive potential students away. The traditional postgraduate contact between faculty and alumni (requests for letters of recommendation, advice on career choices, information exchange, and so on) will decline, diminishing alumni loyalty to institutions. Disconnected alumni will probably not give generously to their alma mater or encourage others to attend. Fundraising campaigns organized around "great teachers" and brochures depicting beloved faculty members, now a reliable staple of university development offices, will also falter. A drop in fundraising will produce a further decline in educational quality. Recent research refutes the charge that the absence of oversight results in poor faculty performance. The Faculty Work Project of the Associated New American Colleges recently conducted a national study with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The study found that faculty members work an average of 53.6 hours a week, with 34 of these hours devoted to student-connected activities (teaching, advising, and the like), 10 to research, and 9 to institutional service. Barriers to Creativity Indeed, the shoe is often on the other foot: it is often not faculty members who fail in their obligations to their institutions, but the institutions that fail in their responsibilities to the faculty. Post-tenure review and other incursions on tenure often occur at institutions that underemploy the positive incentive of raises. Some institutions, after creating nontenured positions, find that they can make the positions attractive only by increasing pay, an ironic reversal of the original intent to decrease costs. Declarations that institutions need more flexibility than the tenure system permits also curiously invert the facts. Managerial universities lacking in tenure do not achieve excellence; instead, they condemn themselves to passivity and susceptibility to fads. The direction of the managerial university does not come from faculty who create their fields through independent research and the training of the next generation of scholars. On the contrary, these universities must follow the trends set by the leading universities, whose tenured faculty members perform this vital work. Recent studies have shown that tenure and faculty governance are strongest at large, private research universities, which also tend to have great prestige. Not coincidentally, these institutions are the most in demand by prospective students and their parents. As other colleges and universities have undercut the role of the faculty member, interest in the kind of education that these prestigious universities offer has increased. The weakening of tenure also threatens the quality of research. Good research requires much time and some risk taking. Obsessive checks on outcomes will favor small, safe projects with predictable results over the daring, conceptually complex projects that have produced cutting-edge research in many fields. At stake as well are extended, comprehensive works. I think of major studies in my own field that have required as many as thirty years of careful preparation, and I worry that such vast and erudite syntheses will be impossible in the future. How many of us published material too soon under the pressure of the tenure clock? The weakening of tenure would make this practice characteristic of our entire careers. Unsatisfactory Substitutes Some people argue that tenure is unnecessary because courts protect free speech. This argument is flawed; the guarantee provided by tenure is not the right to free speech but the protection of one's job in the exercise of it. Moreover, it is dangerous to transfer the authority over academic issues to outside parties affected by the political process. Other factors also make courts a poor venue for protecting academic freedom. Courts are often unfamiliar with the academic world and may not make decisions appropriate to it. Further, faculty who have been dismissed from one institution will hesitate to pursue legal remedies that could jeopardize future job prospects, and, finally, the legal process is costly, time-consuming, and uncertain in its outcome. Tenure was abolished in Britain over a decade ago. The events of the ensuing years confirm faculty members' fears about the deleterious effects of its absence. As Adam Fairclough reported in the July-August 1999 issue of Academe, academics in the United Kingdom Have witnessed many firings and layoffs while coping with greatly increased enrollments. Teaching is subjected to numerical rating, while grade inflation is rampant and the quality of student work declines. The practice of counting publications is leading to the abandonment of certain types of research. Other sources report that faculty members go so far as to hold back publications, coordinating their release with the rigid review schedule. To protect the traditional excellence of the American academic system, faculty members must fight to preserve academic freedom, the professional status of the faculty, and the faculty role in university governance. Doing so means safeguarding tenure. The tenure system is like democracy: it is not perfect, but it is light years ahead of any alternative. ----------------------------- Linda Carroll, professor of Italian at Tulane University, is the author of two books and numerous articles on popular culture in Renaissance Italy.
CURRENT URL http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings/721.html
" Under the banner of an "Academic Bill of Rights," legislation has been introduced in Congress and in several states to help remedy what the sponsors charge is liberal political bias on college campuses. The bill, which has yet to be approved anywhere, would challenge campuses to adopt voluntarily procedures that the sponsors claim would encourage a diversity of political perspectives among faculty, campus speakers, and student organizations. " Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#721 Political Bias in Undergraduate Education Folks: In this month's Carnegie Perspectives, Tom Ehrlich and Anne Colby revisit the highly politicized Academic Bill of Rights legislation. It is #25 in the monthly series called Carnegie Foundation Perspectives. These short commentaries exploring various educational issues are produced by the CFAT< http://www.carnegiefoundation.org >. The Foundation invites your response at: CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org . Reprinted with permission. Note: You can comment on this or any past posting by going to: http://amps-tools.mit.edu/tomprofblog/ Regards, Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Finishing the Doctoral Degree in a Timely Fashion: Tomorrow's Academia ----------------------------------- 1,123 Words ------------------------------- Political Bias in Undergraduate Education by < http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/about/sub.asp?key=10&subkey=257 >Tom Ehrlich and < http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/about/sub.asp?key=10&subkey=252 >Anne Colby Under the banner of an "Academic Bill of Rights," legislation has been introduced in Congress and in several states to help remedy what the sponsors charge is liberal political bias on college campuses. The bill, which has yet to be approved anywhere, would challenge campuses to adopt voluntarily procedures that the sponsors claim would encourage a diversity of political perspectives among faculty, campus speakers, and student organizations. While the goals of this effort are commendable, we think this particular solution is misguided. Leaders at every university agree that educating students in the practice of open-minded inquiry, while ensuring academic freedom of faculty, is a key component of undergraduate education, but creating a classroom and wider campus climate that is truly open to multiple perspectives on hot-button political issues is extremely difficult to accomplish. Yet, if we are to educate our students for responsible citizenship, we and they can't steer clear of controversy. Liberal education and the values of the academy are all about the need to seek and consider alternative conceptions, stances, and views and to consider them respectfully. If a campus is to commit itself to open inquiry and the exploration of a diversity of views, it should affirm the many ways in which controversy occurs rather than limiting its focus to the often simplistic battles between left and right. In many domains, students must learn to think clearly about controversial issues, to form opinions and make a strong case for them, to evaluate the evidence for competing positions, to understand alternative perspectives in their own terms, to engage opposing views with civility and a sincerely open mind, and to change their own positions when persuaded. This is difficult to accomplish, perhaps especially when it comes to controversial issues that may have an ideological dimension. Unfortunately, in most settings, including universities, people with strong opinions talk primarily to those who agree with them. The result is that often neither students nor faculty are accustomed to communicating across ideological divisions. In part because faculty may be unaware of the values and beliefs implicit in their approach to a subject, they may not raise their assumptions for explicit examination. This lack of awareness can happen at any point on the political spectrum. Even faculty who want to encourage open debate by drawing out minority opinions are sometimes so convinced of their ideological positions that they can't imagine how one might make a persuasive case for an opposing view. A legislative approach to ensuring open inquiry fails because it casts the issue in negative terms, as a matter of policing the faculty-and the campus more broadly-to stamp out "indoctrination." It is a solution that inherently calls for less, not more, debate. Given the complexity and ambiguity of both political and academic discourse, this kind of policing is also impossible to implement objectively. Cast in negative terms, the effort itself would be destructive to the goal of civil discourse across ideological boundaries. By contrast, a positive approach, in which administration, faculty, and students from different political perspectives join together to develop strategies for the positive pursuit of more open inquiry, contributes to a climate of openness, respect, and cooperation. This means that faculty and administrative leaders on a campus should be self-conscious in raising the issue of open inquiry-what is it, why is it important, and what should the principle mean in practice? Convocations and other gatherings at the opening of the school year are often useful occasions to open conversations about these issues. Based on these conversations, the campus might choose to adopt the principles of open inquiry and individual commitment as explicit goals and probe more deeply about how they can be pursued. If such goals have already been adopted, their meaning in practice can be re-examined at these times. Campus leaders should use multiple opportunities to endorse and support these goals. Materials sent to newly admitted students, as one example, should set an expectation that the campus will be a community of discourse, and that students will be exposed to a diversity of opinion about many issues, including political perspectives. The message should be modeled in the range of individuals invited to speak on campus. University officials do not control all of these invitations, but they do control some, and those invitations can be balanced in ways that emphasize the openness of the institution to a spectrum of differing views. In the political domain, speakers should include respected exemplars of open-mindedness and civility who (despite their own political convictions) truly believe that in order to be effective, engaged citizens need to be skilled at communicating and forming alliances with people whose perspectives are different from their own. Invited guests should also include those who exemplify political engagement as cooperative public work within a community, reflecting the value of compromise in pursuit of the greater good. Campus leaders should be in regular touch with a range of student opinions to test whether the campus climate seems to some students to stifle minority political opinions. If so, those leaders should work with students and faculty to ensure that forums are available for the expression of minority views and for thoughtful exploration of multiple points of view. In many parts of the academy, the role of scholarship is seen to include representing the perspectives of the powerless, those who are out of the economic and political mainstream. Academic freedom protects faculty's right to challenge prevailing views without punitive response. Likewise, it is important for academic leaders, including faculty, to protect the academic freedom of students who wish to challenge the prevailing views within their classroom or institution. Faculty can also do much to promote the value of open-minded inquiry within the classroom. At the very least, they can examine carefully their assignments and what they say in class through the lens of open inquiry as a course goal. One strategy some faculty use is to ask students to conduct research on and present the strongest arguments they can marshal for two or more quite different positions on contentious issues. This requires students to bring a degree of sympathy to positions they do not hold. Faculty should also pay attention to assessment. Sometimes students believe their academic work has been evaluated based on the political views it expresses, rather than its quality, even when this is not true. For this and other reasons (which concern good teaching more broadly), it is essential to make assessment criteria explicit and to provide as much feedback as possible based on those criteria. It has become a commonplace to complain about America's polarized political landscape. If the next generation of citizens is to set a different tone, they must experience in college an alternative to the politics of vitriol. < http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives/sub.asp?key=244&subkey=1565 >Join the conversation � This Perspective is excerpted from an article originally published in the Summer 2004 issue of < http://www.aacu-edu.org/liberaleducation/le-su04/le-su04index.cfm >Liberal Education, a publication of the < http://www.aacu-edu.org/ >Association of American Colleges and Universities. Tom and Anne lead the Foundation's work on the importance of < http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/programs/index.asp?key=25 >civic and political engagement among undergraduate students. In this piece, they argue for the necessity for college faculty members to become much more self-conscious of the variety of ways in which they communicate their political and social views to students. They provide recommendations and precautions for campus leaders who seek to create opportunities for teaching and inquiry that will encourage student learning around difficult issues. � 2006 The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 51 Vista Lane, Stanford, CA 94305, 650-566-5100 | < http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/general/index.asp?key=55 >Map and directions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR MAILING LIST is a shared mission partnership with the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) http://www.aahe.org/ The National Teaching and Learning Forum (NT&LF)
CURRENT URL http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings/758.html
"Overall, the authors do an excellent job of integrating conceptual frameworks, empirical findings, and program descriptions into a relatively comprehensive portrait of the need for and the ways by which to change America's colleges and universities into multicultural institutions. They recognize that the road to multiculturalism is fraught with pitfalls, traps, and immense challenges, but they also fully understand that the nation's welfare depends on how far colleges and universities move toward multiculturalism. All members of the academy, from regents to students, would benefit from a close reading of this book." Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#758 Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Promoting Justice Note: You can comment on this or any past posting by going to: http://amps-tools.mit.edu/tomprofblog/ Folks: The posting below is a review by Ruben O. Martinez of the book: Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Promoting Justice, by Mark Chesler, Amanda Lewis, and James Crowfoot. The review is from the July-September 2006, Planning for Higher Education, The Society for College and University Planning - Copyright � 1998-2006 Reprinted with permission. Planning for Higher Education book reviews appear at: (www.scup.org/phe). Regards, Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Teaching for Transformation: From Learning Theory to Teaching Strategies Tomorrow's Academy --------------------------------------- 1,475 words ------------------------------------ Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Promoting Justice Reviewed by Rub�n O. Martinez This book combines the perspectives of three White scholars (something they make note of in the preface). The lead author (Chesler) is a retired sociologist, the second (Lewis) is a mid-career faculty member in African-American studies, and the third (Crowfoot) is a retired dean of natural resources and environment. Chesler and Crowfoot served for many years at the University of Michigan and have published several scholarly articles together on race relations, multiculturalism, and diversity in higher education. The aim of the authors is to provide readers with a view of the organizational dynamics that support racism and discrimination in higher education, along with ways by which to change those dynamics and promote more inclusive and multicultural forms of teaching and learning. For readers not familiar with these issues and approaches in higher education, the book will serve as a valuable reference. The book consists of a substantive preface, four major parts comprised of 13 chapters, a reference section, and a useful index. Part I provides an overview of the context of racism in American higher education and an organizational framework for analyzing racism in higher education. Part II provides an overview of intergroup relations on college and university campuses, including the experiences of White students, students of color, diverse faculty members, and senior officials and university board members, and describes many of these individuals' encounters with and views on race and racial dynamics. Part III describes strategies for promoting organizational change, including strategic planning, multicultural audits, administrative and faculty leadership in promoting multiculturalism, and student program initiatives, and presents examples of multicultural plans and programs viewed as innovative and recommended as models for readers to consider. Part IV recapitulates the book's main emphases. As a whole, the book is held together by its emphasis on organizational dynamics. Indeed, although the authors do not say this directly, they present an institutionalist view of higher education, one in which colleges and universities are shaped by both internal and external influences, including participants, resources, ideologies, and economic dynamics. Colleges and universities, the authors argue, reflect and are fraught with the contradictory values and dynamics of American society, including institutional racism. They are contested systems in which different interests compete for limited resources. The authors emphasize the institutionalized nature of racism in American society and present eight interdependent dimensions of organizations that can both transmit societal racism and serve as focal points for organizational change. These eight dimensions are mission, culture, power, membership, social relations and social climate, technology, resources, and boundary management. According to the authors, colleges and universities can alter the basis of their own institutional racism by changing these dimensions. The authors then present three ideal stages through which organizations pass as they move toward becoming multicultural organizations: monocultural, transitional, and multicultural. Next, the authors discuss each of the eight organizational dimensions within each of the three stages. Before discussing strategies for moving institutions along these stages, the authors provide detailed descriptions of the experiences of students, faculty, and administrators in higher education. Descriptions of dominant group student attitudes and experiences and the experiences of minority group students are based mainly on data from a study of a sample of the undergraduate class of 1994 at the University of Michigan. Qualitative data collected between 1996 and 2001 at Michigan are used to present the viewpoints of students in greater detail. Unfortunately, the authors do not provide a demographic overview of the 25,000 undergraduate students at Michigan, but the percentage of ethnic minority students does not indicate a campus where their numbers are likely to threaten those of dominant group students, who represent 63 percent of the student population. White students, as previous research has shown, enter colleges and universities, especially top-tier institutions, without having had much experience relating to persons of color, especially in a setting of "relative equality"-at least one where rigid racial roles do not prevail within the organization. As they progress through college, many broaden their perspectives about race relations, and some even transcend the color-blind ideologies evident in American society today. These changes are generally tied to the frequency of contact with students of color and their willingness to grow at a personal level. The focus of the book moves from dominant group students to students of color. Although the majority of students of color reported overall good experiences, they (especially African-American students) also reported racial tension and conflict on-campus, including subjection to racial stereotyping, marginalization in social relations, pressure to assimilate, White resentment relative to affirmative action and supposed undeserved gains, and a Black-White discourse relative to race and racism. Students of color perceived White students as unwilling to engage in meaningful discussions or relationships with them. Students of color also reported difficult intergroup experiences in interactions with faculty members and in the classroom, although the majority tended to report good educational experiences with faculty. Some faculty members continued to hold lower academic expectations of ethnic minority students, to either deny differences between themselves and students of color or to lump all together without regard to differences, and to single them out in class as authorities on their racial group. The faculty chapter focuses on the demographic representation of ethnic minority groups among the faculty, their distribution across institutional levels, and their experiences in the academy. The demographic data provided point to the persisting underrepresentation of ethnic minority groups in the higher education faculty ranks. More recent data on ethnic minority group distribution across institutional types show that ethnic minority group members are most represented as faculty in public doctoral institutions (ranging from a low of 23.2 percent among African-Americans to a high of 46.8 percent among Asian-Americans), public comprehensive institutions (ranging from 10.9 percent among Native Americans to 21.8 percent among African-Americans), and public two-year institutions (ranging from 10.6 percent among Asian-Americans to 25.5 percent among Hispanics). Ethnic minority group members are least likely to be found on the faculty at private institutions. Not only do faculty members differ on the basis of gender and ethnic minority group membership in their approaches to teaching and in their relationships to students, they also differ in their experiences in the workplace. Women and faculty of color are more likely than other faculty to promote racial understanding through their teaching and to use a broader range of teaching techniques than their respective counterparts. Faculty of color often feel excluded from others in the workplace and sometimes see themselves as tokens that are supposed to address minority issues on campus. The chapter on boards, presidents, and senior administrators provides some demographic data on the representation of women and persons of color in these positions. As might be expected, White males are the majority in every category and are most represented on the boards of independent colleges and universities. At the level of the presidency, women and ethnic minorities are most likely to be found at the lower end of the stratification system of higher education, where they still continue to be underrepresented. According to the authors, increases in the number of women and ethnic minorities assuming presidencies have stalled in recent years. Further, while administrators are more likely to express commitment to diversity than are faculty and staff, they seldom demonstrate their commitment through action and rarely seem to recognize the possibility that the institution itself should be changed. The final part of the book provides strategies for organizational change. The authors present a rational model that emphasizes strategic planning, multicultural audits, alteration of leadership roles to include diversity and multiculturalism as areas of responsibility, and use of multicultural leadership teams to provide direction to and promote changes within the institution. The authors also emphasize the need to move colleges and universities from monocultural to multicultural institutions, especially by providing multicultural instruction in the classroom. Support for and from faculty would, of course, be necessary in order to achieve substantive gains in this area. The authors see student affairs programs as important change agents in moving colleges and universities along the path to multiculturalism. They provide examples of how these programs can make contributions, including group-specific programming, diversity workshops, multicultural programming in the residence halls, student involvement in intergroup conflict mediation, and intergroup dialogues. These activities are intended to address change both at the level of the personal and the institutional. Overall, the authors do an excellent job of integrating conceptual frameworks, empirical findings, and program descriptions into a relatively comprehensive portrait of the need for and the ways by which to change America's colleges and universities into multicultural institutions. They recognize that the road to multiculturalism is fraught with pitfalls, traps, and immense challenges, but they also fully understand that the nation's welfare depends on how far colleges and universities move toward multiculturalism. All members of the academy, from regents to students, would benefit from a close reading of this book. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR MAILING LIST is a shared mission partnership with the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) http://www.aahe.org/ The National Teaching and Learning Forum (NT&LF)
CURRENT URL http://dangerousprofessors.net/2006/02/review-right-left-and-wrong-david.html
Review: Right, left, and wrong, David Horowitz's latest attack on America's left-leaning college professors doesn't add up By Neil Gross | February 26, 2006 THE resignation last week of Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers is being cited in some quarters as evidence that politically correct professors, like the ones who were upset over Summers's comments on women in science, rule the roost in elite academic institutions. Some conservatives outside the academy, meanwhile, are wondering whether American higher education might be rotten to the core. Critiques of this sort have a familiar ring. In his 1963 book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, the historian Richard Hofstadter observed that the tendency to denigrate those who spend their lives in ivory towers is a persistent feature of American culture. The phenomenon owed its strength, in his view, to the evangelical Protestantism and pro-business spirit that had helped define our nation almost from the beginning. Leading the charge against the American professoriate in our day is the leftist-turned-conservative David Horowitz, who heads the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a Los Angeles think tank. In the 1990s, Horowitz helped whip up conservative opposition to campus speech codes banning demeaning remarks toward members of oppressed groups. More recently, he has turned his attention to rooting out liberal bias in the academy. Students for Academic Freedom, a group he founded, promotes the cause of ''intellectual diversity" in teaching, faculty appointments, and even research. Horowitz is also the author of an ''Academic Bill of Rights" asserting that students are entitled to an education free of ''political, ideological or religious orthodoxy" imposed upon them by professors. This right, he says, is routinely infringed by liberal academics who voice their politics in the classroom. Legislatures in 17 states are considering making the ''Academic Bill of Rights" law. In Horowitz's recently published book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, he profiles left-leaning scholars who ''appear to believe that an institution of higher learning is an extension of the political arena." His targets range from the obvious, such as MIT linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky, to more obscure figures like Oneida Meranto, an associate professor of political science at Metropolitan State College in Denver. Horowitz insists that the professors profiled in the book are ''representative" of the American university as a whole, that liberal bias is ''increasingly widespread throughout the academic profession," and that it's time conservatives did something about it. The Professors, however, is no exemplar of careful scholarship. Despite his claims, the professors Horowitz discusses aren't representative in any statistical sense. The leading major in American colleges and universities these days is business. Nearly 22 percent of all bachelor's degrees nationwide are awarded in business and business-related fields fields whose professors tend to hold more moderate political views. By contrast, only about 4 percent of bachelor's degrees go to English majors, only 2 percent to history majors, and 2 percent to sociology majors. Yet professors from these three fields together comprise nearly a quarter of Horowitz's sample, while not a single business school professor graces his pages. Nor, except for Stanford biologist and environmentalist Paul Ehrlich, does any natural scientist, computer scientist, or professor of medicine. The sample is skewed in other ways as well. Scholars Horowitz describes as giving aid and comfort to Islamic fundamentalists make up 16 percent of his sample. While there is no necessary correlation between being a scholar of the Mideast and supporting fundamentalist politics, it's worth noting that the Middle East Studies Association of North America only has about 2,600 members, representing less than 1 percent of all American college and university professors. Horowitz's portrayal leaves the impression that leftists and other ''dangerous academics" have taken over American higher education. In fact, a relatively small percentage of the instruction given to the average undergraduate is in fields where academics who mix politics and scholarship might presumably be found. Of course, this assumes that most professors of English, history, and sociology do believe it acceptable to bring their politics into the classroom. There is no quantitative evidence of this: Studies Horowitz cites purporting to show that Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans in some fields and institutions don't speak to the question. Horowitz's individual profiles are a poor substitute for more solid data on professors and their politics. Nor are they really intended to be such a substitute. The Professors is not an objective account written from the standpoint of social science. Horowitz's book is a one-sided screed that mimics in form the kind of knee-jerk politics he mocks. What really rankles Horowitz aren't professors who bring their politics into the classroom, but professors who hold political views different than his own. Marxists come in for particular attack, comprising 26 percent of his profiles. Needless to say, he doesn't bother to profile any conservative academic ideologues. Although Horowitz's statistics are suspect, he is not wrong to suggest that, since the 1960s, some liberals have been colonizing segments of academe with political ideals in mind. Now conservatives like Horowitz are trying to do the same. This is a phenomenon that Richard Hofstadter never really anticipated: the university as political battleground. The time may be ripe, then, for a consideration of the role, perceived and real, of politics on campus -- not just at Harvard, but nationwide. But on such a fraught subject as this, there can be no excuse for failing to distinguish partisanship from serious social scientific research. Neil Gross is assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University. David Horowitz's Response: Close But no Cigar By David Horowitz Even before my new book The Professors appeared in book stores, attacks on it began to appear on the Internet and I predicted that it would be a long time before any leftist reviewed the book I actually wrote. Apparently The Professors posed such a threat to the self-esteem of Michael Berube and others who sought to dismiss it, they thought reading the actual text superfluous. A dose of agitprop satire would suffice. Professor Berube actually wrote two reviews based on the text of a fund-raising letter that someone else had written to raise money for the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. As a result, Berube’s “reviews” relied heavily on misrepresentation and ridicule of the straw men he created and were embarrassingly devoid of any substantive engagement with the argument I had made. At Amazon.com close to a hundred leftist followers of Berube posted “reviews” amounting to little more than verbal flatulence. Consequently, I was pleasantly pleasant surprised to see a column in the Boston Globe this Sunday, which actually displayed an acquaintance with my text and a offered a reasonable appreciation of some of the things I had said. It was equally surprising that the column in which these observations appeared should be written by an Assistant Professor of Sociology (at Harvard), a field whose members are so generally intolerant of conservatives that nationally their representation on sociology faculties is about 1 in 28. Almost along among leftist critics, Professor Neil Gross was able to get the basic elements of my academic freedom campaign right: “Students for Academic Freedom, a group [Horowitz] founded, promotes the cause of ‘intellectual diversity’ in teaching, faculty appointments and even research. Horowitz is also the author of an ‘Academic Bill of Rights’ asserting that students are entitled to an education free of ‘political, ideological or religious orthodoxy’ imposed upon them by professors. This right, he says, is routinely infringed by liberal academics who voice their politics in the classroom….In Horowitz’s recently published book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America , he profiles left-leaning scholars who “appear to believe that an institution of higher learning is an extension of the political arena.” Yes. Precisely so. And bravo to Neil Gross for getting all this right. He has shown that even a leftist can. And thereby he has also exposed the calculated malice of all those leftists like Michael Berube who have deliberately misrepresented what I have written in order to circumvent the difficulties of responding to what I have said. But after this fine start, Professor Gross goes seriously awry, showing that these difficulties are prickly indeed. “Horowitz insists that the professors profiled in this book are ‘representative’ of the university as a whole,…” writes Professor Gross. Actually I don’t. What I say is this: “Although such a judgment is beyond the scope of this inquiry, it is a reasonable assumption that the majority of university professors remain professionals and are devoted to traditional academic methods and pursuits.” In other words, what I say is almost exactly the opposite of what Professor Gross says I say. To be fair, the last chapter in The Professors is titled, “The Representative Nature of the Professors Profiled In This Volume,” which is certainly misleading if you don’t read the chapter. (If I had realized that it could be so misleading, I would’ve given it another title). On the other hand, if you actually read the chapter you will see that what it means is this: The 101 professors profiled in the book are representative of the 10 percent of faculties everywhere whom I estimate are radical activists rather than academic scholars. This is the real subject of my book. Professor Gross follows this mistake with another. He asserts that I also insist that “liberal bias is ‘increasingly widespread throughout the academic profession,…’” Note that the words “liberal bias” are not actually part of the sentence he quotes from book. In fact, the actual quote from my book reads as follows: “Thus, the problems revealed in this text – the explicit introduction of political agendas into the classroom, the lack of professionalism in conduct, and the decline in professional standards – appear to be increasingly widespread throughout the academic profession and at virtually every type of institution of higher learning.” In other words, my book is not about “liberal bias” in the academy, but about its intellectual corruption. It happens that this corruption is a product of the political zealotry of a generation of leftwing activists – radicals who stayed in the university to get PhDs in order to avoid serving their country in Vietnam . But it is their lack of academic values and their betrayal of their educational calling that are the focus of the analysis in my book. As to “liberal bias” itself The Professors says this: “This book is not intended as a text about leftwing bias in the university and does not propose that a leftwing perspective on academic faculties is a problem in itself….Professors have every right to interpret the subjects they teach according to their individual points of view. That is the essence of academic freedom. But they also have professional obligations as teachers, whose purpose is the instruction and education of students, not to impose their biases on their students as though they were scientific facts.” I don’t think I could have stated this more clearly. Since these passages are part of the text that Professor Gross has actually read, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that his misrepresentation of my argument is not accidental. In fact it is necessary. For otherwise Gross could not construct his own argument against what I have written. His argument is this: “ The Professors… is no exemplar of scholarly criticism. Despite his claims, the professors Horowitz discusses aren’t representative in any statistical sense.” Gross argues that English Lit majors make up only 4% of undergraduate degrees, while History majors account for only 2%, and so forth. In other words, the professors in what I claim to be a representative group, are actually only a tiny minority of all professors in the university. But as I have already pointed out, I never claimed that the professors I discuss are statistically representative of the faculty as whole. My claim is that they represent 10%, which would be more than 60,000 professors nationally. (In the book I reduce this figure to half to be “conservative.”) But far more importantly, it is immaterial how many students major in English literature or Women’s Studies or Black Studies, or Post-Colonial Studies – fields that are either highly ideological (as the case with English Literature) or exclusively ideological (as is the case with the others). What is important is how many students actually take English Literature, History, Women’s Studies and Black Studies courses. Because the academic left views education as an opportunity to indoctrinate a captive audience, academic radicals have conspired to ensure that all undergraduates are required to take at least one of these courses, and usually several. That is what “multiculturalism” as currently defined is about. Professor Gross has a peculiarly narrow view of what might constitute a problem in the contemporary academy. For example, he claims that even if Middle Eastern Studies Departments are generally Islamicist – that is, regard America as an imperialist aggressor and Islamic radicals as freedom fighters resisting the American Empire (which they do), there are only 2,600 Middle Eastern Studies professors all told. This is less than one percent of the total professorial population. But what if they are also almost 100% of the professors tasked with educating Americans about an enemy who is out to destroy them? Apparently, Professor Gross, doesn’t regard this as a problem. In concluding his critique, Professor Gross argues that while I may have described 101 professors who believe it is acceptable to bring politics into the classroom, I haven’t provided statistical evidence that they are representative of any others beside themselves. This is correct, but it overlooks the analytic case I have made that the very structure of the university’s hiring and promotion procedures ensures the representative nature of my professors. Thus, in order to be hired in the first place and then promoted to tenure rank, a full professorship and chair of his department, an academic impostor and extremist like Ward Churchill had to be voted on by his entire department four times, be reviewed by his dean and by the central administration of his university and receive recommendations from at least a dozen “experts” in his field outside his own university. These facts indicate that the corruption is not that of an isolated individual or even merely a department but extends into the field itself. Here are some pieces of the argument I make for concluding that the 101 professors I have described reflect attitudes that are more general: “ More than ninety per cent of the professors profiled in this text have attained tenure rank, an indication that their academic work is approved by their peers both within their department and university, and nationally (through the requirement of outside letters approving the quality of their work). Their tenure also makes them eligible to vote for decades on who will be hired in the future to their departments and who will be promoted to tenure rank….At least 14 of the professors profiled here are (or have been) Department Chairs at one university and sometimes more. As Chairs they are in a position to designate members of Search Committees and hence to shape the composition of their departments….The professors in this volume are drawn from the broad spectrum of fields….They teach at sixty-six representative institutions of higher learning, located in every geographical region….The list intentionally includes institutions large and small, and in many different categories: local public colleges (Metro State, Montclair State, San Francisco State); private liberal arts colleges and universities (Dayton, Emory, U.S.C); major state universities (Colorado, Illinois, Penn State); and Ivy League giants (Penn, Princeton). The list includes Catholic institutions (De Paul, St. Xavier, Villanova), Jewish institutions (Brandeis), Protestant institutions (Baylor) and a Quaker institution (Earlham).” And so forth. At the end of his “review,” Professor Gross becomes somewhat unpleasant in assaulting my work and therefore even more reckless in his distortions of the text. Along the way, however, he makes a major concession: the problem I have described does exist (more kudos to him): “[Horowitz] is not wrong to suggest that, since the 1960s, some liberals have been colonizing segments of academe with political ideals in mind. Now conservatives like Horowitz are trying to do the same.” And what is his evidence for this? In the end Professor Gross wants the examination of the problem I have identified to be scholarly and scientific. I couldn’t agree more. I have demonstrated that the problem exists; I invite Professor Gross to quantify it if he dares. posted by admin at 12:07 PM 1 Comments: Maxwell Hoffman said... These people proclaim to be "intellectuals" and anyone who dares question them to be "anti-intellectual". Yet whenever their perspectives are challenged such as what Mr. Horowitz's book-The Professors does, there are immature and personal attacks on Horowitz that are being able to be listed as "reviews" at Amazon.com? What a bunch of hyprocrites the Left have become. And of course people who hate neo-Cons who proclaim to be "anti-Communist" but only when it involves bashing America as the USSR.
CURRENT URL http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen056/UGC-Responses-8Mar06.html
The Undergraduate Council's examination of grading patterns in University of Oregon undergraduate courses from 1992 to 2004 revealed significant grade inflation (see the attached Grade Inflation Report, February 2006). This pattern is not unique to the University of Oregon, and similar trends nationally have prompted a significant number of colleges and universities to respond locally within their own campus communities. For example, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Princeton, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Indiana University are addressing the problem of grade inflation. UNC introduced its report with the following anecdote to sum up the state of grading and student grade expectations at UNC in February 2000: A faculty colleague recounts meeting a former student: "I took your course last year and it was the worst experience of my life." Oh? "Well, I mean, I enjoyed the course and I learned a lot, but it just about destroyed my GPA ." [Fearing the worst] What grade did you receive? "A B+ . " Current efforts to improve matters are motivated by the understanding that faculty responsibility for the curriculum includes an obligation to provide meaningful evaluation of student work. Such evaluation requires a clear understanding of the meaning of each grade, and the capacity to distinguish multiple degrees of mastery of subject matter. At the same time, this responsibility is balanced by academic freedom, which allows faculty members to grade as they deem appropriate. Clearly, if the UO decides to distinguish itself as one of the institutions attempting to address the problem of grade inflation, faculty members will need to collaborate within their departments to develop approaches that respect both the responsibility and the freedom involved in the act of grading students. We recognize that curbing grade inflation is difficult. A number of market forces favor the tendency to award high grades, and there is concern that if grade deflation is not universal, UO students will be at a disadvantage with respect to their peers at other institutions. On the other hand, inaction will quickly lead to a grading system that is of little value. The growing public demand for standardized proficiency demonstrations may well be prompted by the lack of evaluative information in college grades. From this perspective, if the University of Oregon were to succeed in curtailing grade inflation, our students would likely benefit from the University's enhanced reputation for rigor. In the interest of stimulating a productive campus-wide conversation, the Undergraduate Council has considered possible ways to curb grade inflation on our campus and has compiled them in Section I below. These ideas represent an initial frame for the conversation and should not be confused with recommendations. Any recommendations that come forward will do so through a process of campus-wide discussion coupled with further research into their feasibility. The Council has also gathered approaches that are already practiced by some individual UO units or by other AAU institutions. These practices are summarized in Sections II and III, and are available in complete form on the Undergraduate Council website http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ucouncil ) under "Resources & Links". Section IV is a summary of some additional topics that came up during the Council's discussion of grade inflation. Many of these are potential causes of grade inflation. Although they are worth noting, the Council discovered that establishing causality for a phenomenon as complex as this one is next to impossible. It is our belief that the most productive course of action at this point is to identify policies that have the potential to curtail grade inflation, but do not require a detailed understanding of its cause(s). Next steps: We expect that a lively campus-wide discussion of the Grade Inflation Report will generate many proposals for action. We invite all interested members of the academic community to participate and to send ideas to the Undergraduate Council, in care of Cathy Kraus ( ckraus@uoregon.edu ). Contributions will be posted on the Undergraduate Council website. After discussion and feedback during Spring Term of this year (2005/06), we anticipate formulating recommendations based on the ideas that emerge. An approximate time table would put the Council's consideration of possible recommendations in Fall Term 2006, and a motion to the University Senate in early in Winter Term 2007. I. Possible ways to curb grade inflation A. Collect and disseminate grading patterns The Registrar's Office could periodically disseminate grade distributions for all CRNs in a standard form to the appropriate departments/schools and individual faculty. For example, faculty might be given grade distributions for their own courses, and for comparable ones, at the end of each term. Broader comparisons of grading patterns - among departments and schools and colleges - could be made available on a yearly cycle. B. Articulate the meaning of grade levels and develop departmental grading guidelines 1) For the university as a whole, faculty could define what each grade level means. Although formal grade definitions are provided in the UO Catalog ("A, excellent" and so forth), the subject is not emphasized and is seldom discussed. It might be useful to elaborate the current one-word definitions. 2) P/NP could be substituted for the letter grade option in certain kinds of classes - for example, performance-based classes, practica , or classes in which, historically, no significant distribution of grades exists. 3) Each department could establish guidelines for grading -- such as the GPA range that is appropriate for certain kinds of courses or the % of As and Bs that is expected in them. Grade distributions could be included in the departments' evaluations of teaching performance. Grading guidelines, and the use of grade distributions in evaluation, should be accompanied by a plan for review and improvement over time. 4) Practices and progress in limiting grade inflation could be monitored and compared with relevant national standards, such as those at AAU institutions. Locally, departmental grading guidelines, and annual reports of progress, could be submitted to the Vice President for Academic Affairs for review. C. Present UO grading philosophy and expectations clearly 1) Before they begin teaching, new faculty members, including GTFs, could be introduced to university philosophy and departmental guidelines related to grading. 2) New students could be clearly informed of general UO grading practices as part of their orientation to the university. If needed, more specific information could be provided by individual departments or programs. 3) To provide an appropriate context for grades earned by UO students, the university could communicate its effort to eliminate grade inflation to external constituents such as employers, parents, alumni and donors. 4) Contextual information for grades could be provided on transcripts. For example, the mean grade for each CRN and the deviation of the individual student's grade from the mean could be included. II. Anti-grade inflation measures already in use at UO A. Lundquist College of Business LCB QUARTERLY GRADE REPORT At the end of each term, the LCB emails an Excel file to all LCB faculty members (tenured, tenure-track, instructor, adjunct, GTF) and to all LCB administrators responsible for academic programs. The file includes the following categories of information for all sections of all courses offered that term: � Subject Code � Course # � Instructor's Name � CRN � Number of A's Given / Percentage of A's Given � # of B's / % of B's � # of C's / % of C's � # of D's / % of D's � # of F/N's / % of F/N's � Total Number of Grades Given � GPA for that Section � GPA Guidelines for that Section (See "Guidelines" below) � Variance from the Guidelines � Five-Year Average for that Course � Variance from the Five-Year Average LCB GRADING GUIDELINES "The table below lists the guidelines developed by the LCB for undergraduate and masters courses. We recognize that there is variation in ability and effort of students. However, we believe the standards listed below are sufficiently broad to accommodate reasonable variation in performance. Department heads, program directors and the associate deans will monitor grades awarded relative to these guidelines, provide quarterly information on grade distributions, and follow-up on significant exceptions." (excerpted from LCB policy document, fall-2002) Average Grade Point Ranges by Type of Classes Class Level Average Grade Point Range Undergraduate Pre-Business Classes 2.3 - 2.8 Undergraduate Minor Classes 2.7 - 3.2 Undergraduate Major Core Classes 2.6 - 3.1 Undergraduate Major Electives 2.7 - 3.2 Undergraduate Honors Classes 3.2 - 3.5 MBA Core Classes 3.1 - 3.4 Other Masters Classes 3.2 - 3.5 B. Economics Department ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT GRADING POLICY Fall 2000 "The department rule-of-thumb for percent A's and B's (excluding grades of P, NP, I, X, and W) for undergraduate courses will be 55% for lower division courses, i.e., Ec 101, 201, and 202; and 65% for 300-level and 400-level upper division courses (excluding Ec 411, 413, 423, 424, and 425). Reasonable deviations of course would be expected, for example when a class does quite well or quite poorly. But we expect deviations (WITH RARE EXCEPTION) to lie within 10 percentage points of the above-stated means." III. Anti-grade inflation measures at other institutions A. Perspectives on the Problem of Grade Inflation EVALUATION AND THE ACADEMY: ARE WE DOING THE RIGHT THING? By Henry Rosovsky and Matthew Hartley What are the characteristics of a good grading system? - It should be rigorous, accurate, and permit meaningful distinctions among students in applying a uniform standard of performance. - It should be fair to students and candid to those who are entitled to information about students. - It should be supportive of learning and helpful to students in achieving their educational goals. Short of a fundamental systemic overhaul or return to an earlier day, neither of which are realistic possibilities, we review various suggestions that are contained in the literature. GRADE INFLATION ...WHY IT'S A NIGHTMARE* By Jonathan Dresner Solutions Already Being Tried There are a few active attempts to solve the problems of grade inflation and educational effectiveness. Some of them are at the level of the individual school; more come from 'suggestions' of accrediting agencies; post-graduation testing is already standard in graduate school admissions and certain professional arenas. Colleges and universities have tried a variety of techniques to deflate grades. Some have adjusted their grading systems: Princeton instituted a limit to A-level grades. Harvard adjusted its GPA calculation to narrow the A-/B+ gap and that has reportedly been effective in reducing the A-level overload slightly. B. Steps Taken Elsewhere to Curb Grade Inflation Princeton University GRADING POLICIES IN UNDERGRADUATE COURSES AND INDEPENDENT WORK Beginning with fall term 2004-05, grades awarded at Princeton University reflect new institutional grading expectations for undergraduate courses and independent work ... Princeton's new expectations posit a common grading standard for every academic department and program, under which A's (A+, A, A-) shall account for less than 35 percent of the grades given in undergraduate courses and less than 55 percent of the grades given in junior and senior independent work. These percentages are consistent with historical grading patterns at Princeton for the two decades between the early 1970s and the early 1990s. For departments that have maintained these patterns over the last decade, the new policy will affirm established practice. For other departments, the new policy will mark a significant break with recent practice. Overall, implementing the new expectations across the University will, at least at present, set Princeton's grade distribution well apart from those of its closest peers. Indiana University THE EXPANDED GRADE CONTEXT RECORD by Mark McConahay and Roland Cot� ... The Faculty Council charged its Educational Policies Committee (EPC) to develop a grade-indexing scheme that would put individual student grades into a context that would be meaningful to students as well as to all others who viewed the information. The result, introduced in the spring of 1998, is IU's Expanded Grade Context Record, a system that generates a student record that includes elements from a traditional transcript as well as additional elements that place the grade into a broader context. 1 The additional information includes: � Index (number of students in the course section receiving the same or higher grades over the total number of GPA grades awarded) Grade distribution (number of students receiving each possible grade, including withdrawals) � Instructor name � Class GPA (average of all GPA grades awarded in the course section) � Average student GPA (average GPA of all students in the class who received a GPA grade) � Majors (percentage of students in the class whose major matches the school or department offering the course). The information in the record is distributed via standard reports such as transcripts and is also made available for inquiry via the World Wide Web. To ensure privacy, neither the index nor the context information appear when fewer than five students were enrolled in the course section or received a GPA grade. University of North Carolina -Chapel Hill GRADE INFLATION AT UNC - CHAPEL HILL: A REPORT TO THE FACULTY COUNCIL Prepared by The Educational Policy Committee February 2, 2000 Principles Guiding Reform Our study of grade inflation at UNC-Chapel Hill leads us to propose a set of principles that should guide any attempt to restore the integrity of the grading system: 1. It is the Faculty, acting through the Faculty Council, that determines the purpose and the form of the grading system. Reiterating long-standing faculty policy we assert that the purpose of grades is to identify degrees of mastery of subject matter. Moreover, letter grades have specific meaning with respect to the mastery of that material ... 2. Grades measure performance, not innate ability or individual worth. They should fulfill the functions described above, and only those functions. 3. The meaning of letter grades should be widely published. 4. Schools and departments should bear the primary responsibility for maintaining the integrity of their grading systems, but they must be responsible to the University as a whole. 5. Grading practices of schools, departments and instructors should be public information and departmental standards should be subject to ongoing faculty review. 6. The forces that pressure instructors to award high grades should be reduced to a minimum. 7. The faculty, acting through the Faculty Council, must have the means at its disposal to insure the integrity of the grading system. Some Suggested Reforms The principles just enumerated suggest some specific reforms that might help to achieve them: . The Faculty Council should adopt clear quantitative guidelines for the grading system at UNC-Chapel Hill. . The faculty needs the ability to insure that the norms of the grading system are observed. . At the beginning of each academic year, the Chair of the Faculty should send to the parents of all incoming freshmen a letter that details the substantive meaning of the grading system and informs them as to the distribution of grades to be found at UNC.
CURRENT URL http://davidhildebrand.org/index.php?page=teaching/courses/academicethics2.php
Syllabus, University Of Texas at Austin, Department of Graduate Studies GRS 390R Academic and Professional Ethics Meeting times: Summer 2000, T W Th 1:00-3:30 p.m. Professor: Dr. David Hildebrand COURSE RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES Going through the arduous process of completing masters and doctorates, graduate students become increasingly aware of the many ethical dilemmas that will confront them as future faculty. Some of these conflicts are already in play. For example, many graduate students must already deal with rivalries between their graduate faculty's members, the pressure for good teaching evaluations, sexual harassment, distribution of resources such as fellowships and financial aid, intellectual property issues, and many others. This course is premised on the fact that these issues will not be going away; rather they will be multiplying in both number and complexity. In order to prepare graduate students to deal with this, a wide range of issues will be discussed along with some general strategies for managing ethical dilemmas. The approach here will be philosophical-that is to say, all issues will include discussion of the justifications for proposed solutions. After discussing some basic philosophical approaches to ethics, we'll look at a range of ethical issues that concern professionals generally, and especially academics. The course will be discussion-driven, and it is my hope that several guest speakers with relevant areas of expertise will join us. At the end of this course, you should have achieved these objectives: * Be able to engage in philosophical inquiry with your colleagues that is critical yet constructive. * Be able to describe a range of duties, obligations, values, and conflicts particular to the academic profession * Be able to give an ethical analysis of issues specific to (a) your academic/professional discipline, and (b) your own career * Be able to describe and discuss a variety of theoretical and practical strategies for resolving some of these ethical conflicts * Be able to evaluate the relative merit of the justifications offered for these strategies * Be able to formulate, at least provisionally, a position regarding the goals, identities, and functions of academics and their institutions in relation to a larger context (e.g., cultural, national, international). CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE Week I Introduction and Overview July 18 Course introduction; syllabus review; general discussion; short lecture on ethics July 19 Survey of issues and facts about the changing academic environment July 20 Professorial Duties, Obligations, and Virtues Week II The Teacher-Student Relationship July 25 Relationships1: teachers, undergraduates, grading, and student autonomy. July 26 Relationships 2: teachers, undergraduates, issues beyond the classroom (e.g., friendship) July 27 Unscheduled Week III Graduate School and Beyond: Toward a Life of Scholarship Aug. 1 Graduate teaching: what are the obligations of a graduate teacher? What do graduate students deserve from their training? Aug. 2 Balancing teaching and research Aug. 3 Obligations and virtues of scholarship Week IV On the Job: Workplace Hurdles and Obstacles Aug. 8 Tenure and Promotion Aug. 9 Confidentiality, Discrimination, and Sexual Harassment Aug. 10 Women, Families, Dual Career Couples, and Nepotism Week V What Role, Intellectuals? Academics as Citizens Aug. 15 The Canon and Multiculturalism Aug. 16 Academic Freedom Aug. 17 Academics-in-Society; Politics and the Academy COURSE METHODS This is a discussion-based course, and significant weight will be placed on everyone's contribution to class discussion. For each session you will have read appropriate articles that will provide the basis of our discussion of both practical and theoretical issues. We will read and discuss a variety of academic and ethical issues, dividing our course into sections based upon the primary ethical agent or relationship-graduate student, junior faculty, student-teacher, etc. Most class sessions will begin with a "warm-up" exercise/discussion of a question either prepared in advance for that session or introduced at thebeginning of the session. I am likely to lecture briefly (30 minutes or so) at some point in each class. There will be occasional in-class group work, short presentations, and guest speakers at several sessions. ROLE OF THE INSTRUCTOR My goal is to foment and guide critical discussion of the philosophical issues raised by our readings and other course materials. I will facilitate our class discussions, lecture briefly when necessary, consult with you one-on-one about your presentations, and maintain the momentum of the class. In many cases, you will know more about the specific facts and issues of your field or discipline; my hope is that you will educate me about those issues. In those cases where you think I am misinformed or mistaken philosophically, it is an absolute requirement of the course that you correct me so that I, too, may be educated by this course. TEXTS and SUPPLIES Required is: 1. Markie - A Professor's Duties : Ethical Issues In College Teaching , Edited by Peter J. Markie (Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, 1994). ISBN: 0847679527 (pbk. : alk. paper) 2. MRU - Morality, Responsibility, And The University : Studies In Academic Ethics , edited by Steven M. Cahn. (Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1990). ISBN: 0877229597 3. SAINTS - Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia , revised edition by Steven M. Cahn (Rowman and Littlefield, 1993) ISBN 0-8226-3028-1 4. PACKET - Available at Speedway copy, 21st and Guadalupe (478-3334). Supplies A notebook. A highly alert and enthusiastic brain (your own). ASSIGNMENTS and EVALUATION 10% PARTICIPATION in course discussion 30% SHORT ASSIGNMENTS (1-2 pages, 12 total, graded on a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory/No credit basis) 40% MIDTERM PAPER(to be presented in class); OPTIONAL REVISION and expansion of this paper (as a final paper, to be re-graded) 20% Short CRITICAL COMMENTARY of another's midterm paper READINGS: It is expected that you have done the readings before we discuss them. It is strongly suggested that you do more difficult readings twice before class. PARTICIPATION: Philosophy is a team sport. It requires verbal discussion as much as written argument. There will be ample opportunity for active participation, which I value and is our primary vehicle towards knowledge. "Participation" may also include the following kinds of things: attendance, ability and willingness to contribute to class discussion and/or group activities, e-mail dialogue, etc. SHORT ASSIGNMENTS (12 total) The purpose of these assignment is to help you clarify your understanding of the readings and to help you think about the various dimensions of these issues. These assignments will be one page, typewritten reaction papers on some specific issue which you find compelling in the readings. On occasion, I will suggest a specific topic in advance. You must do 12 papers total. This will be a "graded" assignment only in a loose sense; in other words it will be either satisfactory (100) or unsatisfactory (50). A zero (0) will be awarded if nothing (or next to nothing) is turned in. MIDTERM PAPER (to be presented in class): A 5-7 pp. critical analysis of an issue relevant to one of the course's topics will constitute the largest percentage of the class grade. These topics will be assigned early in the course, so look over the topics on the reading schedule and try to form a preference early on. You will present this paper in class on the day assigned, and you must bring copies of your paper for the rest of the class. Someone else will be responsible for commenting (2 pp.) on your paper, so papers must be done several days in advance of the presentation. Coordinate with your commentator as soon as possible. You have the option of REVISING and expanding your paper to accommodate critical remarks; such a revision will be due at the end of the course and will be RE-GRADED. CRITICAL COMMENTARY (to be presented in class): A 2 pp. critical commentary upon a classmate's midterm paper is also required. This commentary can, but need not, be a negative critique; it may also expand upon some issue in the paper that you believe has been given inadequate attention. The better you make your commentary, the more you help your writer should he or she decide to revise their paper. Coordinate with your paper-presenter as soon as possible. COURSE INFORMATION AND POLICIES Attendance: There should be no problems with attendance in a graduate course. If you are absent during presentation days, you will not be able to give your presentation, introduce, or provide feedback to your colleagues. Because of the fast pace of this summer course, there will be no time for make-up presentations. Not completing these assignments will result in your not receiving a CR or a passing grade in the course. So, be in class to discuss the issues, deliver your presentations, and critique your colleagues. ASSESSMENT: Grades will be assigned according to this scale: 90-100 A (mastery of material, critical insight and ingenuity, impeccable mechanics) 80-89 B (competent comprehension, some insight, reasonably accurate mechanics) 70-79 C (incoherent or inaccurate comprehension, little insight, sloppy mechanics) If you do not understand the reason you received a specific grade on any assignment, you may talk to me about it. If you honestly believe a grade should be reconsidered, take time to review my comments and follow these instructions: * Wait at least 24 hours after you received the grade but no more than one week to talk to me about it. * Review your paper and take notes about areas that concern you * Make an appointment with me and bring your original evaluation. Course Calendar and Schedule of Readings P + C = Presentations and Commentaries SA = Short Writing Assignments Week I Introduction and Overview July 18 Course introduction; syllabus review; general discussion; short lecture on ethics None assigned July 19 Survey of issues and facts about the changing academic environment; SURVIVAL, 1-54 (in PACKET) MARKIE, 155-169; SHILS, 1-40 (in PACKET) July 20 Professorial Duties, Obligations, and Virtues MRU, 109-118; MARKIE, 3-66; SHILS, 41-72 (in PACKET) SA Week II The Teacher-Student Relationship July 25 Relationships1: teachers, undergraduates, grading, and student autonomy. In PACKET: Mohr, "The Ethics of Students", Minahan, "Teaching Democracy", MARKIE, 101-112, 113-128, 171-192; SA, P+C July 26 Relationships 2: teachers, undergraduates, issues beyond the classroom (e.g., friendship) MRU, 134-149; MARKIE, 67-82; SA, P+C July 27 Unscheduled ; SA, P+C Week III Graduate School and Beyond: Toward a Life of Scholarship Aug. 1 Graduate teaching: what are the obligations of a graduate teacher? What do graduate students deserve from their training? MRU, 119-133; SAINTS, 97-109; Other readings TBA; SA, P+C Aug. 2 Balancing teaching and research; MARKIE 193-237; SA, P+C Aug. 3 Obligations and virtues of scholarship; SURVIVAL, 183-212 (in PACKET); SAINTS, 45-70; SA, P+C Week IV On the Job: Workplace Hurdles and Obstacles Aug. 8 Tenure and Promotion Guest : Teresa Sullivan, Dean of Graduate Studies; SURVIVAL, 99-117 (in PACKET); SAINTS, 71-96; MRU, 56-92 SA, P+C Aug. 9 Confidentiality, Discrimination, and Sexual Harassment Guest : John Clarke, Professor of Art History; MRU, 150-176; SURVIVAL, 55-76, (in PACKET); SA, P+C Aug. 10 Women, Families, Dual Career Couples, and Nepotism PACKET: assorted articles from Academic Couples (25-43,226-247, 248-269); Other readings TBA SA, P+C Week V What Role, Intellectuals? Academics as Citizens Aug. 15 The Canon and Multiculturalism PACKET articles by Altieri, Richter, Searle, Blum; SA, P+C Aug. 16 Academic Freedom; MRU, 8-55; Other readings TBA SA, P+C Aug. 17 Academics-in-Society; Politics and the Academy SHILS, 73-96 (in PACKET); MRU, 243-270 Articles by Said, Menand (in PACKET) SA, P+C
CURRENT URL http://diverseeducation.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/
The Miseducation of a Negro Male Assistant Professor June 29, 2008 � 6 Comments By Emmett Lee Gill, Jr., PhD, MSW When I thought about pursuing my terminal degree I really dedicated little thought to all the components o f a J-O-B in academia. I pondered the research I would have to do, but the teaching and service components were truly afterthoughts. I assumed these elements would naturally come with the territory - you know they would be integrated into my game plan. In particular, I thought the teaching would be less challenging because I know my research methods and behavioral theory, I wanted students to learn, and I would avoid grade inflation. I was a miseducated Negro male assistant professor. I characterize myself as miseducated during my first two years because teaching in higher education has assumed a business model, and it has been adventurous to navigate to say the least. The consumer (i.e., the student) must be satisfied with their grade. Intellectual stimulation, new competencies, and the rigors of writing and creative thinking are of little value. Yet, I knew this because not long ago I sat on the other side of the speaking lantern. My miseducation emanates from my miscalculation of the intersection between consumer satisfaction and the professors’ race. As I approach my third year review and I reflect on my years at a research one institution, I have wondered privately and publicly whether I would have experienced some of the issues I have if I were a White sports scholar activist. During my short sojourn I have had more students than I care to mention… threaten to challenge grades, speak to colleagues about my/our classes, actually challenge their grades, tell mistruths about our verbal interactions, or flat out curse me out. One student stared me down and then slammed the door so hard that my 6’1”, 180 lbs. frame starting shaking so bad I had to call a 30-minute break. When I shared this with my incredibly supportive Dean he asked if it was racism and I said no because it was coming from blacks and whites. Sexism? Racism? Ageism? I am not sure, but like Duke Lacrosse something is going on. It’s enough to make you think twice whether to maintain your values and not give grades or make it easy on everyone. Students who trash me on www.ratemyprofessor.com often write that I am arrogant and to a certain degree it is true. Arrogance (i.e., confidence and consistency) is a trait I’ve had to learn. I am in a small minority in a competitive profession that requires precise writing, frequent oratories, quick responses to questions when there are very few “right” answers, and the self-motivation to succeed with very little supervision. I am an introvert so if I do not wake up each morning with a little confidence I would be eaten alive – in class, faculty/committee meetings, presentations, and parenting (lol). Arrogant a little, but how self-absorbed is a Negro male assistant professor who… delays his papers so students can finish assignments from other classes, wears jeans and caps to class, teaches theory using television programming, provides work for students in need, and holds some classes over meals… be? There are also those who give me good ratings on www.ratemyprofessor.com and I appreciate it when my “kids” show me love. Muchas gracias! When I entered the NBA of education I truly believed that I was prepared to quickly become an all-star. I cannot say I never thought about race, but my first two years teaching in the league have not been injury free. My miseducation has caused me to suffer some sprains, bruises, and maybe a concussion or two. Thankfully I have many supportive colleagues and satisfied consumers on my team. Moreover, I love this game… and with the grace of God and a little more schooling… I can help other miseducated Negro male assistant professors. Emmett Gill is an assistant professor at Rutgers, The State University, School of Social Work. Categories: Race � Tenure/professional issues in higher ed Tagged: academia , Emmett Gill , Sports Recent Posts The Growing Intolerance Must Be Confronted Get and Give All You Can: Advice for New Graduate Students Navigating the Racial Highway in America White Privilege: What if Henry Louis Gates had been White? Michael Jackson: A Transformative Human Being
CURRENT URL http://diverseeducation.wordpress.com/category/tenureprofessional-issues-in-higher-ed/
Entries categorized as 'Tenure/professional issues in higher ed' Intellect and Discipline: The Keys to a Successful Academic Career June 9, 2009 � 5 Comments By Dr. Marybeth Gasman I have a good friend who is the most brilliant individual I know. He has a mind that most of us would kill for -- at least most academics would. He is well-read, possessing a deep, almost stunning, knowledge of diverse subjects. He thinks in innovative and refreshing ways. He also has the "proper" educational background to succeed as a professor. In fact, given what is often valued in society, he could go just about anywhere with his three Ivy League degrees. What is the problem you might ask? He lacks discipline! He is fascinated by everything, yet easily bored. I typically feel confident in my intellect. However, I did have a professor in graduate school once tell me, "Marybeth, you may not be the smartest person, but you work harder than anyone I know." Of course, he was probably right no matter how much the comment stung. He had a point now that I think about it. One can be wonderfully, almost beautifully intelligent, but it doesn't amount to much unless you are disciplined. Often students and faculty members will ask me -- "How on earth can you be so productive?" The secret is discipline. As an academic, you must find time to write and I have learned over the course of my career that you need to compartmentalize your days. There is always something to do -- ideas to explore -- and your work will spill over into every aspect of your life if you let it. Work expands (read that in a book once and firmly believe it). So, what do I do? I write every day but Saturday. During the week, I usually begin at 9 a.m. and write (and do research) until roughly 2 p.m. I schedule all meetings and teaching after 2 p.m. unless absolutely necessary. On Sundays, I write in the evenings after my daughter goes to sleep. I'm not saying everyone needs to do this -- but you need a routine, you need discipline. Why this writing schedule and why this discipline? As I explained to another good friend the other day, most academics have a mission that they work toward fulfilling -- they live life for a bigger reason than themselves. I am one of these folks. I don't live merely for material possessions, but instead I thrive on the exploration of ideas and the solving of problems. I consider research a mystery and writing the pathway to solving a mystery. I am not a dreamer but a doer! Without this kind of passion and discipline, intellect will get you and more importantly, society nowhere. I tell my doctoral students, as well as those masters and undergraduate students interested in a faculty career, that crafting a workable routine that is rooted in discipline will help them succeed. Having a sense of discipline also means knowing when to say "no" -- this is especially important for women and people of color who tend to be asked more than others to do service-related work in the academy. Having discipline also means learning how much time to spend on teaching and advising. These areas are probably my favorite part of my job, but I realized long ago that being productive in terms of publications gives you a stronger voice in the academy -- a voice that leads to more freedom in the classroom and a greater ability to take care of and advocate for your students. Lastly, discipline means knowing what you are good at and focusing on that area. Too often academics try to be good at everything -- becoming a 'jack of all trades, master of none'. We forget that as professors we have a lifetime ahead of us to explore new ideas. Focusing on a few ideas at a time -- becoming an expert in one or two areas -- works to our advantage. Plus, no one likes a "know it all"! So back to my friend mentioned at the beginning of this post. I am working diligently to help him increase his level of discipline. I'm modeling good behavior. Hoping that the issue is nurture not nature at play because "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste." An associate professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Gasman is the author of Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) and lead editor of Understanding Minority Serving Institutions (SUNY Press, 2008). Categories: Diversity � General � PhD track � Race � Research � Teaching � Tenure/professional issues in higher ed Tagged: academic careers , doctoral students , Marybeth Gasman , Ph.D. , Research , writing Ain't I A Professor? May 14, 2009 � 4 Comments Ain’t I a professor? Living an Authentic Academic Life as a Black Intellectual By Robin Hughes In the last couple of months, I have mulled over an audience participant’s comment, which occurred during a national conference. To put it mildly, it has been quite bothersome. The comment/question was directed towards me. I took it as what seemed to be a passive aggressive assault on a paper that I had presented. During that presentation, I noted that it was a waste of time engaging in what some professors refer to as “playing the game”. I went on to state that other colloquialisms need to be reconceptualized as well. I stated that as scholars, we should not play games. We should care less, instead of being careful. We should consider tipping the boat over, instead of not rocking the boat, and that we should blow up the bridge instead of not burning any. My point being that these colloquialisms have influenced academic life, research, writing, and service to such an extent that it continues to mimic and perpetuate the same “mainstream and meaningless” jargon with little variation or voice from marginalized or underrepresented individuals. The audience member went on to state that he really wanted to learn about what he should be doing to keep his job. He asked what he should be doing in his present job. “ I want my job,” he lamented, in an almost sing-songy sort of voice. He laughed as if he had some great secret that he wanted to share with the rest of the peons. “He, he, he, I just want to get along…and plus, you cannot possibly be taken seriously or make it without some game playing.” In other words, 'you gotta do what you gotta do in order to fit in.' I took it to mean, 'if you must publish in certain in places, then so be it. If you must write in a certain way, then so be it. Shut up until spoken to, otherwise your word is just mud.' I play that day over and over again. I had to ask myself, do I play games as a professor, and if I do, what do they look like? I have come to the conclusion, for now anyway, I guess in a sense some political maneuvering might be necessary—I think. However, I still refuse to endorse the boot licker, which he, the inquirer, clearly wanted me to support. So, following several months of mulling, I must conclude that playing the game, as he described, is still an indignant game. Now, instead I ask, why should I or anyone for that matter have to play games? Now, I am not saying that there are not certain things that you must do while a professor, but my contract, and interpretation of the promotion and tenure document, which I have now read several times, still does not list boot-licking as a criteria for personal and academic growth. I ask, ain’t I a professor? Ain’t we professors? Now there are certain things that are expected of a faculty member in order to live in an academic space. However, I also know that one can live in an academic place and maintain one’s integrity. I would argue that the real question becomes somewhat close to the very question with regards to women that Sojourner Truth asked. I ponder, ain't I a professor, and what does being a professor mean? In order to live in an academic place must your life be predicated by others who dictate exactly what you should be doing, writing, saying, thinking, publishing, teaching? I cannot help but refer to chapters one and four of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and think that this very notion sounds vaguely and grotesquely reminiscent of Freiere’s philosophies—a little Pedagogy of the Oppress’ish to me. However, many of us are inclined to follow those perceived rules of engagement. We make like Nike, and just do it. I would argue again that we do “it” because it is too risky to do otherwise. We all fear being pulled over for thinking, engaging and just plain old writing while black? Think about requirements for tenure? Be prepared for folks to tell you exactly where you should write, submit to tier one journals only, and how you should write, use certain theoretical frames and write in a jargony fashion and you will be assured of tenure. I wake up some early mornings from the same frightmare that goes something like this: A full professor in sunglasses, driving a 1960’s model car with flashing red lights, pulls me over and says, “Keep your hands on the wheel and let me see your license to profess.” He hands me a citation. I am quickly reminded that I better keep to the rules of the academic police lest I getpulled over for writing while Black (WWB). A student actually informed me that she was told to write stuffy in order to get published in certain journals and wanted me to help edit to make the piece stuffier. I cringed. I also said, no. I asked her what she meant by stuffy. You know, she replied, scholarly. I imagine that stuffiness to sound a little like Professor Henry Higgins forcing Eliza Doolittle to talk like civilized “folks” in the 1950’s scene from My Fair Lady. The result now, however, is even more comical and utterly ridiculous in many instances. Stuffiness might sound like, if you could imagine, a new-aged Cruella Deville, the dog napper from the Disney movie, a fiendish and “stuffy” accent coached by Professor Henry Higgens. Followed by of chorus, a long song and dance number to the tune of "The Rain in Spain" lies mainly in the plain, yadda, yadda, yadda……. I can’t help but ask, what is the purpose of higher education? I am under the assumption that at its crux is that of affecting change. However, some of our very students, the ones with whom we are to train, think that one purpose is to serve as a repository for garbally, gookish, gunky educational crud? I suddenly hear the annyoing voice of Steve Urkel, did we, faculty, do that? When in fact we know that the purpose of higher education, and education in general, is supposed to be much more. Admittedly, I, too, must be brought back to earth after seeing one's name in lights (a hit on a CV). That is really not the goal. I often seek refuge in the writings of other scholars, those who assist me in the sanity and humanity of it all. One such scholar, Cornel West, writes: "The academic system of rewards and status prestige and influence, put a premium on those few black scholars who imitate the dominant paradigm . And if one is fortunate enough to be a spook who sits by the door, eavesdrops on the conversation among the prominent and prestigious, and reproduces their jargon in relation to black subject matter, one’s academic career is set." It is clear from West’s writings as well, that assimilationist intellectualism and garbally, gookish gunk are not the intention of living an academic life. Much like W.E.B. Dubois advances with the idea of the talented tenth and the double conscious, he presents educators with the very real concept of living an authentic intellectual life. We, academicians, have just seemed to get it all confused. We get authentic scholarship and intellectualism sort of confused with reproducing the status quo, intellectual work which typically does not push the envelope and only scratches the surface of bigger social problems. Some how, the notion of living with a double-conscious and the talented tenth have become associated with Black bourgeois’ preoccupation with mainstream run of the mill, academic, good old folks network affirmation. This affirmation makes us too hungry for status to be angry (Cornell West) or to be cognizant that we have not only sold out to black heritage, but just sold to getting ours—whatever the ours maybe—White male affirmation so it seems. This affirmation clouds our thinking, and ability to live an authentic academic life. W.E.B. Dubois’ philosophy of the talented tenth spoke to notions of exceptional people who would help to uplift Black America. He talked about folks like Ben Banneker, Phyllis Wheatley, and Sojourner Truth; men and women who strove to uplift their people. Somewhere along the line, however, many of us misinterpreted Dubois intention. A man who spent his last few years out of the public eye and in exile for his strong views, he was not talking about assimilating one tenth of the population of Black folks so that they could drive a Black man's wish (BMW), wear tweed jackets, and walk the “forever fall campus” (a term by Diana Natalicio, president of University of Texas El Paso). His intentions were well spelled out, keeping strong ties to Black culture, performing service to Black communities, and working to uplift Black folks. In the talented tenth, he described living an authentic life as an American—yet remaining authentically Black and American in a racist world, and how those two things play out or if they can play out. I still ask myself, can there be a happy marriage between the two—in the academy. I think so. But how does this happy marriage play out in the academy? How does one remain authentic, writing and professing while black? Can you live in certain spaces comfortably and remain authentic? Yes, and I would argue that it begins the minute that future academicians set foot on the door step of the ivory tower-during the interview. I tell folks that you better know what you are saying yes to, before you sign on the dotted line. Because once you have made your promise to do and be a certain type of person, then that is who folks expect to see in the office come Monday morning. You cannot be Angela Davis in the morning and fill-in-the-blank, right-winged, identity-confused Black scholar in the evening. You have to know which face you are going to wash every morning, and living a double, assimilationist life might become a little confusing. Besides, once you have gone pseudo-Black, it’s hard to go back. But, my dear audience member would more than likely ask me, how many folks do you know who have been successful at not playing the game? I can name a few—a lot. There are many scholars in the field who remain authentic, and have enjoyed fruitful careers. Think about the folks with whom you know and respect in the field. Think about what they write about, and ask what got them there. What got them through? What are they doing? Who respects their scholarship? Who respects them? There are a host of usual suspects who write from a critical framework, an Afrocentric framework who have been able to live an authentic academic life. Although I am quick to name full professors and associate professors, those who we consider to be pretty well-protected; there are others. There are junior professors whom we respect for “getting there” as their authentic selves, for daring to take a stance, to ruffle some feathers. There has been an influx of newly minted assistant professors, who at the time of writing of this article, convened several edgy presentations, and who dare to introduce Critical Race Theory to conference audiences, and traditional publishing houses, and to those who may never have the opportunity to indulge in such experiences (or who have ignored the writings and thus the experience). There has been a critical appearance of junior professors to the academy, who are speaking up about how they should write, to what audience, unique theoretical frames, teaching styles, content and authenticity and where they live academically. This is the talented tenth to which DuBois spoke. The talented tenth, who at times appears to be the talented 99% (actually I think everyone is talented—not all authentic though), is beginning to walk through the doors of the ivory tower, letting everyone know not only where they will publish, and to whom, but how they will teach and what. And , most importantly, how and where they will live in this academic space and the importance of an intellectual life and authenticity. Dr. Robin L. Hughes teaches courses in Higher Education Student Affairs in the school of education at Indiana University, Indianapolis. Categories: African Americans � Culture � Diversity � General � Higher Ed administration � PhD track � Race � Recruitment and retention � Research � Teaching � Tenure/professional issues in higher ed Tagged: Black scholars , Research , Robin Hughes , Teaching , tenure Mentoring is Absolutely Essential for the Future of the Professoriate May 6, 2009 � 7 Comments By Dr. Marybeth Gasman Yesterday as I was chatting on Facebook (yes, I do that) with a faculty member at a different institution than my own. He's brand new on the tenure-track at a research university. In addition, he is African American at a traditionally White institution and as such, most likely has to contend with additional pressures. I don't know this man well, but had been introduced to him by a mutual friend. As we were chatting, he expressed concern over balancing teaching and research. I immediately switched into mentoring mode, offering advice on which journals to approach, how to limit the time spent on prepping classes, and how to carve out writing time during the academic year. His response: "You don't even know me very well. Why are you being so generous with your time?" My immediate response was "Because someone mentored me; in fact several people mentored me." One of these individuals was Asa Hilliard. Asa was a larger than life figure, but never too large to spend time with young people. I remember when I was a new, nervous faculty member with a small child in a strange city, Asa welcomed me to the department and welcomed my family. He embraced me as a scholar and person. This amazing intellectual would get down on the floor at eye level with my daughter and make her giggle -- such humanity and care in someone who could have chosen to just go about his work or worse yet, bask in his ego. Instead, Asa mentored and gave the best advice: stay out of office politics, rise above petty academic jealousy, and swallow your pride when necessary. These are lessons that I think about daily and that I pass on to my own students and mentees. All too often, once we reach a comfortable level of success in the academy, we forget about those who are coming after us into the profession. I have been told countless stories by Ph.D. students about how they approached a faculty member and were rebuffed. I have been told the same stories by young faculty members who approached those senior scholars they admire. I know that people are busy, but there is always enough time to answer a quick question, to lend an ear, and to provide mentoring to future faculty members. What is most disturbing to me about the rebuffs I mentioned is that quite often the person telling me about them is a student or faculty member of color. My first book was a biography of Charles Spurgeon Johnson, sociologist, the architect of the Harlem Renaissance, and president of Fisk University. While researching and writing the book, I became intensely familiar with Johnson's approach to mentoring scholars and leaders. Under his leadership, Fisk University became an incubator for talent, especially future faculty members. In fact, his students told me that he gave them "all the tools they needed to take on the world." This phrase stuck with me and I have striven to emulate Johnson's approach. I believe wholeheartedly that in order to have a productive, caring, empathetic, student-oriented future professoriate, we as current faculty members must invest the time in mentoring young scholars. Of course, there are many ways to do this. One can co-author publications, co-present at conferences, explain the book writing and grant proposal processes, share ways of simplifying class preparation, etc. One of the ways that I take care for young scholars is by meeting with them for coffee or lunch at national conferences -- providing a low stress way for them to ask for advice. I never turn someone down who asked to meet with me (unless I run out of time!). Why? Because I was rebuffed as a young scholar and I remember how it felt. I was told by a senior scholar as I asked for a copy of one of her conference papers, "I don't have time for you." It stung! I urge all scholars to think twice before ignoring a request from a young person. In order to make sure that the academy is a healthy work environment for research and teaching, we need to provide the proper guidance and nurturing to future academics. An associate professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Gasman is the author of Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) and lead editor of Understanding Minority Serving Institutions (SUNY Press, 2008). Categories: African Americans � Diversity � General � HBCUs � PhD track � Research � Teaching � Tenure/professional issues in higher ed Tagged: African Americans , Asa Hilliard , Charles S. Johnson , faculty of color , Fisk University , Harlem Renaissance , Marybeth Gasman , mentoring , students of color , Teaching The Case Against Cultural Standardization in Tenure Decisions April 6, 2009 � 1 Comment Dr. Christopher J. Metzler There has been a cacophony of voices calling for the elimination of tenure in higher education. Many of those voices are ultra conservative ideologues who are using the tenure debate to excoriate what they see as a liberal-leaning academy. There is a more vexing question that is conveniently absent from the tenure reform debate. That question is the role that race plays in the decision of tenure committees in denying tenure to Black scholars. I am not suggesting that all decisions to deny tenure to Blacks is racist. I am suggesting that the committees making the decision to deny, the departments that support the decisions, the deans, provosts and presidents who uphold denial must ask themselves whether they have homogenized the tenure process, already structured around amorphous standards of scholarship and service, such that it is more likely than not that Black scholars and our scholarship will forever be relegated to the intellectual margins. My concern is that those denying tenure are more concerned about whether their decisions are legally defensible than whether the decisions are just. That is, how many of the people who make the decisions to deny, acknowledge and act upon the structural and racial biases built into the promotion and tenure systems of most universities? Some would argue that there is no need to do so as the issue of denial is about quality and not about race. But, if this is the case are these committees suggesting that Blacks on tenure track were hired as quality scholars and then after years of teaching, researching and providing service magically become mediocre? Perhaps if they were being honest, they would say that in far too many cases, faculties hire Blacks on tenure track because of pressures -- real or perceived -- stemming from the underrepresentation of Blacks on the faculties of predominantly White universities, including some of the most liberal ones. In some cases, so-called diversity programs, which grant additional funding to departments to hire (not promote) more Blacks, result in an erosion of the faculty sourcing strategy therefore resulting in denial of tenure and thus termination. Do universities that employ this parochial and patronizing approach to diversifying faculties really believe that this is just? To be sure, the deliberately vague terms of “scholarship” and “quality” affects Whites who are denied tenure as well, it simply affects Blacks differently and worse. The nature of teaching and learning in colleges and universities continues to change as the student body, and indeed the society, becomes more multicultural and multiracial. The promotion and tenure process at most colleges and universities is a bastion of pettiness, cultural antagonism and ethnocentric backslapping. The ideology and the discourse of tenure approval must become one that praises public intellectuals in all media (including new media), not one that promotes cultural disrespect for the scholarship of Black scholars thus justifying and rewarding the continuation of a community of scholars so stepped in intellectual snobbery and caste warfare that even the mention of new media and scholarship invites public disdain and mocking. To be sure the denial of tenure to any faculty member is as much a failure of the faculty as it is of the individual faculty member. But it is the faculty member denied tenure that must exit the university unceremoniously, while the members of the search committee who selected them selects another group of new faculty often with the same results. Search committees must take a more active and honest role in hiring faculty members who will ultimately succeed, not fail. This requires that the people on these committees understand and can articulate what scholarship is in a way that is specific, measurable, inclusive and achievable. Black scholars also bear responsibility for our failure. Some of us see racism where there is none, and others fail to see it until we are denied tenure. Black scholars like all scholars have an obligation to provide quality scholarship. However, given that so much of Black America simply do not participate in the system of education, governance and the academy, we have to use public engagement scholarship to critically analyze and respond to the “Negro problem of 2009 and beyond.” This is not to suggest that all Black scholars become critical race theorists or produce Black scholarship. It is to suggest that whatever our discipline, we apply the framework of that discipline to the engagement of our communities -- on campus and off. Further, those of us who accept the diversity scholarships to hire (but not promote) us must ask ourselves whether we are willing participants in our demise and thus intellectual sharecroppers. Have we become so content with being window dressing in the halls of academe that we will never own our intellectual mindshare but simply rent it out to the academic overseers? Why do we continue to play the game when we know that the deck is stacked against us? Is it because we see no alternative? Why is it that some of us who are on tenure committees judge the scholarship of our Black colleagues in a much harsher light? Why is it that despite having tenure some of us on these committees refuse to challenge the decisions in the context of cultural standardization? It is doubtful that there is critical mass on tenure and promotion committees at colleges and universities who will adopt my thesis because the tenure process is mostly about cultural standardization, and that standardization does not benefit Black scholars. Mark Bauerlein has it correct when he writes, “ The very system that academics invoke to fend off critics has become part of the problem. Ideological bias has seeped into the standards of professionalism. Peer review isn't just the application of scholarly and scientific norms. It's a system of incentives and rewards, and success depends entirely on what peers say about you. They examine your teaching and scholarship and deliver an inside opinion, and the process is easily corrupted.” Black scholars and all scholars who are truly committed to justice need to insist that the rules for tenure and promotion resists cultural standardization, become specific, particular and transparent or that tenure be abolished in favor of a system that rewards quality, inclusive scholarship and service. Many institutions including so-called liberal institutions are simply not taking the opportunity to expand the definition of scholarship and quality in a way that is substantively equal. Making the case for tenure in 1940, the American Association of University Professors opined, “ College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations.” In 2009, the peer review system at so many of our educational institutions has become infected with rank censorship and a fiefdom controlled by ostensibly liberal “royalty” who use a warped allegiance to the ever-illusive quality as a proxy for race-based decisions. The oppressed have become the oppressors. Dr. Christopher J. Metzler is Associate Dean at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and the author of the book, The Construction and Rearticulation of Race in a “post-racial” America . Categories: Affirmative action � African Americans � Campus life � Culture � Diversity � General � Higher Ed administration � PhD track � Race � Recruitment and retention � Research � Teaching � Tenure/professional issues in higher ed Tagged: academic freedom , Black scholarship , Christopher Metzler , tenure The Miseducation of a Negro Male Assistant Professor June 29, 2008 � 6 Comments By Emmett Lee Gill, Jr., PhD, MSW When I thought about pursuing my terminal degree I really dedicated little thought to all the components o f a J-O-B in academia. I pondered the research I would have to do, but the teaching and service components were truly afterthoughts. I assumed these elements would naturally come with the territory - you know they would be integrated into my game plan. In particular, I thought the teaching would be less challenging because I know my research methods and behavioral theory, I wanted students to learn, and I would avoid grade inflation. I was a miseducated Negro male assistant professor. I characterize myself as miseducated during my first two years because teaching in higher education has assumed a business model, and it has been adventurous to navigate to say the least. The consumer (i.e., the student) must be satisfied with their grade. Intellectual stimulation, new competencies, and the rigors of writing and creative thinking are of little value. Yet, I knew this because not long ago I sat on the other side of the speaking lantern. My miseducation emanates from my miscalculation of the intersection between consumer satisfaction and the professors’ race. As I approach my third year review and I reflect on my years at a research one institution, I have wondered privately and publicly whether I would have experienced some of the issues I have if I were a White sports scholar activist. During my short sojourn I have had more students than I care to mention… threaten to challenge grades, speak to colleagues about my/our classes, actually challenge their grades, tell mistruths about our verbal interactions, or flat out curse me out. One student stared me down and then slammed the door so hard that my 6’1”, 180 lbs. frame starting shaking so bad I had to call a 30-minute break. When I shared this with my incredibly supportive Dean he asked if it was racism and I said no because it was coming from blacks and whites. Sexism? Racism? Ageism? I am not sure, but like Duke Lacrosse something is going on. It’s enough to make you think twice whether to maintain your values and not give grades or make it easy on everyone. Students who trash me on www.ratemyprofessor.com often write that I am arrogant and to a certain degree it is true. Arrogance (i.e., confidence and consistency) is a trait I’ve had to learn. I am in a small minority in a competitive profession that requires precise writing, frequent oratories, quick responses to questions when there are very few “right” answers, and the self-motivation to succeed with very little supervision. I am an introvert so if I do not wake up each morning with a little confidence I would be eaten alive – in class, faculty/committee meetings, presentations, and parenting (lol). Arrogant a little, but how self-absorbed is a Negro male assistant professor who… delays his papers so students can finish assignments from other classes, wears jeans and caps to class, teaches theory using television programming, provides work for students in need, and holds some classes over meals… be? There are also those who give me good ratings on www.ratemyprofessor.com and I appreciate it when my “kids” show me love. Muchas gracias! When I entered the NBA of education I truly believed that I was prepared to quickly become an all-star. I cannot say I never thought about race, but my first two years teaching in the league have not been injury free. My miseducation has caused me to suffer some sprains, bruises, and maybe a concussion or two. Thankfully I have many supportive colleagues and satisfied consumers on my team. Moreover, I love this game… and with the grace of God and a little more schooling… I can help other miseducated Negro male assistant professors. Emmett Gill is an assistant professor at Rutgers, The State University, School of Social Work. Categories: Race � Tenure/professional issues in higher ed Tagged: academia , Emmett Gill , Sports Increasing the numbers of scholars is the key May 19, 2008 � 1 Comment By Lamont Flowers Diverse: Issues in Higher Education's interview with Dr. Houston Baker, “ Literary Scholar Indicts Some Black Thinkers for Shallow Works ,” was very informative in that it enables all of us to think more critically about our work and what is the real impact of our scholarship. The interview also encourages researchers and scholars who focus on the African American experience to consider some of the pressing challenges facing scholarship about African American history and life as well as the role of academic freedom. More importantly, I believe that the interview uncovers probably a more critical issue that may potentially impact the production of scholarship on African Americans - the underrepresentation of scholars writing about and conducting research on issues related to understanding and improving the quality of life for African Americans. In essence, the interview points clearly to the importance of encouraging scholars, who are able and willing, to mentor the next generation of scholars and problem solvers. Producing and mentoring new scholars will ensure that there will be a variety of people, with different cultural lenses and scholarly approaches, to examine the African American experience in education, housing, politics, economics, criminal justice, music, media, philosophy, etc. I contend that an increase in the number of scholars who study issues related to African American issues and race relations may also improve the number and utility of approaches for enhancing the well-being of the Black community in America. Moreover, this next generation of scholars may also lead to the type of diversity in thinking that may provide the best defense against the myriad of theoretical, evidence-based, scholarly, and practical topics, issues, and concerns that decrease opportunities and defers the dreams of many African Americans. Dr. Lamont A. Flowers is the Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership and Executive Director of Charles H. Houston Center for the Study of the Black Experience in Education at Clemson University.


CURRENT URL http://drforbush.tblog.com/archive/2004/07/
Conseravtive Kerry Republicans say that Kerry is a radical leftist. However, He was the most conservative Democratic Candidate save Joe Liberman. The Conservative Right would call Joe Liberman a Radical liberal if he were the nomination. It just doesn't matter, because that was their game plan regardless of the candidate. Read what Ryan Lizza has to say about this: [Line] RUBINOMICS REDUX: One of the major storylines for Democrats over the last year and a half is the emergence of a much more robust and active liberal wing of the party. The rise of powerful 527s like MoveOn, the Dean campaign's success, and the Kerry campaign's record-breaking fundraising are all evidence that Bush has activated a potent backlash on the left. Yet there's almost no evidence in Boston this week of great ideological divisions among Democrats. Ironically, Bush has both strengthened the left and united the opposition party. Even stranger, it seems, in retrospect, that Democrats (or at least the Iowans who set the path for the nomination process) chose the most conservative candidate available, save Joe Lieberman. All of Kerry's other opponents--the anti-war Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, the big spending, pro-labor Richard Gephardt, and the populist, anti-NAFTA John Edwards (to say nothing of Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton)--ran to the left of Kerry during the primaries. [Line] Here's the rest if you choose to read on: http://www.tnr.com/blog/dnc?pid=1854" title="http://www.tnr.com/blog/dnc?pid=1854" target="_blank"http://www.tnr.com/blog/dnc?p... 07.28.04 (2:26 pm) [ edit ] Taxes as Punishment Taxes as Punishment I received a comment today from a Republican supporter who claims that the wealthy shouldn’t be punished for being wealthy. I suggest that they are not being punished by being over taxed. The wealthy receive benefit for the taxes that they pay. But, considering taxes as punishment would be the downfall of the US society if the idea becomes widespread. Taxes pay for infrastructure that benefits the entire society. They benefit us by paying for education, roads, water (as in dams), and protection (as in fire, police, military...). The wealthy actually benefit more than the poor urban person. Because of the infrastructure of the country people can ship goods across the country more quickly and reliably. The wealthy ship more things than the poor. The wealthy have money and material possessions that need to be protected from the poor who would like to steal those things. Imagine a country where no one pays taxes. You survive based on the money you earn. First of all, you need to use some other country’s currency, because you are not paying taxes to actually have a government, a treasury or a Federal Reserve. The roads you drive on are only paved if private citizens pave roads that go across their own land. Of course there are no police or military to protect you. You continuously need to guard your property to prevent squatters from living on your land, or looters from stealing your possessions. With taxes we can pay for these vital services that make our country civilized. In third world countries the wealthy are taken hostage and held for ransom. The wealthy need to build fortresses to protect their possessions. The wealthy want good roads to drive their expensive cars on. The wealthy want good colleges to send their children to. Of course they can buy better education, so they don't care so much for public education. The wealthy are not really being punished for being wealthy, they are paying for infrastructure that they use to protect themselves and benefit their companies and themselves. Because of the benefits of taxes we live in a civilized country that that has an infrastructure that makes life more livable. 07.28.04 (12:08 pm) [ edit ] Low Taxes High Taxes Low Taxes High Taxes How do lower taxes on the middle class and higher taxes on the wealthy improve the economy? Lower taxes on the middle class and raising taxes on the wealthy will put money into the pockets of people who will spend it instead of save it. This money will be spent and companies will need to increase production of the goods that are bought. In turn this will create jobs in these companies. When money is spent into the economy it first goes to the stores where the items are bought. The more that is sold the more profit these companies make. Then, these stores buy more inventory from different companies around the world. If those companies are American, Americans will need to manufacture more produce. In order to meet the demand more items are manufactured and more raw materials are bought to manufacture these products. These companies all need to produce more goods. At each step along the way the owners of all these companies skim money off the top and they get their money back. They just have to work a bit harder and employ more people to do it. Spending money into the economy is more effective than putting more money into the stock market. Putting money into the stock market raises the cost of stocks, but not really the value of the stocks. Building bigger and more efficient companies will raise the value of the companies but not necessarily the price of the stock. They money will get into the stock market eventually anyway, through 401K programs and profits made by the companies selling the goods and services. [LINE] 07.27.04 (10:30 am) [ edit ] Something Completely Different Something Completely Different Someone out in Cyberspace probably knows this, but I’ve noticed a relationship between the production of quarters at the US mint and the economy. This makes some sense, because when money is available people typically want change. When money isn’t available then people don’t need change, and those who are running low on personal funds go around hunting for change and spend it, putting it back into the economy. One of the side benefits of the US State Quarters program is that they announce the production of each type of quarter – therefore they have data five times a year, instead of the once a year data that they had before the program began. Also, the program started in 1999, therefore there is data for more than 4 years. This shows the end of the economic bubble, and it continues up to our present day. Here is the US Mint website: http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/50sq_pr ogram/index.cfm?action=schedule" title="http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/50sq_pr ogram/index.cfm?action=schedule" target="_blank"http://www.usmint.gov/mint_pr... And, here's the graph. 07.26.04 (12:40 pm) [ edit ] Americans Want the Libertarians Included in the Presidential Debates Americans Want the Libertarians Included in the Presidential Debates I found this piece of information quite interesting: “A separate survey found that 68% of Americans believe that Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik should be invited to participate in the Presidential Debates this year.” This is from the Rasmussen Reports web site: http://www.rasmussenreports.c... I wonder what the motivation is for such a high number of Americans wishing that they include Michael Badnarik. My optimistic side wants to say that Americans welcome different view points and they tend to be inclusive. However, my pessimistic side suggests that Americans see the inclusion of Michael Badnarik in the debate would draw away votes from the opposition side. Therefore, Kerry supporters would expect Bush fence sitters to be likely to change their vote from Bush to Badnarik. Similarly Bush supporters recognize the effect of Ralph Nader in the 2000 election, and they believe that the addition of Michael Badnarik to the debate would amplify to Nader effect. No matter what the reason, it is clear that a large number of Americans would like to see more variation in their choices for president. If you never see a person speak in front a group you are not likely to vote for them. However, it is clear that a large number of Americans want to be able to listen to more than two points of view. 07.26.04 (10:01 am) [ edit ] Bush Has Done Nothing About Sudan for the Last Three Months Bush Has Done Nothing About Sudan for the Last Three Months Actually Kofi Annan suggested that there may be genocide happening in Sudan back on April 7, 2004. Bush&rsquo;s reaction was that there wasn&rsquo;t any need for us to do anything. I commented on this on April 15, 2004. Bush continued to do nothing. It has been over three months and nothing has changed, many people have died and Bush has done nothing. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/0 7/bush.un.sudan/" title="http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/0 7/bush.un.sudan/" target="_blank"http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPO... http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=DrForbush&" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=DrForbush&" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template... ;static=149644&search =sudan Thursday 04.15.04 [12:15 pm] delete entry | edit entry If Saddam Hussein was such a bad guy because he was killing everyone, then why aren't we going into the sudan to change that government. We could use a democracy in Africa as well. posted by: DrForbush | 5 comments (view/add) StaticLink eSend http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=DrForbush&" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=DrForbush&" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template... ;static=187446&search =sudan Wednesday 05.26.04 [11:49 am] delete entry | edit entry Bad Guys � Remove Them or NOT? The Iraq war as currently described by the Bush administration does not fit with Conservative values. Conservatives have pride in the fact that they believe in slow steady change. However, the Bush administration now believes in the policy of getting rid of bad guys and getting out. If this is true, then where is Bush on the Sudan issue. People are being starved to death. The government is keeping food away from a group in southern Sudan in order to commit a genocidal starvation plan. It wouldn�t take much for the Bush administration to break the blockade and drop food to these starving people. Why doesn�t Bush use his bad guy removal policy to fix Sudan? The truth is that he wanted to invade Iraq in January 2001 or before and nothing was going to stop him. He did it and now he no longer cares about removing bad guys. posted by: DrForbush | 2 comments (view/add) StaticLink eSend 07.23.04 (2:12 pm) [ edit ] Sudan Sudan President Bush’s argument to go into Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a bad guy could hold water if he actually applied the same argument around the world. However, today in Sudan we are faced with thousands of people being killed by their own government. Does the Bush administration even say anything about this atrocity? Well, they sent Collin Powell to Sudan so he could dance around a bit, but he did not save any lives. Do they have a plan? Do they even care? Is it because Sudan lacks the natural resources that Iraq had? There are so many questions and very few answers. 07.23.04 (11:07 am) [ edit ] Dividing America up into two Parties Dividing America up into two Parties In America the political power is shared between the Democrats and the Republicans. It would be very difficult for one to suggest that any third party has nearly as much power as either of these two parties. However, individual Americans have many more than just these two views of how the country should be governed. In European Countries the government is slightly more complicated, but it actually represents a broader spectrum of the population’s views on how the counties should be governed. This can be dangerous when extreme parties have power, but if the people still have control to change the government on a regular basis then people still retain the final say. In the United States people need to form coalitions in the voting both. They may not agree 100% with either candidate, but they pick the one that they agree with the most for the issues that are being discussed during the election. This means that if the two parties can agree not to discuss something then they can pass laws contrary to the voter’s wishes. This is because special interests can contribute to both parties and have laws passed in their favor no matter who wins. If more parties were part of the discussion the special interests would need to spend more to have their laws passed. Or, one party could be able to bring up a subject because the party had a moral principle involved. In the European system parties are elected in proportional representation. This means that if a party gets 10% of the vote they get 10% of the representatives. This means that a small party like the Green Party in the US could have 36 representatives in Congress if they could get 10% of the vote. Also, large parties like the Republican Party may actually be split up into two different parties, a Social Conservative Party and a Fiscal Conservative Party. These two parties may choose to form a coalition, but they would also feel free to vote differently on social or fiscal issues. The two main benefits of a multiparty proportional representation system are: 1) People who currently don’t vote may feel represented if they were able to elect someone with their point of view. (For example an Green Party candidate) This means greater democracy for our country. 2) Parties can form coalitions for specific issues as they come up for discussion, and they can form new coalitions for new issues. Therefore, the views of the American people are actually better represented. And, this also means greater democracy for our country. However, can multiparty politics ever come into reality? Maybe. San Francisco will be the first city in the country to enable third parties by having instant runoff elections. This means that third parties have a greater chance to acquire votes. This is because people can rank their first, second and third choices. Because of this people can choose a Libertarian Party candidate first and a Democratic candidate second without any fear of electing a Republican by accident. Because if their candidate doesn’t get 50% of the vote and no other candidate gets 50% of the vote then the lowest candidates first choice goes to the second choice and so on until one candidates gets 50% of the vote. It still isn’t proportional representation, but it is going in the right direction. 07.23.04 (10:58 am) [ edit ] What’s the Matter with Kansas? What’s the Matter with Kansas? I was listening to Tomas Frank being interviewed today. Thomas Frank is an author that has a book out called: “What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America” He is a quite interesting thinker and describes how the Republicans changed the debate in the Midwest in order to gain control of the country. After all, how could the evolution debate come back to life after 100 years in Kansas? He makes the point that the old populist argument between the Democrats and the Republicans was a class warfare issue. It was a war between the rich and the poor. However, the new Republican strategy is still class warfare but it has become a conflict between the intellectuals and the common man. Their ideas hinge on the argument that intellectuals are somehow controlling the culture industry. Of course, the truth is that the culture industry is completely controlled by economics. People buy the DVDs, Games, CDs, and Movie Tickets. As Republicans would say, let the market dictate what we get! However, the hypnotized working class Republicans can’t see this. It’s just another insight into the strange way that the people on the right have been convinced to think. 07.23.04 (10:01 am) [ edit ] Bush the Untier Bush the Untier Apparently during the 2000 election when George W Bush told the electorate that he was a uniter he really meant that he was and untier i.e. a person that separates two strings from each other. In Bushes case he separated two half of the US from each other. When we look back on 9/11 one thing that everyone agrees on is that the event united everyone in a moment of grief and the promise of a common future goal of overcoming it. There was patriotism and 90% of Americans were united in a common belief that America would triumph. In three short years George the Untier has been able to bring the two polls of American culture further apart than they had been since the 1960s Cultural Revolution. The 1960s separated the generations. George W. Bush has done more than that, he has separated those who want to improve the life of everyone from those who want to improve the life of the Christian Fundamentalists and Wealthy Corporation owners. George W. Bush wants to impose religious laws on everyone. He wants to remove environmental laws from Corporations. He wants to deny scientific conclusions in favor of religious mythology. Logic and reason are put at the wayside in favor of faith in mythology. George w Bush separates those who think from those who accept mythology on faith. What’s worse is that it is a mythology that deny the destruction of our very environment. Unfortunately with the poor state of the US education system half of the US population doesn’t find it important enough to cast a vote. And, half of those who do cast a vote don’t find it important to actually think about the selections that they are voting for. 07.22.04 (5:40 pm) [ edit ] Lack of Imagination Lack of Imagination I don’t know any more about the 9/11-commission report than what I have heard on the radio. Since it is quite a long report I assume the radio reports are only a small piece of the entire report, but the important parts will most likely dribble out over the next few days. Of course, the panel vehemently stresses that Bush, Clinton, and the congress are equally responsible for the lack of defense against al Qaeda. They claim that a “lack of imagination” is the main problem responsible for 9/11. Then, you look at Clinton and Bush and it is clear that George W. Bush is the poster child for “lack of imagination.” And you look at congress and you see the Republican Party is the Poster Party for “Lack of Imagination.” Hopefully the American People will see that the Democratic Party is the Progressive Party. And, of course progressives use imagination to come up with new and imaginative ideas. Actually I doubt it, because the American people are not educated enough to be able to draw that conclusion. It’s to bad, but it’s true. 07.22.04 (5:08 pm) [ edit ] What To Do About Education What To Do About Education The current state of the public education system in the US is very patchwork and confusing. I am not sure exactly how the New Jersey public education system works, and it seems unfair the way you describe it. The ideal system in my view is to offer the same education to every student in the country. This can not be done exactly in reality, as you point out. This is because there are several inequalities that are introduced by virtue of the students parent income levels. Suppose all students had exactly an equal amount of cash spent on them. The system would still be unequal because some parent value education to a higher degree than other parents. This means that schools with a higher proportion of parents that value education will volunteer more at the school, or make personal contributions to the school to increase the ability of the school to provide for the students. Schools with a majority of wealthy parents will find it easier to acquire books, paper, pencils, computers, lighting, special science equipment etc... In fact, I have personally run a science fair workshop at our school several years in a row now and I can proudly say that people that attended these workshops did very well at the county wide science fair. So, the question becomes: How do we fix this inequality? a) by funding students to enable them to attend private schools b) by giving additional money to schools that lack the resources c) by distributing students from all economic backgrounds through out the school system 07.22.04 (2:36 pm) [ edit ] Senator Barbara Boxer - FERC needs ENRON to Compensate California Here's an e-mail I Got From Barbara Boxer ========================= ========================= = Dear Friend: Few Californians today doubt that our state was victimized by artificial electricity shortages, market manipulation and consumer ripoffs during the energy crisis of 2000 and 2001. If anyone had doubts, the recently released tape recorded conversations between employees should have provided sufficient evidence, not just of illegalities, but of malice and intent to harm Californians, including our most vulnerable elderly residents. I have long called for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to take decisive action against those who manipulated California markets, including Enron. FERC’s mandate is to assure “just and reasonable” rates. It is clearly intended to be the last line of protection against such wrongdoing, and I have continued to push for it to act to make sure that California consumers receive refunds they rightfully deserve. I am sorry to say that FERC has virtually turned a blind eye to this scandal. After the last round of tape recordings were released, I wrote to President George W. Bush to ask that he take action to stand with California consumers. In part, my letter asked that he “instruct FERC to agree that California should receive the entire $8.9 billion in refunds that the Attorney General is asking for and to settle the court suit on that matter immediately. I also ask that you instruct FERC to settle the California Public Utilities Commission lawsuit demanding renegotiation of long-term contracts.” I also asked that President Bush seek the resignation of any Commissioner who does not agree to these steps to provide justice for Californians. Clearly, Californians were cheated during the energy “crisis.” Clearly, the contracts that were signed during the duress of this time should be renegotiated, and the money that was stolen should be refunded. That is my goal, and I continue to work to see it realized. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other matter, I encourage you to contact me at http://boxer.senate.gov/conta... Sincerely, Barbara Boxer United States Senator = 07.22.04 (12:28 pm) [ edit ] FCC Local Media Hearings FCC Local Media Hearings Last nigh the FCC held a public discourse in the San Francisco Bay area. The discussion was broadcast live over the radio on several stations, and was being re-broadcast this morning by at least of the radio stations. The topic of discussion was the loss of local broadcasting because of the consolidation of national radio and TV networks stations. The people in attendance were there for many different reasons and they made public comments well into the night. There were panels of people involved in the media who made presentations and discussed changes that have already happened in the climate of consolidation. To give you an idea of the types of things that were being discussed I’ll use some examples of some of the highlights: 1) One person was concerned with obscenity being forced on local stations. He said that local stations no longer had the option to stop broadcasting at a radio station, because there weren’t any qualified DJs to substitute when something objectionable is being broadcast. 2) Another person was concerned with emergency response. There was no way to contact people broadcasting from 1000 miles away when emergency situations like flooding and weather situations occurred. Apparently a town in North Dakota could not be directed when a train carrying dangerous chemicals crashed and the only radio station was being controlled from Atlanta, Georgia. 3) Many fans of local musical acts complained that the local bands in the area were not being broadcast. 4) People also complained of political censorship during the build up to the Iraq war. Radio stations in the area were not covering protests in San Francisco. 5) The Dixie Chicks music was withheld from Clear Channel Country Stations. This amounts to a type of punishment by a few individuals at the head of a huge corporation. 6) The loudest cheers came from people in the audience complaining about the lack of coverage of political debate. This is local and national political debate. The argument is that local stations have a more vested interest in the responsibility to the local area. Nationally run corporations only care about the bottom line. It was a very interesting discussion, and people were very excited about getting their views heard. At one point the chair of the meeting tried to take a 5-minute break, but the audience jeered her and encouraged her to continue without the break. Of course they understood that every break would cut into their speaking time. 07.22.04 (12:13 pm) [ edit ] Problems with Public education Problems with Public education The public education system is terrible. However, everyone wants his or her taxes cut, so it isn't going to get any better. People can opt out of the system and put their kids in private schools, but people who can't afford it are stuck with the system provided to them. I believe the parents should be allowed to choose the public school they want to send their kids to. This action by the parents will emphasize making the schools better. In the short run better schools will be over run by parents wanting a better education for their kids. The poorer schools will have fewer students to deal with and they will be able to improve over time. As they get better more students will go back to these schools and things will even out. Schools should be allotted a certain amount of money based on the number of students attending school. The staff salary should be based on the number of students attracted to the school and the number of students that can be housed at the school. The number of students in each class room should be flexible, so that good schools can accept more students, but poorer school can have smaller class size. Economics will get all the schools on the same page in a few years. In addition, school should be considered a privilege. If rowdy students act up should be dismissed from the school. Parents who care will correct the problem and they can be re-admitted. Parents who don't care will have misfit kids that end up in jail. But that happens anyway. This way these kids don't stop the other students from being productive. 07.21.04 (12:20 pm) [ edit ] Arizona Poll Puts Kerry in Front John Kerry seems to be picking up states left and right. Hopefully he can hold on to them until November. Here's the link to this new poll: http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/30752 .php" title="http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/30752 .php" target="_blank"http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/h... I saw Bill Maher on Jay Leno last night. Jay asked him a very intyeresting question: "If Bush is doing so poorly why isn't John Kerry way out in front instead of the neck and neck race the polls show?" Bill Maher answered, "Its because Kerry ripped a page out of the Al Gore playbook. Bush is such an idiot that Kerry believes that he doesn't have to do anything and people will vote for him. Unfortunately we saw how that worked out for Al Gore." 07.21.04 (10:29 am) [ edit ] Al Franken Beats O'Reilly in NY Ratings O'Reilly keeps going on about the ratings of Al Franken's Air America. He even brought it up this morning. So, it kind of funny when he gets beat in any market at all. Obviously, Franken has quite a way to go, but he is making some gains. Maybe signs of life like this will help encourage other stations to carry his show. In retrospect it is quite funny to recall O'Reilly saying that a comedian doesn't have what it takes to be a talk show host. Or was that Michael Savage? Also, Michael Savage wasn't broadcast today on his Santa Cruz radio station. I wonder what's going on there? http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&s toryID=5724047" title="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&s toryID=5724047" target="_blank"http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... 07.20.04 (11:09 pm) [ edit ] The Peace President The Peace President Read this Reuters news article which reports on George W Bush’s latest speech. It is insincere at best and out right lie to say the least. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml" title="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml" target="_blank"http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... ;jsessionid=J1L2IZRCGP4TO CRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&s toryID=5722238 George W. Bush says that he wants to be the “peace’ president. Since when? I say actions speak louder than words! I can agree that the attack on Afghanistan was in response to the al Qeada attack on 9/11. However, the far costlier conflict in Iraq was not needed. Saddam was not working with al Qeada, the al Qeada philosophy was religious while the Iraqi government was secular. The Europeans refused to go along with us because we did not have enough proof of WMD to convince them that we needed to attack. Not only that, but George W Bush attacked sooner rather than later. UN inspectors were admitted back into Iraq and the Bush administration refused to allow them to continue their inspections. All the reports that have come out show that we did not have our national interests at stake, and therefore the conflict was not necessary. 07.20.04 (1:49 pm) [ edit ] Republicans and the Environment Republicans and the Environment Who says that Republicans don’t care about the environment? Many hunters are Republicans because they want to preserve the right to hunt with their AK-47 or M-16. :-) But, they also want to preserve the forest that they are hunting in so they can bag the really big game. :-) Unfortunately President Bush doesn’t see it this way. He doesn’t care about the environment and a former EPA second in command, Russell Train, says President Bush has a very poor record on the environment. Well, there are quite a few Democratic EPA executives that have already said this, but Russell Train is a Republican. He served under both the Nixon and the Ford administrations. People should realize that standing up for what you believe in the Republican Party is much more difficult than doing the same thing in the Democratic Party. This is because of a basic difference in philosophy between the two Parties. Republicans believe that you should support the leader no matter what you believe personally, because it’s not about you. It’s about the common good of the Party. Democrats on the other hand have a reputation for being disorganized because they have a collection of common views as well as a number of different perspectives. So, when Republicans say what Russell Train said people should sit up and take notice. This is what he said: "It’s almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection," he said. "I find this deeply disturbing." He went on to say that he was voting for John Kerry in November. http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20040720/to pstories/101137.shtml" title="http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20040720/to pstories/101137.shtml" target="_blank"http://www.theolympian.com/ho... 07.20.04 (11:30 am) [ edit ] I Hate Viruses I Hate Viruses On Saturday our home computer contracted a virus. I don’t know what it was and I didn’t need to. Fortunately I have a product that fixed the computer in a few minutes. The product is called GoBack. This product enabled me to go back to a time when the computer was working. Basically it just restored every file to the pre-virus state. I installed this product initially after the installation of some new digital camera software. It turned out that the digital camera drivers over wrote the scanner drivers that were already installed on the computer. It was a nightmare trying to figure out why the scanner wouldn’t work anymore. So, when I saw GoBack I thought it would be a good safety measure. In the last six months I didn’t need to use it, but today it paid off. Hopefully the computer is back to normal. 07.20.04 (11:08 am) [ edit ] Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda Ronstadt made a dedication to Michael Moore at a Las Vegas show this weekend. It turned out that a few people at the Aladdin Hotel complained to the owner, and Linda in no longer employed at the Aladdin. Apparently free speech is no longer allowed in America. Since corporations control almost everything you can do, corporations now control your speech. In the 1960s concerts were one of the main venues for getting your opinions out into the public forum. Today we have the Internet, but it isn’t the same as 20,000 people listening to your concert. Those who support the Bush administration realize this, and they are there to control whatever aspects they can so people will be exposed to more Bush rhetoric than the opposition rhetoric. The majority of Americans don’t think for themselves. Instead, they decide to form an opinion based on what they hear more often. This is why both Kerry and Bush are buying so many ads. If the volume of ads could not influence the American voter, then neither political party would care about advertising. So, the proof of how easily people are swayed is in the number of dollars each party is willing to spend. So, when big name celebrities like Linda Ronstadt choose to voice their opinion in a public forum, it effects the people in the audience. When the owner restricts her from voicing it he is restricting her free speech – and that is anti-American. If people don’t like her opinion they can get up and leave. I believe they already knew her opinion from the 1960s, so they shouldn’t have been surprised in the first place. If you want to hear right wing rhetoric go to a country music concert. (As long as it’s not the Dixie Chicks.) 07.20.04 (11:07 am) [ edit ] Some History Some History Some people have been asking me about an earlier blog I posted related to a secret video tape that the Bush administration doesn’t want released. Well, to tell you this story I have to go back about 18 years. I was a graduate student at Texas A&M University. My advisor thought it would be a good idea to go to the annual APS conference held in Washington DC. While I was there I thought that I should try to figure out how to voice my opinion to my Senators and representatives. I had never done it before, but I thought that it couldn’t hurt to walk around the Senate office building and at least see how things worked. I grabbed one of my friends in the High Energy Physics community and we decided that we would lobby for the Superconducting Supercollider. This was a huge project to be built in Texas. I’m not sure if the site had been decided at the time, but we were pushing for a particular Texas site. I knew some people from Fermilab in Chicago and I was originally from Ohio. So, we thought that we should hit the Illinois, Ohio and Texas Senators offices. That would be six different offices, and maybe we would try a few more once we found out how things worked. While we were navigating the office building I suddenly heard someone call out my name. At first I thought I was hearing things, then I thought that someone I knew was on vacation or something. But, it turned out that my roommate from undergrad school’s girlfriend was working in the senate office building for Senator Bob Packwood. Well, I didn’t know how someone from Ohio could work for a senator from Oregon, but she told me that Bob Packwood had a hard time hiring people from his own state because no one wanted to more to Washington DC. So, to make a long interesting story short and to the point we ended up going out that evening to see some of the Washington nightlife. She brought a couple of friends along and we exchanged e-mail addresses. We don’t communicate that often, but when they hear something interesting they send me an e-mail. And that’s how I found out about this videotape. I know, the source isn’t great, so you can believe me if you want – but I trust that its pretty good information. 07.19.04 (12:51 pm) [ edit ] Current Electoral Votes: Bush 211 Kerry 327 Current Electoral Votes: Bush 211 Kerry 327 This is a very comprehensive web site that tracks the various states polls and updates the total electoral vote counts every Monday. This survey takes into account multiple polls instead of just one, although the averaging of polls with different errors may be questionable. http://www.electionprojection.com/elections2004.html" title="http://www.electionprojection.com/elections2004.html" target="_blank"http://www.electionprojection... I think the main point here isn’t that John Kerry is leading Bush, but instead it illustrates the sensitivity of one single event. Before John Edwards was selected as John Kerry’s running mate Bush and Kerry were neck and neck with about the same distribution of electoral votes as the 2000 election. 07.19.04 (10:37 am) [ edit ] Mystery Videotape Mystery Videotape The Bush administration is apparently trying to keep a videotape under raps that shows the president orchestrating political attack plans. Someone apparently shot the video with a home movie camera while they were testing it out. The administration claims that the president was just acting in front of the camera. The news media is afraid to touch the film because they don’t have proof of the authenticity of the videotape. The videotape apparently shows the president in an Enronesque moment where the president is telling his advisors to find some more dirt on Kerry and Edwards. Of course he doesn’t use that language exactly. Most people realize that President Bush has a public face and a private face. The administration is worried that this tape shows a little too much of the president’s private face. President Bush has spent time and energy creating his public character of being a dolt and not understanding the details of the operation. This tape reveals the true Bush persona being a bit more calculating and ruthless than the public is used to. Karl Rove has said that if this tape surfaces the campaign is lost, because the president’s whole public character would be challenged from both the left and the right. President Bush would loose whatever thread of credibility he had. 07.19.04 (10:18 am) [ edit ] Stage One Stage One Lord Butler’s report on the British run-up to the war has shed light on the truth behind this action. We may not know everything now, but we will as time goes on. Read this interesting take on the report: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0" title="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0" target="_blank"http://politics.guardian.co.u... ,12956,1263944,00.html 07.17.04 (4:51 pm) [ edit ] Battleground States Give Kerry the Edge Battleground States Give Kerry the Edge Nearly all the battleground states are giving Kerry the edge in the current polls (July 12) by the Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/docu ments/info-battleground04 -0712print.html" title="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/docu ments/info-battleground04 -0712print.html" target="_blank"http://online.wsj.com/public/... 07.16.04 (4:10 pm) [ edit ] The New Liberal Bush The New Liberal Bush Suddenly, and I mean suddenly, George W Bush has become way to liberal. And, how do I know this? I know this because I have been told this by conservative talk radio. Yesterday I took my tour through the conservative talk show circuit and I found out that George W. Bush is way to liberal. I heard this on five different conservative talk shows. Rush Limbaugh was the first to tell me how George W Bush didn’t come down hard enough on George Tenent at the CIA. This is because he is too wimpy. If only we had the choice of a conservative running for president we were told, because a conservative would have their heads. Then I went over to O’Reilly where I was told that George W. Bush was hated by the left because of his social issues policy. If only liberals would look at the whole package they would see that he is liberal on everything else. I then listened to two local conservative talk show hosts tell me the same thing. Finally, on the way home in the evening I was told by Michael Savage that there was no one to vote for. He couldn’t vote for Kerry, because his wife is a loon and he couldn’t vote for George W. Bush because he couldn’t get the Republicans to pass the Defense of Marriage Amendment. So, we are now being told that we need to make the choice for president between a liberal and another liberal. I assume the goal here is to win back the people who are no longer supporting Bush by saying he isn’t really what we would like, but he’s all we have. It is quite noticeable that the conservatives are allowing more dissenters to call in. In this way they are allowing the audience to identify with the caller’s frustration with the president. However, the conservative talk show host always uses the caller, as an example to the audience showing them how the conservative way is superior to any of these crazy ideas like having the UN working with us in Iraq or other such non-sense. 07.16.04 (9:15 am) [ edit ] What I Hate I hate when the stock market goes down and you lose $15,000 and when it goes up and you get it back you feel relieved. Then I hate when you make $15,000 you feel excited and when it goes back down you feel upset. In both cases you are back to the same point, but one is much worse than the other emotionally... 07.15.04 (4:05 pm) [ edit ] Making the Grades Making the Grades Finally, I have an issue that I will differ with at least some Liberals on. This is because this issue doesn’t have anything to do with the presidential election. In general grades for high school and college classes have been going up. You may think that this is a good thing, but it is like the economy when we have inflation the value of money goes down. So, when we have grade inflation the value of those grades goes down. Unfortunately how much you learn can not be tied directly to the grade you deserve for a class. If a professor gives the same exact tests year after years, then more and more students will have access to the tests from their brothers and sisters in fraternities or sororities or families. So, the same test will no longer measure the same understanding of the material. Also, professors know which concepts are easy and which concepts are more difficult. Therefore they can design a test with a given mean for the students in any given class. As a physics professor I am able to design a test that mean score is 80% or 50%. When I design a test with a mean of 50% there will always be a student that gets 90% and there will always be a student that gets 20%. This is a good measure of how well a student understands the material. When I taught physics in the University of California (UC) System I was told that 80% of my students should receive a grade of a B or better. This was the department policy. So, no matter how well or how poorly the students understood the material the students grade distribution would always be the same. This was a different grade distribution than what I had known before, but the argument was that in the UC system the top 12.5% of California students were admitted to the system. This means that these students expect higher grades and we should give them what they expect. When one school raises the grading scale other schools around the country do the same, because grade point averages are what medical, law and graduate schools use to admit students. Your students may be passed over because another school has a higher average grade point ratio. Well, this idea caught on in High Schools as well. At first private High Schools wanted to assure their graduate’s placement into the best colleges. Then Public Schools wanted parity with the elite schools. And soon there is grade inflation to such a degree that 20% of the students in the UC system qualify for the 12.5% slots. So, the UC system used various methods to control which students are admitted, but last week they finally said that the grade point ratio required for admission to the UC system needed to be raised from 2.8 to 3.1. This means that the value of a 2.8 grade point ratio has been readjusted to not being good enough for admission to the UC system. And, I say this is a good thing. The UC system only has so much money to spend on so many students. One option is to raise taxes to pay for more students to be admitted, but this would lead to weaker students being admitted. They would perhaps require remedial services that are not provided by the UC system. They could require extracurricular activities for admission, but that would effect minority students who usually can’t afford 12 hours of dance a week, and the weight training. It would also limit shy students who don’t go in for student government. And it would limit students that are doing all they can just to make the grades alone. But my surprise in all this was when minority groups started saying that raising the grade point average was limiting minority students from being admitted to the UC system. Does this mean that minorities are racist? They believe that because of their race they are incapable of learning and doing well in school? What does your ethnicity have to do with how well you are capable of performing in school? If anyone knows please let me know? 07.15.04 (3:52 pm) [ edit ] What can Kerry and Edwards do about Bush? What can Kerry and Edwards do about Bush? Well, I don't ussually like to cut'n'paste, but here's one worth taking a look at. It is posted by a Bush supporter who has been one until now. I don't know if he is changing his mind, but he is telling us what would be a strong argument for him to change his mind if Kerry and Edwards were to make it: ------------------------- --------------------- So what argument can effectively be made against Bush? If I were advising Kerry & Edwards this is what I'd say: Bush is most vulnerable to a charge of negligent leadership, not for deciding to invade Iraq or for managing the occupation since, but for failing to take swift and aggressive measures to hold people accountable for the fact our intelligence on Iraq was faulty. If what is in Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack is true, I'd make the exchange between President Bush and George Tenet on Iraq's WMD's the centerpiece of the campaign: "George, how confident are you?" the president asked Tenet. "Don't worry, it's a slam-dunk," Tenet said. The fact that George Bush chose not to fire Tenet, instead letting him stay on as DCI for more than two more years and then praising him in June of this year as having "done a superb job on behalf of the American people" is, to my mind, a rather devastating argument. I don't care how nice of a guy Tenet is and I don't care how much the President liked him or valued his loyalty. Given what the public has learned about the quality of the intelligence information coming out of the CIA it's almost indefensible to have left Tenet in charge. It's patently obvious that Bush isn't responsible for the CIA producing information that turned out to be sketchy in some cases and bogus in others. What he is responsible for, however, is kicking ass, taking names, and making sure it doesn't happen again. Americans understand that that's how it works. Even more importantly, it's what they want and what they expect in a leader. Financial guru Jim Cramer made a similar point earlier this week explaining why he has decided to vote for Kerry over Bush: He [Bush] had terrible intelligence and bad homework, stuff I fire people for regularly and always have. The fact that not a single person has lost their job in the aftermath of both the worst terrorist attack and the worst intelligence failure in our country's history is where John Kerry and John Edwards could really hurt Bush. And they could do it by sounding like they wanted to be tougher and more competent in protecting the country from future attacks. So that's what I would do if I were advising the Kerry campaign. I'd have signs made up that said "Slam-Dunk Bush in '04" and I'd have John Edwards saying at every possible opportunity that Bush is lucky Edwards wasn't still a practicing attorney because he'd take him to court and sue him for negligence for not firing Tenet - and he'd win. I don't know if this strategy would lead to a Kerry victory or not, but it would certainly ring a lot more true with those in the middle and it would probably be a lot easier and more productive than what Kerry and Edwards are currently doing: trying to convince voters that night is day and black is white. ------------------------- ------------------------- ----------- The whole post can be found at: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/commentary.html" title="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/commentary.html" target="_blank"http://www.realclearpolitics.... 07.15.04 (11:45 am) [ edit ] Fox News Polls Fox News Polls I recently found an interesting web site that posts compilations of poll from different news sources. Here you can compare polls taken in different states by different groups and come to conclusions about how the election may turn out. Well, like all news organizations Fox took a poll of the four most contentious battleground states: Ohio, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Why they didn’t poll all of the battleground states and present their data is a mystery, but it could have been resource limitations, or it could be that they took the polls and they didn’t like the results so they didn’t publish them. Either way, there is a 10 percentage point diference in the results of the Fox poll compared to the other polls. This is very odd, and may lead one to believe that Fox may actually not only be biased toward George W Bush, but also trying to stack the deck in his favor. Hoping that telling the people that he is leading in the polls would make his supporters want to support a winner and turn out at the polls. But, don’t take my word for it, look at the polls yourself: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry_sbys.html" title="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry_sbys.html" target="_blank"http://www.realclearpolitics.... 07.15.04 (11:08 am) [ edit ] Florida Election Issues Florida Election Issues Last night during Jay Leno’s monologue he made a joke about Florida allowing felons to vote. The sad thing about this is that ex-cons are allowed to vote in most states after they have served their time and parole. Jay Leno is giving the impression that criminals will be voting from their prison cell, which would be completely incorrect. I don’t know who this misinformation favors, but either way it is misinformation that gives the public the wrong idea about the Florida elections. 07.15.04 (10:21 am) [ edit ] More Republican Censorship More Republican Censorship The effort to silence any dissent from the opposition continues on. Whoppi Goldberg spoke her mind at a Democratic fundraiser and she lost one of her gigs. This is as un-American as you can get, and it send shivers down the spines of anyone else who may be speaking at a public event. How many people will hold their tongue now rather than speak their mind because of this action? The Republicans will claim that she was able to speak her mind, and that the Slim Fast company had every right to fire who ever they want, but isn’t economic sanctions what the US government uses on nations that it dislikes? Don’t we place economic sanctions on Cuba because some of the rich landowners lost their property in the Cuban Revolution? So, when Republicans organize a letter writing campaign to Slim Fast to get rid of a spokesperson isn't that a form of economic sanctions? These Republicans are stooping to the lowest forms of control they can muster in order to stave off what would be a landslide vote against them if they would play by the rules. 07.15.04 (10:02 am) [ edit ] Secret Effort to Destroy the Alaskan Wilderness Secret Effort to Destroy the Alaskan Wilderness The Bush administration continues to act against the environment. This time they are trying to open up the Western Arctic Reserve of Alaska to oil drilling. Over the next thirty days there is a very little know public comment period. The Bush administration has tried to keep this activity as quiet as possible in the hopes that no one will find out about it. The cover story is that there is an oil crisis and we need more oil. So, what are they going to do when it’s all gone in 20 years? Or, is twenty years after Christ comes back in the Apocalypse? What are these guys thinking? Is this what they meant what they told us they had a secret government in place? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/opinion/08 BABB.html?ex=1089950400&en=796 ae660f4379f1f&ei=5062&par tner=GOOGLE" title="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/opinion/08 BABB.html?ex=1089950400&en=796 ae660f4379f1f&ei=5062&par tner=GOOGLE" target="_blank"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... Here's a place to go to voice your outrage: http://www.savebiogems.org/westernarctic/takeact ion.asp?RR0407" title="http://www.savebiogems.org/westernarctic/takeact ion.asp?RR0407" target="_blank"http://www.savebiogems.org/we... 07.15.04 (9:48 am) [ edit ] Jack Idema in Prison Jack Idema in Prison Jack Idema is a real life action hero. He has little regard for modern law and that’s why he is living in Afghanistan looking for bounty. He is one of American bounty hunters looking for Osama bin Laden. The Afghani authorities discovered him with three Afghanis hung by their feet from the ceiling. He and two of his buddies were torturing these men in the hopes of discovering the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. Although he was former military, the US military is distancing themselves from him today. This is especially true in the light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. When will Americans who think that they are fighting for American liberty stop and think about what they are doing? Taking liberty away from people like these innocent Afghanis is no way to show the middle East what American values are. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=539995" title="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=539995" target="_blank"http://news.independent.co.uk... 07.15.04 (7:54 am) [ edit ] Some Senators Have a Backbone Some Senators Have a Backbone Republicans in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Colorado, and Arizona should be proud of their Senators that have the guts to stand up against the divisive Bush administration. Finally, some of the Republican Senators are standing up with John McCain to oppose the fundamentalist Christians who have taken the Republican Party away from the American people. In a 48 to 50 vote the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage went down to defeat. Republicans who voted to block the amendment were Susan M. Collins (Maine), Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), John E. Sununu (N.H.), Lincoln D. Chafee (R-I.), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colo.) and John McCain (Ariz.). Be proud of these brave American Senators, because the Bush administration will attempt to take revenge on them somehow. 07.14.04 (3:16 pm) [ edit ] DOMA is DOA DOMA is DOA The Defense of Marriage Amendment is Dead on Arrival Why would a party that claims to be for states rights be so anxious to vote to take them away? Because its an election year and they value being in power higher than their ideology. Republicans need the religious right to vote in a unified way for them to have any hope of retaining a majority in congress and the presidency. So, the Senate wanted to get the Democrats on record voting for Gay Rights. Republicans intended to use the DOMA bill as a wedge issue. This is an issue that Republicans can go around mocking people that might support a Senator by saying, “Your going to vote for that idiot, he wants homos to marry each other.” By the use of peer pressure people will be forced to agree with their homophobic peers and vote for a Republican who wants to restrict the civil rights of homosexuals. Passing such an amendment to the constitution couldn’t be more un-American. The American philosophy is to keep religion and government separate. The issue of whether gays should be allowed to marry each other is clearly a religious issue. If you are a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim you may agree that people of the same sex should not marry each other. And, you have the right to require that same-sex members of your religion don’t marry each other. However, some religions have already agreed on religious unions of same-sex partners, and you should not be able to prevent these people from this union. The government has no right to use one religious ideology to determine whether a union is valid or not. That’s what separation of church and state means. The federal government should have a minimal number of laws restricting our freedoms. Additional laws should be added in layers from the states, then the municipalities and finally additional restrictions by churches on their own congregations. Placing a global federal law on people takes away state’s right, a principle the Republicans have a long history of supporting. This is another example of how the Bush administration has allowed the Christian Fundamentalists to take over the Republican Party and co-opt it for their own benefit. These Christian Fundamentalists are able to influence Republican lawmakers to impose fundamentalist religious laws on non-religious and non-fundamentalist Americans. This is just another reason why we should kick this guy out of office, and kick the Fundamentalist Republicans out of office as well. 07.14.04 (10:14 am) [ edit ] Arkansas: Kerry 46% Bush 45% Arkansas: Kerry 46% Bush 45% Arkansas is the first southern state to go for Kerry this year. Excluding Florida which may or may not be considered a southern state. Maybe some more will follow. I wonder if the selection of John Edwards as VP had anything to do with this. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Arkansas" title="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Arkansas" target="_blank"http://www.rasmussenreports.c... %20July%2012.htm 07.13.04 (1:35 pm) [ edit ] Why Preemptive Attacks Are a Bad Thing Why Preemptive Attacks Are a Bad Thing You may be sitting at home watching the news and cheering for the US victory over Iraq. However, you may not realize that this was a very dangerous action on the part of the US. This is because the US preemptively attacked another country and this sets a precedent. You may be thinking, “Hey this is great, we got rid of a bad bad man. And, right now that’s a good thing. But, this also gave the green light to countries who may choose to preemptively attack another country. I think that won’t happen any time soon. You may think that it will never happen. But the Nazis happened. The Soviets happened. So, you never know what will happen in the future. And, it isn't what I think or even what you think that matters. It is what the people who choose to attack us think. If China wanted to preemptively attack us based on our possession of WMDs they could justify it. They couldn’t last year, because we had an international law against such things. This year things are different. You could say that they wouldn't attack us, because we are the only superpower, and you would be right. However, you need to consider 30 years down the road when China becomes the new superpower, or the co-superpower. History isn't stagnant. In thirty years China may view us as a threat, especially if we have a string of right wing Fundamentalists presidents in the White House. Heck, even Europe will see us as a threat. 07.13.04 (1:02 pm) [ edit ] Rush Limbaugh Faux Pas or Pox Rush Limbaugh Faux Pas or Pox Today, Rush told his audience that Iran was harboring al Qaeda operatives. As it turns out, this makes perfect sense because Iran is an Islamic Fundamentalist state. This is unlike Iraq, which was a secular Dictatorial State. So, it would have made more sense last year for Bush to attack Iran as an accomplice of al Qaeda. He may have been able to win UN support, because this actually makes some sense. Now, Rush tells his audience that they have proof that Iran was harboring al Qaeda. Then he says that this is like Iraq. Are the liberals going to say that there aren’t any al Qaeda there either like they did in Iraq. He is trying to say that the decision to go to war in Iraq is just as justified as the current situation with Iran harboring a terrorist. This may sound complicated, but the two countries may have similar sounding names, but the two countries are not the same. A dictator ran one and one is run by a fundamentalist religious government like the US. This is a very important distinction that our intelligence agencies should understand and hopefully the president. But, based on the unnecessary conflict in Iraq it seems that our government doesn’t understand this distinction. 07.13.04 (12:10 pm) [ edit ] Bill O’Reilly’s Greed Bill O’Reilly’s Greed Bill made a remark today that really started my blood to boil. This happens quite often when I listen to his show, but this just has to do with Bill O’Reilly’s greed. He made the comment today that the liberal monitors out there were not going to quote him exactly. He said that they would conveniently leave this or that part out of the report. I hate to break this to Bill, but there is a simple solution to this problem. He could stream his show on the web and keep an archive of his shows. Then the exact quote could be found at any time. But, O’Reilly will tell you that he could do that because he would loose money by letting people listen to him without paying to join his club. So, he would loose a few bucks, but the exact quote would be out in Cyber-Space. Actually I think the truth is that Bill doesn’t want the exact program out in Cyber-Space, because then people could use the stuff he spouts against him. If NPR and other public radio can broadcast stuff over the web you know that a big time radio show that makes a profit can afford to stream their show. 07.13.04 (9:51 am) [ edit ] George’s Imagination George’s Imagination George W Bush somehow has imagined that he has made America safer. http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... ;jsessionid=5ARHMAILHMKVI CRBAEKSFFA?type=topNews&s toryID=5647771 Just like he has imagined that the economy is doing better, but those who have been hired back have jobs that pay less than the ones they once had. Somehow he believes if he keeps saying that things are good and we are safer then they will be that way. Is America this stupid? This is philosophy of advertisers. Just keep telling people that they need something and they will go out and buy it. But that kind of advertising only effects those that are stupid enough to actually go and buy something. But, when the president of the United States makes this stuff up he demeans the credibility of the office he occupies. The American people want a president that they can believe. But when we have a guy that keeps telling us what he wants us to believe rather than what we are actually experiencing we all know that he is full of crap. What I don’t understand is that those who have put their hopes and dreams into his presidency can’t see the lying. They don’t see how he has changed the story over and over again. If George W Bush hadn’t played dirty against John McCain in south Carolina 4 years ago we may have still had a Republican in the White House, but at least we would have had an honest one. And I could be telling you how great he is. But this time around conservatives need to actually listen to the president before they decide to vote for him. 07.12.04 (3:53 pm) [ edit ] Florida 2000 Election Problems Live On Florida 2000 Election Problems Live On Isn’t it interesting that Florida has been fighting for nearly four years to keep the actual felon list out of the media’s hands? Why would they fight so hard if they were doing everything right? On Friday July 2, 2004 a Florida State court finally ruled that the list had to be released to the public. The state agreed with the ruling and released the list. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPO... And, a week later the media has been able to examine the list of “potential felons.” This could have been done right away, and the state could have examined the list right away as well. The results showed that Blacks and Democrats were dis-proportionally represented on the list. Now that the truth is out the State has decided that it can no longer defend using this list to prevent these people from voting. http://www.news-journalonline... The main issue is that the Republicans who control the government used all of their resources to keep this information out of the public eye. And, after falling to do this they conceded that they used this list to unfairly prevent Democrats from voting 07.12.04 (10:14 am) [ edit ] The Adventures of Baron Munchausen The Adventures of Baron Munchausen My kids, who are great Monty Python fans found this movie at the library. Thinking that I knew about all the successful Monty Python related movies I figured that this movie must have been a sleeper. I was greatly surprised by the movie. In my opinion this movie was much better than “Time Bandits” was. Time Bandits was weak mainly because of the weak (or non-existent) ending. This movie had a much better conclusion. Plus, this movie also had a very strong thread running through the movie, without hitting you over the head with it. I also enjoyed the literary references and Robin Williams as the king of the Moon. My favorite reference was when Venus came out of the giant clam. It reminded me of Kilgore Trout's "Venus on the Half Shell." (Kurt Vonegut). That was a very nice touch. 07.12.04 (9:28 am) [ edit ] Advertising Advertising I lived in Europe for three years, and when I came back I found the most annoying thing about the US was the commercials. In Europe there are two ways to pay for TV and Radio. There are TV and Radio licenses and there are commercials. However, the commercials are only broadcast between the TV shows and on the hour or half hour on the radio. So, when we came back to the US and started watching TV the commercial advertising just stood out like a sore thumb. The segments of between commercial programming were so short that I completely understood why Americans have such a short attention span. Americans can take in their 10 minutes of program and then be interrupted with a commercial break of 6 30-second spots and then 10 more minutes of program. Of course, then you need to consider what the commercials are for. For example, Rush Limbaugh advertises weight loss pills, real estate seminars, and investing in Gold. I guess these borderline scams are matched to the audience that listens to his stuff. People who fall for his garbage will also fall for these scams. So, I found the miracle of public radio and public Television. Even after the government has cut the funding to about 20% of their operating budget they put out quality programming. I am still annoyed by commercial broadcasting and I don’t understand how the American public puts up with it. 07.12.04 (9:06 am) [ edit ] Values Values I went to the pool today. Teaching the kids to swim was today’s major goal, but letting them just have a little fun and relax was good too. After three hours at the pool my youngest claimed exhaustion. She didn’t want to leave, but she sat out of the pool and watched the others for another half hour until finally she wanted to go. The rule was that we would stay until one of them wanted to leave. We could come back after we dropped off the ones who wanted to stay home, but everyone had to leave. The pool has a rule about leaving children unattended. After getting home none of the children wanted to go back to the pool. This was my opportunity to go back to the club by myself. I having been thinking about going up to the pool and sit in the Jacuzzi to loosen up my muscles. One of my kids wanted to go to a neighbor’s house and can fruit. Another wanted to send e-mail. The other two wanted to watch videos they had checked out from the library. I quickly jumped back into the car and headed for the Jacuzzi. I got into the Jacuzzi and relaxed. About 5 minutes later three high school aged kids came into the locker room. They began talking about their latest adventures. One said, “ You should have seen the gun show.” Another one said, “You went to that gun show?” “Yes, it was great. I got a new AK and another…” That sounded interesting to me, so I kept my ears open. I didn’t know if they were just showing off to each other, or if they were another Dillon and Kliebold about to shoot the place up. But, as it turned out he had bought paintball guns. The AK was an automatic model that they were all excited about trying out. The other gun was a powerful gun just like one he already owned. They started recounting a previous paintball adventure where they had been pretending to commit suicide. The one kid said that he didn’t want to do that again. The other two reminded him about how much fun it was. He said, “Hey I wouldn’t have done it, but you were going to shoot me if I didn’t, so I didn’t have any choice.” Of course, this was a strange conversation, and I didn’t really know if they were just doing this to put on a show for me, or if they really did this type of thing. It could have been a little of both. After talking about the paintball suicides they got back to talking about the gun show. “I got a hood,” he said. “A hood?” “Yeah, it’s so cool. I am going to hang it in my window and when the construction workers look at it they are going to think that a racist sleeps in that room.” I really don’t know for sure if they were putting this on for me. If they wanted to put a KKK hood in the window to give the impression that a racist lived in the room they may have thought it was funny to talk like this in front of the guy in the Jacuzzi. But, then again they probably wouldn’t have been talking about making an impression on someone while they were trying to make an impression on someone. Based on the physical appearance of these guys, I would have guessed that they were teased in school. They were at the gym lifting weights and trying to get in shape. They also talked about a German Homeland web site that they logged on to to purchase German medals. The kid who went to the gun show said that he could purchase German and American medals at the gun show. He said he could buy medals that were illegal to wear. I am guessing that these guys got into the whole fascist ideology because they wanted a way to feel that they were more important than the respect that they were getting at school. They wanted the paintball weapons to demonstrate their power. The Supremist and Racist ideology makes them feel powerful. The weight training is done to make them stronger physically to fend off the bullying they are sure to undergo at school. My question is: Are these the values we are teaching our kids? Or, should be teaching our kids? 07.11.04 (7:38 pm) [ edit ] I am a Libertarian I am a Libertarian In several posts I have been told that I am a Liberal, and I have been lumped in with the anti-Bush crowd. Well, that’s fine, lump me in with the anti-Bush crowd. I can’t stand George W Bush because of his position on social issues. I also can’t stand his position on science issues. AND, I can’t stand him because of his position on the Iraq and the War on Terror. Since fiscal issues haven’t come up much I have been labeled a Liberal. In the past people with a Libertarian ideology could join either party and vote against the party on social issues if you joined the Republicans, or fiscal issues if you joined the Democrats. Since there has never been enough support for a full fledged Libertarian Party the power in politics was found in joining one of the other two parties. In politics this has only recently become a problem. In the past most politicians used to work together for the greater good of the community. When Newt Gingrich swept into power he told this constitutes that he wasn't going to compromise any more. This led to many problems in government. Issues could no longer be debated because no one was listening anyway. Most votes are now along party lines and Republicans control two branches of government. Libertarian Republicans were forced to change their votes yesterday in the vote to pass a bill restricting the USA Patriot Act. This is because Libertarian Republicans initially wanted to reduce the unlawful restriction of American’s liberties. But Party Politics took over and 9 Republicans were persuaded to change their votes. Obviously they won’t admit to this coercion and remain in the Republican Party. Politicians need the party support to win elections. It takes someone as strong as Jim Jeffers to stand up against a political party and survive. But, the American people will slowly learn about these tactics and they will vote these wimps out of office. However, I fear that when the Democrats come to power the whole thing will reverse and many policy decisions will be jerked around. This is the worst possible situation. The economy does best when there is very little interference. If policy is changed radically the economy will have tremendous problems. 07.09.04 (4:56 pm) [ edit ] Senate Intelligence Committee Report Senate Intelligence Committee Report Rush Limbaugh says that the Senate Intelligence Committee Report is just CYA (Cover Your Ass). He claims that the Senate Intelligence Committee is an oversight committee and therefore was responsible to know what was going on. The Senate is laying blame on the CIA. This is convenient because George Tenent has resigned and the administration and Senate can place the blame and claim they dealt with the problem. The O’Reilly factor had a substitute host today, so we don’t know what Bill thinks about this, but Bill’s substitute says that the report clears the administration of any blame. He claims that the administration got bad intelligence and they acted correctly with the information that they had. The Democrats that have been interviewed today are saying that the Senate would never have voted to go to Iraq with what we know now. This is political cover for the lack of investigation into the Iraqi threat. I still think that these Senators jumped on the War Wagon much to quickly and now they have a black mark on their record to show for it. Unfortunately, there isn’t much choice left if you want to vote these guys out of office. The choice is a Democrat who has been lead to the trough or a Republican who is already there. Hopefully when we stem the Bush regime’s aggression the US will be able to cultivate a new generation of politician. I truly doubt it , but one can always dream can’t they. 07.09.04 (4:18 pm) [ edit ] Republicans Disregard Scientific Thought Republicans Disregard Scientific Thought The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report that tells us that Politics is affecting science policy. This should send chills down every American’s back. Nazi Germany also politicized science. They told us such fake science as the supremacy of the white race and they used Jews as Guinea Pigs in horrible experiments based on these notions. Science should be transparent to politics. Science is the search for truth and non-scientists should not be telling us where to look. If politics is allowed to dictate where the truth is, it supposes that the politicians must know where the truth is. This is obviously not true. Politicians who want to control scientific policy must have an ulterior motive – be it business interest or religious interest. Either way, it is not the way science should be done. This is how Western Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&st oryID=5625949" title="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&st oryID=5625949" target="_blank"http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... 07.09.04 (12:11 pm) [ edit ] Go F--- Yourself T-shirts Go F--- Yourself T-shirts Cheney has created a couple more jobs by his use of profanity. Of course they are low wage T-shirt boutique jobs, but that's par for the course. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&s toryID=5632943" title="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&s toryID=5632943" target="_blank"http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... 07.09.04 (11:57 am) [ edit ] Blue Blogs and Red Blogs Blue Blogs and Red Blogs I’ve decided to color my blog blue until November. Since the media continues to color the map of the USA in Blue States and Red states I thought that I would color my blog blue to coincide with the “Blue” Democrat states. Not only that, I like the color blue. 07.09.04 (11:34 am) [ edit ] Bush's National Guard Records Destroyed Bush's National Guard Records Destroyed If the mainstream media is so liberal, then why isn't this story being covered. Only the New York Times has this: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/politics/c ampaign/09records.html" title="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/politics/c ampaign/09records.html" target="_blank"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... Apparently Rumsfeld has managed to destroy Bush's records, if there were any. They managed to destroy the records over the time period where George supposedly served with the National Guard in Alabama. Doesn't this sound just a bit strange? How is microfiche destroyed? Isn't data stored on these tapes because of its durability? Why can't the administration just admit the truth? Since Bush was an admitted drunkard at the time, he was most likely unfit to fly. That seems to be the obvious scenario for the facts at hand. No one remembers him at the National Guard post in Alabama, and no records exist to confirm that he was there. He most likely wasn't there. 07.08.04 (10:58 pm) [ edit ] Republicans Deny Democracy Again Republicans Deny Democracy Again Republicans keep cheating the system. 1 hour ago they did it again. On a bill to limit the USA Patriot Act the house of Representatives left the vote open an additional 20 minutes to twist the arms of 10 Republicans and make them change their votes. This is what we saw in Germany in 1939. These tactics are getting more and more common in the Republican Party ranks. The damage to our democracy mounts, as we do nothing. Will November be too late to get our Democracy back? http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004- 07-08-pat-act_x.htm" title="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004- 07-08-pat-act_x.htm" target="_blank"http://www.usatoday.com/news/... 07.08.04 (5:10 pm) [ edit ] Republicans Are Just Mean When it Comes to Health Care Republicans Are Just Mean When it Comes to Health Care Maybe having the shoe on the other foot will help get this health care bill through congress. Some Republicans have used a secret block on this bill preventing it to come to a vote. But the fact is that insurance companies are not required to pay for mental health care. So, people with mental illness never get help, because they can’t afford it. So, when Oregon Republican Gordon Smith’s son kill’s himself the reality may break the gridlock in the US Senate. However, with Republicans with the majority in the House we will not likely see anything come of this bill either. How can these people be so mean? http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&s toryID=5624332" title="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&s toryID=5624332" target="_blank"http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... 07.08.04 (4:46 pm) [ edit ] Clinton on the News Hour Clinton on the News Hour Yesterday Jim Lehrer interviewed Bill Clinton on the NewsHour. The interview was one of the best of the Clinton book tour. There weren’t many questions about Monica or the any of the scandals. Instead the interview concentrated on the current state of America and approaches to the problems we face today. Clinton had a masterful handle on the information involved in the discussion. It makes one pine for the days when we had an intellectual in the White House. When Bill Clinton was asked to contrast the difference between the Bush foreign policy and the Clinton foreign policy he made a very clear and concise statement: The Clinton foreign policy worked hard to foster relationships with other nations and used those relationships to develop American interests. When working with other nations didn’t work then we went on alone on an issue as needed. The Bush foreign policy instead is to go it alone to foster America’s interests, and when that didn’t work then they try to work with other nations for American interests. So, when people say that if Al Gore were elected we would be in the same situation one needs to think about this comparison. I believe that Al Gore would have continued the Clinton foreign policy, rather than striking out with a new policy of Unilateralism like the Bush administration. The text of the interview is here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_hou se/july-dec04/clinton_7-0 7.html" title="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_hou se/july-dec04/clinton_7-0 7.html" target="_blank"http://www.pbs.org/newshour/b... 07.08.04 (8:47 am) [ edit ] Great One - George! Great One - George! George W Bush brings up the fact that Edwards doesn't have the same stellar experience that George himself had when he took office. Oh, by the way yes he does. Edwards actually made money in his business before going into politics. Not like George who lost money on every business he ever tried before running for Governor. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml" title="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml" target="_blank"http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... ;jsessionid=1QF5LKGVGFRCM CRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&s toryID=5612713 07.07.04 (4:40 pm) [ edit ] American Values American Values Finally someone I can vote for. John Kerry and John Edwards will restore American values to the White House. http://www.onnnews.com/Global/story.asp?S=2001615&nav=LQlCOU3 f" title="http://www.onnnews.com/Global/story.asp?S=2001615&nav=LQlCOU3 f" target="_blank"http://www.onnnews.com/Global... 07.07.04 (2:10 pm) [ edit ] Talk Radio Talk Radio Another wide spread discussion on talk radio is the fact that Kerry will get a big bounce out of the selection of Edwards for the VP place on the ticket. They are discounting the bounce before it happens. I guess that this works for them whether the bounce happens or not. If it happens, then they can just say it was the VP announcement that caused the bounce. If it doesn’t happen, then they can say that the ticket must be pretty weak not to get the expected bounce. They are saying this about the Democratic Convention as well. They are really playing this up. I assume that this is also to help alleviate despair when Bush falls behind in the polls. They are saying that the bounce could be 15%. I am sure that they are over exaggerating the bounce so that when it happens they can say that they expected it, and Bush will recover. Hopefully this will not be the case, but it is interesting how all of the talk shows are talking about the same thing. 07.07.04 (1:21 pm) [ edit ] VP Debates VP Debates I was listing to conservative talk radio yesterday, but I forget exactly which pundit it was. They were all excited that John Edwards was selected for the Vice President position on the Democrat’s ticket. Why were they so excited? They were excited because they thought that Dick Cheney was going to wipe the floor with him. First of all I doubt that that would happen with all the preparation that these two people will undergo before the debate. Even Dan Quail and George W. Bush debated and it didn’t effect them very much. Instead I believe that the debate will be along the line of the Nixon - Kennedy debates. Cheney is the old frumpy Nixon character and Edwards is the young energetic Kennedy type character. Nixon could have claimed that he knew a bunch of details, but the debate proved that debates are not about the details. Debates establish your attitude. That’s why the Kerry – Bush debates are also going to go for Kerry. If the election is to come down to the VP debates, which I don’t believe it will, then Kerry/Edwards will beat Cheney/Bush. (We need to remember to put the authority figure first!) 07.07.04 (12:51 pm) [ edit ] Excellent News Excellent News Florida is breaking for Kerry in the latest polls. This confirms the post I made yesterday that Florida was going for Kerry by 2%. Now in the latest Florida poll Florida is going for Kerry by 5%. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/index.htm" title="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/index.htm" target="_blank"http://www.rasmussenreports.c... I wonder if Fahrenhiet 9/11 had any effect. 07.07.04 (12:38 pm) [ edit ] Optimism and Pessimism Optimism and Pessimism The Republican media machinery is churning away on creating new evil images of the Democratic candidates Kerry and Edwards. They have decided on painting a picture of the Democrats being a party of pessimists. This was obviously provoked by the memory of Ronald Reagan the Optimist. But, instead of becoming optimistic, the Republicans have decided to go negative and paint the Democrats as being pessimistic. This is easier than putting the energy into becoming optimistic yourself. So, how do the Republicans claim that the Democrats are pessimistic? Easy they say that the Democrats are pointing out all the things that are wrong with the country. Isn’t this the first step in fixing a problem? Identify the problem and proceed to fix it. Democrats say that industries are polluting the environment. Now the Democrats say we need to put effort into this problem so we can have a clean planet. The goal of having a clean planet is optimistic. What is the Republican’s optimistic solution? Their solution is - there is no problem, don’t worry about it. Ignore it and it will go away. Is this really an optimistic attitude? Yes, if you are a Republican advertising planner. Let’s look at another example. The Democrats are pessimistic because they point out that there are poor people suffering because they don’t have health care. The Republicans say that if those people were more optimistic they wouldn’t feel so sick. The Democrats are pointing out the problem so it can be fixed. The Republicans want the issue put in a dark place, because it may cost them higher taxes. The Democrats want to expose the suffering of these people because there is hope that this problem can be resolved. So, who are the optimists? The optimists are the group that believes that this problem can be fixed. One more example is the terrorist problem. The Republicans are telling us that there are terrorists everywhere. We can never know for sure if they are hiding behind a curtain or in a subway. Democrats acknowledge this problem and want to work with the international community to solve it. The Republicans are unsure that they can trust France, German and Russia, so they decided to go into a war with a few countries sending token support. They moved out of paranoia into an optional conflict. Is the motivation out of paranoia an optimistic motivation? Now who is the optimist and who is the pessimist? 07.07.04 (9:30 am) [ edit ] Text of Calvin Trillin Poems Text of Calvin Trillin Poems The only King We Have is Jesus (A Previously unearthed Gospel Song accredited to John Ashcroft) As I told the Bob Jones students seated white and black apart This nation is unique not like the rest As I faced those Godly Youngsters I told them from the heart Just why this land will always be the best The only King We Have is Jesus and I feel blessed to bring that News. The only King we have is Jesus I can't explain why we have Jews The homosexual lifestyle could make our Jesus weep He loathed their jokes about which cheek to turn Yes Jesus came to teach with whom we are to sleep Ignore that and you'll go to hell and burn (Final chorus sung in tongues) Tron schlect God dreeb nah hope alouf nock Trest fag narst fag meduna greeb Tron schlect God dreeb nah hope alouf nock Dar Popish flarj jar darky heeb The Effect on his Campaign of the Release of George W Bush's College Transcripts Obliviously On he sails With marks not as good as Quails 07.06.04 (10:52 pm) [ edit ] Calvin Trillin Poems Calvin Trillin Poems Here are three more poems. If you are having trouble listening to them let me know. If you like them, let me know. If they aren't popular I won't post any more. These are mp3 audio files, right click on the link and download the target. Then listen in your favorite player. http://www.geocities.com/mforbush/TheOnlyKingW eHaveIsJesus.mp3" title="http://www.geocities.com/mforbush/TheOnlyKingW eHaveIsJesus.mp3" target="_blank"http://www.geocities.com/mfor... The only King We Have is Jesus (A Previously unearthed Gospel Song accredited to John Ashcroft) As I told the Bob Jones students seated white and black apart This nation is unique not like the rest As I faced those Godly Youngsters I told them from the heart Just why this land will always be the best The only King We Have is Jesus and I feel blessed to bring that News. The only King we have is Jesus I can't explain why we have Jews The homosexual lifestyle could make our Jesus weep He loathed their jokes about which cheek to turn Yes Jesus came to teach with whom we are to sleep Ignore that and you'll go to hell and burn (Final chorus sung in tongues) Tron schlect God dreeb nah hope alouf nock Trest fag narst fag meduna greeb Tron schlect God dreeb nah hope alouf nock Dar Popish flarj jar darky heeb http://www.geocities.com/mforbush/Effect.mp3" title="http://www.geocities.com/mforbush/Effect.mp3" target="_blank"http://www.geocities.com/mfor... http://www.geocities.com/mforbush/CheneysHead.mp3" title="http://www.geocities.com/mforbush/CheneysHead.mp3" target="_blank"http://www.geocities.com/mfor... 07.06.04 (5:20 pm) [ edit ] Nanny Dick Nanny Dick So, Dick Cheney’s assertion that there were links between al Qaeda and Saddam hold no water. The 9/11 commission says that the information given to Cheney was the same information given to the 9/11 commission. How can Cheney have any credibility left? Who can believe him at all. Bush’s only hope at re-election is to get rid of this guy. But, without him Bush wouldn’t know what to do. http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... ;jsessionid=M3SB4BAM154E0 CRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&s toryID=5601658 Check out the following mp3 file: http://www.geocities.com/mfor... This is a Calvin Trillin poem I believe most people will enjoy. 07.06.04 (4:36 pm) [ edit ] Long Weekend Long Weekend I bought a family membership for a sports club on Friday. They have a pool at this club, so the kids wanted to go as soon as I got home. The kids could care less about lifting weights, Stairmasters, treadmills and all the rest, but they want to swim in the pool. Or, as it turns out at this sports club - pools. So, the instant I got home from work the kids began begging. “Please, lets go swimming....” After dinner we went to the pool and swam. The two oldest learned how to swim long ago when we lived in a apartment complex where they had a pool. I taught them, and they hadn’t forgotten very much. The youngest had never taken a lesson, but she had been in pools from time to time for parties. As Charlie Chan says Daughter number two could swim around a bit, but was never taught at any regular basis. So, when we got to the pool everyone screamed “Look at me.” And they took turns as I corrected their stroke. Just on that first day they got better and better before my eyes. When Saturday came, my son woke me up at 5:00 AM asking if I could take them swimming yet. You see, the pool is open from 4:45 AM ‘til 10:00 PM. Unfortunately they know this. After telling him to go back to sleep I went back to sleep and we woke up at a more reasonable 8:00 AM. We went to the pool again and the kids continued to improve. But, the Dad was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. All that day we worked in the garden, trying to spruce it up for next weekend’s party. We pulled weeds, pulled gopher eaten plants, planted new plants and watered them. It took much longer to do than it took for you to read that sentence. In fact we didn’t finish on the first day – we continued into July 4th and July 5th with intermissions to watch fireworks, drink some beers with friends, run in a 5 k race and go swimming some more. When Tuesday morning arrived I hoped that I could go to the gym and swim for a short time before work. And, of course the kids all begged to go with me at 6:00 AM. And I took them for a 45-minute swim. Of course they complained that 45 minutes was too short. 07.06.04 (4:16 pm) [ edit ] Bush-Cheney Negativity Bush-Cheney Negativity This morning, the Bush-Cheney campaign launched an ad attacking John Kerry's decision. This ad was produced before they even knew who had been selected. George Bush and Dick Cheney are showing once again that they are consumed by negativity and unable to defend their record. 07.06.04 (2:11 pm) [ edit ] Cumulative Poll Web Site Cumulative Poll Web Site There may be more sites out there like this one, but this web site has a huge numbers of polls on the presidential race so that politophiles can have more data to look at. According to this web site Kerry now has Florida by over 2%. And, he has the electoral votes as well. http://www.electionprojection.com/elections2004.html" title="http://www.electionprojection.com/elections2004.html" target="_blank"http://www.electionprojection... 07.06.04 (10:24 am) [ edit ] Could You? Would You? If you were living in Germany in 1939 would you have the strength to stand up against Adolph Hitler? Well, it’s 2004: Stand up against George W. Bush! VOTE! 07.02.04 (1:08 pm) [ edit ] Republican Censorship Republican Censorship Why do Republicans care what is broadcast on the Radio, TV and Internet? They fight tooth and nail to limit what is being broadcast. The argument is always against sexual content and indecency. Unfortunately the definition of indecency is cultural. Late night TV in Europe always shows a few female breasts. In a Muslim country a woman’s face is only for her husband and family to see. There is no documented evidence of the exposure to the viewing of woman’s breasts to effect a child in a negative way. However, there are quite a few studies that show that the exposure to viewing violence effects children. Why then does the FCC allows the broadcast of content that effect children and prevents the broadcast of material that does not? It comes down to Religious control of the Republican Party. Fundamentalist Christians have distorted views of sexuality and morality. They also have control of the Republican Party. Therefore they use this power to make laws to restrict the freedom of speech. Then they defend their assault by using an emotional argument about protecting children from pornography. The reality of the situation is that children can be protected from pornography by their parents. Republicans continue to tell us that we don’t need the government to monitor industries destroying the environment. The Republicans continue to tell us that they don’t need government to regulate commerce. Republicans continue to tell us that they don’t need government to regulate the energy industry. But somehow we need the government to regulate what we listen to on the radio, watch on the TV or download on the Internet. What happened to the Republican ideal of personal responsibility? I think Republicans are jealous of the non- Fundamentalist Christians who want to listen, view and download this stuff. This is like the child who didn’t win the game so he wants to take the ball home so the others can’t play the game. What other explanation can there be, because they can simply turn the channel, or turn off the media if they don’t like what is being broadcast? I was listening to The O’Reilly radio show this morning. A caller called in about this subject. She said that she listened to Howard Stern. She told the host (O’Reilly’s substitute) that she was offended by his show. Why did she continue to listen after she was offended? Simple, she listened so that she could file complaints against Stern. What? This is another Nazi Brown Shirt tactic. They Nazis would go around complaining about the Jews in the neighborhood so that they could be removed from the neighborhood. It is really sad that our country has come to this. 07.02.04 (10:20 am) [ edit ] The Bush Goon Squad Strikes Again The Bush Goon Squad Strikes Again The Bush ad that portrays the Democrats as Hitler is a new low for the Republican Party. They have resorted to Nazi brown shirt tactics because they believe that what they are fighting for is worthy of fighting for by cheating. They are trying to make the Democrats look like the Nazi Party when in reality they are the Party of Racism and protectionist policy. They fought hard in California to keep immigrants from receiving health benefits. They are fighting hard to make gay and lesbians second class citizens. They believe that Christian Fundamentalism is the one true religion and they use the religion’s definition of morality to write the laws. They would like to censor books from our school’s libraries. And, they have little regard for true science and would rather make science up to benefit their cause. They use false science to argue that there isn’t any global warming even though most scientists agree that global warming coincides with the on set of the industrial revolution. So, to have an ad that suggests that the Democratic Party is anything like the Nazi Party is disingenuous at best, but more likely sinister. They use the naivete of the general public to do these things and deny it out right knowing that the public will give them the benefit of the doubt. If not, then explain how the Republicans can do this. First, in a MoveOn.org contest where several hundred random people could enter a contest to produce an anti-Bush ad, the Bush campaign jumped on one ad that was distasteful. MoveOn.org immediately pulled the ad, because they agreed with the Bush campaign. Remember that this was an ad from someone who logged onto a web page asking for contributions. The ads were displayed at random when you logged on to the site. Plus, you could only view 5 ads per day. So, how did the Bush administration learn of this one ad? Were they logging on from multiple computers trying to dig up dirt? Or, who's to say that a Republican member of the Bush Goon Squad didn't submit the ad for the purpose of causing the controversy. This way, they would know that the ad existed without digging for the dirt. Someone should talk to the person who submitted the ad. Now, under the guise of trying to demonstrate how evil the Democrats are they use Nazi Brown shirt tactics to imply that Kerry and the Democrats are like Hitler. Their excuse is that the Democrats used Hitler in their ad. Well, they didn’t, because that ad did not win the contest. Second, that ad was taken off the web page when the controversy was announced. This should send chills down the back of any American that values Democracy. 07.01.04 (1:44 pm) [ edit ] The Lessons We Learned From Iraq (part 1) The Lessons We Learned From Iraq Hopefully when people make mistakes they learn from them. Today, the majority of Americans agree that the Iraq conflict was a mistake. So, the question becomes: “What do we learn from this mistake?” I would go back to the beginning of the war and look very closely at the events that happened and the choices made. After 9/11 the US quickly discovered that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack. At that time there was a widely held belief that terrorists could not cause major damage without the aid of a nation state. In al Qaeda’s case Afghanistan and Sudan were harboring al Qaeda and allowing them to train terrorists. The US response was quick and fatal for the Afghani government, the Taliban, but al Qaeda escaped. The US believed that without a supportive nation state al Qaeda could not exist. Lesson learned: Terrorists don’t need a nation state for support, but it makes one’s life easier. But, where could the terrorists go next? Obviously another nation state willing to support their activities. So, the Bush administration concluded that one of the nations that hated us must be next on the list of harboring terrorists. Unfortunately the Bush administration either had no one informed about Middle East culture, or more likely they didn’t listen to people that opposed their plan. Most likely because of a grudge the Bush administration concluded that Iraq must be invaded. They somehow concluded that Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and a number of other third world countries would not be where al Qaeda would go. Lesson learned: Don’t jump to conclusions. Many dangerous places exist and terrorists make due with what they have. So, once the Bush administration had it’s mind made up it needed to gain support from the world for its plan to attack and overthrow a sovereign nation. This is a violation of the number one international law. One does not go into another sovereign nation uninvited, or it is considered a military aggression. Military aggression should be opposed by the world as a whole. This, of course, was the reason we used to oppose Iraq after they invaded Kuwait in 1990. In 1990 the US was able to find support in the UN and raise an international force to get Iraq out of Kuwait. Even the French, Germans and Russians agreed to this use of force. Since the Bush administration had no credible evidence of the danger of Saddam Hussein the UN was not enthusiastic about supporting the invasion of Iraq. Lesson learned: If you can’t convince your friends with the evidence, reexamine the evidence. It may not be all you think it is. Without being able to convince the UN security council of a need to attack Iraq the Bush administration took a group a former Eastern Block nations, the UK, and a couple of island nations and invaded Iraq. Unfortunately, after they got rid of the government they didn’t know what to do. Lesson learned: Make plans. When I started writing this I thought this would be short, but obviously there is much more. I’ll continue this in another blog.
CURRENT URL http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/02/academic-freedom-vs-academic.html
Shining a psychological spotlight on a few of the insanities of life Thursday, February 03, 2005 Academic Freedom vs. Academic Accountability It seems that there is a lot of confusion these days among university professors about the difference between the concepts of "academic freedom" and "academic accountability". Many of them appear to believe that having "academic freedom" means never having to say they're sorry--or at least, never being accountable for what they say; and forever protected from criticism of their their thoughts and opinions and behavior--no matter how UNacademic or asinine. When the criticism originates in a scholarly journal in response to a scholarly publication, it is more palatable. But usually, scholarly journals are the repository of scholarly ideas--a place where those ideas can be presented with evidence or data to support them; discussed; disagreed with, or refuted. This is a form of academic accountability. Those professors--even with tenure--who never publish their ideas for the academic community to analyze or dissect, soon lose credibiity within their fields (or should, at any rate). Those with crackpot ideas; no evidence or data to demonstrate their ideas; are subject to the indignity of not being published at all--their papers and the elucidated ideas insufficiently robust to even make it onto the academic cutting block. These latter will never (well, hardly ever) achieve tenure--except in those fields where scholarly ability is not valued. One such area appears to be "ethnic studies". I wonder what "ethnic study" led Professor Churchill to opine his delusional personal beliefs and disguised it under "academic freedom"? He is currently finding out about the impact of "peer review" as the general public become aware of some of the more outrageous things he says. And, isn't it interesting that --although his expressed feelings managed to hurt thousands of people who had relatives and loved ones in the 9/11 attacks; there is no outrage from the same multicultural, politically correct university community who are so often tenderly concerned about the hostile impact of "conservative" views-- speech is only free, apparently, for those who have views the university crowd agrees with (see here , for example) Of course Churchill has a right to free speech . But just because Churchill works for a university does not make him some holy, sacred being whose ideas and opinions must forever be sacrosanct and unquestioned. Who does he think he is? Mohammed? Are his writings like the Koran that they must not be ridiculed and laughed at? That they can't be exposed for the academic shams they are? What will he do? Issue a fatwa against those who think he is a crackpot and that he should be fired? Frankly, I personally agree that Churchill is a complete idiot and a malignant human being. He is certainly entitled to his opinions on September 11, and he can identify with and dress up as Che Guevara and other Leftist thugs all he wants for all I care (he's probably so narcissistic he thinks the picture linked to isn't completely hilarious). But if I lived in Colorado I would deeply resent that MY tax money was being used to promulgate his personal agenda; and not to further the cause of science and scholarship in any way that I could see. It is probably too much to hope that his academic colleagues would see him for the joke that he is and laugh him out of the field. But I have no problem with him having to be accountable for his views to the people who pay him. And tenure or not, in my humble opinion, those people should fire his ass.
CURRENT URL http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2007/09/academic-lunacy.html
Victor Davis Hanson asks, "Have American academics lost their collective mind?" Having been in academia for much of my professional career, I think I am qualified to andwer that question in the affirmative. And let me add, that it is because the "mind" of academia has become a "collective", that it has been lost. Hanson considers some of the more recent examples of academic lunacy and then points out: In each of the above cases, the general public has had to remind these universities that their campuses should welcome thinkers who have distinguished themselves in their fields, regardless of politics and ideology. The liberal Chemerinsky, the Clinton Democrat Summers and the conservative Rumsfeld have all courted controversy -- and all alike met the criterion of eminent achievement. But the propagandist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not. Unlike Chemerinsky, Rumsfeld and Summers, he used the prestige of an Ivy-League forum solely to popularize his violent views -- and to sugarcoat the mayhem his terrorists inflict on Americans and his promises to wipe out Israel. Here's a simple tip to the clueless tenured class about why a Larry Summers or Donald Rumsfeld should be welcome to speak, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shunned: former Cabinet secretaries -- yes; homicidal dictators killing Americans -- no. I noted in this post that: Columbia University does not, as one person has astutely pointed out have to "give a soapbox to every lunatic in the world" to somehow "prove" that it believes in free speech or the free exchange of ideas. Giving a soapbox to a Hitler or a Bin Laden or a pipsqueak like Ahmadinejad is merely yet another histrionic display of narcissistic self-indulgence by a politicized academia; just as the decision to recind Larry Summers invitation to speak was at another institution of higher learning. What both incidents have in common is the dedication and committment to a particular political ideology, rather than to any value or belief in "the free exchange of ideas. " And the collectivist ideology that many American universities and their faculties implicitly and explicitly promote and represent is what I have termed neo-Marxist fascism . If students in these madhouses aren't anti-American by the time they enter college, quite a few are by the time they finish. I am reminded of this pathetic state of affairs in our educational system by this humorous editorial about Columbus that I read the other day, which exemplifies how American history is being taught these days in the elementary school curriculum. The neo-Marxists have also reinterpreted the history of slavery in order to demonize America--the country and people that were one of the first to put an end to a barbaric practice that had been going on for centuries (see this article "Six Inconvenient Truths about the U.S. and Slavery") . Instead of celebrating the ideas and the paradigm shift that America represents, the political left has chosen to use the imperfections of America as an indictment against the very ideas of political liberty and individualism. The process of indoctrinating young minds into utopian Marxism and all other variants of collectivist thought has become the holy mission of many universities and colleges and their faculty. This travesty has implications for generations of minds, whose thought processes have been perverted by the distortions of reality that are necessary to shore up the underying totalitarian ideologies. Hiding behind the concept of "academic freedom", the purveyors of thought oppression have gained control of education in this country. The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of those overly-prized qualities of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" need to be thoroughly and painstakingly exposed for what they are: the politically correct posturings of incompetent social engineers who wish to impose their own mediocrity on all aspects of society. They champion a new kind of oppression (the oppression of the competent) under the benign guise of "political correctness". If your ideas merely hurt their feelings, you can be sent to their gulags. The transformation of our intellectual centers of knowledge into vast emotional swamps of multicultural victimhood, offended by any idea that they don't like, can be best appreciated by the unwillingness to tolerate dissent and difference of opinion, and the utter willingness to resort to physical violence to silence anyone they don't agree with. In this manner, the professors--sure of their ideological and moral superiorty-- are no longer bothered by pesky ideas , which might actually have to be defended by reason and logic. No, they rely almost totally these days on the primacy of their feelings, which they proudly point out need no defense, since they are honest feelings and reflect the utmost emotional sensitivity--except, of course, to those who happen to disagree with them. So, Hanson wonders if American academics have lost their collective mind? My answer is that it is precisely the "collectivist" and totalitarian mindset taught in American Universities and colleges that has ushered in an era of academic lunacy with its disconnect from the real world; its worship of feelings over thought, and its betrayal of knowledge, truth, and reason. UPDATE : Four rather long articles for you to read if you want to understand some of the issues related to Academic Freedom today. First, the report "Freedom in the Classroom" put out by the AAUP; Peter Wood's response to that report, "Truths R Us"; the detailed, point-by-point scholarly and detailed critique of the AAUP report by Balch and Wood of the National Association of Scholars here; and Erin O'Connor's essay "AAUP To Critics: What, Us Biased?" that just came out this week. (hat tip: The Corner ) - Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:49 AM
CURRENT URL http://eagleforum.org/psr/2002/apr02/psrapr02.shtml
 Subscribe YouTube Blog Shop Order for home delivery today! Diversity Dishonesty on College Campuses Survival Advice for College Students Mandatory Student Fees Finance Leftist Causes Get on our e-mail list! VOL. 35, NO. 9 P.O. BOX 618, ALTON, ILLINOIS 62002 APRIL 2002 Diversity Dishonesty on College Campuses Google Ads are provided by Google and are not selected or endorsed by Eagle Forum Diversity, multiculturalism, tolerance, and political correctness are the watchwords in colleges and universities today. The campus thought police have defined those words to enforce the liberal leftwing agenda. Diversity means diversity only for thoughts and practices that are politically correct. Political correctness means conformity to leftwing orthodoxy. Multiculturalism means all cultures are equal but Western Judeo-Christian civilization is the worst. Tolerance means acceptance of all behaviors except those that comport with the Ten Commandments. The Luntz Research Companies, a respected polling company, conducted a survey this spring of the opinions of the liberal arts and social science faculty at Ivy League colleges and universities. The results explain the ideological indoctrination rampant on campuses today and prove that the colleges' sanctimonious accolades to diversity are dishonest. Only 3% identified themselves as Republican, while 57% admitted they are Democrats. 64% identified themselves as liberal, 23% as moderate, and only 6% as conservative. Here is how they voted in the 2000 election: 61% for Al Gore, 5% for Ralph Nader, 6% for George W. Bush, and 28% either did not vote or refused to answer. Here is how they answered the question "who do you think has been the best President in the past 40 years?": 26% Bill Clinton, 17% John F. Kennedy, 15% Lyndon Johnson, 13% Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan came in a poor fifth at 4%. 79% said George W. Bush's political views are "too conservative." 71% disagree that "news coverage of political and social issues reflects a liberal bias in the news media." 74% said that we "should not spend the money that would be required for research and possible development of a missile defense system." 61% believe "the federal government should do more to solve our country's problems" rather than individuals, communities or private enterprise. 80% disagree that "if the federal budget has a surplus in any a given year, this money should be returned to taxpayers in the form of a tax cut." 40% agree that "the federal government owes American blacks some form of reparations for the harms caused by slavery and discrimination." This survey was commissioned by David Horowitz and released by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Horowitz calls the biased faculty "institutional leftism." He says it is unfair for institutions that receive hundreds of millions of dollars and subsidies from the taxpayers to be so partisan in their hiring practices. "How can students get a good education if they're only being told one-half of the story?" It's a well-kept secret how much money the elite colleges are getting outright from the federal government -- in addition to billions of dollars in all sorts of student financial aid. Here is a sampling of the latest available annual figures: Johns Hopkins $793 million, Stanford $391 million, Harvard $349 million, Washington University (St. Louis) $347 million, MIT $301 million, Yale $300 million, Emory $248 million, Cornell $247 million, Duke $218 million, and Northwestern $204 million. It's no wonder that, after 9/11 when Congress tried to legislate a time-out on the granting of student visas to aliens from countries that sponsor terrorism because of obvious fraud, negligence, bribery and treachery, the colleges sent an army of high-priced lobbyists to Capitol Hill to kill the bill. The colleges want the alien students enrolled in the graduate programs in order to bolster their demand for these federal handouts for "research." The INS didn't learn any lessons from its embarrassing approval of student visas for the two dead terrorists who flew the planes into the World Trade towers on September 11. The INS fouled up again when it granted "shore leave visa waivers" in Norfolk to four Pakistani crewmen who immediately disappeared and can't be found. INS Commissioner James Ziglar now says, "The days of looking the other way are over." (3-22-02) But why weren't they over by sundown on 9/11? Survival Advice for College Students Pick your courses carefully. Since you are paying an enormous hourly rate for classes, don't waste your education dollar on trivial, non-academic courses, or rap sessions on highly specialized subjects of no value to anyone other than the professor who is writing an article for a journal no one reads. Don't waste your education dollar on trashy courses that are just entertainment or propaganda, such as courses in horror or porn movies, rock music, witchcraft, or gay or erotic writings, Don't think that the title of the course is a guarantee of what the course really covers. Get a syllabus to find out if the course has been politicized by the liberals and the feminists. The title may indicate a traditional course of study, but the famous DWEMS (Dead White European Males), who wrote the great books of Western civilization, may have been censored out and replaced with Oppression Studies, i.e. , selections from third-rate writers who paint themselves as victims and attack Western civilization as sexist, racist, and oppressive. Take courses where you learn things that are true (not things that are false and must be unlearned later), such as engineering, math, accounting, statistics, and the classics. Avoid taking advice from college counselors. They are working for the financial interests of the college, not the students. Counselors frequently channel students into a schedule that requires five or six years to get a bachelor's degree -- federal grants and loans make this profitable for the college. Your degree isn't worth a penny more even if it costs you 25% or 50% more in money and time. Make sure you don't get trapped in a course taught by an instructor who doesn't speak intelligible English. Many important and necessary college courses -- especially in math and science -- are taught by immigrants who can barely speak English. If you take Economics, seek out the professors who teach the successful free-market economics according to Adam Smith or Milton Friedman. Try to avoid professors who teach the failed economics of socialism. Beware of professors of English who teach Deconstructionism. That means there is no such thing as intrinsic merit in a work of literature and that what matters is what you think, not what the author wrote. Avoid women's studies. They are usually just propaganda courses for sexual politics and radical feminist, and often lesbian, ideology and behavior. Seek out courses that teach the true history and achievements of Western civilization and the United States rather than multiculturalism, the code word for downgrading America as the worst of all cultures. Avoid instructors who impose their anti-Christian bias by demanding that students replace B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini) with B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era). Don't believe everything you read in the college catalogue. Many college catalogues are dishonest advertising because up to half of the courses listed may not really be offered, or may be offered only once in ten years. Take courses taught by qualified professors rather than by Teaching Assistants (T.A.s), underpaid graduate students who know very little more than you do. Beware of crime on campus. Most colleges conceal the actual amount of crime that takes place on college campuses. If your roommate is on drugs, has sex in your room, or engages in obnoxious behavior that interferes with your studying, demand a change. Prepare yourself morally and psychologically for the culture shock of freshman orientation. You might be asked to role-play what it's like to be gay, or told that if you object to coed bathrooms you need psychological counseling. Don't think you can get into a first-rate college because you are smart. Michele Hernandez, Dean of Admissions at Dartmouth, says you have a better chance of being admitted if you are from a ghetto, a barrio or an Indian reservation, or if you are someone they can feel sorry for, even if your academic qualifications are lower. Avoid the colleges that have speech codes. Speech codes are Political Correctness run amuck and an offense against the First Amendment. Don't pile up debt on credit cards. You will probably have plenty of tuition debt to pay off after you graduate and you don't need any more debt. Many colleges are secretly paid by the credit card companies for the privilege of pressuring college students to get credit cards even though they have no job. Don't think you are getting a good education just because you get high grades. Grade inflation is an insidious system designed to make you and your parents feel good about exorbitant tuition rates. Seek out companions who share your values and beliefs and join a conservative student support group such as Eagle Forum Collegians. Engage in conservative, pro-family activism on your college campus. Stand up against the professors and students who attack America. Run for student government positions and demand a fair share of student activity fees for conservative, pro-family student groups. Write for the student newspaper, where you can expose such abuses as inviting only leftists to lecture, and giving financial aid to large numbers of aliens even though so many American citizens need help. (The Wall Street Journal reported (2-1-02) that about 40% of 240,000 foreign graduate students now receive financial aid and the colleges plan to increase this substantially.) Boston University, for example, has 5,240 foreign students, researchers or professors. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Mandatory Student Fees Finance Leftist Causes A principal source of funding for the radical leftwing movement in the United States is the student activity fees collected from all college students. It's a mandatory tax in addition to tuition; i.e. , a student cannot receive his grades or diploma unless student fees are paid in full. At many if not most colleges and universities, the student activity money becomes a pot of gold that goes into the hands of student leftists, who then direct much or all of the funds into liberal, leftwing, feminist, gay, socialist, or radical student groups or activities. These funds are used to bring leftwing speakers to campus, to lobby for leftwing causes, and to engage in leftwing demonstrations and activities. The amount of money is very large; at state universities, the student fee can add up to a million dollars a year or more. Enjoying tight control over this tremendous pot of money, the leftwing students (with the patronage of leftwing professors) are able to finance the radical movement in the United States and pay honoraria of thousands of dollars to leftwing speakers. Only rarely is a token conservative invited. Student activity fees often finance the college newspaper, which usually manifests a strong bias for liberalism and political correctness. One of Eagle Forum's major projects has been to sponsor campus groups called Eagle Forum Collegians , and our Collegians keep trying to cut off this flow of money to leftist causes or at least to try to get equal treatment for conservatives. Our first big effort was at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1979, a handful of students including Roger Schlafly (then studying for his Ph.D. in math) went into the Small Claims Court to challenge the policy of taxing all students and channeling the money into leftwing causes. After a 30-minute hearing, the handful of students won, based on Thomas Jefferson's dictum: "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical." The powerful University of California, determined to maintain the flow of the $3-million-a-year student-fee money to leftwing causes, then hired high-priced San Francisco lawyers and moved the case into the regular state courts where the litigation dragged on for 14 years. Finally, on February 3, 1993 the California State Supreme Court in Smith v. Regents of the University of California condemned the policy in which students are "forced to support causes they strongly oppose." The Court listed 14 "frankly political or ideological" groups to which the student government organization had given funds from mandatory student fees, including the National Organization for Women, Campus Abortion Rights Action League, Gay and Lesbian League, Spartacus Youth League, Radical Education and Action Project, UC Sierra Club, Greenpeace Berkeley, and UC Feminist Alliance. Student fees were even spent to send a delegation of Berkeley feminists to Chicago to march with Phil Donahue in a demonstration for the Equal Rights Amendment. The California decision said students could demand a refund of the portion of mandatory student fees used for off-campus lobbying or given to ideological groups. When the Smith case was remanded, however, a lower court ruled in 1997 that student governments are free to spend student fees directly for leftwing activism. The bottom line is that mandatory student fees are still collected and spent for leftist causes, and the burden is on individual students to get reimbursement for a small portion. In a related case in 1999, a federal judge ruled that lobbying with student fees cannot be banned. The next breakthrough came at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where Bill Clinton's friend, Donna Shalala, had been president. A group of students filed suit to challenge the forcing of all students to pay fees that were given exclusively to leftwing causes. In 1998 the federal Court of Appeals ruled that the University of Wisconsin cannot constitutionally force students to pay into funds that give money to organizations or causes they oppose. The Court's decision cited 18 student organizations that had been funded by University of Wisconsin student fees, including WISPIRG (which lobbied Congress and distributed environmentalist voter guides), the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Campus Center (which distributed sexually explicit materials), the Campus Women's Center (which lobbied for abortion rights and against any regulations), the UW Greens (which distributed campaign materials for the Green Party), the Madison AIDS Support Network, the International Socialist Society (which advocated the overthrow of the government and disrupted a church meeting), the Ten Percent Society (which lobbied for same-sex marriages), the Progressive Student Network (which lobbied against the GOP Contract with America), the United States Student Association (which lobbies for a mix of leftwing causes), the Militant Student Union, and Students of National Organization for Women. The University appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which unfortunately ruled in favor of the University in Board of Regents v. Southworth , 529 U.S. 217 (2000) . The Supreme Court was persuaded by arguments in favor of academic freedom and giving broad discretion to the University. Buried in the Supreme Court's opinion, however, was a powerful caveat: the system imposing and spending the student fees must be "viewpoint neutral." The case was remanded to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The Circuit Court judges were then besieged by amicus briefs from the groups that had long been on the student-fee gravy train, including Wisconsin Student PIRG (which received $45,000 in one year) and the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Campus Center. The Court of Appeals then sent the case back to the district court with an order to consider whether a majority student vote can force a minority of students to fund projects with which they disagree. The University of Wisconsin kept fighting hard, asking the Court of Appeals to rehear the case en banc , which it refused to do. This left the district court with the task of finally resolving the issues. The district court then held that "to require University of Wisconsin students to pay a fee to subsidize expressive speech without any protection for the rights of students who object to the funded speech is a violation of the First Amendment." Fry v. Board of Regents , 312 F.Supp.2d 744 (W.D.Wis., 2000) This court enjoined the University from imposing such fees until it "establishes an allocation system that operates in a viewpoint neutral manner." The University never did establish a viewpoint-neutral allocation system. So, three months later, the district court rejected the University's proposed alternative and granted judgment in favor of the student plaintiffs. The court held the student-fee system at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in violation of the First Amendment because "it fails to conform to the principle of viewpoint neutrality in allocating fees." The University was enjoined from compelling students to pay those portions of student fees that fund expressive activities to which they object. Fry v. Board of Regents , 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3346 (W.D. Wis, Mar. 15, 2001). Unfortunately, most colleges and universities haven't gotten the message that it is a violation of the First Amendment to force students to pay for causes which they oppose. Trying to stop the unjust taxing of all students to finance leftwing causes will continue to be a priority of Eagle Forum Collegians . My own experience in speaking on more than 500 college campuses reveals the bias in the use of student funds to bring in visiting lecturers. At one state university in Ohio, I was invited as a token only after the student fees had paid to bring in a long succession of radical feminists: Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Pat Schroeder, Katherine Brady (who spoke on incest), Shirley Chisholm, Ellen Goodman, Germaine Greer, Wilma Scott Heide, Shere Hite, Kate Millett, and Sarah Weddington. At a state university in Virginia, I was invited as a token only after the previous speakers had been extreme feminists Susan Faludi, Molly Ivins, Patricia Schroeder, the sexologist Dr. Ruth, Faye Wattleton of Planned Parenthood, and a lesbian army colonel. Nevertheless, the feminist faculty protested the invitation to me. I regret to say that these experiences are typical. More than 140 college campuses in 36 states have held anti-war rallies denouncing our military actions in Afghanistan, according to a report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. The document, called Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America , contrasts this with the way many professors and administrators are quick to clamp down on acts of patriotism, such as flying the American flag. Listing 117 examples of anti-American sentiment on campuses, the report expressed particular concern about the anti-patriotic attitude in new post-9/11 college courses. Reproduced with permission from Dick Adair and the Honolulu Advertiser . Don't waste your tuition on any of these college courses that have been taught at major universities -- they are just entertainment or propaganda masquerading as education: U of California-Berkeley : "Male Sexuality"; Columbia : "Sorcery and Magic"; Dartmouth : "Queer Theory, Queer Texts"; Harvard : "Feminist Biblical Interpretation"; Yale : "AIDS and Society"; Cornell : "Gay Fiction"; Princeton : "Sexuality: Bodies, Desires, and Modern Times"; U of Pennsylvania : "Feminist Critique of Christianity"; Brown : "Unnatural Acts: Introduction to Lesbian and Gay Literature"; Bucknell : "Witchcraft and Politics"; U of Iowa : "Elvis as Anthology"; Swarthmore : "Lesbian Novels Since World War II"; Stanford : "Homosexuals, Heretics, Witches, and Werewolves"; Oberlin : "Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare"; Rutgers : "Women on the Fringe: Perceptions of Women as Social and Sex-Role Deviants in American Civilization"; Vassar : "Global Feminism"; Wesleyan : "Pornography Writing of Prostitutes"; U of Massachusetts : "Rock and Roll"; U of Indiana : "Star Trek and Religion"; U of Michigan : "Crossing Erotic Boundaries"; U of North Carolina : "Magic, Ritual, and Belief"; U of Wisconsin : "Goddesses and Feminine Powers."
CURRENT URL http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2005/12/seven_hypothese.html
My impression is that most people suffer from "environmental bias." At least when they are talking about human beings, they overrate the importance of environmental factors, and underrate the importance of genetic factors. Why would they do this? Joseph Buckhalt offers an original and thought-provoking list of possible explanations: I have tried to understand why we are so resistant to accepting the idea that intellectual ability and other human characteristics are heritable to a significant degree, and here are a few hypotheses: a. Democratic values: Individual and group differences run counter to our egalitarian ideals, and to reduce cognitive dissonance, we use denial. b. Genes are invisible: Although genes are becoming increasingly "visible" through modern science and technology, environmental differences are much more available to us. c. Parent-child similarity: Most persons aren't aware, or choose not to remember, that their children are products of the (invisible) genotypes of their parents, rather than their phenotypes. d. Extended families: Extended families in America tend less and less to grow up and live near enough one another for family resemblance to be noticed in extended kin. e. Rapid cultural change and slow genetic change: Our environments have changed so fast during the last century due to rapid technological advances, that we over-attribute the influence of environment and under-attribute to genetic change, which is exceedingly slow relative to a human lifespan. f. Non-agrarian society: Unlike the majority of the last 10,000 years when humans were involved in growing plants and raising animals, and the even longer span of millions of years when we coexisted in habitats with plants and animals, agriscience and technology have enabled us to escape our direct connection to nature. Americans of just a few generations ago might have understood implicitly that many traits are the joint product of breeding and husbandry. g. Religious myths: The myth that humans are somehow separate and above other species on earth continues to persist and thrive. Even if we all understood Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution, many would resist the idea that human traits are subject to these natural laws due to their special status as creations in God's image. I don't know if it's true, but I find (f) to be the most intriguing. Are farmers more hereditarian than urbanites? Are more agricultural countries more hereditarian than industrial countries? Anyone? CATEGORIES: Behavioral Economics and Rationality COMMENTS (15 to date) Latest Comment Steve Sailer writes: 8. Advice books for parents are written for parents of their first child, who naturally tend to overrate their own influence on their child because they don't have a control group to compare the child with. When parents have a second child, then they realize how different children are, but by then aren't much of a market for parenting advice. 9. IQ elites find it useful to attribute their success to environment. For example, Harvard has been notorious for decades for having professors who are research superstars and are bored with teaching undergraduates. Stanford has been notorious for grade inflation. Berkeley has been notorious for gigantic class sizes and lecturers with incomprehensible accents. There's no evidence that you get a better education at these elite colleges. Yet, these colleges continue to get ever more applicatons for undergraduate education because getting in certifies you as smart and hardworking. Then, these vastly influential institutions fight against alternative ways to certify young people as smart and hardworking. Posted December 2, 2005 4:56 PM Bernard Yomtov writes: Perhaps Buckhalt would make a more convincing case if he understood the difference between "genetic" and "heritable." Posted December 2, 2005 5:21 PM Ramon writes: I have tried to understand why we are so resistant to accepting the idea that intellectual ability and other human characteristics are heritable to a significant degree People in general are not resistant to believe that smart parent produce smart children or that children are smart/stupid for genetic reasons. When I was a kid (70's in rural Mexico) it was natural to talk about a child "coming out" smart or dumb. People had no problem characterizing general behavioral traits as inherited from parents. My impression is that the "environmental bias" is a cultural feature of more egalitarian societies but not necessarily a product of genetics itself. So I vote for (a). Posted December 2, 2005 6:50 PM Anonymouse writes: 10. 50 years of pathologization in media, academia and entertainment of anyone who thinks nature has as much (or more) to say in the debate than nurture. Posted December 2, 2005 6:59 PM Biopolitical writes: The evidence for substantial heritability of interesting mental traits is extremely thin. For saying this, and despite not having mentioned the word "environment," you probably think I suffer from an "environmental bias." Biased or unbiased, I do not fit in the seven hypotheses. I am no egalitarian and I support individual freedom over democratic control. I am a biologist and have always been quite fond of genetics (i. e., I am "aware" of genes). I have spent much of my adult life doing ecological research in the field, where I feel quite "connected with nature." I live in the countryside and grow food in my backyard, as do all my neighbors. I live in Spain, where extended families remain quite close. I am in a good position to be "aware" of genetic and nongenetic similarities because I adopted a child (who has much much darker skin than my wife and me). And I have been an atheist all my adult life. c. Parent-child similarity: Most persons aren't aware, or choose not to remember, that their children are products of the (invisible) genotypes of their parents, rather than their phenotypes. I am not aware of such thing because it is false. Children are not products of the genotypes of their biological parents, even if heritability were 100%. Posted December 2, 2005 7:13 PM Anonymouse writes: "The evidence for substantial heritability of interesting mental traits is extremely thin." I don't know what you mean by "interesting mental traits," but if you think the case for substantial heritability of intelligence is "extremely thin," you're extremely wrong. To those in the field, the question is no longer even considered very interesting. Nature is somewhere around 40-75% heritable (it likely varies for different groups). Only a politicized media -- backed by a few politicized scientists -- propagates the myth that intelligence in not highly heritable. Based on the subtitle of your blog, I suspect you might be among them. You don't have a photo of Dick Lewontin on your office wall, do you? Posted December 2, 2005 7:22 PM back40 writes: Epigenetic effects make things complicated in that the expression of a genome depends in part on the environment of previous generations. You are what your grandmother ate, to some extent. Posted December 2, 2005 9:33 PM dearieme writes: Long ago, as a rustic freshman amongst urbanites, I noticed that it was not their instinct to check assertions about humankind against knowledge of animalkind. Posted December 2, 2005 11:52 PM Bob Knaus writes: Being the son of son of a farmer I can tell you that agrarians absolutely think more in terms of family traits than do urbanites. My aunts and cousins used to joke about the "Knaus walk" that the men had. (It is rather ape-like). Small-town newspaper clippings from a century ago routinely mentioned the longevity and mental alertness of the Knaus patriarchs. Pictures, Civil War records, and family history all point to a clan that was larger, stronger, and smarter than average. Good attributes to have on the Missouri frontier. I myself am a gangly shadow of my ancestors, due no doubt (in the minds of the oldsters) to 2 or 3 generations of breeding with effete Easterners. This mindset had (has?) some strongly negative effects which I think animates much of what Brian calls "environmental bias" today. Jim Crow laws, patriarchal religions, Main Street merchant cliques, xenophobia, and many other social ills that we associate with rural America drew at least some of their strength from the conviction that "people are born that way". Seeing the outcomes, it's no wonder people recoil from the assumptions. Posted December 3, 2005 9:51 AM Tom West writes: I think Bob Knauss hits it on the head. The problem with assuming genetics is that if the belief becomes widespread, we *know* the policy that will follow, and it ain't pretty. This especially because (as a whole) society does link intelligence and "worth". Add in racial differences, and we're on a path to branding whole groups of people as less worthy even before they're born, and that's a road that no-one with sense wants to travel down. There are those who claim that this time we'd handle the "truth" rationally and calmly, but I doubt many believe it (including most of those espousing the need for their "truth" to be known). Posted December 3, 2005 11:00 AM Bill writes: Well, sure, genetics would have something to do with it, but I would argue that this would make a very slight difference overall. My opinion is that any differnce would be very marginal, so that holding all else equal, two kids of identical physical upbringings and different genes taking a difficult timed math test would display only slightly different results. It is one thing to be born with raw materials, but these materials take cultivating. Look at dogs. I have noticed that a lot of people who work all day have stupid dogs. I think this is because the dogs' minds are not stiumulated, they just sit in their cages or the laundry room for the majority of the day. I don't want to compare kids with dogs, but if a child is parked in front of the T.V. all day, or not challenged at every step of life, like being made to calculate a tip at the restaurant, or asked if he/she nows how to get home from the grocery store, or taught how to tell time, or read to early, then their brains won't develop as much or as fast. Again, I am not saying genetics has nothing to do with it, but I think if you had to qualify kids in only three ways: dumb, average, and smart, the overwhleming majority of the "dumb" kids would be both disadvantaged environmentally and genetically, the "average" kids would be disadvantaged in two ways, just one way, or advataged in one way or two ways, and the majority of the "smart" kids would be both environmentally and genetically advantaged. I think the key here is that the vast majority of all kids would be average, and the majority of the kids on the extremes would have their corresponding environmental factors working for or against them. Posted December 3, 2005 4:23 PM Joseph Hertzlinger writes: I'm reminded of the notorious paper "Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition" somehow... Posted December 3, 2005 5:28 PM Dog of Justice writes: There are those who claim that this time we'd handle the "truth" rationally and calmly, but I doubt many believe it (including most of those espousing the need for their "truth" to be known). I think Steven Pinker was essentially correct when he concluded his recent talk on Jews, genes, and intelligence with the thought "intellectual life is not at present prepared to deal with this topic". But I might add the qualification "Western" in front of "intellectual life". Everything I know about what's going on in China suggests that those folks are prepared to tackle the subject head-on. This may put the West on a clock. Posted December 4, 2005 2:11 AM MoBo writes: Excuse me, but I think to be much more intellingent than my parents! Posted December 5, 2005 2:13 PM anon writes: Bill said: My opinion is that any differnce would be very marginal, so that holding all else equal, two kids of identical physical upbringings and different genes taking a difficult timed math test would display only slightly different results. Well, so far the best test we have of this is from twin studies. And measured iq, performance on other tests and even, I believe, college performance, of twins separated at birth are all more closely correlated than the same measures for each twin and the unrelated siblings they are raised with. For someone trained in economics, it is worth pointing out that even if the role of genes and heritability were a mere 5% of the total, comparative advantage and specialization due to competition might easily lead to observed outcomes that are vastly different. In which case genetics would be hugely important even if its measured effects were "small". Posted December 5, 2005 4:40 PM Comments for this entry have been closed Read comments Return to top Copyright � 2006-2009 Liberty Fund, Inc. All Rights Reserved Blogging software: Powered by Movable Type 4.2.1. Pictures courtesy of the authors. All opinions expressed on EconLog reflect those of the author or individual commenters, and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of the Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib) website or its owner, Liberty Fund, Inc. The cuneiform inscription in the Liberty Fund logo is the earliest-known written appearance of the word "freedom" (amagi), or "liberty." It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.
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A blog about economics instruction. "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler."--Albert Einstein Wednesday, March 15, 2006 Keeping Up with the Latest Brain Research I found the cognews web site when following up a news item on brain research. What's an economics instructor doing reading about the brain, you ask? As a teacher, I am interested in how the brain functions. If I know more about the brain, then I know more about how people learn. At least, that's my theory. The problem is that the journals that publish brain research are pretty darn inaccessible to anyone who's not an expert in the field. That includes economists. Thus, I need an interpretation of new thinking about the brain, rather than the original research. Cognews fills the bill. For example, an article on altruism caught my eye. As a fan of Gary Becker and the whole Chicago school approach to economics, I've long recognized that altruism, doing something good for others with no apparent benefit for yourself, is quite rational. Now, if the latest research is valid, I see that altruism may be "hard wired" into the brain. In the journal Science , German researchers report that infants as young as 18 months demonstrated behavior that suggests humans have an innate tendency to be helpful. In the experiments, toddlers aided strangers in completing tasks such as stacking books. "The results were astonishing because these children are so young - they still wear diapers and are barely able to use language, but they already show helping behavior," said Felix Warneken, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. As a social scientist I can speculate that altruism may be a way of increasing the odds of surviving in a hostile world. So, thousands of years ago, the brain some how became wired with the helper instinct. Could this instinct also be found in animals? The researchers also asked that same question: "It's been claimed chimpanzees act mainly for their own ends; but in our experiment, there was no reward and they still helped." How does any of this apply to teaching economics? I'm not 100% sure, but I think I see possibilities. Students helping students, faculty helping faculty, for example. With no reward for that helping behavior. Perhaps older wisdom anticipated these research findings. "Virtue is its own reward," is a saying I often heard when growing up. It's nice to see that science has confirmed that principle. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:35 PM | 2 comments links to this post Thursday, January 19, 2006 Make 'Em Feel the Pain, if You're a Man, That Is Here's another one of those stories about gender differences. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if this particular difference has any relevance to the teaching of economics. Tanya Singer and Dr. Klaas Stephan, both of University College London, are coauthors of a new study, the results of which have been published in Nature. Here are the basic findings: ... a new brain-scanning study suggests that when guys see a cheater get a mild electric shock, they don't feel his pain much at all. In fact, they rather enjoy it. In contrast, women's brains showed they do empathize with the cheater's pain and don't get a kick out it. The two scientists offered the usual caveat, "more studies are needed, blah, blah, blah." The bottom line, though, is expressed in the title of the ABC News story: Men Enjoy Seeing Bad People Suffer. Assuming that's true as the study suggests, I suppose that if I were a prosecutor seeking the death penalty for a defendant, I would try to stack the jury with men. I also suppose if I were a novelist writing Westerns, then the lynch mob in my story would be made up of men. In the classroom, maybe there's a lesson here that could be applied to prevent cheating on exams. If I ever figure out the lesson, I'll let you know. By the way, I can't resist adding that some of the history of Nazi Germany suggests that women concentration camp guards enjoyed seeing the inmates suffer as much as the men guards did. Hmm. I think after the war some of those men and women who enjoyed seeing people suffer emigrated to America and taught at my high school : - ) Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 2:06 AM | 5 comments links to this post Thursday, November 17, 2005 The War on Grade Inflation Professor Harvey C. Mansfield: “We should stop giving our students the same grades they used to get in high school.” Harvard Professor Harvey C. Mansfield is controversial. More than once he's stirred the pot on the issue of grade inflation . You might think of him as the General Patton on the War on Grade Inflation. This is one General who has a pretty good take on the enemy . Perhaps he revels in the nickname students have given him: Harvey C. Minus Mansfield. As an instructor, I like the boldness with which Dr. Mansfield approaches the issue. It takes guts to award two grades to every student in his classes, one public grade and one private. The first is the student's official course grade, which is sent to the Harvard registrar. That grade is admittedly inflated to match the overall grade distribution at Harvard, which today amounts to one fourth A's and another fourth A-'s. The second grade is an unofficial accounting of each student's relative performance, with the effects of grade inflation removed. In defense of the two-grade system, Dr. Mansfield writes: The two-grade device is a way to show my contempt for the present system, yet not punish students who take my course. My intent was to get attention and to provoke some new thinking. Dr. Mansfield puts his finger on the problem with grade inflation: Grade inflation compresses all grades at the top, making it difficult to discriminate the best from the very good, the very good from the good, the good from the mediocre. Surely a teacher wants to mark the few best students with a grade that distinguishes them from all the rest in the top quarter, but at Harvard that's not possible. What does this say about professors who are complicit in grade inflation? Professors do not say to themselves, "This is what I can require; anything above that enters into excellence." No. With an eye to student course evaluations and confounded by the realization that they have somehow lost authority, professors begin from what they think students expect. American colleges used to set their own expectations. Now, increasingly, they react to student expectations ... Thus another evil of grade inflation is the loss of faculty morale that it reveals. It signifies that professors care less about their teaching. Anyone who cares a lot about something -- for example, a baseball fan -- is very critical in making judgments about it. Far from the opposite of caring, being critical is the very consequence of caring. It is difficult for students to work hard, or for the professor to get them to work hard, when they know that their chances of getting an A or A- are 50-50. Students today are still motivated to get good grades, but if they do not wish to work hard toward that end, they can always maneuver and bargain. How did Harvard, and by extension many other American universities, get into such a mess? Grade inflation has resulted from the emphasis in American education on the notion of self-esteem. According to that therapeutic notion, the purpose of education is to make students feel capable and empowered. So to grade them, or to grade them strictly, is cruel and dehumanizing. Grading creates stress. It encourages competition rather than harmony. It is judgmental. You might be thinking, "What's so controversial? Here's a professor who would like to implement higher standards. Nothing wrong with that, is there?" Dr. Mansfield isn't content to let sacred cows go unslaughtered. The academic sacred cows of silent acceptance of racial preferences and the damage done by multiculturalism are central to his arguments: At colleges, self-esteem often goes hand in hand with multiculturalism or sensitivity to people of diverse races and ethnicities -- meaning that professors must avoid offending the identities (still another name for self-esteem) of victimized groups. I know what that means. It means that despite all the talk about free speech at Harvard, you had better watch what you say. And how you grade. When I was interviewed by The Boston Globe about my two-grade policy, one cause of grade inflation that I cited provoked a fiercely defensive reaction from the administrators at Harvard. I said that when grade inflation got started, in the late 60's and early 70's, white professors, imbibing the spirit of affirmative action, stopped giving low or average grades to black students and, to justify or conceal it, stopped giving those grades to white students as well. Dr. Mansfield calls for university leaders to put standards first. He's seeking a political solution to the problem of grade inflation, focused on the politics of university governance. As an economist, I'm in a position to remind Dr. Mansfield that there's another force, more powerful than university politics, that has the potential to contribute toward a solution to the problem. That force is the free market. Here's my argument in a nutshell. Grade inflation makes it more difficult and costly for employers to sort students by abilities. For example, there are real, significant costs associated with hiring a young engineer of average ability when the job calls for an engineer of exceptional ability. Thus, employers have a preference for hiring graduates of universities where grades correlate closely with the underlying abilities of the students. Universities that allow rampant grade inflation will, in the long run, see recruiting of their graduates suffer. Additionally, when the best students come to understand that grade inflation diminishes their chances for a job, the students themselves, in partnership with employers, will call for greater realism in grading. Perhaps Dr. Mansfield should see that employers know about the grade inflation he so passionately writes about by putting copies of his writings about Harvard's grade inflation into the hands of companies that recruit Harvard graduates. Now, here's the diabolical part of my suggestion. Without student's names attached in order to preserve their privacy, Dr. Mansfield should put those unofficial grades into the hands of recruiters, too, right next to the official grades. I wonder how a company would react when it realizes that the A student that it has been recruiting is really only a C student. Just maybe, he would have an instant ally in his war on grade inflation. Remember, all's fair in love and war! Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 8:41 PM | 10 comments links to this post Saturday, October 01, 2005 False Memories! How Memory Fails Us Danger! Danger! Danger! The knowledge in the linked article from New Scientist is dangerous! In the hands of the wrong people, it could cause significant harm. Here's the lowdown: A new study was designed to "bring people into the laboratory and set up a circumstance in which they would remember something that did not happen," said Kenneth Paller of Northwestern University. Like what? I've read books chock full of testimony from sincere people who "remember" being abducted by aliens, taken aboard alien spacecraft, and then being forced to donate eggs or sperm to create hybrid human/alien creatures. Could someone be brought into a lab and be convinced that they were so abducted? Better yet, could I convince Bill Gates that I loaned him the money to start Microsoft and that I'm thus entitled to half his wealth? Let's see how false memories were induced in laboratory subjects: They showed the participants pictures and asked them to imagine other images. Later, investigators asked whether certain objects were seen or imagined. Often, imagined images were recalled as real. Now wait a minute, please. Could I show Pamela Anderson (or Jessica Simpson, etc.) a picture of two people having s*x, ask her to imagine an image of the two of us having s*x, and then expect her to believe that the two of us are a couple? This is dangerous, powerful stuff, folks :-) Luckily for Pam Anderson, there is a key to separating out false memories from real ones. The key to remembering that something was imagined when we recall it is the context surrounding a memory, the research showed. If you remember who told you to imagine something, where it was, what was going on around you, the separation between what really happened and what you imagined becomes more distinct. When a person makes these external connections to the memory, he engages the parts of the brain that lead to true memories. Brain research is intersting and useful. In this case, the message is simple. Not every memory is real. Some are false. Next we need an economist to study how false memories affect decision making and hence economic welfare. Since I'd rather avoid the problems that false memories have the potential to create, perhaps the answer is to make sure to keep a written record of significant events. Unless I can back up my claim to Bill Gates' fortune with an IOU signed by him, then I guess it's just a false memory. And searching through my collection of s*x tapes, I see evidence of another false memory. It's not Pam and I that were an item. It was some guy named Tommy Lee. Darn it! Sometimes those false memories are better than the real ones! Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:12 PM | 12 comments links to this post Get in Touch with Your Inner Child (Who Just Happens to Be A Mathematician) Economics students are often dismayed by the math in even a basic economics course. Computing an elasticity of demand, for example, seems to send a number of learners into panic. Somewhere along the line, lots of students have developed the attitude (as one girl put it to me): "I am stupid in math." The story linked by this post offers a surprising rejoinder to that girl. According to a recent study, five year olds have innate math abilities, even when they have not received any instruction in math. Heck, you don't even have to be human to have mathematical abilities. Studies have shown similar math abilities in monkeys. Here's an example of the type of experiment the researchers performed with 5-year olds: In one experiment, the children saw 13 blue dots on a computer screen; those were covered, and then they saw 17 blue dots and were forced to keep the running tally in their heads. Then they were shown 50 red dots and asked whether there were more blue dots or red dots. Presented this way, the children answered correctly about two-thirds of the time that there were more red dots than blue dots. This and similar mathematical abilities appear to be inborn: "What's central about numbers for us as adults is that we can apply a number like 7 to a diverse number of things," said Elizabeth Spelke, a psychologist at Harvard University and the principal investigator of the study. "We can say that there are seven dots but also that a horn honks seven times. Although these are different in their sensory qualities, the numbers are the same." Past studies performed on infants and non-human primates suggests that these abilities are present even before the age of 5. "The experiments of the infants and the monkeys, I think, make it extremely likely that these abilities are inborn," Spelke said. What are we to make of this insight? For one thing, somewhere between age 5 and age 18, something happens to many people that creates "math anxiety." What are the causes of math anxiety? How can people suffering from it be helped? In terms of teaching economics using math, the best advice I can give learners is to practice, practice, practice, if you have trouble getting in touch with that inner child mathematician. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:03 PM | 7 comments links to this post Thursday, September 29, 2005 How Much is the Life of a Reindeer Worth? Without Reindeer, How Will Santa Make His Rounds? In labor economics classes instructors usually cover the economic value of life. In a variety of circumstances, such as when a worker is killed on the job, economists are brought in to determine the size of the financial settlement paid by the employer to the dead worker's family. The typical economic study brings considers net future earnings, discounted in a present value computation. An unusual value of life computation is the subject of a story coming out of Denmark. It seems there was this Santa Claus (there are lots of them in Denmark) whose reindeer had a heart attack and died when Danish Air Force jets flew over his farm. The military was clearly responsible and had to pay off the reindeer's next of kin, who in this case was Santa. How much to pay was the question. The answer was 31,175 Kroner, about $5,032 U.S. dollars. This value of life computation was probably a lot more straightforward than the computation done when a human being is killed. Why? Well, if human beings could be bought and sold like reindeer, cattle, pigs, and dogs, then there would be a market price for a person. That price would vary according to the individual's productivity, and it might not be known with certainty. In the case in question, it's likely that the market value of reindeer in Denmark is established through livestock auctions. Of course, if the reindeer who was killed had a red nose, thus helping light Santa's way on his Christmas eve journeys, then that unique bit of human capital ... uh, "reindeer capital," would make Rudolph worth quite a bit more than ordinary, run-of-the-mill reindeer. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 8:07 PM | 19 comments links to this post Sunday, September 25, 2005 QuickTake: An Integral Approach to Teaching Economics From the web comes this 24-page paper by Marcelo Clerici-Arias of Stanford University. Although the paper is more than 10 years old, the approach is still fresh and would be of use to faculty in a variety of disciplines. The "integral" approach refered to in the title is deceptively simple. First, devise a set of course objectives, design and implement activities to achieve the objectives, assess how successful the activities were, and then followup by rewriting the objectives and activities. The reason I consider this one of the best papers I've ever seen on teaching is that the author provides several examples of the activities he's used in his own classes. That makes it easy for any instructor wanting to implement this approach to get started. The paper is also well grounded in the literature and contains an extensive bibliography. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 9:42 PM | 2 comments links to this post Tuesday, July 05, 2005 QuickTake: Poor Writing Costs Taxpayers Millions Direct cost of poor writing: $250,000,000 spent on remedial writing instruction. Indirect cost of poor writing: not easily measurable, but undoubtedly quite high. Hidden cost? Another hidden cost is that good ideas may never see the light of day. "I see that all the time in writing and political speaking," Huckabee said. "There are some really bright people who can't communicate and as a result their ideas probably aren't given the attention they deserve." Magnitude of the problem: While two-thirds of companies surveyed in the 2004 report said writing was an important responsibility for workers, 100 percent of the 49 states responding to the anonymous survey said it was. More than 75 percent said they take writing skills into account when hiring. An economy functions more efficiently when its labor force can read well and write clearly. Encouraging students to develop their writing skills is something that any economics instructor can do. More information will be found at this web site . Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:46 AM | 15 comments links to this post Wednesday, June 29, 2005 Gender Differences in the Brain--Really Not a Big Surprise, Is It? Views of the brains of men and women Brain research that has a bottom line ought to offer insights into gender differences in teaching and learning. Consider this: Men and women do think differently, at least where the anatomy of the brain is concerned, according to a new study. The brain is made primarily of two different types of tissue, called gray matter and white matter. This new research reveals that men think more with their gray matter, and women think more with white. Researchers stressed that just because the two sexes think differently, this does not affect intellectual performance. Psychology professor Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine led the research along with colleagues from the University of New Mexico. Their findings show that in general, men have nearly 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence compared with women, whereas women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence compared to men. It wouldn't surprise most observant, aware people that men and women think differently, but now there's research to prove it. So far, so good, but if intellectual performance is not affected by differences in thinking then what does it matter? The results from this study may help explain why men and women excel at different types of tasks, said co-author and neuropsychologist Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico. For example, men tend to do better with tasks requiring more localized processing, such as mathematics, Jung said, while women are better at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions of the brain, which aids language skills. Wait a minute. Paraphrasing the results, the study tells us that men do better in math and women in languages. Is that what I just read? What else do I need to know? Scientists find it very interesting that while men and women use two very different activity centers and neurological pathways, men and women perform equally well on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as intelligence tests. Here's what I think I know and ought to keep in mind in teaching economics. First, male and female students should perform equally well in the course. However, when math is involved, female students will not perform as well as males. When language is involved the males will have more difficulties. The question remains is there anything a conscientious instructor can do about these research findings to help the females get through the math in an economics class and help the males deal with the fine points of language. Until the answer is provided, perhaps by additional research, the best an economics instructor can do is try to explain concepts as clearly as possible and provide an array of learning opportunities that engage the white matter brain cells and the gray matter brain cells. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 11:31 AM | 25 comments links to this post Economics--A Journey of the Heart as Well as the Mind? Students want their universities to help them answer the question, "What's my life's purpose?" Are public universities equipped to do that? More specifically, can economics classes help students meet this need? First, let's be specific. UCLA surveyed 112,000 students on 236 campuses and found that 67 percent of first-year students believe it is essential or very important that their school help develop their personal values. The survey also found that 48 percent of them would like their school to encourage the personal expression of their spirituality. No one should interpret these survey results as suggesting that students want to be preached to. Furthermore, the survey tells us that it's their own "personal values" that students feel need further development, not the values of organized religion. Economics as it is presented in the typical Economics 101 textbook would appear to be totally disconnected to spiritual needs. At first glance, it's hard to inject an interpretation of spirituality into topics such as demand and supply, monopoly and antitrust, and money and inflation. Furthermore, instructors might find themselves feeling a wee bit uncomfortable trying to supply spiritual interpretations or insights. But, let's take a second look and see if these thoughts hold up under scrutiny. An introductory economics class is a good place to explore career choices, as part of a discussion of labor economics. Typically, that exploration will involve looking at markets for different occupations and observing how demand and supply influence earnings. However, everyone recognizes that intangibles play a huge role in occupational choice. Might there not be a spiritual aspect to the choice of teaching as a career, for example? In fact, wouldn't a consideration of the intangibles provide a worthwhile relaxation of the ceteris paribus clause? Business ethics opens a Pandora's box of opportunities for discussing personal values. It's hard to picture an economics class so abstract and theoretical that current corporate scandals are ignored. Thus, ethical issues of business as part of the study of the firm can easily be brought into Economics 101. If students demand help with issues relating to personal values, shouldn't instructors make the effort to supply a framework grounded in economic principles that will help them? Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:02 AM | 4 comments links to this post Thursday, June 23, 2005 Look and Listen: Brain Struggles to do Both I left the title of this post exactly as it appears on the Live Science web site . It's shocking to me to think that my brain and your brain struggle to look and listen at the same time. It reminds me of the old joke about not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, but this story is no joke. "Our research helps explain why talking on a cell phone can impair driving performance , even when the driver is using a hands-free device," said Steven Yantis, a Johns Hopkins University psychologist. "Directing attention to listening effectively 'turns down the volume' on input to the visual parts of the brain." "By advancing our understanding of the connection between mind, brain and behavior, this research may help in the design of complex devices – such as airliner cockpits – and may help in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders such as ADHD or schizophrenia," Yantis said. I see another application of this research, which is described in the link to this post, that goes beyond driving with cell phone in hand or the design of cockpits. Think about the student sitting in a lecture hall on a college campus. The instructor reveals a complicated graph of profit maximization, and launches into a lecture on the subject at the same time. The poor student sits there trying to look and listen at the same time. What's the brain doing? Struggling to cope. Solution to the problem? I'm not a scientist so I can't say for sure. If I wanted to be a smart aleck, I might suggest pausing for a moment of silent prayer. But since prayer is illegal in the schools, maybe I'll just suggest pausing for a moment of silence. Let the students' brains take in information through the eyes (the looking part), before I start talking and they have to start listening. General principle: If people struggle to do more than one thing at time because the brain has difficulty coping, then stop doing more than one thing at a time. No wonder people feel so drained after a hard day of multitasking at work. One thing at a time, and first things first. Maybe that's the way to a more effective day at work and more effective learning in the classroom. At least, that's what this research suggests to me. What do you think? Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 12:20 AM | 5 comments links to this post Friday, June 10, 2005 An Award to Honolulu Community College for the Teaching Tips Index The Royal Economics Academy excellence award There's a wealth of links to faculty development resources that have been gathered on this page. Check it out. Thanks, Honolulu Community College. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 9:29 PM | 1 comments links to this post Gardner's Multiple Intelligences--Implications for Teaching and Learning Thanks to Professor Lamp , I have a list of Howard Gardner's 7 intelligences. Professor Lamp discusses these from the perspective of gifted and talented children. I've taken a stab at laying out the perspective from the podium in an Economics 101 class. 1. Linguistic Students with this intelligence are probably majoring in English or foreign languages. They might be bloggers, if they have a technological bent. They enjoy writing, reading, telling stories or doing crossword puzzles. I've created economics crossword puzzles for my classes to help linguistic learners master the subject. I'm also always interspersing true stories with technical material. 2. Logical-Mathematical These are the math, science, and economics majors. Learners with lots of logical intelligence are interested in patterns, categories and relationships. They are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games and experiments. There are lots of these kinds of learning resources in course study guides provided with economics texts. Assigning study guide exercises would help these students to learn. 3. Bodily-Kinesthetic Dance and kinesiology are likely to be the majors of choice for these learners, who process knowledge through bodily sensations. They could also be majoring in art or sculpture. They are often athletic, dancers, or good at crafts and other hands-on activities. In economics, students whose primary intelligence is kinesthetic will be at a disadvantage relative to other learners. 4. Spatial I presume that art and sculpture majors would possess this intelligence in large amounts. These learners think in images and pictures. They may be fascinated with mazes or jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing, daydreaming, or building models. This is a good intelligence for engineering, architecture, and economics majors to possess, too. Graphing assignments in economics would help these students learn. 5. Musical I hope that music majors possess a heaping quantity of this intelligence. These learners are often discriminating listeners. I would imagine that lectures and sound files posted on a course web site would help them learn economics. 6. Interpersonal Learners who are leaders, who are good at communicating and who seem to understand others' feelings and motives possess interpersonal intelligence. Group projects in economics allow learners with interpersonal intelligence to excel. 7. Intrapersonal These people may be shy. They are very aware of their own feelings and are self-motivated. Appealing to that sense of self motivation may be the key to increasing the learning of economics with these students. Too bad there's no easy way to determine the primary intelligence of each student in an Economics 101 class. What I'm left with is preparing course materials that appeal to a variety of intelligences. Since there is debate about the validity of the multiple intelligences theory, here's a little example of how a computer programmer uses several intelligences: Gardner (1983) proposes that there are seven forms of intelligence: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal (e.g., insight, metacognition), and interpersonal (e.g., social skills). As a computer programmer, I use a number of these different kinds of intelligence on a regular basis. For example, writing a Pascal program requires extensive use of logical-mathematical intelligence. Choosing recognizable variable names requires linguistic intelligence. Debugging requires intrapersonal intelligence in order to arrive at that, "Ah, ha!" experience of recognizing the problem that needs to be fixed. Finally, when I run into an especially difficult problem, interpersonal intelligence is required to get help. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 8:45 PM | 10 comments links to this post QuickTake: Intelligence--What is It? I'm just an economics instructor trying to teach basic economic concepts to college freshman. However, research into the psychology of learning is sometimes as useful to me as knowledge about the latest economic research. Take a look at the page of resources on intelligence by clicking on the link in this post. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 8:37 PM | 4 comments links to this post Piaget's Final Stage of Development and The Economic Way of Thinking From The Dictionary of Cognitive Science comes this statement of Piaget's final stage of development: Formal Operations (11/12 to adult) Children who attain the formal operation stage are capable of thinking logically and abstractly. They can also reason theoretically. Piaget considered this the ultimate stage of development, and stated that although the children would still have to revise their knowledge base, their way of thinking was as powerful as it would get. In university-level introductory economics classes, "the economic way of thinking" is usually stressed. That emphasis fits right in with Piaget's Formal Operations stage of development. The problem is that not every child reaches this final stage of development. At least, that's what psychologists think today. The challenge in teaching economics is to help learners achieve that final stage in cognitive development, if they're not already there. How can that be done? Several thoughts occur to me: Limit the quantity of content and emphasize topics that involve theoretical reasoning. Explicitly show the steps in logical arguments. Provide practice exercises that involve theorizing and abstraction. Build new knowledge around what learners already know. The economic way of thinking seems obvious to instructors, but often is not obvious to students. Perhaps that's the first step to wisdom in the teaching of economics. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 8:16 PM | 3 comments links to this post QuickTake: How Does Knowledge Grow? Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is a legend in teaching and learning circles. The question at the core of his research was, "How does knowledge grow?" His answer is that the growth of knowledge is a progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore, children's logic and modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults. Piaget's oeuvre is known all over the world and is still an inspiration in fields like psychology, sociology, education, epistemology, economics and law as witnessed in the annual catalogues of the Jean Piaget Archives. Notice that 25 years after his death Piaget is still an inspiration in diverse fields, including economics. While Piaget was concerned with exploring how children learn, Malcolm Knowles focused on adult learning. Since college students are often not quite adults and certainly not children anymore, the question about how their knowledge grows has always been an issue in my mind. Is Piaget's pedagogy or Knowles' andragogy more relevant to excellence in college teaching? Future posts will explore the issue. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 8:04 PM | 2 comments links to this post Wednesday, June 01, 2005 QuickTake: EconomicsAmerica National Standards The 20 national standards in K-12 economic education are listed on the linked page. In future posts I'll be commenting on the standards, and the related online lessons that accompany them, from a higher ed perspective. For now I'll just say that if students really met the standards it would make the job of Economics 101 instructors much easier. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 11:28 PM | 0 comments links to this post The Economics of Online Surveys I posted a companion piece to this post on Socrates Tech a few minutes ago. Researchers in pyschology are finding that people will go online to take surveys, which provides them with a richer data base than the traditional method of surveying undergraduate students. Some sites offer small prizes to people who take part, or promise to post the results of the research. But more often than not, there is no reward. "I think there are a lot of people who are just generally interested in filling out surveys - probably the same people who would do all the Cosmo surveys sitting in doctors' rooms," says Paula Saunders, who is running a survey on workplace bullying (www.psy.unsw.edu.au/BullyingSurvey) as part of her PhD research at the University of NSW. Researchers like the swing to online surveying because it takes them to a global audience at a low cost. It seems to put the subjects more at ease: it is far easier to share secrets, intimacies, fears and embarrassments behind the anonymity of their computer screen than face-to-face with a research assistant. "When I advertised for face-to-face participants, I had a great deal of reluctance. I had people phone and say they are interested, but quite often they will give me false names after talking to me six times trying to get a feel for whether or not they can trust me," says Saunders. "It's been a huge struggle. With this, I think people feel more comfortable expressing themselves because they know I don't know who they are and I won't be able to track them." David Mallard, a psychology lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, has used online surveys for research since 2002, including one no longer online that flashed up a series of photos re-enacting a mugging. A week after watching the crime onscreen, folks who took part were asked to return to the site to view mug shots to see if they could correctly identify the perpetrator and detail some other aspects of what they had witnessed. The followup for economists is obvious. If the psychology faculty are finding that online surveys provide richer, more economically acquired data, there's no reason it can't be done by economists. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:38 PM | 6 comments links to this post Thursday, May 26, 2005 Women and Competition: Do Gender Differences Matter In the Classroom? More economics in the news is good for economics instructors. At their best, stories with economic content can engage student interest. The linked New York Times story made a big splash today. Two economists, Muriel Niederle : Department of Economics, StanfordUniversity and NBER, and Lise Vesterlund , Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, experimented with competitive responses by males and females. Not surprisingly, they found a number of significant differences in the way men and women respond to competitive situations. Let them put their conclusions in their own words: In this paper we examined an environment where women and men perform equally well, and where issues of discrimination, or time spent on the job do not have any explanatory power. Nonetheless we find large gender differences in the propensity to choose competitive environments. We feel that the effects we discover in the lab are strong and puzzling enough tocall for a greater attention of standard economics to explanations of gender differences that so far have mostly been left in the hands of psychologists and sociologists. I want to use the conclusions of the Niederle and Vesterlund paper to tentatively explore the implications for teaching and learning in the economics classroom. Niederle and Vesterlund refer to women leaving science and engineering, thusly: There is indeed evidence that, for example, the decision of women to quit sciences and engineering is not primarily due to ability. For example, a report entitled “Women’s Experiences in College Engineering” writes that “Many young women leave […] for reasonsother than academic ability. These reasons can include their negatively interpreting grades that may actually be quite good, diminished selfconfidence, or reluctance to spend all of their waking hours ‘doing engineering.’” (Goodman, Cunningham and Lachapelle 2002). The report mentions that many women that left mentioned negative aspects of their schools’ climate such as competition, lack of support and discouraging faculty and peers. Similar effects have been found by Felder et al (1994). It seems therefore that decisions of women to remain in male-dominated areas are not driven by actual ability only. In natural settings issues such as the amount of time devoted to the profession, and the desire of women to raise children may provide some explanations for the choices of women. These conclusions, you may recognize, are the similar to those that got Harvard President Larry Summers in trouble a couple of months ago. I applaud the fact that the paragraph immediately above is in the paper. However, the insights of Professors Niderle and Vesterlund don't address gender differences in response to teaching methods and styles. What I'm getting it is that I'm still in the dark about how to create a classroom environment that appeals to female students and male students equally. The reason for raising the issue relates to my previous post on The Royal Economics Academy about the AEA's efforts to increase the number of women in the economics profession. Women students, at least in my classes, perform as well or better than the males. Nonetheless, the number of females moving on to economics majors and careers in economics lags behind what I would expect. I hate to end a post with a question, but I must. Why the gender difference? Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 7:44 PM | 14 comments links to this post Tuesday, May 24, 2005 QuickTake: The FOMC's Calendar A useful tool when teaching monetary policy is the FOMC calendar page. Just follow the link in this post and then click on the FOMC press release or the minutes of the FOMC meeting of your choice. We teach monetary policy in an abstract way, but seeing the actual minutes of an FOMC meeting makes monetary policy more concrete. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 7:42 PM | 0 comments links to this post QuickTake: The IDEA Paper Series The IDEA Center is up to #42 in their series of papers on teaching and learning. While these papers are not specifically directed toward the teaching of economics, they offer solutions to many of the problems economics instructors deal with in terms of class management, motivating students, etc. Each paper is short and practical. Highly recommended. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 6:51 PM | 0 comments links to this post Free Online Book: How People Learn How People Learn is one of the best free online resources for instructors, and parents for that matter. Among instructors, t's not just economics faculty who will find the book useful. Any instructor, no matter his or her field of instruction, will be mesmerized by learning about how students learn. The book is also available in a print version, which would be easier to read and thus justify the $22.45 price. The interface between the reader and the book in the online version is awkward because the book is provided in html format rather than a pdf. (A pdf version can be purchased.) That said, and even though a good bit of the book's context involves children, this is a worthwhile resource for all college faculty. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 6:19 PM | 0 comments links to this post EcEdWeb: An Award for an Excellent Resources Page The Royal Economics Academy excellence award The University of Nebraska at Omaha's Economic Education Web page (EcEdWeb) has been online for 10 years now. I've provided a link to the homepage, but once there you'll probably want to click on the link that says College Teach . I counted well over 100 clickable links to online resources useful to economics instructors. That makes EcEdWeb the most comprehensive resource page I've found yet. I'll be reviewing some of these links in future posts. Thanks, EcEdWeb for helping improve the quality of economics instruction. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 5:45 PM | 1 comments links to this post Monday, May 23, 2005 Quotable Ideas for the Economics Classroom From the AACSB e-newsline B-school quotables page come these thoughts: Leaders must inspire change from the top. Success happens in the minds of people and you can have all the systems in the world, but if you really want to have change it must happen in the minds of your people. Woodroffe said if companies were to become more entrepreneurial, they had to be willing to accept failures. The one thing that's common to entrepreneurs is that really successful people don't go around succeeding all the time. Sometimes they fail. --Simon Woodroffe, founder, Yo! Sushi UK restaurant chain, speaking to an audience at the University of Auckland Business School Running a classroom is like running a business in some ways. Instructors must be leaders. Change must happen in the minds of your people--your learners. Sometimes you fail. Yep, no wonder that former teachers sometimes go on to success in the business world. We've seen all the things that can happen in the economy happen in the classroom. Economics 101 classes probably don't pay enough attention to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship studies. Yes, we teach that there are four resources, land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship, then quickly move on to the concept of production possibilities and its graphs. Since entrepreneurs are such interesting people, it wouldn't be a bad idea to spend a bit more time discussing them. A good way to break the ice on this topic is to survey students about their plans for future businesses, followed up by questions about the qualities of successful entrepreneurs. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 11:28 PM | 3 comments links to this post Hot on the Heels of the Apprentice Comes The Scholar It's easy to see the similarities. A group of attractive youths compete for a prize worth $250,000. While The Apprentice offers star power in the fleshy form of Donald Trump, while The Scholar offers offers insights into academic excellence. In looking over the Web site for The Scholar I didn't see a contestant express an interest in pursuing an economics major, but then again does anyone ever enroll in college as an economics major. My impression is that students are exposed to economics and a handful of them are drawn to it and change their major. The Economics Department at Indiana University offers a web page that sketches the benefits from majoring in economics. Dr. Martha Olney has this page, which has graduates with economics degrees writing about their experiences. Valpariaso University offers this excellent pdf informing prospective economics majors about career opportunities . My advice: Direct only the best students in your Econ 101 classes to these materials. Economics isn't the easiest subject in the world! Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 3:41 PM | 3 comments links to this post Saturday, May 21, 2005 QuickTake: Ask Dr. Econ Another winner from the San Francisco Fed: Ask Dr. Econ. The good Dr. can't answer all questions, but he/she posts answers to selected questions. I'll be putting up a link to Ask Dr. Econ on my class WebCT resources page. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 2:48 AM | 0 comments links to this post QuickTake: The Economic Letter The San Francisco Fed has a nice bimonthly Economic Letter that can be useful in teaching current economic issues. The level is about right for an Economics 101 class. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 2:45 AM | 0 comments links to this post QuickTake: The Current Account Deficit The Atlanta Fed has a nice article on the deficit in the current account. This would make a nice supplement to textbook coverage of the topic. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 2:40 AM | 0 comments links to this post Teaching as Leadership What are the characteristics of a good teacher? If you believe that good teaching requires servant-leadership, then ponder: The Ten Characteristics of a Servant-Leader 1. Listening 2. Empathy 3. Healing 4. Awareness 5. Persuasion 6. Conceptualization 7. Foresight 8. Stewardship 9. Commitment to the growth of people 10. Building community Visit the Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership for details on how to put these characteristics into action. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 12:38 AM | 0 comments links to this post Wednesday, May 18, 2005 Where are the Women Economists? I found two items next to each other on the UBDaily newsletter today. One item linked to an NPR audio file discussing efforts to increase the number of women in the sciences, the issue that got economist and Harvard President Larry Summers in trouble. The second was also a link to another NPR audio file, this one discussing the fact that the majority of college graduates these days are female. Putting 2 + 2 together and arriving at 4, I shouted "Eureka!" If more women than men are graduating from college these days, then ceteris paribus , the relative number of women in the sciences can't do anything but increase. Imagine all the grief Larry Summers could have avoided had he realized this implication in the data! The American Economic Association has long concerned itself with increasing the number of women economists. The Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) is the vehicle by which that concern expresses itself. Here's some of the Committee's work: CSWEP was the moving force behind the establishment of a child-care program at the annual AEA meetings and, with NSF support, organized a successful mentoring program at the national and regional levels in 1998. With new funding from the NSF, CSWEP launched another mentorship initiative in 2004. The first set of workshops were held immediately after the January 2004 ASSA meetings in San Diego. There will be a second set of national workshops in 2006, as well as one mentoring program at each of the regional association meetings. I don't have any data telling me how successful the Committee's efforts have been. When I was in college, most of my English teachers were women and most of my economics teachers were men. From what I can see at the meetings, there are still a lot of male economists, but more women than when I was in school. As for the teaching of economics, I don't know what role gender plays. I've found an article that might give me some answers: "Gender and the Study of Economics: The Role of Gender of the Instructor." Journal of Economic Education. v30, n1 (Winter 1999): 3-19. If I find definitive answers while reading the article, I'll share them with readers of this blog. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 11:17 PM | 0 comments links to this post Controvery in the Classroom--A Remedy Worse than the Problem? From USA Today comes the linked story about efforts by 14 state legislatures to shape classroom discussion via proposed legislation. Since economics is about choice, just about any topic might come under discussion in the economics classroom. Who's to decide what's legitimate? Let's take a quick look at the legislative proposals: Though proposals vary slightly from state to state, core principles remain the same. In Ohio, for instance, a bill would bar faculty or instructors from "introducing controversial matter into the classroom or coursework that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose." Ohio's state colleges and universities would also have to create "a grievance procedure by which a student, faculty member, or instructor may seek redress for an alleged violation." To be a professional in the classroom means understanding Socrates when he said, "I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." Some instructors might corrupt this educational philosopy to read, "If I make them think, they will think like me." An instructor might consider it a personal failing if students haven't come around to his or her way of thinking. That's confusing the outcome with the process. Contrast it to the Socratic perspective, which emphasizes the value in the process of student discourse. There is a simpler solution than state legislation, grievance panels, and the whole bureaucratic jungle that both faculty and students will have to navigate if legislation is enacted. First, those few faculty who lack professionalism and thus let personal feelings toward students' beliefs influence their grading need to read their teaching surveys more carefully. Students do not care for such nonprofessional behavior. Many will and should avoid taking classes with such instructors. That's the market for information making for an efficient outcome. Second, a grading rubric can contribute to the amerlioration of the problem. A rubric spells out in great detail what factors will influence a student's grade. Every class should have a well defined rubric as part of the syllabus so that students will know how their grades will be determined. If those nonporofessional instructors insist that students agree (or pretend to agree) with their point of view or be penalized, then let them put it writing as part of the rubric. In economics, rubrics are especially important since so many current events and theories involve belief systems. Ever seen a neoKeynsian and a monetarist go at it? I feel for the aggrieved students who have complained about their inability to express themselves freely in the classroom or who have been penalized by lower grades because their thinking did not match that of their instructors. Fair grading and a fair hearing of everyone's views is the least that students have a right to expect in exchange for their hard-earned tuition dollars. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:17 PM | 1 comments links to this post Cantillon's Paradise: A Student's Economics Blog Next fall I'm going to have my students create their own economics blogs. They'll be required to post weekly to their blogs. As far as I know I'll be the first economics instructor to require students to blog. I'm aware of a few English instructors requiring blogs, but no economics instructors, so I'm not quite sure how good an idea this is. In future posts I'll discuss the rubric and other dimensions of that course assignment, but this post is about an exemplary student economics blog, Cantillon's Paradise . Click on the title of this post and pay it a visit. Why is Cantillon's Paradise exemplary? Consider the title. Student blogger David Skarbek obviously spent some time coming up with it. Just from the name of his blog, you know a lot about Mr. Skarbek's economics. Then there's the frequency of his posts. I don't know Mr. Skarbek, but I would assume that like most students he stays busy with his courses, his part-time job, his friends, family, and other interests. Yet, he posts a steady stream of items to his blog. Good for him! The quality of the posts are excellent. The latest as of this writing, Mill on Theory , is a good example. The style is authentic, the thoughts clearly expressed and well developed. The previous post, Wine , offers readers Mr. Skarbek's analysis of the recent Supreme Court decision striking down state laws banning direct-to-consumer interstate wine shipments. I dare anyone to find a better written or more thoughtful analysis of the reasoning behind the existence of those laws. I would suggest the New York Times or other mainstream media pick that post up and run it as an op-ed piece. I'll have my students take a look at Cantillon's Paradise next fall. I'll also let them know that I expect them to make every effort to match its quality. In the meantime, I hope David Skarbek continues to find the time to keep blogging. With all the noisy drivel and ranting in the blogosphere, it was a good day when I happened upon the quiet reasoning in Cantillon's Paradise . Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 8:33 PM | 1 comments links to this post Don't Miss Cantillon! Mark Thornton has done an admirable job of filling in a gap in my economic knowledge. Like many Ph.D. economists of my generation, my undergraduate schooling consisted of Keynesian economics a la McConnell, spiced with a bit of Alvin Hansen and other admirers of Keynes. When I entered the doctoral program at Tulane University it was a revelation to discover that other schools of thought existed. Still, I managed to make it to a doctoral degree without ever having heard of Richard Cantillon . Since my electives were in other areas, I never took a course in the history of economic thought. Now I wish I had because I've clearly missed something. Click on the title of this post and you can read Dr. Thornton's article yourself. The brief outline of Cantillon's incredible life is alone worth your time. Every Economics 101 course rightly mentions Adam Smith and the invisible hand. Of course, Keynes and the General Theory are also usually covered, at least minimally. I'm more concerned with what Economics 101 students are not learning. My text, unlike many others, mentions the Austrian school and Mises, albeit briefly. Because of the Mises Institute at Auburn University, I can type in a link to their web page on the computer at my classroom teaching station and show students the modern incarnation of Austrian thought. Now, I can also mention Cantillon. It seems that we have Cantillon to thank for being the first to articulate the concept of opportunity cost. Cantillon's examples, presented and discussed by Dr. Thornton, are fresh and easy to understand. Cantillon may not have gotten his due in my undergraduate education, but I'll fill in the gap for my students. Perhaps other economics instructors would like to join me. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 7:43 PM | 0 comments links to this post Friday, May 13, 2005 Dr. Yoram Bauman--Economist, Comedian, A Man for All Seasons I love Dr. Yoram Bauman's Small Party web site. There's plenty of food for thought for economics instructors throughout. On his humor page, I found a link to this parody of Mankiw's 10 principles. Check out Yoram's web page and read the explanations for his translations. There is a keen intellect at work here, so don't let the silliness fool you. Mankiw’s Principles #1. People face tradeoffs. #2. The cost of something is what you give up to get it. #3. Rational people think at the margin. #4. People respond to incentives. #5. Trade can make everyone better off. #6. Markets are usually a good way to organize economic activity. #7. Governments can sometimes improve market outcomes. #8. A country’s standard of living depends on its ability to produce goods and services. #9. Prices rise when the government prints too much money. #10. Society faces a short-run tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. ------------------------------------------------------------ Yoram’s Translations #1. Choices are bad. #2. Choices are really bad. #3. People are stupid. #4. People aren’t that stupid. #5. Trade can make everyone worse off. #6. Governments are stupid. #7. Governments aren’t that stupid. #8. Blah blah blah. #9. Blah blah blah. #10. Blah blah blah. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 11:58 PM | 0 comments links to this post The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome--What Can Instructors Do? Here at The Royal Economics Academy the Provost issues a warning to the faculty each semester. That warning reminds the faculty to consider the fact that exams are hazardous to the health of students' grandmothers. The Provost's memo is grounded in solid research, published by Mike Adams of Eastern Connecticut State University in 1999. His paper The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome is a classic in the literature. Furthermore, the faculty members I know confirm his results through their own experiences. With every exam that comes around, more grandmothers die. Since academic freedom is a cornerstone of the charter that created The Royal Economics Academy, our Provost chooses not to dictate how faculty should respond to the dead grandmother/exam syndrome. Some of my colleagues have decided to stop giving exams altogether, thus saving the lives of hundreds of grandmothers around the world. Other faculty members put a requirement on their syllabi that makes students sign an oath promising to keep their enrollment at the academy a secret from their families. The problem with this approach is that sometimes family members get nosy, investigate the whereabouts of a student, and are shocked when they discover that Susie or Sam is in college. Economics instructors everywhere need to remember grandmothers as they schedule exams. Give as few exams as possible to keep the death toll among grandmothers down. In my experience, exams that contain math are especially deadly. Eliminate the math. The grandmothers of the world will thank you. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 11:21 PM | 2 comments links to this post Brain Research and Economics Instruction This article from Scientific American provides a wealth of information about recent findings relating to male-female differences in the brain. The implications for economics instruction are not clear, yet when I read the article my first thought was that economics instructors need to find ways to make economics appealing to both sexes. Since this post is a QuickTake , I'll just copy and paste a few intriguing statements from the article: These anatomical differences might well relate somehow to differences in the way males and females navigate. Many studies suggest that men are more likely to navigate by estimating distance in space and orientation ("dead reckoning"), whereas women are more likely to navigate by monitoring landmarks. Even the neurons in the hippocampus behave differently in males and females, at least in how they react to learning experiences. The more we discover about how brain mechanisms of learning differ between the sexes, the more we may need to consider how optimal learning environments potentially differ for boys and girls. That last statement deserved the bold, which I put on it. I have to warn you that if you read the article, you'll learn more about rat brains than you ever wanted to know. My purpose is to remind instructors that male and female brains do differ and that's going to make a difference in their reaction to the subject matter and the way it's presented. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:16 PM | 1 comments links to this post Wednesday, May 11, 2005 Assessment--You Have to Measure Something Meaningful Florida is best known as the home of palm trees, hanging chads, hurricanes, and missing children. It is also the home of Hillsborough High, the nation's 10th ranked high school according to Newsweek magazine. If the state of Florida ranked schools, the school would likely be a wee bit lower in those rankings. You see, Hillsborough High received the grade of D in an assessment performed by the state. How can these differences in the performance of the school be reconciled? There is a lesson for instructors. The linked story tells us that The Newsweek list is based on a single factor: the number of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school, divided by the number of graduating seniors. The students don't have to do well on the tests either. It matters only that they take them. Test scores? No. Graduation rates? Nope. Closing the achievement gap between whites and minorities? Forget it. Unsound assessments are performed all the time. Take the example of student self assessment. A student predicts an A on the next exam after answering all questions correctly on a self test that the student created. The problem is that the student's questions are all at the first level in Bloom's taxonomy, requiring only that the student recall definitions. Sound assessments measure at least four abilities: comprehension, interpretation, analysis, and synthesis. I'll discuss the question of how to create sound assessments in economics classes in a follow up post later this month. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:25 PM | 0 comments links to this post Constructivist Learning: A Hands On Assignment--The Microsoft Antitrust Case I've copied and pasted an assignment that I gave my Honors Micro Principles class this semester. It embodies constructivist learning principles, which are discussed in my other blog Socrates Technological University . Readers of The Royal Economics Academy can use this assignment provided attribution is given to the author. __________________________________________________ You Be the Judge! The Microsoft Antitrust Case Sections I. through IV. provide information that will be useful in completing the assignment. Section V. poses questions for you to answer in parts a. through d. You will be working with your group in arriving at answers. The actual assignment isn’t that long, but it may take some time to wade through the background in the Microsoft case and the provisions of antitrust law. Four links are provided in case you would like to do more research on the case. http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm I. The above link will take you to the U.S. Department of Justice web site to the Findings of Fact in the 1999 Microsoft case. This is a long document. You don’t need to read it in its entirety, but you might take a quick look to get the flavor. I’ve copied and pasted item 34: 34. Viewed together, three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. First, Microsoft's share of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is extremely large and stable. Second, Microsoft's dominant market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. Third, and largely as a result of that barrier, Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows. Here is item 63: 63. Finally, it is indicative of monopoly power that Microsoft felt that it had substantial discretion in setting the price of its Windows 98 upgrade product (the operating system product it sells to existing users of Windows 95). A Microsoft study from November 1997 reveals that the company could have charged $49 for an upgrade to Windows 98 — there is no reason to believe that the $49 price would have been unprofitable — but the study identifies $89 as the revenue-maximizing price. Microsoft thus opted for the higher price. Here is the last item, item 412: 412. Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's actions have conveyed to every enterprise with the potential to innovate in the computer industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such companies and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and businesses that exhibit the potential to threaten Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest. II. The following link will take you to the text of several of the antitrust laws: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/foia/divisionmanual/ch2.htm Since Microsoft was charged with violating sections 1 and 2, I have copied and pasted them here: � 1 Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. � 1 Trusts, etc., in restraint of trade illegal; penalty Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court. � 2 Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. � 2 Monopolizing trade a felony; penalty Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court. The Sherman Act is not very specific, is it? How can a company tell is if it is violation? Well, I guess keep up with the case law. III. The Final Judgment of the court, rendered in 2002, is stated in this document, which has many specific provisions: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f200400/200457.htm IV. The following link contains a 2005 status report on Microsoft’s compliance with the court’s decision: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f207200/207283.htm The court will be monitoring Microsoft’s efforts to comply, and its behavior through 2007, I believe. V. As you can see, an antitrust case plays out over a significant period of time. There were two critical elements in the court’s decision that we talk about in economics, but don’t spend much time applying. One of these relates to the question, “What is the market?” The other is a related question, “What are the substitutes?” For example, is beer a substitute for coffee? If it is, then the market would be the market for beverages. If it’s not, then the beer market and the coffee market are two separate markets. a. From your perspective as a consumer who uses computers and software, how closely do you think Microsoft fits the textbook model of a monopolist? b. Microsoft products include Windows XP and Internet Explorer. From your perspective as a consumer, what do see as the substitutes for Microsoft products? Do you personally use any substitutes for Microsoft products? c. Do the facts in item #63 (copied above) surprise you? Should firms be punished for charging the “revenue-maximizing price”? d. At the time this case was in court, the talk was that Microsoft was going to broken up into two different companies: one company would create operating systems and the other company would create word processing software, web browsers, games, etc. That radical punishment was not meted out by the court. I am guessing that there are economies of scale that would be lost if Microsoft were to be broken up. Explain briefly. Instructions: You should contribute at least two postings to a group discussion designed to arrive at answers to the questions in a. through d. Since none of us has training in the fine points of antitrust law, you are to discuss from the perspective of a student who has read the material on antitrust in the book and the material about the case contained in this document. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 6:00 PM | 1 comments links to this post Monday, May 09, 2005 An Award for an Excellent Resources Page The Royal Economics Academy Excellence Award The Department of Economics at California State University in Fullerton has created a homepage that would help to interest students who may be thinking of majoring in economics. I like the message the pictures of the faculty-student potluck dinner sends to learners. I also like the data page, with nice links to various resources that economics instructors will find useful. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:04 PM | 0 comments links to this post QuickTake: A Failure to Teach the Whole Story? Gil Guillary has a nice post (May 5, 2005) on the Mises blog, titled What are You Calling Failure? The points he makes in the post are ones that economics instructors might want to make when teaching the standard textbook pablum on market failure. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 6:46 PM | 0 comments links to this post QuickTake: An Online Currency Converter A good way to engage student interest in exchange rates is to utilize an online currency converter. There are many of these on the Internet, including the one at itools linked in this post. I like to show students the conversion of the dollar into the euro, the peso, the Canadian dollar and several other currencies before launching into an explanation of how the exchange rates are determined. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 6:28 PM | 0 comments links to this post Economics as the Foundation of the Gestalt No word play intended, but William F. Sharpe is a pretty sharp guy. Professor Sharpe, 1990 Nobel prize winner in Economics, writes, “. . . one needs a gestalt from which to make business judgments.” To put it another way, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and business people had better darn well know it. The issue is how can colleges and universities instill in students the gestalt they must possess to make sound business judgments. I'm glad to see that a Nobel prize winner and I agree on the prime importance of economics in creating the gestalt. Critical foundations of the gestalt include microeconomics and macroeconomics. In most syllabi the goal is listed as "the economic way of thinking." Sharpe notes that the micro and macro contexts of business are not very likely to be front and center in a business environment. In short, business leaders must master the economic way of thinking in school or risk forever missing the key elements in the creation of gestalt. Let me use an analogy. I've never had the patience to put together a jig-saw puzzle, but I can imagine how it's done most effectively. I would pull out all the pieces with straight edges and then begin to build the outside edges of the puzzle. I'd pay attention to colors in order to mate adjacent pieces of the puzzle. I'd use the picture on the box the pieces came in as a guide. For example, if the only thing red in the puzzle was an object in the middle of the picture, I'd find the red pieces and put that part of the puzzle together. Proceeding in a systematic way, utilizing all information, I would put the puzzle pieces together. To me, a systematic process to put all the pieces of the business world together is what economics provides. Simply put, the job of economics instructors is critical in creating first-class business leaders. But then, you already knew that, didn't you? Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 5:09 PM | 0 comments links to this post Saturday, May 07, 2005 QuickTake: Tap Into Tom Peters Brain Tom Peters is blogging now! Your visit to his blog will find you in search of excellence. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 2:16 AM | 0 comments links to this post Friday, May 06, 2005 The Economics of Student Retention Student retention is an ongoing issue despite the efforts made by universities to increase retention rates. At a Faculty Senate meeting yesterday one of my fellow Senators proposed that incoming freshmen receive a healthy dose of counseling on financial matters, along with the standard fare of advice on academics. With that excellent suggestion fresh in my mind, I eagerly took a look at a new report, College Dropouts Who Borrowed for Education Face Long-Term Economic Hardship . Here's part of what I learned: Known risk factors for dropping out appear to be more important than borrowing in affecting a student’s chances for degree completion. Among the known risk factors for dropping out are delaying entry into postsecondary education after high school, attending college part-time, and working full-time while enrolled. The problem with the conclusion as stated in the excerpt is that the risk factors mentioned are not independent of each other. Adverse economic circumstances correlate with all the behaviors that are associated with dropping out. In other words, there be no magic bullet that will solve the problem. Another aspect of dropping out, not discussed in the report, relates to how effectively student loan programs are administered. Some colleges and universities do a better job than others in getting the money into the hands of students without unnecessary bureaucratic delays. Delays can result in the inability to buy textbooks, for example. That doesn't help retention. Another relevant factor, in my estimation, is the large tuition increases of recent years. Students who borrow face a mountain of debt after graduation. Since tuition increases have far outstripped the starting salaries of college graduates, the real burden of that mountain has been rising significantly. Not every student likes the thought of climbing that mountain. As a professional educator and teaching and learning specialist, I recognize the value of good teaching in keeping students around. Universities at least pay lip service to better teaching. Some actually make real efforts to improve it. The financial side of retention needs to be better understood for administrators to allocate resources effectively. The report suggests that private scholarships and other community support can be a significant part of the effort. Unfortunately, it isn't likely that significantly more private scholarship money will be forthcoming. That takes me back to the first paragraph and my colleagues suggestion that financial counseling be an integral part of the first year experience. Knowing how to wisely spend money can be as useful a skill as knowing how to make it. Link posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 8:17 PM | 1 comments links to this post About Me Name: Ronald M. Ayers Location: United States I am a university professor with a passion for teaching and for economics. You might call me a "lead steer" in teaching with technology and in the economic analysis of current issues. My accomplishments include directing my university's Teaching and Learning Center, winning three teaching awards, and coauthoring four economics textbooks published by Prentice Hall. Typically, I will be posting new thoughts at least twice weekly to all three of my blogs. View my complete profile My Other Blogs EconOpinion Socrates Technological University My Textbooks Economics: Explore & Apply, Enhanced Edition Macroeconomics: Explore & Apply, Enhanced Edition Microeconomics: Explore & Apply, Enhanced Edition Economics by Design: Survey and Issues
CURRENT URL http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/shooting-fish-in-a-barrel/
Stanley Fish's latest warning about the dangers of academic freedom is a work of surpassing nonsense. As usual, Fish would have his readers forget that academic freedom is threatened by the accelerating pace at which temporary lecturers are replacing tenure-line faculty at American colleges and universities. And he'd be grateful if onlookers would also ignore the fact that academic freedom isn't guaranteed, that many scholars -- sometimes even those who are dedicated to their jobs -- are fired because their colleagues don't believe they merit tenure. Instead, Fish focuses on the bad apples who hide behind the shield of academic freedom, getting away with all manner of misdeeds. Which, sure, does sometimes happen, though far less frequently than consumers of Fish's drippings likely believe. In this instance, Fish writes about Denis Rancourt, a physicist at the University of Ottawa. Rancourt, it should be said, sounds like buffoon : Rancourt is a self-described anarchist and an advocate of "critical pedagogy,” a style of teaching derived from the assumption (these are Rancourt’s words ) “that our societal structures . . . represent the most formidable instrument of oppression and exploitation ever to occupy the planet”... It turns out that another tool of coercion is the requirement that professors actually teach the course described in the college catalogue, the course students think they are signing up for. Rancourt battles against this form of coercion by employing a strategy he calls “squatting” – “where one openly takes an existing course and does with it something different.” That is, you take a currently unoccupied structure, move in and make it the home for whatever activities you wish to engage in. “Academic squatting is needed,” he says, “because universities are dictatorships . . . run by self-appointed executives who serve capital interests.” Rancourt first practiced squatting when he decided that he “had to do something more than give a ‘better’ physics course.” Accordingly, he took the Physics and Environment course that had been assigned to him and transformed it into a course on political activism, not a course about political activism, but a course in which political activism is urged — “an activism course about confronting authority and hierarchical structures directly or through defiant or non-subordinate assertion in order to democratize power in the workplace, at school, and in society.” So gosh, yes, Fish must be right: if academic freedom protects a miscreant like Rancourt, it must be a terrible thing. But wait! Administrators at the University of Ottawa are now "recommend[ing] to the Board of Governors the dismissal with cause of Professor Denis Rancourt from his faculty position." Which is to say, he may be fired. So Fish's claim that someone like Rancourt, so long as he's working in the halls of academe, will be "celebrated as a brave nonconformist, a tilter against orthodoxies, a pedagogical visionary and an exemplar of academic freedom" is drivel. In his conclusion Fish admits as much, allowing that Rancourt isn't resting comfortably under the parasol of academic freedom. So the first several hundred words of the column were just a misunderstanding, then? And academic freedom functions properly after all, Professor Fish? "But only till next time," he answers. That sound you hear, readers, is the clutching of pearls. Luckily for Fish, he's a regular contributor to the New York Times , which means that he'll keep his bully pulpit even though he's clearly incompetent. 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This is officially an award-winning blog Best group blog: "Witty and insightful, the Edge of the American West puts the group in group blog, with frequent contributions from an irreverent band.... Always entertaining, often enlightening, the blog features snazzy visuals—graphs, photos, videos—and zippy writing...." Archives August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 37 comments February 9, 2009 at 12:22 pm politicalfootball Well, yeah. But what about Ward Churchill? They let him keep his tenure right up until they fired him. February 9, 2009 at 12:24 pm silbey I think we should list the people that should be immediately fired from the Times. I'll lead off with Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, and Ben Stein. February 9, 2009 at 12:24 pm Matt Lister The only bad thing about criticizing Stanley Fish is that it's so easy. I must say, though, that I resent him even more now that I found out that he was the model for Morris Zap in the _Trading Places_ book (I suppose it does make sense in retrospect) because it's sort of ruined that book for me. February 9, 2009 at 12:25 pm kid bitzer denis rancourt... i'm guessing here, alex, but would that be "how do you say ward churchill in canadian?"? February 9, 2009 at 1:20 pm Colin You're being Fished. February 9, 2009 at 1:45 pm Ahistoricality I read Fish only because I know that people will respond, and I do so hoping that nobody will.... I thought the comments on his post pretty much captured the absurdity as well as Ari. I could be a good liberal and point out that there are issues with tenure that are troubling, but it just legitimizes Fish's flamethrower approach to let him start a conversation. February 9, 2009 at 2:47 pm jacob I know this isn't quite your point, but in fact what's happening to Denis Rancourt is an outrage. He's basically being fired because his colleagues and administrators don't approve of his grading methods. That's the sort of intrusion into the classroom and specific teaching methods that tenure really is designed to prevent. Moreover, his firing is a dangerous signal for tenure throughout Canada. Professors are being told that since they work for public institutions, they are civil servants and that tenure is meaningless. It's a dangerous precedent for Canada, and I think we in the United States need to take it seriously. February 9, 2009 at 3:00 pm dana He’s basically being fired because his colleagues and administrators don’t approve of his grading methods. It seems like it's a little more than that, if the reporting in the article is at all accurate. Plenty of people who are easy graders aren't marched out the door in handcuffs. February 9, 2009 at 3:11 pm Jonathan Dresner He’s basically being fired because his colleagues and administrators don’t approve of his grading methods. Not if Fish is being at all honest about the situation. He's being fired because he's giving people grades which don't in any way reflect the work students have done on the subject matter of the intended course. He's not even trying: this isn't inflation, it's culture jamming. Grades are a product and a form of communication to a variety of constituencies and there are serious implications to the institution if they become meaningless. February 9, 2009 at 3:21 pm Vance Here's a brief account from the Globe and Mail . It confirms the detail Jonathan picked out -- R announced at the beginning of one class that every student would get an A+. (On the other hand, Dana, let's not take the fact that the university reacted harshly to his return to campus as evidence in itself.) February 9, 2009 at 3:23 pm jacob As I understood it from the Globe and Mail (admittedly, my blood pressure can't handle reading Fish, so I haven't), Rancourt gave everyone A+s because he didn't approve of grades. While, yes that's "giving people grades which don't in any way reflect the work students have done," it's also grading in a particular way that others don't approve of. My point is not about whether or not this is good pedagogy (indeed, I have mixed feelings about grades, and also about how one should deal with those mixed feelings). My point is that I don't want my colleagues or administrators telling me what grades I can give my students. If I want to give them all A+s, my right to do so is a small price to pay for my right to autonomy in the classroom. February 9, 2009 at 3:24 pm jacob Sorry: I should have included the URL to the Globe article in the comment above: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090206.wprof06/BNStory/National/ February 9, 2009 at 3:31 pm ari In defense of the post, I did include a link to the Globe and Mail story. So did Fish, in his editorial, by the way. Not that I'm defending him. February 9, 2009 at 3:35 pm Jonathan Dresner Actually, I think the stronger point isn't that he's giving out all A+'s (though I do have pretty strong views on grade inflation) but that he's teaching a different course than that described in the catalog. (in the end, the "all A+" thing was finessed by making the course pass/fail, which seems obvious to us in the US but is apparently rather unusual in Canada) I'm not talking about a little slippage in topics or some supplemental projects: I'm talking about providing an educational experience so different from the advertised material as to constitute a form of fraud. It's true, real investigation of complex topics can take you down unexpected roads, but certain courses exist for a reason, and it's hubris to assume that the instructor can abandon those reasons without doing harm to the curriculum. I'm all for autonomy in the classroom, but within the context of professional responsibilities. If social responsibility trumps professional responsibility, as Rancourt seems to think, then it's time to give up the profession. February 9, 2009 at 3:36 pm dana (On the other hand, Dana, let’s not take the fact that the university reacted harshly to his return to campus as evidence in itself.) Not in and of itself, no. But... I don't think this just about giving too many high grades. (And the article suggests more.) And this.. disciplinary procedure doesn't seem to be coming from the state, but from the rest of the faculty. Which means it's a really weird example to choose to try to show that the academy is full of people who couldn't get Real Jobs. February 9, 2009 at 3:47 pm Vance No kidding. Anyway, Fish's writing these days (well, in my experience, for a long while now) seems to be a kind of typing practice -- he has a bag of rhetorical tricks, long on paradox, and just keeps pulling them out for their own sake. But the case is strange. (And Ari -- oops, I too missed your link.) February 9, 2009 at 4:38 pm rea My point is that I don’t want my colleagues or administrators telling me what grades I can give my students. Well, but there's a catagory difference between your colleagues or adminstrators telling you what grades to give to particular students, and your colleagues or administrators requiring you to participate in the same grading system that everyone else at the university follows. It would infringe you academic freedom for your colleagues and adminstrators to tell you what you can or cannot say in the classroom-but that doesn't mean you have the right to deliver your lectures in Serbo-Croatian without anyone complaining . . . February 9, 2009 at 4:51 pm Jason B. If I want to give them all A+s, my right to do so is a small price to pay for my right to autonomy in the classroom. Seems like that's a philosophy that belongs somewhere other than academia. Rights? A right to give grades? Give grades? Is this a college classroom or a sandbox? You're not the boss of me. Everyone gets ponies! February 9, 2009 at 6:59 pm andrew I had a professor for a freshman seminar in English who, concerned that people were too hesitant to participate in class discussions, suddenly declared about half way through that he would give everyone A's in order to take any grade-related fears away. The course was substantially in-class participation focused. His comments on the few written assignments were thorough and critical - in the good sense of critique. And the course was exactly what the description said it would be. February 9, 2009 at 9:44 pm tf smith Apparently the Times was really hard up for copy to fill the space around the Hermes ads that day... When nothing in the article actually supports the lede, you really have to wonder... February 10, 2009 at 6:07 am jacob I should say that the Globe article that Vance and I read makes no mention of Rancourt not teaching the class he promised, and describes the issue solely as about his refusal to give meaningful grades. I agree that not teaching the class as promised is a greater breach of trust-although still not worth of being banned from campus and fired. Moreover, I suspect that the harsh treatment he's faced comes more from the fact that he's heterodox in his research (he's a global warming denialist) and politics (he's an anarchist), and that in the past he's sided with students against the university. The point of Ari's original post, as I read it, was that the system worked well in this case, in that Rancourt was a bad egg and was fired for it, so complaints that academic freedom protected bad eggs were moot. My point was that Ari was conceding too much, because Rancourt's offense in fact shouldn't have caused him to be fired. This is not to defend Rancourt's actions tout court. February 10, 2009 at 6:48 am Barry politicalfootball: "Well, yeah. But what about Ward Churchill? They let him keep his tenure right up until they fired him." Wow. And Timothy McVeigh was reportedly allowed to live right up until his execution - criminal coddlers! February 10, 2009 at 7:00 am ari jacob, to your point: I don't know enough about the case to make judgments. But you'll note that in the post I'm pretty careful with my language; I say that "Rancourt sounds like a buffoon." I later suggest that his case is really lousy evidence for the point Fish is trying to make. Nowhere do I say that Rancourt should be fired. Two more things: reiterating, I don't think I have nearly enough information here to make an informed judgment about Rancourt's fate; and it's possible that Fish is making up the facts, but I assumed that wasn't the case. February 10, 2009 at 7:56 am Jonathan Dresner From a quick look at Rancourt's website , including his two teaching-related blogs , Rancourt seems quite proud of his "course squatting" and encourages students to engage in "course hijacking" (in which they collectively decide to discuss topics and engage in activism unrelated to the instructor's agenda). February 10, 2009 at 9:31 am jacob Ari: Fair enough. And I think we can agree that Stanley Fish is in any case the greater fool. Jonathan: Fair enough as well. I don't mean to deny that Rancourt has done that, only that it appeared from the Globe article that it wasn't the offense for which he was fired. February 10, 2009 at 9:42 am Matt L. A couple quick points: Yes, Fish is being a blowhard and cherry picking the evidence to make his case against a particular case against academic freedom. But I also think he has a larger point: for some people academic freedom means the ability to skip meetings and foist administrative chores on junior colleagues while reserving the right to shoot them down at a later date. No news there. But come on, Rancourt is clearly not doing his job and being a bad colleague. His academic freedom ends when it starts screwing over students and colleagues. If dude was slated to teach a course on anarchist political theory and practice then his grading scheme and course hijacking shenanigans would be relevant to the material. Let me ask a question: if a Micheal Bauerline type English professor decided to "course hijack" his Intro to Shakespeare class and turn it into Biology 101 focused on creation science, do you think that the 'academic freedom' argument would hold water? Especially once the Bio department got wind of it? February 10, 2009 at 10:19 am dana But I also think he has a larger point: for some people academic freedom means the ability to skip meetings and foist administrative chores on junior colleagues while reserving the right to shoot them down at a later date. No news there. Also, like, not unique to the academy. February 10, 2009 at 11:34 am Buster Meh, this thread illustrates exactly the problem of Fish's essay. When you start with a ludicrous example, it's pretty hard to get back to a sensible discussion of the topic at hand. Or as my engineer father succinctly puts it: "Garbage in, garbage out." Might I suggest that we agree that Fish's column is foolish and that discussion of Rancourt's case will not lead to a very interesting conversation about academic freedom. (I think this was Ari's original point.) February 11, 2009 at 1:11 pm Timothy Burke We can have perfectly autonomous classrooms if we choose, without any institutional obligations. I can put a notice in Craigslist that I'm convening a course on anything I want, taught however I want it, and tell people to meet me on my front lawn. If we work for an institution and with colleagues and under the banner of some kind of procedures or common agreements about the systems of our instruction, then we're not so autono