Friday, June 08, 2007

The Group as Great Teachers?

Critics of the campus see the Group of 88 as a threat to learning—even as [Lee] Baker notes that the faculty members under attack attract large enrollments (including athletes) and earn positive evaluations from students.

---Robert Bliwise, Duke Magazine

Many reasons exist why college courses have large enrollments beyond the quality of instruction. An introductory course required for the major will always enroll well, regardless of the instructor. The topic—i.e., the modern civil rights movement—could be intrinsically interesting. A course might have an extremely attractive time slot, or the professor might be a very easy grader.

On the flip side, a low enrollment doesn’t necessarily mean a low-quality course. The class could be very difficult, or meet at an inconvenient time, or require too many prerequisites.

Baker’s suggestion, however, that the Group of 88 attract large enrollments appears to be the latest defense of the Group contradicted by the record. Over the last two academic years, some Group members—including Baker himself—have consistently attracted robust enrollments. Other such figures include Pete Sigal, Mark Anthony Neal, and David Wong. (Class evaluations are not publicly available; there is no way to independently verify Baker’s claim about them.)

Yet many other Group members have attracted low or in some cases very low enrollments. This pattern comes despite the fact that of the Group members who are full-time faculty, almost none have taught more than two undergraduate courses annually in either 2005-2006 or 2006-2007. So it cannot be said that they oversaturated their potential market.

Perhaps if more Group members had more regular contact with more undergraduates, they would have been less likely last spring to advance their ideological, pedagogical, and personal agendas at the expense of their own institution’s students.

Enrollment figures are below, with the number of students who took the course listed first, followed by the number of available slots in the class.

Spring 2007

Wahneema Lubiano and Jocelyn Olcott (Introduction to Critical U.S. Studies): 7 of 40 [Based on what people heard of Lubiano’s lecturing style during the Group of 88 Rehab Tour, it’s little surprise that her course failed to enroll well.]

Diane Nelson (Theories of Cultural Anthropology): 9 of 17

Karla Holloway (African-American Literary Genres): 18 of 30 [Amazingly, given her attack on the law in the lacrosse case, Holloway’s spring term topic was “the novel and the law.”]

Maurice Wallace (African-American Literature): 16 of 40 [It would seem that most Duke students do not respond to the pedagogical approach preferred by Wallace: “I have a responsibility to all of my students—every single one of them—to disabuse them of all of the national, racial, middle-class, gender and sexual myths they’ve been taught to comfort or flatter themselves and, of course, the people who, perhaps unknowingly, miseducated them.”

Kim Curtis (Ecological Crisis and Political Theory): 18 of 30 [The class explores the “ethical, political, economic, aesthetic, social, and technological approaches to contemporary ecological crisis,” though how Kim Curtis, of all people, can teach others about “ethics” is not clear.]

Stanley Abe (Chinese Buddhist Art): 16 of 40

Paula (“no to due process”) McClain (Race in Comparative Perspective): 8 of 15

Alice Kaplan (French Literature in the Modern Era): 21 of 35

Fall 2006

Antonio Viego (Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies): 4 of 15

Michaelene Crichlow (Caribbean Migration): 8 of 16

Raymond Gavins (African-American History, I): 9 of 40

Paula McClain (Racial and Ethnic Minorities in American Politics): 15 of 30

Leo Ching (East Asian Cultural Studies): 14 of 20

Kathy Rudy (Ethics, Rights, and the Subject): 14 of 30 [As with Kim Curtis, imagine the irony of a Group of 88 member teaching “ethics.”]

miriam cooke (Topics in Arabic): 6 of 15 [cooke does not capitalize either her first or last names.]

Jocelyn Olcott (Introduction to Contemporary Latin America): 24 of 40


Spring 2006

Michaelene Crichlow (Popular Culture in the Americas): 7 of 15

Sally Deutsch (US History, 1870-1940): 26 of 40. [Lacrosse players, therefore, formed nearly 20 percent of her enrollment for the class in which Deutsch deviated from the syllabus to deliver a guilt-presuming lecture when the charges went public.]

Wahneema Lubiano (Social Facts and Narrative: “Story telling as it establishes, relies on, and transforms socially recognized categories of [naturally] gender, class, race, sexual orientation, and region): 13 of 18

Stanley Abe (Art History & Representation): 3 of 15

Susan Thorne (Modern Britain): 15 of 35 [Ironically, this course included several lacrosse players, though Thorne had no problem putting them in harm’s way by signing the Group’s statement and then by repeating her no-apology approach by signing the "clarifying" statement.]

Paula McClain (Seminar in Government and Politics): 7 of 15

Charlotte Pierce-Baker (Trauma, Violence, and Women Writing): 11 of 18

Diane Nelson (Fieldwork Methods): 18 of 30

Jan Radway (History of Literary Institutions): 7 of 15

Kathy Rudy (Feminism and Reproductive Ethics): 26 of 50


Fall 2005

Raymond Gavins (African-American History): 17 of 40

Bayo Holsey (African Modernities): 8 of 15

Antonio Viego (Cuban America): 9 of 18

The enrollment figures do not reveal how many students in each class were student-athletes. Baker’s suggestion, however, that student-athletes flock to the Group’s classes (mirroring an earlier claim by Charlie Piot) doesn’t pass the laugh test.

How many of the seven students who enrolled in the Lubiano/Olcott spring 2007 offering were student-athletes? How many student-athletes would want to take classes from Karla Holloway, knowing that she impugned the character of dozens of female athletes at Duke?

In short, despite Baker’s hints, there is no evidence that Duke students are beating down the doors to take classes from most of the Group; or that Group members are somehow better teachers than other Duke professors.

47 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do the Duke trustees believe this is a fine group of professors?

wayne fontes said...

Seeing Charlie Piot's name reminds me that he has yet to produce the paper on academic freedom he told John in Carolina he was going to publish. I guess we will just have to accept that it's "forth coming".

KC, have you contacted Robert Bliwire about his claim that the phrase used in the Water Buffalo affair was "shut up you black water buffalo". It 's completely at odds with the available public record. I wonder where he got his information?

Michael said...

Looks like it has been a busy day for KC, despite the trip to Boston with the students.

I still like RateMyProfessor.com as a measure of professors.

I had a look at the titles of those classes and asked myself if I'd want to take any of them just for fun. Perhaps East Asian Culture but I think that that would be it. The others look pretty useless unless you want to be part of the professional victims class of people.

Our son is taking a writing class at a local university this summer and he got hit with the PC stuff in the second class. I just told him to grin and bear it and not make waves in the class. I guess that most kids implicitly learn this either in high school or in college.

On a different topic, there's a YouTube Video of Linwood Wilson and his singing group posted by user kcjohnson9 at
Linwood Wilson

I thought that it was ironic that they were singing about Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego.

I was thinking that Nifong would be Nebuchadnezzar and Linwood would be the captain of the eunuchs.

Anonymous said...

blackwhite- The ability to accept whatever "truth" the party puts out, no matter how absurd it may be. Orwell described it as "...loyal willingness to say black is white when party discipline demands this. It also means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know black is white, and forget that one has ever believed the contrary."

Anonymous said...

KC, you keep doing this lately: Your first sentence of the post needs a comment. So again, I've read just a bit of your posting and need to comment on the first sentence:

(Quoting Robert Bliwire:) "Critics of the campus see the Group of 88 as a threat to learning—even as [Lee] Baker notes that" blah blah blah.

First, he's calling us "critics of the campus"? Hey, Mr. Bliwire, maybe you better listen to your own President and read the "listening ad". It wasn't us who said Duke students are racist. It wasn't us who said Duke co-eds are terrified. No, that sentence would've been more accurate if it said, "Supporters of Duke students see the Group of 88 as...."

"...as a threat to learning"? Well, I suppose there is some "learning", broadly defined, available in 88er-classes. But that sentence might better have read "threat to fair grading". Mr. Bliwire, Duke already had to settle ONE case of a faculty grade-punishing students based on race and sex, and another professor has admitted she has done the same thing. This is the nearest thing to academic-violence a professor can commit, isn't it? So, yes, we supporters of Duke students see a "threat" all right, a threat to white-male Duke students that is KNOWN and PROVED.

Finally, Mr. Bliwire uses a journalist's trick with "notes". See, when an interviewee makes a statement with which the reporter agrees but doesn't want to investigate, then the reporter says the interviewee "noted such-and-such". In the reverse case, when an interviewee makes a statement with which the reporter DISagrees but doesn't want to investigate, the reporter uses a sneering word like "claims".

R.R. Hamilton

Now I can read the rest of KC's posting.

Gary Packwood said...

This is the first time I have ever seen or heard about university courses that 'make' with fewer than eight (8) undergraduate students.

Also, five courses per semester is a fairly normal load for most academics.

A state university would be looking down the barrel of an audit if they reported these data.

The cost of these faculty with both low teaching loads and low enrollments must be just astronomical.
::
GP

Anonymous said...

Nice to know there's plenty of room to spread out in an "88" class - or even bring a friend along !

However, I have to say that one of my more interesting classes was with Peter Wood -so I can't tell you how disturbing it I to see his irresponsible (slanserous?) behavior - a good memory ruined.

Anonymous said...

"slanserous" - wow, spellcheck has spoiled me rotten

Anonymous said...

Gee, classes in single digits! Maybe I should apply for a Duke faculty post and teach Gender Studies. So much easier than teaching a master's class in Software Metrics and Process Improvement to 65 enrolees.

GaryB said...

Some of those topics give new meaning to earning a "BS" degree.

Anonymous said...

If we have learned something from this case, it is that some elements of the Duke faculty will shamelessly use lies and distortion to advance their agendas.

IMO, Baker is only one more of these liars. He only makes his claims so long as he knows that there is no way that he can ever be audited. He is a disgrace to Duke, and should leave... NOW!

Greg Allan said...

miriam cooke (Topics in Arabic): 6 of 15 [cooke does not capitalize either her first or last names.]
Could Miriam be the e e cummings wannabee who has posted here several times recently?

Anonymous said...

K.C.,

With articles like this, you NEVER will be able to get that position at Duke!

This does not surprise me at all. From what I know of these professors, they constantly are haranguing students in the classroom about leftist politics and the like. Students who are not in the favored identity groups sooner or later get the message to stay away, or just be quiet and put up with it.

It has been my experience that the professors who scream most loudly about "academic freedom" are the ones who are the biggest totalitarians in the classroom. To people like Lubiano, "academic freedom" is nothing more than a useful tool to gain power, and once people like her have that power, they do away with academic freedom.

Anonymous said...

These figures are very encouraging in a way. Even with affirmative action, the audience for this bilge appears quite small.

I've always thought the various versions of anger studies were an academic ghetto. At Duke, unfortunately, the tail seems to wag the dog.

Anonymous said...

Would it not be necessary to compare the enrollments of these classes with other, similar non-pre requisite courses at Duke in order to make any sort of inference?

Also, I find the assertion that Baker's statement "doesn't pass the laugh test" one of your most intellectually lazy arguments to date. As you said, the data does not exist...more research ought to be done.

-PG

Anonymous said...

Gary Packwood--

I agree with your general point, but not some of the details.

First, many (not all) of the classes KC lists that have fewer than 8 enrolled students are actually graduate classes (for example, Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies, History of Literary Institutions and Art History & Representation). Enrollment standards for those may be different because of the specialized needs of grad students.

On the other hand, Introduction to Critical US Studies (the Lubiano and Olcott class--2 profs for 7 students!) and Crichlow's Popular Culture in the Americas are undergrad-level classes.

I'm also not at all sure that "five courses per semester is a fairly normal load for most academics." At the state university where I teach, full-time non-tenure track instructors in the English Dept. (don't know about the rest) teach 4 classes a semester--which is a demanding load, because most of these instructors teach composition and other required classes with lots of papers to read and no TA's to read them; tenured and tenure-track profs usually teach fewer, substituting committee work, research/conference time, or supervision of undergraduate and graduate theses for the other classes.
My sister is a tenure-track professor of business strategy at a private university, where she has usually taught two, or at most three, classes per semester.

That being said, it does appear some of these instructors neither carry heavy teaching loads nor attract a lot of students.

Anonymous said...

K.C.--A typo, the Duke Magazine reporter is Robert Bliwise, not Robert Bliwire.

Also--Wayne Fontes--Bliwise does NOT claim that the phrase used was "shut up, you black water buffalo." He says: "A freshman yelled out of his sixth-floor window, "Shut up, you water buffalo." The women charged that the actual expression was "black water buffalo."

Anonymous said...

If you were wondering why the "88" were pushing for mandatory sensitivity training under the Campus Culture Initiative (CCI), wonder no more --- its simple economics.

They need to fill the seats !

Brodhead is staring at a sorry spreadsheet of his cost per credit for Angry Studies/88 classes, and is trying to get the heat off his back for such inefficient use of University resources.

The AS/88 need to build their little kingdoms - starting from an obvioisly poor basis.

The infamous ad might be less about idealogy and more to do good old fashioned greed and power.

Anonymous said...

I think standard course loads in Liberal Arts & Sciences are 3-3 or 3-2 for many tenured/tenure-track faculty at state universities. This is not a light load if you're actually teaching students.
(BTW, 7 grad students in a seminar is hardly rough going. Popular faculty easily have double that number.)

I am very curious as to how long Kim Curtis has been visiting, ie, non-tenure track faculty at Duke. I'm also wondering why the University is supporting her.

Is she really the quality faculty that Duke parents pay the big bucks for?

Anonymous said...

I normally teach a 3-3 load, with an on-line course in the summer. I'm also expected to publish in peer-reviewed academic journals and engage in service for the department, college, and university.

Duke's teaching load is lighter, but professors are expected to publish in highly-rated journals for publication. For example, I can guarantee you that any economics professor who does NOT get a "hit" in something like American Economic Review, or one of the other requisite "A" journals is not going to be tenured, period.

However, it seems to me that the standards for the Identity Studies faculty are much, much lower. First, many of the post-modern journals are not true academic journals, as they are filled with academic-speak and other Marxist nonsense. Second, as we saw 12 years ago, one can write literally non-sensical work (as one professor did deliberately) and get it published.

Duke's post-modern journals have an especially bad reputation for being ridiculous in an area where being ridiculous is the norm.

All of this, plus high salaries and a low teaching load, make the jobs of the people of which you speak pretty easy compared to people in "real" academic fields like chemistry, physics, and the like. (The Identity Studies people have not yet figured how to create "postmodern physics," but I am sure that they believe that math is inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, lookist, and whateverist and needs to be "deconstructed.")

Anonymous said...

Some of Duke's journals, like GLQ, are actually very good, per-reviewed journals.

The difference between Kim Curtis--temporary faculty, presumably teaching more classes for less money--and others who signed the 88 list is really striking.

Anonymous said...

*peer-reviewed

Anonymous said...

I am intrigued by two things about the information in this blog. The first is how large the enrollment cap is on some of the classes listed above. I would not be happy to be paying $32,000+ in tuition alone to have my child in a class with 40 students. The second thing that intrigues me is the low numbers of students in the classes. My experience at other colleges is that some of those classes would have either been cancelled or would not have been offered again absent evidence of strong student interest. It appears to me that Duke is subsidising faculty and classes for which there is not sufficient interest. It appears that Duke's students may be more interested in more standard (or employement relevant) and less "multicultural" courses. From a business point of view it doesn't seem reasonable to have so many undersubscribed course.

Anonymous said...

Forty students is actually very teachable, although 35 is better. The number of students in a class is not the only variable that goes into a good learning experience, of course.

Interesting would be to see the reading/work requirements for the classes.

And, of course, the evaluations.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone seriously believe that with all the negative publicity, clarifying statement, refusal to apologize, ad taken out demanding an apology etc. that white athletes are not making damn sure they are not in any classes taught by these folks?

You can bet that I would be making very sure I didn't wind up in a class taught by any of them. Regardless of the outcome, I don't think anyone wants to run the risk of going through what Kyle Dowd did.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I did not realize what a HUGE teaching load I had (two classes of about 25 students each per semester) when I was in "gradual" school.

kcjohnson9 said...

To the 8.57am:

It's my understanding that all of the classes listed here were undergraduate classes. (They all, at least, had undergrad code-numbers.)

Anonymous said...

I would jump at the chance to enroll in a class where I knew I was smarter than the instructor.

Anonymous said...

KC,
Another point to make is class enrollment is ,to some degree,based on perceived difficulty of the class.King Banaian,an econ chair at St Cloud State chides one of the "Studies majors at his school as the "Dept of the 3.7 gpa" ,since thatis the average grade received.On the flip side,when Pres. Eliot opened more sewlectivity at Harvard,Henry Cabot Lodge's enrollment plummeted since it was such a difficult class.I'd be mildly interested to klnow thw average grade inDr. Lubiano's course-but not enough to do any actual work myself.
Corwin
PS I had a nightmare years,or mainly decades after the class that I was again in Organic Chemistry.

Anonymous said...

There you go again KC using "facts" to show the truth. Being a member of the Group means that you don’t need back-up for the truth you can just feel the truth and if your feelings conflicts with reality then clearly reality is wrong.

Anonymous said...

KC didn't mention what the average grade awarded was for these "poof" courses, as compared to non-Angry Studies humanities classes. If, they were, as seems likely, easier classes to get an A in , with less work required, then the fact that most of those listed had less than 50 % allowable enrollment in them really, really , REALLY tells you what jokes they are , and what jokes the "profs" that "teach" them, are.

Anonymous said...

KC--
Usually classes numbered in the 100s and below are undergraduate classes, classes numbered in the 200s are open to seniors and graduate students and sometimes juniors, and classes numbered in the 300s are open only to graduate
students. This information sometimes appears in the course synopsis or the "info" box rather than in the course schedule listing.

For example, Stanley Abe's Art History 387 is open only to graduate and professional students (see the info box). Same thing with Lit 304. Paula McClain's seminar in Government and Politics (299) is open only to seniors and grad students.

On the other hand, Antonio Viego's Lit 290 doesn't state any restrictions or prerequisites, so it may be completely open despite the 200 number (or, possibly, if a freshman or sophomore tried to register for it, the system would not allow the transaction).

Clearly, some of these policies are not as transparent as they might be.

8:57 (a Duke parent who has been entirely too much of a busybody in her children's class registration decisions).

Anonymous said...

gary packwood said: "The cost of these faculty with both low teaching loads and low enrollments must be just astronomical."

Not to mention the all-but-absent publications. Just what do these people do with all that free time?

Sheesh, I wish I had cushy gig like that, but being in a real academic discipline (science and engineering) I have to actually work for my paycheck.

Unknown said...

"miriam cooke (Topics in Arabic): 6 of 15 [cooke does not capitalize either her first or last names.]"

How pretentious...

Anonymous said...

Anon at 12:25--
This is probably getting way off the track of the thread, but I would think twice before enrolling in a class where I knew I was smarter than the instructor if the grading carried any subjective component (i.e. evaluating a paper and/or class participation rather than an exam) and the subject matter involved subjective interpretation rather than hard facts or the application of formulas to problems. Ideally, the professor would see such a student as a challenge, but some might perceive a threat instead.

Anonymous said...

The isssue of small numbers in classes is much more complex than some of you realize. For instance, in say the 1970s many more students took French than took Spanish as electives. Hence "needs" defined a larger French faculty than Spanish faculty, and tenure numbers reflected that. As student interests changed around 1990, there was a need to hire more in Spanish. The French faculty are still tenured, but have lower enrollments, while Spanish faculty have larger enrollments. Similarly with say Physics, which finds it hard to get many majors these days, compared to a cold war past time when the physical sciences were more "present" than the biological sciences. But the physicists, who are tenured, are still teaching physics. Economics lost students to the "new" Public Policy department, as did Political Science department, etc.

Anonymous said...

(miriam cooke) is indeed a sad sack. But what's new? She's a typical Gang of 88 traveler. She's just trying to do something to distinguish herself. Can you blame her with such a run-of-the-mill name?

Let her have her little e.e.cummings fantasy.

GIS !


Debrah

Anonymous said...

1:30 a.m inre; Peter Woods. He is part of the problem and NOT part of any enlightened thinking. After reading Roger Kimball’s “The Rape of the Masters” you may consider petitioning Duke for a tuition refund?

I've posted this before and cleaned it up a bit now...

I won’t go as far as saying the fraudulent stuff being taught is throwing gas on the fire. The Gang of 88 did that and this then is more akin to readying the logs for both the gas and match. This is the pap that, in my opinion, sets the framework for events such as this one.

Race, gender, and class warfare apologists like to add and change meaning. Is there more to a painting or do certain people divine text from images that don’t exist to serve collective political ends?

I have no idea of Dr. Wood’s involvement one way or the other with recent events at Duke. But I do find the following critique endemic to the larger problem(s) associated with race, class welfare, and gender studies B.S. being jammed down students throats. This approach sure isn’t solving any problems…it’s time for reform, on every campus. The effort to drive race politics isn’t limited to rape trials…

The Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer’s own words:
“You ask me for a full description of my Picture of the “Gulf Stream” – I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description – The subject of this picture is comprised in its title…I have crossed the Gulf Stream ten times & I should know something about it. The boat & shark are outside matters of little consequence. They have been blown out to sea by a hurricane…” – Winslow Homer, a reply to a request to explain the painting “Gulf Stream”

Duke Professor Peter Wood and his book reviewed (Amazon):

“In “Waiting in Limbo; A Reconsideration of Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Steam”, Peter Woods, ties the painting to race and slavery and colonialism. “Perhaps no other American painting is at once so familiar and so little understood as Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream (1899). For more than a century, scholars have praised the artist and yet puzzled over this harrowing scene of a black man adrift in the open sea, in a derelict boat surrounded by sharks. Critical commentary, when it has departed at all from the painting’s composition and coloring, has generally viewed The Gulf Stream as a universal parable on the human condition or as an anecdotal image of a coastal storm.

There is more to this stark masterpiece, says Peter Wood, a historian and an authority on images of blacks in Homer’s work. To understand the painting in less noticed but more meaningful ways, says Wood, we must dive more deeply into Homer’s past as an artist and our own past as a nation. Looking at The Gulf Stream and the development of Homer’s social conscience in ways that traditional art history and criticism do not allow, Wood places the picture within the tumultuous legacy of slavery and colonialism at the end of the nineteenth century.

Viewed in light of such events as the Spanish American War, the emergence of Jim Crow practices in the South, and the publication of Rudyard Kipling’s epochal poem "The White Man’s Burden," The Gulf Stream takes on deeper layers of meaning. The storm on the horizon, the sharks and flying fish in the water, the sugarcane stalks protruding from the boat’s hold—-these are just some of the elements in what Wood reveals to be a richly symbolic tableau of the Black Atlantic world, linking the histories of Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.

By examining the "present" that shaped The Gulf Stream more than a century ago, and by resurrecting half-forgotten elements of the "past" that sustain the painting’s abiding mystery and power, Wood suggests a promising way to use history to comprehend art and art to fathom history.””

Anonymous said...

12:25 "I would jump at the chance to enroll in a class where I knew I was smarter than the instructor."

You then would be one jumping $@#%^ were you enrolling in the Angry Studies offerings...and you would be abetting fraud. This same pap is offered on most any community college campus at 1/10 the price.

Anonymous said...

"Clearly, some of these policies are not as transparent as they might be.

8:57 (a Duke parent who has been entirely too much of a busybody in her children's class registration decisions)."
_______________________

Inre: transparency...it is most interesting that these frauds...

1. Don't link their published works on their web sites, or

2. Post the required course reading material on with their online course description.

A little light is needed at both the faculty and administrative levels.

Anonymous said...

Once a faculty member has tenure, it is very difficult to fire said faculty member. And interesting question is: what kinds of publications and how many did the various 88 signatories have at the point of tenure and promotion? Has Duke long allowed certain faculty not to meet high/the highest academic standards for publication?

And why does Duke keep long-term visiting faculty? Is this a cost-saving strategy or is Dr. Curtis a spousal/partner hire?

It looks like smoke and mirrors for both teaching and research in some cases at Duke.

Anonymous said...

It would be interesting to know what the CVs of the 88 signatories looked like at the time of tenure & promotion. Has Duke hired, tenured, and promoted people who spend their time on other than academic pursuits? And, are some people tenured and promoted with well fewer publications and well less teaching experience/ability than others?

And, lastly, is Dr. Curtis (permanent?) visiting faculty as a spousal/partner hire?

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Duke has long hired and then tenured faculty who have weak CVs and teaching. It would be interesting to know what kind of research the 88 signatories did before tenure.

Is [long-term] Visiting Assistant Professor Kim Curtis a spousal/partner hire?

Wouldn't it be sad if an athlete actually wanted to take one of these people's courses and was put off by their politics?

Anonymous said...

Kim Curtis is a spousal hire--I think that has been reported earlier on this blog. I don't remember who the spouse is, though.

Anonymous said...

Group of 88 member, Charles Payne, professor of African American Studies and History, has been hired to teach at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration see(http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/07/070608.payne.shtml). Its one thing if someone like that is on your faculty with tenure and you can't get rid of them. Its another to go out and hire someone like this! As a Chicago alum, I am extreemly disapointed in the lack of integrity of my alma matter. They can forget any donations from me.

Anonymous said...

Spousal hire, eh? If the spouse is any good, a job for life without having to go through the standard COMPETITIVE hiring process. One wonders if Duke regrets having made this spousal hire...

Faculty move from one place to another for all kinds of reasons. Chicago doesn't seem to have hired this man to teach history, which shows discernment!

Anonymous said...

As several bloggers have noted, it is difficult to draw any conclusions about classes based on the enrollment alone. It is clear, however, that the numbers cited show that these courses are not in high demand, as none came close to filling. Popular courses often have waiting lists. The small enrollments in the courses listed that are taught by some of the more vocal of the Gang of 88 make me wonder where they get all their information on the sorry state of student culture. If Lubiano and others glean the information on which they base their generalizations about the prominence of sex-class-gender problems at Duke from their students, they are not getting a representative sample. The students they teach provide a minute sampling of the students on campus. I think a lot of exaggeration is in play when the 88 discuss campus culture.

Thanks again, KC, for critiquing Bliwise's article.