The John Hope Franklin Institute is inviting Duke professors to apply for faculty fellowships for the 2008-2009 academic year. The six recipients will each receive a two-course workload reduction. The theme: “The Alternative Political Imaginaries.”
The co-directors: Group of 88 member Michael Hardt and Women’s Studies/”clarifying” professor Robyn Wiegman. Wiegman is best known for lobbing intellectually unsustainable allegations of racism against Steve Baldwin and for announcing that presuming the lacrosse players’ guilt wasn’t a “crime.”
The program’s wording is arrestingly blunt, even for the Group of 88 and their campus allies:
The humanities have come to be characterized in recent decades by an overarching concern for politics, from the politics of cultural practices and knowledge production to political issues more traditionally conceived, such as state power, social movements, public policy, and law. As a result, almost all humanities scholarship is now considered political in one sense or another, whether it names its political intention or not . . .
Although our investigation of alternative political imaginaries will be wide ranging, we have a specific investment in using this topic to rethink what we see as the predominant way in which humanities research approaches politics today, namely critique: the critique of commodity culture, representational practices, colonial thought, patriarchal structures, tyrannical regimes, racial hierarchies, sexual normativities, and so forth. Such critical practices generally seek to unmask domination and speak truth to power with the implicit belief that doing so will undermine and topple its control . . . We sense, however, that a search is already underway within the humanities for alternative political imaginaries that will enable producing not just different affects but different itineraries for political scholarship and action . . .
Fellowship proposals from Duke faculty members should include . . . your teaching goals and the ways in which your participation in the seminar might support your work in the classroom.
Over the past 18 months, evidence was rather scarce of the Group of 88 and their allies “speaking truth to power” in
How many Duke parents, alumni, or trustees are aware that the University’s humanities openly state that their goal is not instructing students in the traditional disciplines of the liberal arts, but instead engaging in political activism based on a “critique of commodity culture, representational practices, colonial thought, patriarchal structures, tyrannical regimes, racial hierarchies, sexual normativities, and so forth”?
288 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 288 of 288'Ralph, could you explain a bit more about "preference falsification"?'
Patriotism and Preferences By Glenn Harlan Reynolds : 13 Mar 2002
Everyone seems to be amazed that the flags are still up, six months after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Have Americans suddenly become more patriotic?
Probably not. More likely, they always have been - they just didn't realize that it was okay to show it.
The muting of open patriotism after the Vietnam era may have been a case of what social scientists call "preference falsification": One in which social pressures cause people to express sentiments that differ from those they really feel.....
... when patriotism began to be treated as uncool, people who wanted to be cool, or at least to seem cool, stopped demonstrating patriotism, even if they felt it.
When this happened, other people were influenced by the example. In what's known as a "preference cascade," the vanishing of flags and other signs of patriotism from the homes, cars and businesses of the style-setters caused a lot of other people to go along with the trend, perhaps without even fully realizing it...
...The result was a situation in which a lot of people's behavior didn't really match their beliefs, but merely their beliefs about what was considered acceptable. Such situations are unstable, since a variety of shocks can cause people to realize the difference and to suddenly feel comfortable about closing the gap.
Georges Clemenceau (le tigre), who represented host France at the Paris Peace Conference, generally translated from the French as "War is far too serious a matter to be left to the military."
Don't know if KC would know it--he's an Americanist. I do, however, and I'm a gender historian. It's not like it's a secret, but equally, other quotes are more fun, ie, "And yet it does move" or "How many divisions does the Pope have?" Being able to remember famous quotations is not the same as being smart or well-read. It's simply very useful in Trivial Pursuit.
Dear Duke Dad,
Judging by KC Johnson's CV, he isn't head and shoulders, or even just shoulders, above the historians of his rank who signed the statement. And historians compared to historians is probably the most apt comparison. And these folks don't even do all of their research in English, or in the US.
KC Johnson is a good historian. Great? Probably not. But that's ok. Few people are. You can like his blog. You can like his politics. You can even like the subjects of his books. Snooozzzzzzz. No one cares. It's a matter of taste.
Spook, I'm neither a nor b. You seem to be the one who engages in ad hominim attacks, not I. Fine, but it would probably make you a better, or at least, a more useful, human being if you recognized behavior in yourself rather than attributed it to other human beings.
Do you have a therapist? You probably could use one.
Ankle biter, rug rat, curtain climber, yard ape...all terms from my childhood for younger kids. Or immature ones. Like Deb-Deb, you know, the name caller and grammar Nazi.
Childish and petulant personal comments against KC and other bloggers add nothing to the discussion of the important issues raised here. I personally would welcome reasoned discussion and debate of the merits of KC's posts from all viewpoints as that type of interplay is how I form and inform my own opinions.
I understand the parapsychology lab didn't anticipate being defunded.
Congrats, on the Clemenceau quote, professor. Btw, I had a friend who was a "gender historian" back in the day. He used to keep a pair of panties from each of his "conquests", signed by the former owners.
RRH
7:54 AM
KC Johnson is a good historian. Great? Probably not. But that's ok. Few people are. You can like his blog. You can like his politics. You can even like the subjects of his books. Snooozzzzzzz. No one cares. It's a matter of taste.
Obviously you care, or you wouldn't be here running up KC's blog-hit count.
Re: New York Times
Anonymous said., “Morgan Stanley Sells Entire New York Times Stake”
Another point of interest: www.About.com
“Shareholders have also criticized the company for spending $410 million to acquire the About.com Web site in March 2005 and $500 million on a new headquarters. In res ponse, the company said its Manhattan skyscraper is now worth more than $1 billion, and About.com's sales rose 28 percent in the second quarter to $23.5 million.”
You can see open disrespect, go to their site and search,” President Bush.” The entries are derogatory, and totally biased. Certainly, this site should be banned from all school students.
Proof Positive
SEE: http://incestabuse.about.com/od/inthenews/a/DukeProvost.htm?terms=Duke+Lacrosse%20scandal
Duke Leadership Still Has Not Learned
Provost's Response Leaves Little Optimism For Real Change
September 12, 2006
“Fourteen Lacrosse team members have been convicted of underage drinking. Misdemeanors, true, but crimes none the less. Isn't that worse than expressing an opinion in a newspaper? Was Provost Lange "disappointed, saddened and appalled" at that? It really makes me wonder if he really was mad at the "rush to pre-judgement" (which a careful reading of Dr. Baker's letter makes clear was not happening), or if he was mad that Dr. Baker put the search for justice above the University's "Code of Silence."
To the 9:46, Was I not clear? No one cares what the poster likes or doesn't like. People are entitled to their own opinions. What's so murky about that?
I read this blog because most of the people who post hold opinions very different than those I encounter in my daily life. It is good exposure. Ok?
RRH, Am I supposed to be impressed by you or your so-called friend? I'm not. Back in the day? In the Ice Age when you were at Idiot State U? That kind of comment, however, is why people think so badly of KC Johnson. He can't always get such infantile remarks down before people save them. Are you trying to embarass him?
The Clemenceau quote was easy. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't have known it. Name that quote was a grad school game. Big deal.
anonymous nimpum: First, it really was a friend's "conquest collection", not mine; I didn't have the drawer space. Second, back "in the Ice Age" kids could actually get an education at college, unlike today.
Btw, I like that ... "Idiot State U" ... Reminds me of how my alma mater turned away George Bush. Good thing for him that he had Harvard to fall back on. Yeah, I'm so impressed by you rich putzes.
RRH
To all the folks who cannot bear KC Johnson's "obsessive" and "narrow" interest in and blogging about Duke/Durham,
The subjects of this blog, as I am sure you well know, are much bigger than Duke/Durham, and it would be lovely to hear some of Prof. Johnson's detractors (who seem to be narrowly and obsessively focused on petty attacks) actually discuss them. The subjects include: first and foremost the US Constitution--are we as citizens (including the G88) aware of what it means, do we as citizens agree to be bound by it in our behavior and hold other to account for their behavior, how does is apply in the Duke case, are there consequences for violations of citizens' constitutional rights even if the citizen is not actually convicted of a crime, etc. And then there is the subject of the academy--what are the humanities and what is critical for future generations to know, what is reality, what are facts, what are "imaginaries" and how do they fit with the study of the humanities, why are the humanities supposedly "characterized in recent decades by an overarching concern for politics"--whose "overarching concern for politics"...what are the politics? Really, there are interesting things to talk about. It just happens that Duke/Durham has offered a most interesting particular context in which to discuss these matters.
So, do the detractors have anything of substance to offer or just more silliness about how KC Johnson spends his free time? This is an opportunity for an interesting conversation...why not use it?
Observer
Regarding the new program called “The Alternative Political Imaginaries,” does anyone know who signed off on it other than Profs Hardt and Wiegman?
Who within Duke decides what will be taught and who will teach it? Does the faculty take a vote? Is the administration at all involved? Does the Board of Trustees have ANY input EVER?
And does anyone know how the Duke students rate the gender - race - cultural anthropology courses and professors? Do Duke students publish descriptions of professors and courses for use by other students in makng their course selections?
How is funding for particular departments determined? Is it a function of how many students take courses in that department?
Does anyone know whether academic departments play a role in admissions the way, for example, the athletic department does? Does the Cultural Anthropology Dept go to the Admissions Office and request x number of students who have expressed interest in that field of study?
Alumni get very upset when sports teams lose consistently. Are alumni contributions affected by academic issues?
I'm trying to understand who at Duke is responsible for authorizing and supporting various fields of study, including gender and race studies.
As this blog has focused on academics at Duke I have not been able to get a sense of perspective about Duke. I have the feeling that Duke is a bit like the Catholic Church in the sense that there are many Dukes within the university and that they are by no means in agreeent with each other on important issues but do not necessarily feel free to air their disagreements in public out of a sense either of fear or loyalty.
If anyone knows of a book that explains how elite universities are governed, I would be most grateful for a reference.
Here's the state of Genius Private Hueniversity:
I often ask my seniors, majoring in history, literature, and even economics if they know, for example: any major events of ancient Greece, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance; the works of John Locke, Hobbes, Bastiat, Say, von Mises, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Dante.
The overwhelming response is a blank stare.
Duke Prof
10/17/07 12:10 PM
Yeah, the Hueniversity professors and gender herstorians should look down on us poor kids who had to attend Idiot State back in the Ice Age....
Joan foster - Sorry to see you leave LS. There is so much personal attacking that goes on there, it was only a matter of time before some of the rabid mob, bit the hand that feed them. Loved your poems, etc.
The metaphor "ankle biter" should stick. I have a vivid image of a tiny chiuaua dog relentlessly and noisily nipping at ankles, but too arrogant and self absorbed to realize that its efforts are utterly feeble and ineffective!
LOL!!
9:57
You were perfectly clear. You always are. Initially.
I read this blog because most of the people who post hold opinions very different than those I encounter in my daily life. It is good exposure. Ok?
You also post on this blog. A lot. Why is that?
9:46
To the 9:46 at 11:20, My voice must not be sufficiently independent. I don't post here a lot.
WR Chambers:
The simple answer to your questions is that most colleges/universities are extraordinarily decentralized. Individual departments and programs decide what will get taught and who will teach it, often with only minimal institution-wide constraints. (For example some schools have minimum enrollment rules that cancel a class if it enrolls fewer than X students. Others don't.)
In general, the curriculum is the province of the faculty and the oversight from the BoT is nearly non-existent. Speaking from my own experience, the faculty control over the curriculum is in our By-Laws and our Board, as far as I know, want nothing to do with it. I think the guiding principle (whether you agree with it or not) is that faculty have the expertise to know what should and should not be taught, and the fact that the college in question has hired them is the evidence that they have said expertise.
It's easy to say that Boards should exercise more oversight, esp. if you believe that there's a lot of nonsense in many areas of the curriculum. But if you really think BoTs are in a better position to know what "should" get taught in the humanities, why shouldn't the same hold for the rest of the institution, including the sciences?
Based on my own conversations with members of the board at my institution, they simply have little interest in the curriculum, mostly because:
1. They don't believe they have the expertise to stand in judgment
2. They trust the faculty and our hiring processes to make good decisions
3. And as long as our students are graduating with the skills, capacity, and knowledge that we think are at the core of our liberal education goals, and that they are ending up in jobs/careers that appear to confirm the success of that education, they are not overly concerned about the particulars of what gets taught.
Again, you can think they're wrong to view it that way, but I do think that's how many BoTs see their work, at least in the world of selective liberal arts colleges that I inhabit.
And, frankly, my own view is that pedagogy is more important than curriculum. If faculty are genuinely challenging students to think, working with them to develop their writing, speaking, and research/evidence evaluation skills, and are evaluating them on the basis of their deployment of those skills rather than the content of their arguments, they are doing their jobs, whatever they might be teaching.
Students well-equipped in critical thinking and communication skills will figure out how the world works pretty nicely themselves, no matter what faculty try to tell them about it.
Anon 7:54 AM said:
"Judging by KC Johnson's CV, he isn't head and shoulders, or even just shoulders, above the historians of his rank who signed the statement."
--- ---
You neglected to identify the names of individuals to support your assertion. Nor did you reference their cv.
A large number of the signers of the Listening and Clarifying Statements have pitiful academic accomplishment.
This is documented in DiW's discussion on a number of these academics. You might review their curriculum vitae as well.
Res ipsa loquitur
(The facts speak for themselves)
"I read this blog because most of the people who post hold opinions very different than those I encounter in my daily life. It is good exposure. Ok?"
This has to be awarded the most disingenuous comment to date.
If one does not encounter conversation as is witnessed on this blog in their everyday lives, then that individual resides inside a hermetically sealed cave.
Or they are most certainly lying.
Pick one.
BTW, the term "ankle-biter" has been around a long time.
Back in the 90's, we used it on the NYTimes political fora.
It does not refer to children.
It refers to anyone who nitpicks, argues, trolls and lurks for an upcoming attack, and uses personal ad hominems against another instead of arguing the issues.
The entire Gritty Gang of 88 could be considered ankle-biters to the max!
And not much else.
Not sure if this has been posted yet, but it sounds like a book that's relevant to the discussion in this comments thread.
w. r. chambers@10/18 10:46 AM:
If anyone knows of a book that explains how elite universities are governed, I would be most grateful for a reference.
Off the top of my head, and not precisely what you've requested, but the insights of a former Harvard University president might be instructive:
Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education by Derek C. Bok (Princeton University Press, 2003)
and
Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More by Derek C. Bok (Princeton University Press, 2006)
President Bok likely would recommend a few more relevant titles if you cornered him at Littauer or sent him an email. Very approachable, one reason he was Harvard's most popular president since J. B. Conant. (Also the biggest fund-raiser, most politically astute, and savviest about life outside the academy.) He stepped in temporarily to replace Lawrence Summers, who really could tell you a thing or two about governing a modern asylu... um, university.
dave
Angry Studies
Correctology
The Piot Principle
Prowess Envy
And introducing: Ankle-biter!
I'm telling you people, somebody oughta start a list.
w.r. chambers wrote
"How is funding for particular departments determined?"
Ever seen sausage made?
"Is it a function of how many students take courses in that department?"
No. That would make too much sense and be too free market.
Here's one example. There's a program at Duke that does not do gender/race/class junk. It is overflowing with student demand. Its courses, some with enrollments of 100 (!), fill quickly. It cannot hire enough faculty and offer enough courses because it operates on a shoestring budget.
By contrast, gender/race/class programs (and now departments) can't fill classes with enrollments of 25. Yet they are awash in money, prime office space, research monies, etc.
"Does anyone know whether academic departments play a role in admissions the way, for example, the athletic department does?"
Here's one tactic by which progaganda-driven departments boost both undergraduate and graduate admissions in their fields.
They agitate for and profit from preferences given to favored minority applicants. And they recruit prospective undergraduate and graduate students by showering them with scholarships available only to selected minorities.
"I'm trying to understand who at Duke is responsible for authorizing and supporting various fields of study, including gender and race studies."
Ultimately, it's the BOT and the administration -- from the president to the provost and on down. They establish and expand PC programs because they think that this is what counts as good "education," and because Harvard, Princeton et al. are doing it. Duke is in the business of being "more Royal than the Royalists."
Washington's pressure-group warfare is child's play compared to academia's PC-group warfare. At Duke, to the "oppressed" go the spoils.
Duke Prof
To the 12:01 Use the link that KCJ provides to the signees of the document. It notes the names and departments of the signatories. Access the faculty link to the history department on the Duke website. The information is there.
10/18/07 9:57 AM
...most of the people who post hold opinions very different than those I encounter...
from, professor. " different from."
"Mind the Solecism," another old grad school game. Fun bunch, grad schoolers.
"War is too important...."?
My first guess was: "... to leave to the soldiers."
My second guess was: "."
My third guess was: "... to be described only by the mainstream media."
My fouth guess was: "... and Bridge is not important enough."
_____________
Ralph Phelan really is on fire. I loved the "tipping point" analogy. I would add that this is one of the first times that the big race-baiting bully has suffered a very public bloodly nose.
_____________
In the Campus Culture Initiative, the committee urged Duke to make diversity a central mission of the university, apparently akin to teaching and the pursuit of research.
My major problem with this idea is that it has not been fully developed as an idea. It cannot be tested using scientific principles (because everyone is scared to do so). It is not subjected to cultural testing, debating its positives as well as its NEGATIVES (because everyone is scared to do so, except on blogs).
There is no "exit strategy" for diverstiy. Does anyone, anywhere even know what the definition of success is?
Finally, why are we spending our assets and (costing opportunities - Econ people can help me out here) at the "end" of the problem and not at the roots of the problem? Chop off the dandelion's head, and what do you get, more and thicker dandelions (and pissed off neighbors). MOO! Gregory
When you want to belittle someone rather than correct them, Herr Grammar Nazi at 12:31, it is good to be correct yourself. Unless you are a Brit, the original usage is acceptable for informal speech/writing. No one has declared MLA or Chicago style to rule the blog, so save your snottiness for another time and place.
MOO Gregory,
Good question about spending assets! On the present course, Duke will have a hard time finding its assets with both hands in the dark.
And the preferred 88er "exit strategy" for diversity is when everybody dresses like Chairman Mao and gets really bad haircuts (as one comedian once stated, a hair style similar to Moe's, of the Three Stooges.) And now is an appropriate time - (with your "dandelion analogy") - to introduce Mao's cultural revolution concept, which is to say: let the flowers bloom, and cut their bloomin' heads off.
A couple of public executions - (the 88 must figure) - and everybody who might've thought about dissent will just...shut up and teach.
That's their exit strategy.
"Based on my own conversations with members of the board at my institution, they simply have little interest in the curriculum, mostly because:
1. They don't believe they have the expertise to stand in judgment
2. They trust the faculty and our hiring processes to make good decisions"
This makes perfect sense to me.
And if the BoT notices that the curriculum has gone totally mad, the proper response is not to micromanage the curriculum, but to revisit #2.
Debrah said...
"I read this blog because most of the people who post hold opinions very different than those I encounter in my daily life. It is good exposure. Ok?
If one does not encounter conversation as is witnessed on this blog in their everyday lives, then that individual resides inside a hermetically sealed cave."
Or be in the liberal arts faculty of a university.
I'm willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt on this one issue, and believe that he really is having a "Pauline Kael moment."
dave, You're wrong about archives. And, since you haven't been in all of them, you wouldn't know. I've been in some archives where material has not been catalogued. Archivist: I think this stuff is from thus and such an era. I've been in other archives where material was stuck away in a carton between the wars & no one had looked at it since.
I wouldn't say it's very clever to generalize from the archives of your experience to all archives on the planet.
Duke Prof wrote
"How is funding for particular departments determined?"
Ever seen sausage made?
Who are the sauage makers?
Do angry studies get size increases because they bring in government grant money, are believed to be good for Duke's reputation, threaten to bring in Jesse Jackson if they don't, or other factors I haven't thought of?
Was the decision to upgrade AAAS to departmental status made and executed by the administration on its own, made by the administration and ratified by the BOT, made by the BoT and implemented by the administration?
To the extent the administration made the decision, was it made at the university-wide level or down at the "arts & sciences" level?
How much (if any) and what sort of influence do the faculty of other departments and other schools have on this kind of thing?
How important are threats by "star" professors to take their marbles and go to Cornell or Vanderbilt? Do they have real leverage, or are they seen as a fungible commodity?
Ralph Phelan
debrah said...
"I read this blog because most of the people who post hold opinions very different than those I encounter in my daily life. It is good exposure. Ok?"
This has to be awarded the most disingenuous comment to date.
If one does not encounter conversation as is witnessed on this blog in their everyday lives, then that individual resides inside a hermetically sealed cave.
Or they are college faculty.
Further to 12:01 and 12:31 PM:
Yeah, I picked up on that implicit little challenge in 7:54 AM's imperious assertion, too:
Judging by KC Johnson's CV, he isn't head and shoulders, or even just shoulders, above the historians of his rank who signed the statement.
Look, Professor Johnson can't do all the work, nor in this instance should he. But it would be an informative exercise for someone to compare the attainments of Professor Johnson to those of the G88-signatory historians at a similar age and position, and then post them. (But be advised: Some of them work, gasp, in more than one language!, like my housekeeper and the taxi driver who got me to the airport last week.)
Point of the exercise? A minor one, but, I'd predict, another instance in which a G88er or acolyte is crushed by the facts. Ironically, and yet again, at the instigation of one of their own.
It's not like they're giving anyone much else to do.
" I would add that this is one of the first times that the big race-baiting bully has suffered a very public bloodly nose. "
Public and bloody, but not particularly painful.
As I posted elsewhere:
"Durham in Wonderland. TUESDAY, AUGUST 01, 2006 The Brodhead Files:
Among other things, [Women's center head Donna] Lisker faulted a Rolling Stone article on campus social life for speaking only to students who “believed staunchly in the innocence of the accused men.
Duke Chronicle, 10/17/07
After a one-month search process, Donna Lisker, director of the Women's Center, was named associate dean of undergraduate education Tuesday..."
While the 88ists have been subject to much public mockery outside the university, within Duke they have never stopped being rewarded.
From the point of view of students it may now appear that there is sufficient safety in numbers to openly dissent from PC.
For faculty concerned about their careers, the situation is if anything worse than ever. It doesn't help if 90% everyone agrees with you when the 10% who don't happen to include the university administration, board of trustees, and chairs of the hiring and tenure committees.
10/18/07 12:10 PM
Anonymous said...
Angry Studies
Correctology
The Piot Principle
Prowess Envy
And introducing: Ankle-biter!
I'm telling you people, somebody oughta start a list.
10/18/07 12:18 PM
He's right, we should.
"But it would be an informative exercise for someone to compare the attainments of Professor Johnson to those of the G88-signatory historians at a similar age and position, and then post them. (But be advised: Some of them work, gasp, in more than one language!, like my housekeeper and the taxi driver who got me to the airport last week.)"
I had the same reaction - being a child of immigrant parents (Italy) who managed to run a business in their second language, i.e. English (and, not, a "family" business). Also, I recall in college not only studying French, but studying early French literature in the language in which it was written. (I did not major in literature, it was just an interest of mine.) If a professor's career is dedicated to a field with a requisite language other than the professor's native tongue, it seems to me that knowledge of that language would be a pre-requisite and hardly something to be seen as an extraordinary talent.
Ralph Phelan at 1:23 p.m.said-- "From the point of view of students it may now appear that there is sufficient safety in numbers to openly dissent from PC. For faculty concerned about their careers, the situation is if anything worse than ever. It doesn't help if 90% everyone agrees with you when the 10% who don't happen to include the university administration, board of trustees, and chairs of the hiring and tenure committees."
Here's the crux of the problem and the reason that pressure to change PC universities may not come from within the universities. Alumna and students (future alumna)are the only hope. Federal government policies are part of the problem.
I wonder how many administrators suffer from "preference falsification" in order to get or keep their positions (see 4:27 a.m. above)? I suspect Brodhead does.
Thanks, Steve Horwitz, for your link to the review of Kronman's "Education's End."
Dear 1:44,
Some people do all of their research in a language or languages that are not their own. They may also read literature in the original, something that's rather usual in upper-level undergraduate lit courses, c'est vrai?, just for fun, too. Big deal. Not like you read a difficult language like Greek or Chinese...just French. Same family as Italian. I repeat: big deal. Presumably, if you pushed yourself, you could read Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian literature in the original. (Ok, you get a break on the Romanian, maybe you aren't familiar with the Dacio-Roman roots.) The point is that doing research in another country or countries in languages other than ones own requires a set of skills that someone working in his own language and his country doesn't have.
People who don't have immigrant parents--or do, but don't work in that language--and work in three or four languages other than their own are impressive. And way more impressive than someone who works in only one.
Speaking a language, any language,--like your housekeeper or taxi driver--is not the same as being literate in it. So, the comparison is pretty stupid. But, rather to be expected from some who post here.
Your comments and the earlier anonymous's are par for the course here. If KC doesn't do it, but someone else does, let's belittle it.
Winston Churchill alledgedly said, "If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35, you have no brain."
"...a search is already underway within the humanities for alternative political imaginaries that will enable producing not just different affects but different itineraries for political scholarship and action . . ."
Q.E.D.
anon 1:44pm -
I know some teenagers who are teaching themselves Japanese so they can read their favorite manga in the original.
anon 1:44
Of course those teenagers are a bit odd (in more ways than one).
A popular joke among my European relatives goes:
What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks 1 language? American.
Thanks very much for suggesting the two books by former Harvard President Derek Bok, and for the replies describing two very different models of university decision-making.
For anyone interested in governance at Duke, Duke's charter, bylaws, aims and mission statement can be found here
http://library.duke.edu/uarchives/history/charterlink.html
Anyone interested in a critique of higher education might find Tony Kronman's new book interesting. The title draws one's attention:
Education's End: Why Our Universities and College's Have Given Up On The Meaning Of Life
You can find a review by Jacob Laskin in the City Journal here
http://www.city-journal.org/html/rev2007-10-12jl.html
A review in the San Francisco Chronicle by Bob Blaisdell, an English professor at the City University of New York's Kingsborough Community College, can be found here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/09/DD2QRJ1SN.DTL&feed=rss.entertainment
"If KC doesn't do it, but someone else does, let's belittle it."
Your continued point is entirely meaningless.
You fight for the embroidered pillow cases while the foundation of your house is crumbling from termite infestation.
I can speak some....and have a working knowledge of Spanish, Italian, and French.
Some Japanese.
I'm reasonably fluent in Spanish.
This does not make me smarter than anyone else who is not.
If being able to order easily from gourmet restaurants is your goal, then keep touting this tiny aspect of life as being significant above all else.
I speak 2 languages: English and Southern.
The rest are irrelevant.
Ralph, The punchline works for anyone from an English-speaking country. But you're still missing the point, as was 1:44, to do research in a language means to understand it very well. That's rather different than just sort of speaking a language.
Here is a better url to the Duke University bylaws
http://www.duke.edu/web/ous/bylaws00.htm
I apologize for the duplicate reference to the Kronman book and related reviews that I posted recently. Steve Horowitz had already provided a link to a review of Education's End. Thank you, Steve!
10/18 1:06 PM (aka 10/17 2:02 PM) writes:
Archivist: I think this stuff is from thus and such an era.
Which is exactly the point I made @10/17 5:41 PM:
...even if it's just the venerable custodian knowing approximately where various rolls, scrolls, pottery shards, and manuscript piles are supposed to be located.
Something or someone is going to guide you, if only in a general way, through any archive on the planet, unless you've just dug it up from the ground yourself.
The point here was that, although you might denigrate the research of those whose primary source material is archived someplace that does a reasonably good job of cataloguing the material (such as the NARA or LoC), as Professor Johnson fortunately is able to do, even the most primitive archive offers some guidance to its collections, or you simply wouldn't go there without a few years to sort through the stuff, or even know to go there. But all of that was an aside, or preliminary point, to:
But even visiting institutions with more catalogues, lists, and finding aids than manuscripts in their collections, does not guarantee a researcher an easy time of it. At both NARA and LoC (places where I'm sure KC hangs out), I've found documents that weren't supposed to be in the collections where I found them..., etc. (@10/17 5:41 PM)
Which you confirm has also happened to you:
I've been in other archives where material was stuck away in a carton between the wars & no one had looked at it since. (@10/18 1:06 PM)
And so have I. And, I daresay, so has Professor Johnson. And that was the real point:
Anyone, anywhere, who does primary source material research-- as Professor Johnson has stated he does @10/17 2:05 PM, this thread-- is going to have to locate, and wade through, uncatalogued, or very poorly catalogued, material. This, at any archive you'd care to name, including the ones where I'd assume Professor Johnson does a fair amount of his research.
And the point of clarifying all of that to "others not familiar with archival sources," was to demonstrate why you needn't be so underwhelmed at the kind of original research Professor Johnson is forced to do, as almost any historian in such a specialized field as his would be forced to do.
I'm just surprised that one who claims, anonymously, to know what really rigorous slogging research is all about would be taking potshots, anonymously, at a colleague who obviously (I say 'obviously,' if you've read any of his scholarly books) has conducted such research himself, as my entirely too lengthy comment @ 10/17 5:41 PM attempted to illustrate.
But enough about my cleverness. What's really clever is to make all of the assertions you've made @10/17 2:02 PM, by way of denigrating another scholar's research, without identifying yourself, or listing a single qualification that you possess to post yourself as an authority on impressive and really tough slogging research or why you're entitled to be underwhelmed by Professor Johnson's, all of which would lend some credibility to your animadversions.
As you might have noticed, bald assertions on this blog-- which barely rise above the "get a life, KC" level of attacks to which he's usually subjected by "colleagues," don't cut it much with the regular readership here. As yours was a bit more specialized, in an area I know a little something about, I was the only one who didn't ignore you.
But I will, if you don't tell us who you are and where you've done your really tough slogging. Calling you out a second time, slogger,
dave
CORRECTION:
"War is too important ...."
My third guess was: "... to be described to the American public only by the mainstream media or by the generals."
_______________
MAC: I think that any comparison of the Gang of 88 to "The Three Stooges" should be limited to:
1. Hairstyles;
2. Proclivity for comic blunders; and
3. Unusual language usages.
The Stooges were geniuses. Their hairstyles, ineptness and hilarious language usages were intentional comedic constructs. That must NOT be lost when the histories are written.
_______________
The John Hope Franklin Institute's political initiative brings to mind a couple of other ideas. The first is the concept of "don't ask, don't tell." I always thought that subversive political action on campus was the elephant in the room.
With the national media now denying any kind of bias hundreds of times every day, and the academy coming under the same kind of spotlight because of the Duke, Summers and Churchill incidents, as well as the documentary "IndoctrinateU," I would think it would be a good "don't ask, don't tell" moment for the academy.
Perhaps the Gang of 88 can also be compared to "The Three Stooges" based on their shared excellent timing. Of course, the slapstick timing of the Stooges was, again, intentional.
The other idea raised in my mind about the political initiative is: What are the tax consequences, if any?
______________
When was the last time humans dealt with an institution (be it governmental, religious, commercial or other, which had a core belief that was so sacrosanct it could not be discussed in other than laudatory terms?
There is the story about the soon-to-be-fired animators who played their bawdy cartoon of Mickey Mouse "getting it on" for Walt Disney. Then, there was the whole Inquisition thingy. Others? MOO! Gregory
Is anonymous foreign tongue ankle-biter an elitist?
traveler said...
Re: "A google search for "KC Johnson" returns more than 140,000 hits.”
Is your Google --- My Google?
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,210,000 for KC Johnson
Results 1 - 10 of about 260,000 for Charles Piot
Results 1 - 10 of about 83 for Waheema Lubiano
10/17/07 6:20 PM
(1) try quotemarks around "KC Johnson" (same for Piot)
(2) it's Wahneema, I think.
RRH
Ralph Phelan said...
anon 1:44
Of course those teenagers are a bit odd (in more ways than one).
A popular joke among my European relatives goes:
What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual.
I'm trilingual .... I can speak English, Texan, and Legalese. :)
Here's a joke for your Eurelatives: In European heaven, all the lovers are Italian, the chefs French, the police British, and it's all organized by the Germans. In European hell, all the lovers are German, the chefs British, the police French, and it's all organized by the Italians.
10/18 2:09 PM
People who don't have immigrant parents--or do, but don't work in that language--and work in three or four languages other than their own are impressive. And way more impressive than someone who works in only one.
Like the commentators who pooh-poohed the importance of the D. B. Hardeman Prize that KC was awarded recently– on the basis of the number of competitors for it, rather than the quality of past recipients or the probity of the panel that awards the prize– the commentator confuses quantity with quality.
It isn't how many ways you can say it, it's what you say that matters.
If you think and write French like Derrida {"The French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly"), or German like Hegel (delicious takedown by Popper in The Myth of the Framework), Manchurian like Mao, or Arabic like Bin Laden, you're just not going to be of much use to anyone outside the Left Bank and the Angry Studies Department at Local U.
This is not to denigrate (can I use that word here?) the considerable accomplishment of mastering several languages for one's scholarship, but even his brilliant accomplishments in the abstruse language of physics did not ameliorate Teller's reputation as The Man Who Invented The Bomb.
Speaking a language, any language,--like your housekeeper or taxi driver--is not the same as being literate in it. So, the comparison is pretty stupid.
How condescending to housekeepers and taxi drivers. But, "rather to be expected from some who post here."
dave
"But you're still missing the point..."
No, I'm having fun riffing on the subject of language while mostly ignoring you.
Moo! Gregory, I love your posts here and elsewhere. What do you do in your spare time?
You're more than welcome to call me out, dave. I don't do "calling out," especially when it is accompanied by name calling. Won't do you any good to know my name (and I don't want to know yours)--I'm rather sure we don't work in similar fields. (Before you start: yes, sure, your field can be bigger and better.)
You didn't contradict anything I said, you just tried to show me it was wrong. And, if you've worked in the foreign archives you seem to claim to have worked in, you know that comparing many of them to NARA or the Library of Congress is terms of cataloguing is a bad joke. At least NARA and the Library of Congress catalogue materials.
We will just have to disagree.
Correction to typing error in 4:34 pm: second paragraph, second sentence, should read (correction is capitalized): "or the Library of Congress IN terms..."
MOO! Gregory@ 10/18 3:29 PM:
Railway operations under Mussolini?
Cuban literacy under Castro? the medical care?
John Lennon?
dave
Steve,
The book you linked above is worth its own mention:
"Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life", by Anthony T. Kronman
Kronman is a self-described liberal Yale prof and his book is a critique of the current trend in humanities.
Here's a quote from the review of the book in your link :
"It was no accident, as the Marxists used to put it, that the faculty at Duke University, unconcerned with anything so trivial as evidence, rushed to condemn the “privileged” white students on the lacrosse team as rapists. The faculty response was an inevitable outgrowth of academic political correctness that, far from eliminating racism, has only sanctioned new strains of it."
TO RRH: Those references are copied, directly from Google serch results, that is how they wrote it. I searched for W. Lubiano, and there are two spellings for her.
Wahneema might want to issue a clarifying statement to Google.
------------------------
Anonymous said...
traveler said...
Re: "A google search for "KC Johnson" returns more than 140,000 hits.”
Is your Google --- My Google?
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,210,000 for KC Johnson
Results 1 - 10 of about 260,000 for Charles Piot
Results 1 - 10 of about 83 for Waheema Lubiano
10/17/07 6:20 PM
(1) try quotemarks around "KC Johnson" (same for Piot)
(2) it's Wahneema, I think.
RRH
10/18/07 4:12 PM
At 12:29 Duke Prof wrote:
"Here's one tactic by which progaganda-driven departments boost both undergraduate and graduate admissions in their fields.
They agitate for and profit from preferences given to favored minority applicants. And they recruit prospective undergraduate and graduate students by showering them with scholarships available only to selected minorities. "
_________________
Are there scholarships conditioned on a promise to pursue a particular course of study the way, for example, athletic scholarships are conditioned on a promise to play a particular sport?
Ralph Phelan wrote
"Who are the sauage makers?"
Chairs and program directors in conjunction with some faculty, and deans. Pet projects/faculty get special funding from the provost and president.
"Do angry studies get size increases because they bring in government grant money"
No. Because they're, well, angry -- and have been "oppressed" by (insert your favorite PC villain here).
"are believed to be good for Duke's reputation"
Yes, in the eyes of those at Harvard et al.
"threaten to bring in Jesse Jackson if they don't"
They've been acting on like threats for at least 20 years. They've torn a page from the 60's "free speech" playbook.
"or other factors I haven't thought of?"
The rankings -- a significant component of which is peer review. You saw what they did to Summers. Imagine what they'd do if Duke started "marginalizing" gender/ethnic studies.
"Was the decision to upgrade AAAS to departmental status made and executed by the administration on its own, made by the administration and ratified by the BOT, made by the BoT and implemented by the administration?"
Faculty agitation with high-level administrative support. Don't know if the BOT was involved. Such "involvement" is almost always pro forma.
"To the extent the administration made the decision, was it made at the university-wide level or down at the "arts & sciences" level?"
Arts and sciences.
"How much (if any) and what sort of influence do the faculty of other departments and other schools have on this kind of thing?"
By "this kind of thing," I gather you're referring specifically to goodies for gender/ethnic types. If so, the answer is none. There are always dean/provost/president prerogatives and special funds.
"How important are threats by "star" professors to take their marbles and go to Cornell or Vanderbilt? Do they have real leverage, or are they seen as a fungible commodity?"
It's the ultimate threat by which to get (more) unearned values.
Duke Prof
At 11:27 Steven Horwitz (thank you Steven for such a comprehensive reply to my questions) wrote:
"And, frankly, my own view is that pedagogy is more important than curriculum."
________
Is there any reliable way of knowing which colleges and universities emphasize teaching over curriculum, over research, political correctness, over ...well..emphasize teaching over everything else?
What actually is more important than, to quote Steven again
".....genuinely challenging students to think, working with them to develop their writing, speaking, and research/evidence evaluation skills, and are evaluating them on the basis of their deployment of those skills rather than the content of their arguments, they are doing their jobs, whatever they might be teaching."................?
How could one tell whether Duke is such a place or not, or for that matter, whether Stanford, Chicago, the Ivies or any number of other colleges or universities are?
This isn't the place for asking this question, but I'm wondering how colleges and universities market themselves and whether teaching (the way Steven describes it, which I find very appealing) gets much billing.
The new student center that resemebles a resort gets more play than the Classics Professor whose courses are always oversubscribed.
Higher education as business is the subject for another time. But is there a connection between revenue stream and the hiring of professors like those in the G88?
10/18 4:34 PM (10/17 2:02 PM; 10/18 1:06 PM):
I'd be honored for you to call me "Slogger." Your verb choice. I've done a little slogging, possibly you've done more, and I bet we take equal pride in occasionally doing it successfully. Which is why I take exception to the not-so-subtle, and anonymous, denigration of someone else's efforts wherever undertaken.
Of course there's no serious comparison between working in the National Archives or Library of Congress and at the AGN in Mexico City... or in a county courthouse or in the production files at Culver Studios, for that matter. The point I'd expect one to take away from this exchange is the work done in them all is the same. Our mss. discovery stories are the same. Primary source material research in the DC institutions requires the same intellectual effort, and sometimes as much detective work, physical labor, dust inhalation, and serendipity as in any other archive. "Others not familiar with archival sources" can be justifiably impressed by someone who's done it in 63 locations throughout the U.S.– with or without finding aids.
And if you're not, you're not, though we'll never know exactly why. We can agree that what one does with the research is the more important question, anyway. Go after Johnson on that score (but with citations, not assertions, please), and I'll take a back seat and watch the fun.
Yours for successful slogging,
dave
I guess dropping the pretense that it's not really about indoctrinating the kiddies to be good little lefties and using the tools of cultural marxism to do it can be called progress?
At the very least this settles many arguements. The cat is out of the bag. America is in trouble and the most dangerous enemy we face is internal. Radical leftists are in full control of many of our institutions and one of our two main political parties. These internal enemies work relentlessly to weaken us enough to be vulnerable to outside enemies, and they are succeeding.
12:17am--This post is a joke, right?
"Anonymous said...
12:17am--This post is a joke, right?
10/19/07 8:18 AM
Go reread the document KC quoted and tell me that's not a good description of the folks that wrote it.
Read UPI to see what happens when people with their belief system have decision making authority.
Ask yourself if universities are or should be completely ineffectual in affecting the thinking of those who spend four years there.
I consider 12:17 overly alarmist, but not to the point of absurdity (not like the NYPD hate crimes unit scrambling resources to investigate a noose hung on a Columbia University professor's door in the middle of the night in a locked university property - that's a big enough overreaction to be pretty hilarious.)
WR asks:
Is there any reliable way of knowing which colleges and universities emphasize teaching over curriculum, over research, political correctness, over ...well..emphasize teaching over everything else?
Not sure how reliable they might be but...
1. Smaller colleges/universities, esp. liberal arts colleges, tend to emphasize teaching over research. Find out what the faculty teaching load is, which is normally a good indicator of the relative value of teaching. Places where faculty consistently teach 3 or 4 courses per semester mean that work is valued more than having them spend time on research. If you can find out what the general criteria for tenure are, that will help too.
[Note: I don't think you can BE a good teacher without engaging in research and having peer-reviewed publications or the disciplinary equivalent. No "in progress", no conference presentations. Show me the money. My point is just that teaching schools value these differently on the margin. I would not want my kids to be at a school where faculty did not have to publish to get tenure.]
2. See if the campus has a teaching and learning center. That will tell you how much they value teaching, all else equal. Also see what sorts of resources they provide faculty to help them teaching writing, speaking, and research skills. Does the school have a writing/rhetoric/communication skills center that serves students and works with faculty to help them teach that material?
3. See how much interdisciplinary teaching takes place, especially across divisions of the university, i.e., not just a sociologist and a political scientist, but a biologist and an economist, for example . To teach across major disciplinary barriers requires that people talk about and take seriously how they are going to approach material in the classroom.
4. Find out if the institution has faculty awards that are based on teaching.
5. Find alums and ask them. :)
6. See how the university markets itself. Does it have a mission statement? If so, what does it say? Does it focus on faculty accomplishments (likely not teaching oriented then) or what it does for students (ka-ching)? Research schools tend to be "faculty-centric" while teaching-oriented ones tend to be more "learning-centric" (the good ones anyway - the bad ones are overly "student-centric").
None of this says anything about the degree the curriculum or the faculty are "politicized" (left or right). To answer those questions, you'd need to prowl the website and see what's there. Look for course descriptions, syllabi and links to faculty CVs and publications, to the extent they are there.
And talk to recent alums.
Hope that helps.
9:21 am
When did Teachers College start locking everything up tight?
An "Impressionistic" comment after reading many and scanning some of the 272 comments when I started this morning:
Many/most of the detractors who posted on this thread (and others) have seen the complete dissection of Professor Piot into his component parts, have no adequate response to the embarrasing destruction of his article and have chosen to wander around talking about trivia. They have neither the facts nor the law to advance their position so they are, metaphorically speaking, pounding the table with their shoe.
They desperately wish they had something, anything, to throw but they do not. Rather than react to their nonsense and ad hominem attacks they should be pitied.
I view the Gang of 88 and their supporters and sympathizers much the way one would watch a train-wreck from a distance...sad and fascinating.....but in this case enormously productive.
w.r. chambers wrote
"Are there scholarships conditioned on a promise to pursue a particular course of study the way, for example, athletic scholarships are conditioned on a promise to play a particular sport?"
Yes.
"But is there a connection between revenue stream and the hiring of professors like those in the G88?"
At Duke, no. But there is a connection between prestige in the eyes of Harvard et al. and the "hiring . . ."
Duke Prof
KC, et. al.:
The state-of-academia discussion running back up this thread, between w. r. chambers, steven horwitz, duke prof., duke09parent, ralph phelan, and contributing anonymouses (anonymi? anonymoi?)– replete with book titles, citations, intelligent questions, and first-hand knowledge– is a splendid example of what I visit the threads on this blog to read and learn from during these epilogue days.
Thank you for maintaining it. A lot to ask, but can't you hold on here until the next round of court hearings? Your country needs you. It's a matter of national security. Luke, trust your feelings. After you, the deluge.
The state-of-academia discussion running back up this thread, between w. r. chambers, steven horwitz, duke prof., duke09parent, ralph phelan, and contributing anonymouses (anonymi? anonymoi?)....
anonymice :)
RRH
anon wrote
"Thank you [KC] for maintaining [the bolg]. A lot to ask, but can't you hold on here until the next round of court hearings?"
Hear, hear!
Duke Prof
Malfeasance in all respects - not certain if a billion dollar class action suit by alumni and students is viable - certainly justified IMO.
Such an action may very well get the attention of the BOT and the controlling Alumni and result in 'cleaning house'
Reasonable persons will conclude that the continuing actions, inactions and incompetence of the BOT, the Admin and the Faculty have and are impacting the 'elite' status of Duke, as well as the expectations insofar as direct and indirect value of the Duke education and the potential for prospects in grad studies, career and employment opportunities.
Is the administration's cowardice, the intellectual drivel and mediocre scholarship what we all signed up for.
The performance and code of honor expected from Duke students should be matched or exceeded by all those who run 'this place'. This has not been the case; lies, false CVs, questionable basis for tenure and 'late feeble apologies aside' it appears that the malfeasance continues.
TO 4:27 PM--
All excellent points that cut to the heart of everything.
What will it take for all interested parties to organize and actually do something about it?
That's the proverbial question.
Hey dave!
Re your 6:55 PM, do you slog in your sloggis?
;-)
RRH@10/19 2:45 PM clarifies:
"The state-of-academia discussion running back up this thread, between w. r. chambers, steven horwitz, duke prof., duke09parent, ralph phelan, and contributing anonymouses (anonymi? anonymoi?)...."
anonymice :)
_____________________________
That one is going on The List:
anon•y•mice. noun, plural of anonymouse. Late Lat. anonymus, from Gr. anonymos, from a+nonny nonny. 1) small-brained but otherwise unidentifiable rodents who swarm comment threads moderated by blogger KC Johnson following any post critical of Duke University administration, faculty, or Angry Studies, and whose comments, although undistinguished and indistinguishable from one to another, are characterized by petty pontification, verbalized nouns, quibbles, petulance, passive-aggressive snippiness, whining, and– remarkably– cattiness, while avoiding references to facts, citations, links, logic, or reasoned argument. Not particularly dangerous when cornered, which they often do to themselves, anonymice utter a shrill cry of "collegialiteeee, collegialiteee!" intended to paralyze an attacker, which some authorities believe also to be a mating call, before retiring quickly in wounded dignity or martyrdom. <"KC dissected one alive, so the anonymice are really swarming the thread today."> see also, ankle-biters.
11:57
LOL. Bravo.
jim2 @10/19 10:45 PM
Anything's possible. :-0
dave
When do people expect the "next round of court hearing"? Law suits take years and years.
heh, heh... yes, they do, but don't tell KC.
anon @10/19 12:51 PM
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