Not Your Cheney Kind of "Water Program," But Close

I don't know which is making me crankier, tenured Columbia professor Mark Taylor's Op-Ed piece in the Times grandstanding with his "abolish tenure" manoeuvre, or Erin O'Connor's applause:

I know it's hard for the folks who have tenure--or who hope to have tenure--to wrap their minds around the utterly vestigial character of an institution that has outlasted whatever limited purpose it might once have served to protect academic freedom in a different era, under different circumstances. But the time has really come for the people who are invested in tenure to conduct the thought experiment proposed by Taylor and others. If they can do that, they will have a fighting chance of preserving academic freedom and self-governance by other means -- and potentially of being part of a long overdue revitalization of the academy. If they don't, they will continue to be a shrinking, defensive, increasingly indefensible group with diminishing claims to authority, respect, autonomy, and, yes, academic freedom.

Taylor, as do a number of people tenured a long time, especially at higher-tiered places, takes as a given, one assumes, that he would fare well in this new system of seven year contracts he conjures up. The "thought experiment" is a fine idea, à la Rawls' veil of ignorance, but it is (why do I read Critical Mass, anyway ?), O'Connor's defeatism ("...preserving academic freedom and self-governance by other means...") that rankles, and, in fact, derives from academia-as-crumbling-fortress mentality she (and Taylor) take as a given. One wishes to take a step back, or many steps back, plague pole in hand. Academia is not the only world where advancement comes with some measure of security and freedom: lawyers make partner, all kinds of seniority and its privileges exist outside of academia, and I could go down this road suggesting other models vs. the current one, but that is precisely the trap one is being led into lately. It is the very smallness of this thinking that makes me CIA tonight indeed. Yes, there is laughable over-specialization, but that, as Taylor himself almost manages to point out, is a symptom and not a cause of some of the current malaise. Taylor is on the "problem-based" bandwagon, and suggests departments/discplines are the root of much of the evil, making this an end of spring semester piece for sure (when I arrived at his discussion of the "Water Progam," I thought I'd stumbled into satire. In fact, I imagine him in cozy New York digs strewn with oriental rugs laughing his leather loafers off...). Funny how interdisciplinarity and integrative programs are already gaining prominence. I give higher ed more credit: it is a smart animal and can transform itself without the pseudo-radical provocation from the likes of Prof. Taylor. It is here that institutions themselves must be more flexible, and open to the scholarship and kinds of classes they make possible; this may be generational, and seems to already be happening. Shi[f]t happens, and before Profs. O'Connor and Taylor and their ilk go scrambling in peri-apocalyptic survival mode, offering human sacrifices in hopes of appeasing forces over which they sense only minimal ---if any--- control, let's really get at that thought experiment: the larger questions that are diminished by the defensive mentality exhibited in Taylor's piece. The idea that only some radical reconfiguring will save us still has academia stranded on its on island, trying to build its own boat in order to land on the same shore. The larger and more compelling issues are the ones that become demonic forces in O&T species' mind (think of their initials as standing for "zero tenure"): in what kind of a society do we want to live ? If the academy becomes merely reactive instead of constructive, it will ---or has--- lost a great deal of its function in society. To be fair, I think Taylor gets at this via a jargon I can barely stomach; his piece is not a rant against tenure, and, in fact, I think we would agree that it is the role of the intellectual in the public landscape that must be expanded or re-righted to a position of prominence within public discourse. Yet this includes many areas that ought not to be subjected to the "problem-based" [spit] litmus test: do we not want a society where products of the imagination (literature, arts, new media) are valued and discussed for their own sake ? Where theoretical science may precede its application ? Taylor comes so close to a utilitarian stance without realizing it that I feel slightly ill. There are the complex questions; how to live, how to live well, what it means to be human and humane, that any decent thought experiment about academia should take on, and though a special promise of freedom of speech and practice (tenure) may seem redundant for some, it has done much to create conditions, in the best of circumstances, where creativity and intellect flourish and contribute to a better made world, better lived lives. Sometimes the bonds between the highly specialized and the clearly relevant are microfine, invisible threads, ---and, at a place like Columbia, Taylor evinces a deep sense of not being able to see the connections, even in his own department--- but one should not lose sight of the larger whole. I think Taylor would agree with this. What is not necessary, and is even quite dangerous, is a vision, a thought experiment, that opens with the view that the academy is a service industry, at least one modelled on fast food chains instead of Socrates' gadfly. I still do think that public intellectuals can exist, but they should not only or primarily be defined by their immediate use-value; and , yes, that without tenure, we lose, men and women both, a vital room of our own.

People Smarter Than I Have Figured This Out

To Hell with Photobucket. I don't know what their problem is. A great post at a blog called Eros Den (yes, I was afraid to click on the link, too, but it's okay), has an even easier way around them to do the whole animated gif thing. You use google docs. Here are the instructions from the blog. I plan to leave a comment saying how much he helped. Fair Warning: there is some Eros to be seen/read on Eros Den's main page, but I've linked to the specific post. G-Rated for all audiences.

How To (I did not recreate his hotlinks. Maybe later):

The second solution that I found doesn't require a third party hosting site. It's actually something new I'm trying. I'm using Google Docs! That's right.
1. Go to Google Docs. If you have a Blogger account, you have a Google account; that means you also have access to Google Docs. (Just look at the drop down menu on the Firefox homepage (the Firefox search page ), then find Google Docs. )
2. Sign in. Click on New menu and start new document. Type your post. You insert your gifs and pictures using the Insert menu. Once you're done with your post, Click on Save.
3. Go back to to Docs Home. Click on More Actions menu, then choose Preview to see if your gifs are working.
4. Go back to Docs Home and click on More Actions menu, then Click on Publish. You'll be taken to the Publish Document screen. Click on Publish to blog. Fill out the settings as appropriate. Then Click Ok and you're done! Go visit your blog and see how the post looks. You can make your adjustments there til you're happy.
I used Google Docs for this post. I'm pretty happy with the results. Not bad for a first try. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

That slepen al the nyght with open ye

People seem to forget that "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote" arrives, it really results in sleepless wide-eyed pilgrims yearning for foreign lands. Never mind the "tendre croppes and yonge sonne:" break out the espresso, the grading pens, and the sudden attraction to the newspaper's travel section. Alas, the showers here are coming in abundance, even with, today, bone-cold cubelets of hail. Not. Helping. The. Grading. And the grading is not helping the sleep. Not only have I the issue of Mr. Pay-to-Play (see earlier post), but I have a member of the species discipulus iratus, aka, Angry Student, who substitutes snarling drivel for analysis so that the resulting (low, low) grade can be chalked up to my "disagreement" with DI's "opinion." DI often begins with sweeping statements about American and the world, moving onto how the reading to be analyzed is: a) sarcastic; b)out of touch with the average American; c) intellectually worthless; d) shouldn't be studied by anyone who wants to improve their [sic] life. I do not want to change DI; I want to throttle DI. Being who I am, it is the (lack of) reasoning and argumentation that gets to me most. I am perfectly willing to at least take seriously, with a clenched jaw, well-argued vituperations, because, heck, at least I can respond in kind, and heck, yes, because at least there is something there to grade. In this case, however, my fantasy is to whip out a cigarette lighter (I don't smoke) and burn the thing right in front of him in class. Worse, at this morning's earlier than usual awakening, my first thought after "why am I awake ?" was about how pissed I am about this paper, this student. "@$$hole !" I mentally exclaimed, and then went on some in fanstasied exhortation, in detail and argument unworthy of the slime presented to me in the place of thought, about what was wrong with it. WHY is this getting to me ? (Don't answer that; we all know why. The reasons, like demons, are legion.) Okay, no. misery loves company, O Pilgrims of April: in 200 words or less, please describe the office hour conversation-appropriate substitute for THROTTLING DI WITH MY BARE HANDS AND LIGHTING HIS HAIR ON FIRE. Thank you.

For certes fire ue may not come out of no thing

PS Gif image is offered FREE HERE. Take that, photobucket, which says it violates their terms of use. For WHAT ?

Ward Churchill: It Finally Got To Me, Too

I just took up much too much comment space writing this response on Critical Mass. Here it is, essentially unchanged. My point: Colorado got what it paid for. They have to live with it. Their reasoning is dangerous for us all. Bet Critical Mass wishes I'd said that succinctly.

I'm going to venture a very unpopular position here: in spite of the deficiences in his scholarship, Churchill should get his job back. I was appalled, am appalled at interviews I've seen with students on his campus (not all of whom oppose his return) who say that he should not get his position back "because of the horrible things he said." And, I'd add, if his plagiarsim were as clear as, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin's, he'd have to go. But when you read the committee's findings, it's not so clear as that. As for the fact that he does not have the usual degrees or terminal degrees in his field, this again brings up the issue of a college's right to hire (and it is often the faculty, not the administration, in many places, who really do the hiring) and to retain someone whose teaching, writing, or other expertise warrants the rank. I grant you that this is a horribly complicated question in Churchill's case. Many very selective places do have, though the instances are less and less, full professors who do not hold the expected Ph.D. Reed, for example, and Kenyon, and Oberlin (if I remember correctly) had several still into the nineties and may now. I do not mean MFAs or MBAs, because those degrees are often taken to be the terminal degree in the field. If Colorado once saw itself in that vein, it must live with what it has wrought. There was also a time that one could declare an ethnic identity by proving an identification with it, e.g. by participating in the activities of, and becoming even an honorary member of, a tribe. It is hard for me to write this, because I am very disturbed by the inaccurate and insensitive piece on the tragedy of 9/11, and I find his claims about how he went about his scholarship to reveal a sloppy, egotistical approach to scholarship (he limns plagiarism, but does not really engage in it, if as everyone seems to agree, he "plagiarized" himself). Colorado should have to keep him, but they should ---and should have--- censured him. He should be knocked down a rank/pay grade, he should not serve on certain committees or in certain positions, whatever their faculty regulations will permit. If they do not have these mechanisms of censure, he should stay on as a lesson to them all. "Scholarship vs. polemic" is also a very dangerous standard to begin to use to examine someone's work. For many a radical (many better spoken and more scholarly radicals) their work is a polemic. Presumably, universities hire them not to have a department full of them, but so that their students will be exposed to how a person like that thinks. One assumes the rest of the department, the rest of the college, offers counterbalance. Colorado got what it wanted, promoted Churchill, and made him a large part of their curricular design. If they have decided that moment is over, i.e. that he is an artifact of a culture they can no longer support, they are going to have to separate their own polemical stance from the various weaknesses and ugliness of Churchill's writings. His actions are perhaps censurable, but not cause for detenuring him, vile as he may seem to some now. I can barely stand to hear myself support the guy, but I can face myself: I was happy he won; the grounds for outright dismissal are far too shaky. Colorado should negotiate, perhaps with the AAUP's help (it is supporting Churchill. It often supports tenured people. If you're not tenured, it will support the college), a way for Churchill to exist on campus. Finis.

More Murder and An Exequy

Asia McGowan, shot to death by her former boyfriend at Henry Ford Community College.

Announced on the same day:

• A murder-suicide at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, MI (ex-boyfriend kills former girlfriend)
• A Gettysburg College senior strangled his ex-girlfriend on Thursday.

Virginia Tech will reopen Norris Hall, where the shootings took place. It will contain a Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention.

Emily Rachel Silvestein, sophomore, strangled by her former boyfriend at Gettysburg College

I was tired last night, so have now added some things:

I (still) have no answers, and only a few incomplete theories. My sense about the mass shootings is that, somehow, the school violence has "trickled up" with a generation, from high school shootings to college shootings, to killing your ex-girlfriend on campus. I am tired of the latter crime being classed as "domestic violence," because 1) it fails to address the growing violence against female teens and young women by the boys and young men who sought intimacy with them; 2) it isolates these cases instead of viewing them on a continuum of location specific motivated killings, i.e. why school ? I'll grant opportunity its due, but there is something more to it. In the mass killings there is the constant reiteration that school is not safe, that no one can save you, that innocence is no protection. One need only think of the anomalies in the pattern (Nickel Mines, where the Amish children were gunned down, is hardly ever mentioned, since the killer was not a student or a member of the Amish community) to see that any theory is too narrow and the violence too wide: home, school, church, but I often have wondered why the school was the target at Nickel Mines. What did it, does it, symbolize ? All of the killers are male; the magnitude of their rage and destruction of life, unfathomable. Unforseeable., we keep hearing. Maybe Berryman's guess in this stanza from a Dream Song is as good ---or better--- than anyone else's: do they "fe[el] less/ and more about less than us ?"

Dream Song 34
My mother has your shotgun. One man, wide
in the mind, and tendoned like a grizzly, pried
to his trigger-digit, pal.
He should not have done that, but, I guess,
he didn't feel the best, Sister,—felt less
and more about less than us . . . ?

In every room I teach in, I subconsciously learn, by the end of the second week at most, how many ways there are to get out the door, the windows, whether the door is locked to the outside, where the nearest exits are out of the building. I can't ever remember doing that until Virginia Tech.

PS. Does anyone know how to get rid of those damn daisies (??!!!) that the template has morphed my bullets into ? Not only are they glaringly inappropriate for this post, but for any list I might make, ever.

Their Lyin', Buyin' Hearts

Cranky has had enough espresso to make her veins ache. Cranky has been on every search engine the god/dess ever made, Cranky has been to the library, Cranky has access to Turnitin.com (more useless than a mousetrap in a barn full of cats). Cranky has undergrads with fat wallets who are turning in papers that in no way match their near non-existent abilities to write analytically and grammatically in class. She watches them get all horky-snorty when they get back papers with grades clearly not earned by them. We have a strict policy: no source, no plagiarism accusation. One can hint, one can ask that the student "explain" the paper, but our students who engage in this deceit are also masters of the bold-faced lie. Cranky has had students become almost violently belligerent until she has produced the source for the plagiarism hotly denied. So what is Cranky to do ? This has eaten up an enormous amount of time, but worse, it is getting to CIA. She is VEXED. Of necessity, this post must be in the third person, because without some distance, Cranky is going to explode. Hee-haw.

4.5.09 Update, now that I have had time to read. University Diaries (see sidebar) has two posts relevant to this p³ mentality (pay, plagiarize, play): the first, on Doris Kearns Goodwin's lack of deserved academic disgrace and a second, on bogus diplomas obtained, by of all people, K-12 supervisory personal and teachers, here. Of the first, it cheers me that the Vanderbuilt students see right through the pomp to the essence of the matter. On the second, my cynicism is boundless: it seems that the more stress this system puts on accountability, standards, and testing, the more it is revealed for the house of cards it is, and the all the more should higher ed stay far away from any "reform" that resembles it. I am still of the opinion that if a student can survive public K-12, s/he may finally get an education at college.