Originals http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/ en Copyright 2009 Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:40:25 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss The Ominous Rise Of The Adjuncts By Maurice Black & Erin O'Connor Review of John C. Cross and Edie Goldenberg's Off-Track Profs: Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education. (Cambridge: MIT Press): 2009. According to the AAUP, 48 percent of faculty are part-timers, and 68 percent of all faculty appointments take place off the tenure track. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) cites comparable numbers, reporting that a mere 27 percent of postsecondary instructors hold fulltime, tenure-track positions. Such figures are the familiar touchstones of debates about the nature and future of academic work, undergraduate education, and academic freedom. They anchor official statements and form the basis of movements. Adjunct faculty are unionizing, and the AFT has launched a campaign to increase the proportion of undergraduate courses taught by fulltime and tenure-track professors to 75 percent. Surrounded by statistics, activism, and commentary, the adjunct faculty member is never far from discussions about higher ed reform. "There is no subject so painful and so ubiquitous as the role of adjuncts in higher ed," writes Louisiana State University English professor Emily Toth, the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Ms Mentor." Nor, perhaps, is there an academic subject so thoroughly stylized. The underpaid, uninsured, and underappreciated "freeway flyer" has become a tragic figure, a poster prof for the moral, economic, and ethical failings of modern-day academia. Hardly a month goes by without another scandal in which someone fires---or fails to renew---an "invisible adjunct" who has expressed controversial views. Such cases---and the anger they evoke---have become the standardized set pieces of an academia that has yet to reckon with the fact that its modes of employment have undergone a seismic shift. The supporting casts in these set pieces are as stylized as their non-tenure-track stars. There is the bean-counting administrator, an anti-intellectual corporate drone who sees adjunct faculty as a handy way to reduce overhead. And there is the smug tenured professor who sits idly by while a corps of shamelessly exploited workers enables his light teaching load, his leisurely sabbaticals, and his inflated salary. Together, these characters facilitate two structures of blame. The first focuses on putatively deliberate actions, assuming that the rise of adjuncts is an intended consequence of a specific, crass economic plan; the second focuses on passive inaction, assuming that tenured professors have made a Faustian bargain to secure their own comfort at the expense of tenure and academic freedom for future generations. ]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/review_of_john_c_cross.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/review_of_john_c_cross.html Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:40:25 -0500 Standpoint Theory Arrives At The Court By Daphne Patai One of the key contributions of second-wave feminism to the academy is what is known as "standpoint theory," which asserts that members of oppressed groups have special "ways of knowing" based on their group's unique experiences. The problem standpoint theory attempted to address is how to respond to the apparent monopoly of knowledge and power held by men (usually called "white men" in these discussions). Since women were for centuries excluded from education and professional activities, how could they gain traction for their views and rapidly enhance their present status? The easiest way to deal with this problem is to consider the source of an idea an adequate gauge of its validity and significance. This is known as the "genetic fallacy," a form of ad hominem or ad feminam argument. Valorizing the viewpoints of hitherto marginalized groups is an obvious instance of this fallacy. It also discourages challenges to one's point of view, since any challenge can be represented as an attempt to demean that group's experience, out of which it presumably speaks. In the more academic-sounding form of "standpoint epistemology," by which one's racial or sexual identity provides a person with experiences that define how he or she thinks, deference is routinely paid to the special perspectives of minorities. While not wanting to get embroiled in biological essentialism or in the view that acquired experiences are inherited (or transmitted through some sort of collective unconscious), proponents of standpoint theory have turned it into a staple of feminism over the last few decades, and it has been of great utility as well to other identity groups. Its objective, as feminist scholar Sandra Harding, one of the founders of feminist standpoint theory, puts it, is to unearth the special powers that women's lived experience can offer, the special knowledge that they can thus claim. ]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/by_daphne_patai_one_of.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/by_daphne_patai_one_of.html Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:10:12 -0500 The Cambridge Empire Strikes Back By Harvey Silverglate With Kyle Smeallie Harvard University may be losing money like a hard-luck high-roller, but the Vegas tagline (what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas) certainly does not apply: what happens at Harvard reaches well beyond the Cambridge confines. For better or for worse, many schools follow in Harvard's footsteps. What better place, then, to effect change in American higher education than a place where other schools---at least until the recent economic meltdown---have been green with Crimson envy? Such was the premise behind my insurgent campaign for a seat on the Board of Overseers, one of Harvard's two governing boards. Dismayed by the lack of principled oversight (a key reason, I suspect, for Harvard's recent financial woes) and the general illiberal culture of his alma mater, I spent months trying to convince alumni to elect me to the board. In early June, however, Harvard officials informed me that my bid for a six-year term on the 30-member board came up a bit short. In defeat, I learned the very same lesson that Harvard Law School alum Barack H. Obama (Law School class of 1991) learned when he ran as a petition candidate in the 1991 Overseers election: Input from outsiders---those unwilling to place collegiality over candor---is unwanted.]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/by_harvey_silverglate_kyle.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/by_harvey_silverglate_kyle.html Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:34:29 -0500 The Illinois Admissions Scandal By Richard D. Kahlenberg Illinois, the state where Senate seats are sometimes sold, has now scandalized higher education with the revelation that hundreds of applicants to the University of Illinois were placed on a special "clout" list, many receiving favorable treatment. According to a series of investigative reports by The Chicago Tribune, state legislators, university trustees, and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich successfully pressured University of Illinois officials to admit less qualified applicants, including a relative of influence peddler Antoin (Tony) Rezko. Examining email correspondence obtained through the state Freedom of Information Act, the Tribune found that decisions to deny admissions were reversed through a secret appeals process following intervention by top officials. In some cases, notification of admissions for "clouted" candidates with dubious credentials were delayed until the end of the school year in order to minimize attention from more qualified classmates who were denied admissions. In the wake of the publicity, the university has temporarily suspended the clout list and Governor Pat Quinn established an independent panel to investigate the practice. Illinois state legislators are not the first to push for special treatment in university admissions for favored candidates. In the 1990s, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that then-California governor Pete Wilson, and other state officials and prominent citizens made requests on behalf of applicants to institutions such as UCLA and U.C. Berkeley. These applicants, who were placed on a special "VIP" list, had a significantly higher rate of acceptance than regular applicants. Indeed, between 1980 and 1996, more than 200 VIP students were admitted after initially being rejected. ]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/the_illinois_admissions_scanda.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/the_illinois_admissions_scanda.html Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:24:40 -0500 The Murder At Harvard By John McWhorter A few weeks ago a teenaged pot dealer was shot dead in a Harvard dormitory. That alone was depressing enough. However, Harvard suspects a black senior, Chanequa Campbell, of an association with the pot dealer -- Justin Cosby, also black -- and last week was barred from her dormitory and prevented from graduating. Campbell grew up in the depressed Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, but was a star student, a product of elite prep school Packer Collegiate Institiute, and four years ago was celebrated for her achievement. The details have yet to be released. But one of the three men who planned the murder, and a suspect in the shooting itself, Jabrai Copney, is a songwriter from New York who was dating another Harvard undergrad named Brittany Smith who also grew up in Brooklyn. Copney and Smith are black.]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/a_few_weeks_ago_a.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/a_few_weeks_ago_a.html Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:10:35 -0500 "Study, Study, Study" - A Bad Career Move By Ward Connerly About five years ago, shortly before my term ended as a Regent of the University of California (UC), I was having a casual conversation with a very high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that he was developing to increase "diversity" at UC in a manner that would comply with the dictates of California's Constitution and the prohibition against race, gender and ethnic preferences. As I listened to his proposal, I asked him why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. In an unguarded moment, he told me that unless the university took steps to "guide" admissions decisions, UC would be dominated by Asians. When I asked, "What would be wrong with that?" I got an answer that speaks volumes about the underlying philosophy at many universities with regard to Asian enrollment. The UC administrator told me that Asians are "too dull - they study, study, study." He then said, "If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it." I won't betray the individual's anonymity because to do so would put him in a world of trouble - and he would, indeed, deny having said it. Yet, it is time to confront the not-so-subtle hand of discrimination against Asians that masquerades as "building diversity" at many elite college campuses.]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/by_ward_connerly_about_five.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/06/by_ward_connerly_about_five.html Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:16:10 -0500 On The Right In The Land Of The Tenured Left By Harry Stein What acid rain is to our irreplaceable forests, lakes and streams, leftist dogma is to American higher education. In every corner of the land, it has turned once-flourishing departments of English and history into barren wastelands where only the academic equivalent of cockroaches can thrive. Its corrosive poison - infantile anti-Americanism, hatred of capitalism, scorn for ideological pluralism - spreads far beyond the narrow confines of its source, polluting popular culture, public education, the very laws under which we live. Absorbed in sufficiently high doses, it is morally and intellectually fatal. While the mind-boggling damage done to higher education by multicultural activists, diversity-mongers, and all-around leftist jerks is a subject very much on the minds of conservatives, liberals seem truly not to care. More precisely, they actually regard it as progress. Shakespeare elbowed aside by Maya Angelou? Hey, education's got to change with the times, just like the Constitution. Mandatory sensitivity training for incoming freshmen to instill appreciation of transgendered persons? What kind of monster has a problem with sensitivity? Conservative students getting charged with hate speech for daring to take on affirmative action or women's studies zealots? Exactly - that kind of monster. Even the occasional report in the mainstream press of epidemic ideological conformity on the nation's campuses fails to elicit a reaction. So what if, as the Washington Post reports, 80 percent of faculty in America's English literature, philosophy, and political science departments describe themselves as liberal and a mere 5 percent as conservative - with ratios of eighteen to one at Brown, twenty-six to one at Cornell, and sixteen to one at UCLA - or that a study after the 2004 election showed that the Harvard faculty gave John Kerry thirty-one dollars for every dollar donated to George Bush, with the ratios rising to forty-three to one at MIT and three hundred to one at Princeton? (And you think when someone gets around to a comprehensive analysis of the 2008 campaign donations, that will be any less lopsided?) For liberals, the only important question remains what it's always been: How can I get my kid into one of those places? ]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/on_the_right_in_the_land_of_th.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/on_the_right_in_the_land_of_th.html Thu, 28 May 2009 14:15:25 -0500 War Over A Trojan Horse By Robert L. Paquette A few weeks ago, the Delta Phi fraternity at Hamilton College distributed on campus fliers welcoming students to attend "the 53rd annual Mexican Night" party. The invitation, which was intended to be symbolic of spring-break excursions to Cancun and other vacation spots south of the border, contained the image of a Trojan Horse in the shape of a Mexican pinata towering over an armed guard in front of a stout U. S. border fence. The words "Proper Documentation Required," a spoof of the usual language for proper identification at parties that serve alcohol, ran to the left of the image. In a flash, student activists and their faculty allies had mobilized in ginned-up outrage to protest this latest alleged example of institutionalized racism and to demand action by the administration and trustees on a laundry list of particulars that includes a speech code (masked as a "social honor code"), mandatory diversity courses, and the establishment of a multi-million dollar cultural education center to provide "safe spaces" for aggrieved student groups. Administrators competed with each other to see how artistically they could grovel to protesting students. Acting President Joseph Urgo and the college's "diversity ombudsman" called the fraternity to account and pressured its leaders to cancel the party. In an all-campus email, Urgo claimed to have extracted from the contrite fraternity leadership an expansive confession that the image not only "hurt and offended many members of the Hamilton community," but that it "trivializes a contemporary political crisis and reduces the complex history and culture of Mexico to a simple stereotype." Urgo and other administrators then joined protesting faculty and protesting students in holding a candlelight vigil. Speeches, poetry, and spiritual songs of the Kumbaya variety expressed feelings of solidarity with the disrespected, vulnerable, and marginalized on campus and around the world. Fraternity leaders rained apologies from all directions to no avail. The dean of students, standing in like a kind of sacrificial lamb, bleated enough mea culpas to elicit God's forgiveness of a rash of mortal sins. Unforgiving students, however, led by a group called the Social Justice Initiative, followed by commandeering another faculty meeting. Looking anything but vulnerable and threatened, they seized the microphone and threateningly wagged the finger of blame at college officials for their "lack of response" and "lack of action" to the fraternity's benightedness. Dozens of sympathetic faculty, including leaders of the Diversity and Social Justice Project, signed on to a proposed resolution that would signal to posterity "Our profound appreciation and affection... for our international students and students of color who may have felt marginalized by recent events on campus." The faculty eventually passed overwhelmingly a resolution that supported the creation of a cultural education center on campus, that urged---Hamilton College's recently imposed open curriculum notwithstanding---mandatory "educational and programmatic initiatives" to intensify diversity training, and that directed administrators to expand the powers of existing harassment and grievance boards to "raise critical awareness of different forms of harassment." Stay tuned, for the full extent of the concessions by the guilt-stricken have yet to be determined. ]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/war_over_a_trojan_horse.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/war_over_a_trojan_horse.html Tue, 26 May 2009 18:28:16 -0500 Should The Unemployed Go Back To School? By George Leef The last time President Obama gave a speech dealing with education (his address to Congress on February 24), he misrepresented government data to make his case that the country needs to put a significantly higher percentage of people through college. (I wrote about his fudging of the figures here) For that reason, Americans would be wise to look skeptically on his policy pronouncements regarding education. Last week the president gave another speech this time extolling college and especially community college programs as a good path for unemployed people who want to prepare for new and better jobs. He gave a couple of nice anecdotes about people who had greatly improved their lives by taking vocational training courses and he wants to make it easy for unemployed workers to get federal money for education and career training. In one case, a woman in Maine who had lost her job as a receptionist decided to take courses in nursing, and now makes a good living as a registered nurse. Without question, that's a success story, but it's never a good idea to make government policy on the basis of some individual success stories. That's because policy changes usually have hidden costs. To get a few success stories, we often have a greater number of failure stories. Before looking at the president's proposed changes, we should examine the broad vision he articulated. Here are his key sentences. "Now is the time to put a new foundation for growth in place - to rebuild our economy, to retrain our workforce, and re-equip the American people. And now is the time to change unemployment from a period of 'wait and see' to a chance for our workers to train and seek the next opportunity..." That sounds quite uplifting. It sounds obvious and simple. But is it realistic?]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/should_the_unemployedgo_back_t.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/should_the_unemployedgo_back_t.html Costs and Tuition Financial Crisis and Higher Education Tue, 19 May 2009 21:18:35 -0500 When Campuses Became Dysfunctional By Patrick J. Deneen In recent years the stakes for entrance to the nation's most prestigious colleges and universities have risen to absurd heights, with students (or, their families) not only now paying significant sums for private school tuitions (or the entry cost into good school districts, namely expensive housing), SAT training, and coaching for application writing, but increasingly specialized services such as student "branding" - in which students (or, their families) hire "branding" professionals to develop a marketing strategy for "selling" a student to the top universities - and even such morally damnable practices as anonymously informing schools about the reprehensible qualities of competitors who apply to the same university. Clearly things have gotten out of control, but there are very few people - whether inside or outside the university system - who are willing or even desire to rock the boat by pointing out the absurdity of the current state of affairs. The reason for this conspiracy of silence is that the current system benefits those who are best positioned to take advantage of the root causes for these absurdities: namely, families with the background, wherewithal and education to know how to "game" the system, and the elite colleges and universities whose denizens benefit in all sorts of financial and professional ways from their placement at these exceedingly small number of desirable schools. A confluence of interest bonds these financial and cultural elites in their ambition to maintain the current arrangement, namely a desperation on the parts of the families to put their children in a position to succeed, and the desperation on the parts of these elite institutions to be the exclusive grantors of the imprimatur for such success. In our profoundly competitive world order, in which increasingly few people can hope to emerge as the "winners" in a system that ruthlessly winnows out those who will not join the small club of the international elite - financial, political and cultural - all stops must be removed, all measures pursued, all efforts expended. In compensation for their success, students are privileged to join an elite group of similarly-situated peers who harbor the same ambitions of worldly success and achievement. They are simultaneously thrown together as colleagues and competitors, a condition that will continue to define their relationships throughout their college years and beyond. The elite institutions are populated by star professors and a steady stream of noteworthy dignitaries, intellectuals, artists, public intellectuals, and so on: exposure to this class - as well as to the future incarnation of these winners in the form of their classmates - constitutes a considerable share of the education that takes place on today's campuses, namely a socialization in success, the learned capacity to emulate their predecessors who have successfully navigated the shoals of hyper-competitive globalization and emerged as its leaders and beneficiaries. ]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/by_patrick_j_deneen_in.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/by_patrick_j_deneen_in.html Wed, 13 May 2009 15:00:01 -0500 Obama's Loan Plan - Scary Stuff By Richard Vedder Like Caesar's Gaul, President Obama's plan for higher education is divided into three parts: 1) Every American should have postsecondary educational training, and within a few years we should again lead the world in the proportion of young graduates with bachelor's degrees; 2) Federal financial assistance to pay for college should become an entitlement like Social Security or Medicare, available to all in need; 3) The private provision of loans to students should end and the Federal Government should become the provider of student loans. The American higher education establishment has mostly endorsed this sweeping proposal. As is so often the case, they are wrong. On every count, this proposal is an Obamination - a perverse set of policies that will raise costs to taxpayers and, surprisingly, also to many college students and families.]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/obamas_loan_plan_scary_stuff.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/05/obamas_loan_plan_scary_stuff.html Costs and Tuition Financial Crisis and Higher Education Wed, 06 May 2009 17:05:09 -0500 Be Fair, Harvard By Harvey A. Silverglate In theory, e-mail should make it easier to organize for social and political change. But, as recent events in my campaign as a petition candidate for Harvard's Board of Overseers have shown, new means of communication can be used to relegate would-be reformers of the academy to dead-ends, and to keep the outsiders outside. If I might make a rough analogy to the familiar Star Wars trilogy: My initial undertaking of my petition candidacy, along with my fellow petition candidate Robert Freedman, has been followed by the second phase of the trilogy, namely The Empire Strikes Back. Freedman and I are now working to get to the third installment, Return of the Jedi. But I'm getting a bit ahead of the story. I should not feel like an outsider - much less a barbarian knocking on Harvard's gates, seeking a place at the table - but I can't help feeling that I'm being treated like one. After all, I came to Cambridge in 1964, attended my law school classes with due attention (especially given the fact that I had to work full-time to support myself, my mother and younger brother after the sudden death of my father while I was a senior at Princeton), received my LL.B. in 1967, and remained in Cambridge to marry and live and to practice law in Boston. During that time, I became a legal affiliate-in-law at one of Harvard College's undergraduate houses, where I still give unpaid "pre-law table" discussions once each semester. I've judged moot court arguments at Harvard Law School. I taught a course at the law school during a sabbatical-from-practice that I took in the mid-1980s. I've lectured to many an undergraduate class. And I continue to advise Harvard students, and even an occasional faculty member, when they get into trouble (with Harvard, as well as with the outside "real world"). Now, I'm running as a petition candidate for Harvard's Board of Overseers, the university's second most powerful governing body. So why do I feel like an outsider?]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/04/in_theory_email_should_make.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/04/in_theory_email_should_make.html Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:37:34 -0500 Stanford '89, A Happier Takeover By John McWhorter Debra Dickerson said of the Cornell students who took over Willard Straight Hall at Cornell in 1969, "What they actually wanted was beyond the white man's power to bestow." Even after they were granted a Black Studies department as they demanded, a core of black students remained infuriated at Cornell as still "fundamentally" racist. As we mark the fortieth anniversary of that day, I am reminded of one twenty springs later in May, 1989, when 60 Stanford students took over the university president's building and were arrested. Because 1989 was such a different America racially from that of 1969, such that Stanford had a healthy body of black students of middle-class provenance and above, what went down in the annals as "Takeover 89" was fundamentally a happy event. It was symbolic of a general detour in race ideology in America, and the memory has never left me. The idea was that in not acceding to certain demands regarding minority issues, the administration had revealed itself to be racist. Interesting, though, what the "demands" were. This time there was already a Black Studies program, plus a student association, and a theme house. So instead, the main demands were four: a Native American Studies department, an Asian-American Studies department (despite there being an Asian-themed dormitory and university-funded Asian students' association), an assistant dean for Chicano affairs (despite a Chicano student center), and a vague demand for "more" black professors. After all, if black professors are not 13% of the faculty when black people are 13% of the American population, then you know what that's all about. ]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/04/post_5.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/04/post_5.html Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:52:29 -0500 Cornell '69 And What It Did By Donald Downs Forty years ago this week, an armed student insurrection erupted on the Cornell campus. I was a sophomore on campus at the time and later wrote a book on the events, Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University. To some the drama represented a triumph of social justice, paving the way for a new model of the university based on the ideals of identity politics, diversity, and the university as a transformer of society. To others, it fatefully propelled Cornell, and later much of American higher education, away from the traditional principles of academic freedom, reason, and individual excellence. "Cornell," wrote the famous constitutional scholar Walter Berns, who resigned from Cornell during the denouement of the conflict, "was the prototype of the university as we know it today, having jettisoned every vestige of academic integrity." In the wee hours of Friday, April 19, 1969, twenty-some members of Cornell's Afro-American Society took over the student center, Willard Straight Hall, removing parents (sometimes forcefully) from their accommodations on the eve of Parents Weekend. The takeover was the culmination of a year-long series of confrontations, during which the AAS had deployed hardball tactics to pressure the administration of President James Perkins into making concessions to their demands. The Perkins administration and many faculty members had made claims of race-based identity politics and social justice leading priorities for the university, marginalizing the traditional missions of truth-seeking and academic freedom. Two concerns precipitated the takeover: AAS agitation for the establishment of a radical black studies program; and demands of amnesty for some AAS students, who had just been found guilty by the university judicial board of violating university rules. These concerns were linked, for, according to the students, the university lacked the moral authority to judge minority students. They declared that Cornell was no longer a university, but rather an institution divided by racial identities. ]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/04/cornell_69_and_what_it_did.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/04/cornell_69_and_what_it_did.html Curriculum Diversity Politics Professors and Tenure Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:07:44 -0500 The Situation at the New School By James Miller
This is the text of an open letter about the student occupation and police intervention last weekend at the New School in New York City. It was sent to members of the New School community by James Miller, professor of political science and liberal studies at the school. Miller is a former member of Students for a Democratic Society and author of several books, including "Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy" and "Democracy in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago." - John Leo
]]> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/04/the_situation_at_the_new_schoo.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/04/the_situation_at_the_new_schoo.html Politics Professors and Tenure Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:00:21 -0500