MOO2

Taking an extended snooooooooooooze...

2007-11-18T16:06:00.000-05:00

I am putting this blog on snooze mode. Not sure when or if I will be back...

Particularly those with paper bag skin...

2007-10-03T21:03:00.000-04:00

Jena by John Mellencamp. Watch the video just completed earlier this week, lyrics below. Hat tip to our own dangerous professor, Harry Targ.

Jena

An all white jury hides the executioner's face

Is this how we are, me and you?

Everyone needs to know their place

And here we thought this blackbird was hidden in the flue

Oh oh oh Jena

Oh oh oh Jena

Oh oh oh Jena

Take your nooses down

So what becomes of boys that cannot think straight

Particularly those with paper bag skin*

Yes sir no sir wipe that smile off your face

We've got our rules here and you've got to fit in

Oh oh oh Jena

Oh oh oh Jena

Oh oh oh Jena

Take your nooses down

Hey some way sanity will prevail

But no one knows when that day will come

A shot in the dark, well it might find its way

To the hearts of those who hold the keys to kingdom come

Oh oh oh Jena

Oh oh oh Jena

Oh oh oh Jena

Take your nooses down

Oh oh oh Jena

Oh oh oh Jena

Oh oh oh Jena

Take your nooses down

* Craig Cunningham asks what becomes of those with paper bag skin, and offers this answer.

A Hoover Institution in the Land of Corn and Soy: New Initiative to Watch at Urbana-Champaign

2007-09-16T20:39:00.000-04:00

Here is a story to watch: A group of alumni and others are establishing a new entity at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I say "entity," because I have not quite figured out what it is, though it seems clear that the founders know what they want: something like the Hoover Institution at Stanford is their explicit model. But first they have to get it off the ground, with an upcoming one day kickoff conference near the end of September.

The interesting part of the discussion concerns governance and academic accountability, as campus leaders such as Nick Burbules, chair of the University Senate, point out. This entity, called the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund, "is ostensibly an endowment to support the research and teaching of free market capitalism, limited government, entrepreneurship, enterprise and individual rights and responsibilities," according to the article in the local paper today.

Another interesting part of this development is the establishment of such an entity at a major state university, as in like the place where I toil. Founders are eager for that, to branch beyond the Princetons and Stanfords to the huge Midwestern land-grant MooU.

Here are more tidbits from the article:

"While the academy's ideology might have raised a few eyebrows on campus, what's caused a stir recently are discussions about how the academy fund is structured (is it an academy or a fund?) about quality control and academic freedom and accountability, as well as the fear of a possible "mission creep," meaning the academy fund would go from sponsoring research or sponsoring classes to dictating research and offering classes, according to some faculty members."

"Before they established the academy fund, founders like Vermette and O'Laughlin turned to alumni, academics and members of various business and industry associations. They sought the advice of people from the Hoover Institution, a public policy center at Stanford University; (Hoover Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson is on the UI academy fund's advisory council); the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (its president Anne Neal is also on the advisory council); and the National Association of Scholars (its president, Stephen Balch, is on the academy fund's board of directors). Both Balch and Neal will participate in the inaugural conference Sept. 27.

(Cary) Nelson said he was disappointed to hear about Balch and Neal's affiliation with the academy fund.

Neal's American Council on Trustees and Alumni "is an extremely conservative organization that fundamentally does not understand academic freedom. They constantly attack professors exercising what (the American Association of University Professors) regards as their academic rights," Nelson said.

"The idea of she and Stephen (Balch) being enshrined in a building on campus suggests those kind of activities will spread to our campus. That will not be a positive contribution to collegiality."

Nelson said the local AAUP chapter is scheduled to discuss the academy fund this week."

And though the founders claim they want to put forth merely another view for discussion, they have big plans: "The fund is at $2 million, and the goal is to increase that to $10 million in three years and $100 million in 2015, Vermette said. "

*Update 9/20: Article in Inside Higher Ed by one of its editors. IHE articles often have great comment threads, and this is no exception. Keep scrolling down!

Victory in the Big House: Priceless

2007-09-04T11:12:00.000-04:00

Kevin Richardson of ASU asks the crowd to quiet down...it was already a mausoleum. HT to Walt Oldendorf of ASU, who just happened to be visiting his daughter in Ann Arbor.

Back in the Fall...

2007-08-05T19:45:00.001-04:00

I am on summer break (what an oxymoron) and am not feeling too bloggy. Back in the fall, I think.

Calvin and Hobbes and Integrity

2007-07-05T12:57:00.000-04:00

Here's integrity, from Garrison Keillor's Writers' Almanac today (much more text than he recites on the air).

It's the birthday of cartoonist Bill Watterson (books by this author), born in Washington, D.C. (1958). He created the cartoon strip "Calvin and Hobbes," which ran from 1985 until 1995. He studied political science in college, and originally planned to become a political cartoonist. He got a job at the Cincinnati Post, but his editor insisted that he focus on local politics, and Watterson couldn't get a handle on the Cincinnati political scene. He lost his job after a few months and began drawing up plans for possible comic strips, including a strip about a 6-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger. This idea caught the attention of the United Features Syndicate, but they told Watterson they would only run the strip if he would insert a "Robotman" character that could be sold as a toy.
Watterson didn't want to turn down his first possible syndication deal, but he also didn't want to give up control over his own characters. So he rejected the offer. Eventually, United Features Syndicate bought the strip anyway. It began to appear in newspapers on November 18, 1985, and within three years it was appearing in more than 600 papers. It told the story of the 6-year-old boy, Calvin, and a tiger named Hobbes, who appears to be a real tiger to Calvin but appears as a stuffed animal to everyone else.
Once the strip became wildly popular, Watterson began to get offers to license the characters for toys, T-shirts, greeting cards, and movies. He could have made millions from all the merchandising opportunities, but he decided to refuse all the offers. He said, "My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships. [No one] would believe in the innocence of a little kid and his tiger if they cashed in on their popularity to sell overpriced knickknacks that nobody needs."
Watterson worked on the strip for 10 years, and then decided to retire and devote his time to painting. He has declined any interviews or photographs since his retirement, and hasn't shown any signs of returning to cartooning. But in 2005, he published The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, a three-volume set containing every Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that ever appeared in syndication.
Bill Watterson said, "There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do."

Ja, Ja, but can I text from my buggy?

2007-07-03T17:24:00.000-04:00

Hat tip to my good friend Krista Simons. As she pointed out, these are probably German Baptists, as we have here in Indiana*, or Mennonites, and not the Amish, and the GBs use technology (and are terrific plumbers, I can attest!)

And yes, the IPhone is gorgeous, just fiddled with one at the AT&T store, but since, sigh, I just got a Blackjack, and my wallet is vacuumed after some home improvements, can't swing the sleek little gem.

*We also have Amish here in Indiana...good hearty artery stickin' food you can get up in Nappanee and Middlebury and down near Marshall nearby, yum...but the German Baptists are visible and prominent here in Tippecanoe County and environs.

Nietzsche Family Circus

2007-06-22T21:57:00.000-04:00

Interesting glomming together of two ideas. Those who have seen this comic strip will know that the little tykes literally comprehend common expressions, uttering their understandings with wide-eyed innocence. Now, they mouth aphorisms of the tortured genius.

Bring me your nachos, your chips, your cups o' microwavable soup...

2007-06-19T21:59:00.000-04:00

Here is an item, sent by a former colleague who is now at another of our nation's MOO Universities, followed by my colleague's comment in italics.

Such memos and committees, of course, are not found only at ye olde land-grants. Yet I have a raft of emails about parking garage cleaning schedules, street closures, power outages, and so on that I receive almost daily. We professors do not spend ALL our time breathing the rarified air of metaphysics. We do the following:

*Final open forum on vending needs is Tuesday*

The final open forum to discuss the future needs of snack vending and beverage vending on campus will be at noon Tuesday, June 19, in the second floor lobby opposite the information desk in X Center.
Comments and questions can be directed to Y.

Seriously? An open forum on future vending needs at the university? And the final one at that, meaning there have been OTHERS? I bet Y hates his/her job. I'm tempted to send my comments: Dear Y, I am glad to see that LAND GRANT is FINALLY taking action to understand the diverse vending needs at this fine institution. It is a long time coming, let me tell you, but something is better than nothing, that's what I always say.

There is something my colleagues and I have been debating for quite some time now. To wit: how would you characterize the current philosophy of the LAND GRANT vending group? I mean, there are some folks who advocate a strict traditionalist perspective: chips (nacho, potato, and maybe Cool Ranch if feeling a bit edgy), Baby Ruth, and the occasional skinny bag of peanuts. Then there are the trend-setters: Banana Twinkies, Salt 'n' Vinegar Chips, and even Cup o' Soup (SOUP in a vending machine??!!). I'm not sure there's a place for the trendinista vending crowd at this fine institution, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject. Respectfully submitted, Professor Z, BA, MA, PhD

PS - Don't EVEN get me started on all those faddish beverages. I mean, berry-flavored this and electric-blue that. And water??? Who buys water when you can get it for free from a good, old-fashioned, bacteria-laden fountain?

A Tale of Two Presidential Searches

2007-06-19T15:24:00.001-04:00

Purdue: Here is how my university did its presidential search. The BoT hired a search firm and a well known presidential searcher on that firm, Bill Funk. The search was secret until the last minute. Nobody knew for sure who the choice would be or even who the candidates were. What appears to be a wonderful new president is what we got, Chancellor France Córdova of UC Riverside, set to start in August.

Iowa: Here is how the University of Iowa is doing its search. All four finalists' vitae are on the web, candidate forums were public, then broadcast on UI TV, and finally archived on the web (I watched the one for our provost on my laptop at home).

Which is better? I would opt for openness. The arguments trotted out for why Purdue was secret, that public knowledge of the finalists would cause some to withdraw from the search, does not seem to be the effect at Iowa, though I understand one candidate did withdraw.

I do support confidentiality of a presidential search, but ONLY up to the point of campus interviews and visits by finalists. Then what Iowa did should be the norm.

As a faculty member, I don't feel like I was part of the process, and indeed, I wasn't, but that is the point. Our BoT telegraphed that idea by deciding in private, and unless I am mistaken, the search advisory committee, on which faculty sat, did not know who would be chosen either.

I am glad that the BoT did what appears to be a fine job. We shall have to see, of course!

Surprise! A non-posting on Richard Rorty

2007-06-19T14:52:00.000-04:00

There has been a veritable Niagara of postings on the blogosphere about the passing of Richard Rorty. I tapped out a memory of meeting him while in grad school as a comment on Crooked Timber, as well as a posting on this blog immediately preceding this, so I too have added to the verbiage.

Some of the tributes are quite good. I particularly liked Habermas's understated and touching brief essay on the site Sign and Sight (cool play on words there).

Still, I don't recall nearly as many words offered for the passing of Derrida and certainly not for Gadamer (who, after all, was 102 when he died). I remember when Heidegger died in the mid 1970s, and of course that was pre Internet, but not as much ink was spilled.

What gives? Perhaps it is the suddenness of his death for some, though it was known by many though not me that he and Derrida shared the insidious disease of pancreatic cancer. Or is it that he was an anti-philosopher, who spoke across and in between disciplines, and did so with modesty and grace? I know that he annoyed many people, both the analytic philosophers he left behind as well as the neopragmatists of which he became the best known. RIP.

"...no one owns the truth and all have a right to be understood" - Rorty and Education in Our Times

2007-06-12T22:24:00.000-04:00

Bill Doll, LSU professor, friend, and board member of the journal I edit, sends this on about Richard Rorty, who died last week:

"It is hard to think of a current American philosopher who has had more effect on my thinking than Richard Rorty. His quote (from Milan Kundera) that "there exists a fascinating imaginative realm, born of the echo of God's laughter, where no one owns the truth and all have a right to be understood," stands as an ideal for all I do and strive to do."

"Obviously Kundera is talking of the novel and Rorty of social/political situations. I expropriate it for my vision of what education can, when well done, lead us toward."

Aletha Hall's MySpace Page

2007-06-09T22:16:00.001-04:00

Here is a cached version of the MySpace page of Aletha Hall, wife of Edwin Hall, the accused killer of teen Kelsey Smith. Scroll down to the friends, and the first is Edwin, aka Jack. Jack had problems ever since he was adopted at a young age, but these demons had been concealed from many, including neighbors, though his own MySpace page is dark and ominous (he liked the film A Clockwork Orange and said he was troubled). Aletha's friend Betty posted this on April 13: "You've known Jack longer than you've known your own brother?! Guess you 2 were meant to be together LOL Love ya!"

RIP Kelsey Smith, said by her father to be "scrubbed with sunshine."

James Peterson, Bucknell Professor: Great Job

2007-06-06T21:47:00.000-04:00

James Peterson, a Bucknell English professor, fared well in taking criticism from Geraldo, Sean Hannity, and even Alan Colmes, just now on "Hannity and Colmes" on Fox. I couldn't find a webpage for him, but he was described as a "hip hop scholar" on the tube, and the listing on the Bucknell page says that and a bit more, including that he is a Penn PhD.

The topic was Danny Glover's relationships with Hugo Chavez and John Edwards, but Peterson's well-reasoned and dispassionate points were hard to hear over the blather and chatter of the talking heads.

In Memory, Wondering Where My Outrage Is

2007-05-28T22:07:00.001-04:00

I haven't really stopped sobbing inside, and some outside, today. Another Memorial Day with people on both sides dying in Iraq. On CNN, Anderson Cooper's 360, tonight called Coming Home, is almost unbearable.

Out of Office

2007-05-24T21:33:00.000-04:00

Dear Professors,
Just a teeny suggestion. Don't list "your" secretary as a contact in your out of office message when you indicate you are not available. Chances are, that person doesn't care to be contacted about business only you can handle anyway. And the person who made the request isn't interested in talking to your secretary about your business. That person is writing to you. Just a teeny suggestion. And really, professor friends, how many of you "have" a secretary anyway?

Gotcha: I see a 95 Mustang in a Film about the First Iraq War!

2007-05-22T21:56:00.000-04:00

OCD-like behavior manifests itself in odd places. Take the "goofs" section in listings on imdb.com. While some of us may enjoy noting a 1995 magazine cover in a film set in the 1980s, it is a point of trivial conversation. There are folks who seem to make it their task to ferret out these anomalies. Here below are the "goofs" from the film The Squid and the Whale, recommended by my daughter after she saw it in an English class in college this past week. I wonder if a member of my dissertation committee, now long gone, lives on. We called him Professor Tidy Bowl.

Goofs for The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Anachronisms: At the end of the movie, Walt enters the newly renovated marine exhibit of the Museum of Natural History through the Hall of Biodiversity. The Hall of Biodiversity did not exist in 1986, it was added to the museum in approximately 2000, and the marine exhibit was renovated about a year later.

Anachronisms: In the middle of the movie, Walt is waiting on a subway platform. A train goes by, and you can glimpse an American flag on the side of the train. Flags decals weren't put on New York subway trains until after the terrorist attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001.

Anachronisms: Late model cars (ie, cars made after 1986) can be seen during most exterior shots.

Anachronisms: Bernie's car has a Statue of Liberty license plate, which didn't start appearing until 1986. But his car's registration says 1986 on it, which means it was issued in 1984, so it should have the older blue-on-yellow license plate.

Anachronisms: When the Berkmans are speaking to Walt's teacher about his plagiarism of the song "Hey You" by Pink Floyd during his performance during the talent show, there is a poster behind the teacher promoting reading featuring the WWE wrestler Hurricane. This wrestler made his WWE debut in 2001.

Anachronisms: Numerous late model vehicles are visible in many of the outdoor scenes.

Anachronisms: The shelves of the school library include at least two sets of reference books that were published after 1986: the 1997 Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara and the "Millennium 2000" edition of the World Book encyclopedia.

Anachronisms: When Walt visits his father in the hospital, there is a Purell Anti-Bacterial Hand Dispenser on the wall in the background.

Miscellaneous: Tennis pro Ilie Nastase's first name is misspelled as "Ille" on the poster in Frank's new room.

Audio/visual unsynchronized: Frank's mouth is closed when, in front of a bathroom mirror, he observes that he has the same bone structure as his mother. Joan is heard to speak in this same scene, and her mouth never moves either, as viewed in the mirror.

Miscellaneous: The Squid and the Whale display in the museum is in reality not nearly as well lit as it is in the movie. It is a very dark display meant to simulate the inky depths of the ocean. It probably would not show up on film as it really exists.

Anachronisms: The NYC subway cars shown throughout the film were introduced in the late '90s. The NYC subway cars of 1986 would be coated with graffiti both inside and out.

Anachronisms: The ambulance that takes Bernard away is painted FDNY red. EMS was not merged into the fire department until the '90s, and prior to that ambulances were painted in the EMS colors: orange, blue and white.

Anachronisms: The fence seen around the reservoir in Central Park was built in 2003. The Whale Room in the Museum of Natural History was renovated to look as in the movie in around 2004.

Anachronisms: When Walt is learning 'Hey You' from the record and from the book, the book has the song in standard music notation and in tablature, but tablature was just starting in the guitar magazines of the mid-1980s and the style of the book is also from a much later date.

Anachronisms: The ambulance that takes the father to the hospital after he has his heart attack has the logo of the twin towers on the back that were not used until after 11 September 2001

Anachronisms: The police officer who issues Jeff Daniels a ticket for double parking is wearing a Navy blue uniform. Those were introduced to the NYPD in 1994. The uniforms in 1986 were sky blue.

Anachronisms: Many of the cars parked on the street throughout the entire movie are cars made in the late 1990s as well as the early 21st century. These cars would not have been around in the 1980s.

Audio/visual unsynchronized: In the dinner scene at Bernard's new home, Frank asks him what happened to his old agent. Bernard responds with "Pissed me off," but in the shot he is clearly chewing rather than speaking.

Tabletop Studies Take Off

2007-05-14T20:55:00.000-04:00

The recent controversy at Purdue about whether a researcher achieved "tabletop"fusion hasn't stopped the interest in tabletop projects elsewhere on campus.

A group of literary theory professors in various departments in the College of Liberal Arts have been investigating tabletop deconstruction. "We believe if we bombard the author enough times, we can achieve the fusion of horizons beyond what Hans-Georg Gadamer would have predicted!" shouts a recent newsletter article.

Other projects elsewhere on campus are investigating tabletop nutrition (appropriately called the Center for Dining TableTop Inquiry), tabletop soil science (spreading soil samples from Purdue's project in Mongolia on a nano-sized table to detect minute changes in soil composition), as well as a promising venture in the School of Veterinary Medicine on tabletop pets for this year's holiday season.

Deficit Spending

2007-05-13T11:35:00.000-04:00

Input: Won award as outstanding "faculty fellow**" at the residence hall where I have only been associated for one year. Got certificate, pen, paperweight, various other items, and a mug with candy in it.

Output: While chewing on candy, broke tooth, thus necessitating a visit tomorrow to dentist (aka Wallet Vacuumer) for perhaps a $1300 crown.

As my brother's father-in-law, in his 90s and just now declining, says about aging and deteriorating health, "Whaddya gonna do?"

**Euphemism for "mostly staff program" as most faculty at places like Purdue don't spend much time with undergraduates.

Driftwood Horses

2007-05-12T17:28:00.000-04:00

Check out these amazing driftwood horses, by Heather Jansch. More here. Hat tip to my dear friend Manny in Tallahassee.

Mac Lack

2007-05-09T16:42:00.000-04:00

Apple Macintosh users are about 5% of the total. Maybe that is why they are so loud and boisterous about their machines, bleating on about how wonderful they are.

You can't right-click with a Mac. Yes, yes, you can get a special mouse or use a PC mouse and it will work. But there is no right-clicking on a Mac laptop's touchpad. Dumb. I right-click ALL the time. Would be lost without it.

Macs are, comparably, twice as expensive as PCs.

Vista has now closed the gap on operating systems.

There is less software for Macs. And it is more expensive.

So why, dear reader, do folks use Macs? Why do they spend twice as much money? It is because they are imprinted and enslaved to the machine. They like the image of being "cool." Macs are sexy, I grant it. They are nice to look at. But the simple fact that you have to hit the touchpad and another key to do a right-click eliminates them for me.

PCs, as the ads show, are for engineery nerds with glasses who calculate how much time you are wasting. OK. But Mac users swear that all that extra money is SO WORTH IT! Sorry, I don't get it. Besides, I live in the Midwest, so I don't worry about being seen as sexy!

Just Texted in to the E-mail and Land Lines are for Oldies Desk

2007-05-09T13:04:00.000-04:00

From the most e-mailed article in today's CHE (full article for subscribers only...c'mon CHE, get with it!)

Colleges are pressing ahead despite the bumps because they realize that cellphones are the best, and often the only, way to reach their students.

"We noticed that students were not logging into their campus e-mail for weeks at a time," says Arthur Downing, chief information officer at the City University of New York's Bernard M. Baruch College.

That observation was repeated at colleges across the country. E-mailed announcements of campus events, course changes, and financial-aid deadlines were being ignored wholesale.

So were dormitory-room land lines. "They just weren't plugging in," says Ronald G. Forsythe, vice president for commercialization at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, who oversees campus communications there. The reason, he adds, was that most students had already obtained cellphones in high school and brought them to the campus.

"Ninety-eight percent of our students come to campus with a cellphone already," says Edward V. Chapel, vice president for information technology at Montclair State University, in New Jersey.

On Fire

2007-05-08T23:07:00.000-04:00

Add high winds, 6% humidity, and Griffith Park in Los Angeles is on FIRE! Just incredible shots on CNN...There's that observatory from Rebel without a Cause, foregrounded in bright orange...

Last week, I was in Florida, which now is, as in the summer of 1998 when we did WDW...in FLAMES! Florida on Fire, Florida in Flames shouted the TV in our room.

Sein und IPod

2007-05-08T20:39:00.000-04:00

Philosophy for the ear-bud generation!

CFP: The iPod and Philosophy
The iPod has become an international cultural phenomenon. We enjoy iPods for a number of reasons, from the easily navigated soundtrack to our days to the clean, elegant design, and strangely pleasing tactile interface. But there seems to be special public devotion to the iPod above its competitors.
We invite abstracts of proposed contributions to this upcoming volume in Open Court's Popular Culture and Philosophy Series to examine the iPod phenomenon from philosophical and related points of view. Topics may include:
* Phenomenology of being-in-the-world-iPodded
* Personal Identity and the Music Library
* Fair Use and Digital Rights Management
* The ethics of filesharing
* Podcasting and artist-public relations
* Randomness and the meaning of the shuffle feature
* Class-distinction and Self-expression
* Is the iPod really "The Perfect Thing" (Levy, 2006)
* Apple and Orwell: marketing or metaphysics?
* Are iPod or Apple devotees a cult?
* Per-song vs. Per-album modes of aesthetic engagement
* What is the public sphere, exactly, and are we losing it?
* The meaning and role of the "cool" as exemplified by the iPod
* Marketing of "lifestyle" and the Culture Industry
Philosophical perspectives may be Analytic, Continental, Pragmatic, or Non-Western. Areas which we expect will be of particular interest include Philosophy of Technology, Critical Theory, Phenomenology, Aesthetics, and Social/Political, but we strongly encourage you to be creative, and welcome submissions from less obvious areas.
Submissions may address the iPod by way of philosophy, or philosophy by way of the iPod (or both).
The Popular Culture and Philosophy series engages with an intellectually curious general public. Papers will be written for a non-academic audience, and will be around 12 to 20 pages total.
Please send a 300-400 word abstract and CV to d.e.wittkower@gmail.com before June 22nd, 2007.

Viva La France!

2007-05-07T20:45:00.000-04:00

France A. Córdova takes the stage at Loeb Playhouse this afternoon, after being named as Purdue's 11th President! More here.

Now chancellor of UC Riverside, she starts in August. Her speech and Q&A were marvelous, and exciting to many of us. She spoke of a more inclusive campus, and said repeatedly she was a listener. She has an easy grace and a sense of humor. A petite woman with a terrific smile.

A former NASA space scientist and professor of physics, she has been a department head at Penn State and vice chancellor for research at UC Santa Barbara. The oldest of 12 children, Córdova is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and a fifth-generation Irish-American. She earned her undergraduate degree in English from Stanford, and decided afterwards to pursue her longstanding interest in science by getting a PhD in physics at Cal Tech.

She was inspired as a young woman by Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon in July 1969. Armstrong is a Purdue alumnus, and a new, dramatic, engineering building named after him is being finished on the north end of campus.

. Armstrong Hall

Purdue Jet Heads for California

2007-05-05T23:01:00.000-04:00

The Purdue jet left West Lafayette for California today, according to the nightly news. That can only mean that it is picking up our next president.

Looks like France Córdova, chancellor at UC Riverside, is set to be named Purdue's 11th president on Monday afternoon, and then introduced to the community at a reception at the Purdue Memorial Union.

One of 12 children, she has a bachelor's in English from Stanford, and a PhD in physics from Cal Tech. It is very exciting to think that Purdue will have its first female president, and a Latina too! Add to that my new colleague, Nathalia Jaramillo, now finishing her dissertation under Peter McLaren at UCLA, shares some of the same background.

(Dear reader, you would have to spend time in the Midwest, in Indiana, at an enormous land grant university, perhaps even to have read the inspiration for this blog, Jane Smiley's novel Moo, to understand the sea change this represents.)

Derby Daze

2007-05-05T16:40:00.000-04:00

Liveblogging the Derby a bit. As someone who spends a fair amount of time with animal behaviorists and other people involved in the human-animal relations area, I must admit, I do watch the Derby usually, but I watch with a bit of sadness too.

Here we are, humans, but animals too, carrying on and watching horses do what WE want them to do. All the while displaying our hats (Jenny McCarthy, Jennifer Tilly, the Queen too) and our cleavage (Tilly and McCarthy again), as well as the absurd "entourages" of brand name products like Michael Jordan, and the blinged NFL stars here to be seen in their shades and expensive suits. Isn't this all a bit unseemly and arrogant of humans?

Update: Just love watching those horses run, but still. Nice job, Street Sense.

Just in to the Computer as Doorstop Desk

2007-05-05T10:43:00.000-04:00

From Arts and Letters Daily:

A laptop for every student was to be the key to success in schools for the 21st century. That's what the experts told us... more

Relief

2007-04-30T12:53:00.000-04:00

The Chronicle has a section this week on college admissions, complete with the usual suspects: profiles of high-powered HS seniors who don't get into their first-choice colleges, context-setting remarks by thoughtful admissions officers, and so forth. A good section, worth a careful read, especially as I am a keen observer of higher education, a former Ivy admissions officer, and the parent of a college senior.

The last gives me relief. Our only child got into her first-choice university and program, and will graduate in June. She has enjoyed her time there and has done well.

I breathe a bit more easily now, for here is what I will NOT ever be doing: summer trips to visit colleges and sitting through bland information sessions and tours (both of which I have given); applying to college; hurrying on tax forms in order to apply for financial aid; moving endless boxes and bulky items up stairs and down stairs to dorm rooms and apartments, and so on. You get the picture. I won't miss any of that, quite frankly. I will miss going to visit her at what is my graduate alma mater, and making those connections periodically.

Rush says Cho is a Liberal, and that explains it

2007-04-28T10:08:00.000-04:00

More sensationalist nonsense about Va Tech, from Rush Limbaugh, who claims Cho was a liberal. Why, Rush? Because Cho railed against wealth, so his mind must have been poisoned by liberals.

I Pity The Fool!

2007-04-27T22:16:00.000-04:00

The Mr. T Virtual Playset

Haircuts

2007-04-27T16:14:00.000-04:00

Liveblogging CNN. Comment on John Edwards's $400 haircut by Wolf Blitzer and a regular guy who comments, crusty older guy (COG), can't recall his name, let's call him COG (update: COG = Jack Cafferty).

COG: I don't pay anything near $400 for a haircut, I am sure I pay less than you Wolf, based on amount of hair.

Wolf: I pay $35, including a tip.

COG: I have been going to the same person in Jersey for 20 years, I pay $20.

AGR: Well, I pay around $12 here in north central Indianer, including tip, at Borics, and I have more hair than both of these fellers.

Just in to the Email is for Old People Desk

2007-04-26T14:17:00.000-04:00

Purdue official being interviewed on WBAA AM now, regarding using Facebook to notify students about campus emergencies.

85% of Purdue students belong to Facebook
Most students check Facebook up to 6 times a day
Students may check their email once a day, if that

Art Caplan: Fix the Mental-Health Crisis

2007-04-23T20:44:00.000-04:00

Wise, and passionate, words from well-known Penn ethicist Art Caplan. Here's a snippet, but read on in this powerful commentary.

It is not just guns. In all my life I never thought I would write those words after a massacre involving a mass murder with a gun. But a week’s worth of intense media coverage of the heinous murders of students and faculty at Virginia Tech and analyses focusing on guns by innumerable experts has left me furious.

I don’t think the expert wisdom is even close to understanding what must be done to try and prevent this type of tragedy in the future. It is not just guns. We need to fix a broken, abandoned and pathetic system of mental-health care.

You Go Girl!

2007-04-23T10:43:00.000-04:00

Junior Liz Lehmann first woman to win 50th anniversary Purdue Grand Prix (kart race on big blowout spring weekend, spectacular weather). Story here.

Epstein's Tocqueville

2007-04-22T22:16:00.000-04:00

Just finishing Joseph Epstein's wonderful "Eminent Lives" bio of Alexis de Tocqueville. I awaited Epstein's "Aristides" column with eagerness each quarter when he was editor of The American Scholar. For such is why I read him with enthusiasm:

"A wise man once said that neither marriage nor bachelorhood was a fit solution. (Let us leave aside for now what, precisely, is the problem.) Certainly neither was a solution for a man as high-strung and imaginative as Tocqueville. His biographers tell a story about his wife's habit of eating so slowly that one day, unable to bide it any longer, he rose from his chair, took her plate of pâté, and dashed it to the floor. (She, without a change of expression, is said insouciantly to have ordered another.) (Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide, p. 66)

A Jeffersonian Life

2007-04-22T20:43:00.000-04:00

Albert Borgmann, a philosopher at the University of Montana, writes about a "Jeffersonian life" as an ideal in his new book, Real American Ethics (Chicago, 2006).

"The dinner table is that focal thing, the center of grace where we can rest the case of our lives...The particular character of our ethics comes into focus through the American reality that is gathered in a household and at the table. We can think of that gathering as a Jeffersonian life" (p. 197).

He goes on: " The beginning of wisdom is to be broadly familiar with the width and depth of American culture and to realize deeply one of its possibilities at the dinner table...Although the celebration of dinner should be wholehearted, it cannot be unreserved. Celebration has to imply the determination to widen the circle of well-being until it includes everyone in this country and on earth.

Fortitude has to go ahead of dining and follow it. The temptation of yielding to the comforts of fast food and relaxing entertainment is always there...

Once retired, Jefferson was in the happy situation of having made the exercise of fortitude that is such a challenge for us a normal part of his domestic life. "From breakfast, or noon at latest, to dinner," he wrote to Dr. Benjamin Rush in 1811, "I am mostly on horseback, attending to my farm or other concerns, which I find healthy to my body, mind, and affairs""(pp. 199-200).

LIve Blogging Larry King: Va Tech

2007-04-20T21:50:00.000-04:00

"I think we need to start a dialogue about mental illness in America."
- Dr. Phil

Wise words...

Very Sensible End of Semester Procedures at Va Tech

2007-04-20T10:33:00.000-04:00

Classes will resume on Monday, April 23, 2007. The first day of class will involve broad ranging discussion of these events from various perspectives. There will also be discussion of the options, which are available to students concerning their completion of the semester. Information about the options will also be made available online. Classes will be continued with the elimination of one week of work. Students will have the option of requesting, on a course by course basis, that the semester grade be based on the faculty evaluation of:

Materials which have already been submitted for grade prior to April 16, or
The already submitted material plus any other assigned material which the student wishes to submit for grade, or
The material that would have been submitted for grade upon regular completion of the course.

How to get from New York to London

2007-04-18T22:44:00.000-04:00

1. go to (http://www.google.com/)
2. click on "maps"
3. click on "get directions"
4. type "New York, NY" in the first box (the "from" box)
5. type "London" in the second box (the "to" box)
6. press on "get directions" button
7. scroll down to step #23

Hat tip to Bob and Kathy Evans...

Daylight Causes Warming

2007-04-18T20:13:00.000-04:00

A little levity in these dark times. Hat tip to Manny in Tallahassee.

Thank you Braveheart John Derbyshire

2007-04-18T10:32:00.000-04:00

This is from Nick Burbules's Progressive Blog Digest today. I am speechless. Thanks to Nick for making the comment.

The kind of people they are

[John Derbyshire, NRO] Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake-one of them reportedly a .22. At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage-your chances aren't bad. Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes-and like most cliches. It's true-none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.

[NB: Imagine all the poor kids already questioning themselves and feeling guilty that they didn't do more to stop it. Nice to have someone writing from the luxury of a safe distance what a Great Hero HE would have been under the circumstances.]

Just in to the Email is for Old People Desk

2007-04-18T09:10:00.000-04:00

"Virginia Tech officials sent out e-mail alerts about a shooting rampage that killed more than 30 people at its campus in Blacksburg, Va. But few people there received them. Students have stopped relying on e-mail for information, say many college administrators. That trend is prompting colleges to try new technology to immediately notify everyone on a campus of an emergency. Many of the new services are built around the ubiquitous cellphone."

From the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription only)

Hokie Pride

2007-04-17T21:29:00.000-04:00

I have been glued to the coverage (NPR, Fox, CNN, CBS) on the massacre at Virginia Tech. One of my closest personal and professional friends is a faculty member there. He is safe.

We edited a book manuscript (The Educational Conversation: Closing the Gap, SUNY 1995) and ate at the Hokie House in between sessions at the computer. We rafted on the nearby New River, second oldest in the world, to clear our minds for the editing and conceptualizing work we did over those days.

My friend's office looks out directly upon the drill field from War Memorial Hall.

I love that part of the country, and I fondly think about Blacksburg, Tech, and the southern Appalachians.

The Eyes of Speedo

2007-04-16T21:09:00.000-04:00

This is from Marc Bekoff's new book, The Emotional Lives of Animals. I contributed to one of Marc's publishing projects, and in reading the book now, I find it comforting, and hopeful, in this time of dark news from Blacksburg VA.

This revelation about his career direction is particularly moving. I know that Marc thinks about Speedo all the time, and I am most grateful for his sharing of this story.

"In fact, the eyes of a cat were instrumental in my development as a scientist. A doctoral research project I was once involved in required us to kill the cats we were studying. However, when I went to get “Speedo,” a very intelligent cat that I’d secretly named – secretly, because we weren’t supposed to name “subjects” – for the final exit from his cage, his fearlessness disappeared as if he knew that this was his last journey. As I picked him up, he looked at me and asked, “Why me?” Tears came to my eyes. He wouldn’t break his piercing stare. Though I followed through with what I was supposed to do and killed him, it broke my heart to do so. To this day I remember his unwavering eyes – they told the whole story of the interminable pain and indignity he had endured. Others in the program tried to reassure me that it was all worth it, but I never recovered from that experience.

So I left the program and entered another one in which naming was not only permitted but actively encouraged, and I resolved not to conduct research that involved intentionally inflicting pain or causing the death of another being." (p. 51)

Nifong Hearing at NC Bar, Fayetteville Street, Raleigh NC

2007-04-13T16:54:00.000-04:00

Doin' NSF research ethics in Raleigh
Takin' a break, to get a view of a tree
Down the street, whad ya think I see?
A Mike Nifong hearing media extravangazee!

Fun Couples

2007-04-07T22:54:00.000-04:00

Fun Couple? Nah, but when are we EVER gonna see another like him?

Yeah, I can see Lindsay and Jared playing THIS fun couple...bring it on!

A Blog to Watch

2007-04-07T16:01:00.001-04:00

Hat tip to Barb Stengel, collaborator at Education Policy Blog, the Weblog Award finalist in 2006 for Best Education Blog. Nick Burbules, Craig Cunningham, and I started EPB, and here is further notice of it, from the ASCD blog In Service.

New Tenure Policy at Yale

2007-04-06T09:01:00.000-04:00

From CNN, hat tip to Corax:

"What's Become of the Swab of Dannielynn?"

2007-03-28T22:06:00.000-04:00

Greta Van Susteren queries the news on Fox right now...I am one of the 12% of Bluesters who watch the channel of Sean, Bill, and Ann (HT to Nick Burbules for letting me know Fox's audience is 88% Red).

OK, back to it, liveblogging: What happened to that swab? It is DEGRADING to swab that child!

A Hoosier on how difficult it is to write something good

2007-03-28T21:33:00.000-04:00

John Mellencamp, 2 minute interview clip from recent Charlie Rose. He writes "10-15K songs to get one good one" and new album started with 50 songs whittled to 11.

Just in to the Culture of Privilege Desk: Spring Break Division

2007-03-25T00:12:00.000-04:00

What Are Universities For?

By Shmuley Boteach

Jerusalem Post

Here's the beginning snippet:

If there is one event that sums up all that is wrong with American university life, it is spring break, which was celebrated last week. I was lecturing in Miami Beach, where I grew up, and was walking on the city's famed boardwalk. Thousands of young college students - all in their late teens and early 20s - were lounging on the sand.

It was a sobering sight. The female students' beach attire was close to non-existent. Time was when the bikini was considered revealing. Today it is only for prudes and the modestly attired. These young women were already perfecting their role as eye candy for men. Is this what they were learning in college?

Western educational life revolves around getting into a good college. But the time has come for a fundamental reevaluation of whether our children progress or regress at university. The simple fact is that the American campus is not a very healthy place and belies its description as a place of "higher" education.

HT to Drew Koch.

Chez Hoosier

2007-03-24T21:05:00.000-04:00

But do they serve corn dogs? Café Indiana, in Paris (Le France, not Illinois or Texas). HT to Corax.

Just in to the Culture of Privilege Desk: Building Character While Feeling Like an Outsider Division...

2007-03-15T16:57:00.000-04:00

Attracting Students of All Incomes...from the Daily Northwestern last month.

Here's a snippet, about junior Kristi St. Charles, who is spending her spring break filling out five different loan applications, and covers the EFC (expected family contribution) herself:

St. Charles considers herself a minority at NU, a campus where 62 percent of students from this year's entering class come from families with estimated annual incomes of $100,000 or more. When her friends come back to school in the fall with extra spending cash from summer jobs, St. Charles usually has just paid her fall tuition bill with money she made working 40 to 50 hours a week at a law firm near her Milwaukee home.

"There are times when I feel I can't relate to some of my friends," St. Charles said. "But we usually just don't talk about money or any of that."

Big tabs, no worries

Heading out to local bars like 1800 Club, 1800 Sherman Ave., or the Mark 2 Lounge, 7436 1/2 N. Western Ave., is a typical Thursday activity for St. Charles. But the amount of money some of her friends spend makes her realize how atypical her situation is."People just open up tabs when we go out and don't really worry," St. Charles said. "They'll spend like $200 and it'll go on their parents' credit card without giving it a second thought."

Essai: A Letter to AMac (Re Duke Lacrosse Context)

2007-03-15T00:05:00.000-04:00

Here is my “essai,” more a letter to a commenter, and it will need to stand as my final word on the context of the Duke lacrosse situation. My response to AMac’s civil query, now expunged along with the trolls’ venom, posts from my friends, and my own comments, is here now slightly edited. Some of this below appeared already tonight in an update to my “Perfect Storm” post. I haven't time, interest, or energy for more and spring break is now half over.

AMac,

I appreciate your suggestion that I read more about the Duke case. I have stated here several times that I will do so. I may disappoint you, because though I have good intentions, I probably won't do much more than an hour or so. When the situation was made public, I read quite a bit about it, and also watched mostly Fox News coverage, for what seemed like an eternity. I work also in American Studies here at Purdue, and the Duke case _in its wider social and cultural context_ is of interest to faculty and students in that interdisciplinary area.

I guess I have to say it again: I am not as interested in this particular situation as I am in the broader cultural issues surrounding it in current higher education, and the history of higher education. I stated as much in an original posting, and my comment upon Penn Professor Sanday's column in Inside Higher Ed supports this.

However, I will try, in limited time and words now, to give some shorthand to my thinking and explain some of the terms I have used, based upon more than average knowledge (though not first-hand or even Durham- or Duke-centric) of the issues of the case and surrounding the case.

Culture of privilege: By this I mean students who attend elite private institutions. That includes me for both graduate and undergraduate. I have worked in higher education since 1982, when I received my PhD, mostly in state institutions, and since 1994, at a Big Ten land-grant institution with a far different culture than my graduate or undergraduate alma maters.

I like where I work, and I see readily that I am the recipient of good fortune with which I didn't have anything to do (third-generation Ivy legacy, professional and adequately paid parents, a comfortable home and decent K-12 public schools, numerous and expensive camps and lessons, and so forth). I know about places like Duke from the inside, as a student years ago and as a former Ivy admissions officer. I don't know Duke much, having visited the campus only two or three times. I worked in North Carolina for eight years, but at a state institution far removed in distance and status from Duke's orbit. Most North Carolinians are indifferent to Duke, so I learned little about the university from people I met in that state.

Culture of violence: By this I am talking about America. It is a violent country, historically and presently. As an American, I am part of that culture. So are students at Duke. Check out some of the accounts of the incident, particularly what was said about the strippers by those present, and also what has been said subsequently on at least one other site I have seen. The comments there reveal much about this culture of violence, IMHO, as well as a lack of civility rampant in many internet forums.

Simmering gang rape: What do you get when a group of young, virile men hire a stripper to excite them sexually amidst profuse alcohol? When I simmer something on a stove, it is slowly cooking, heating along, but if I were to turn up the heat slightly, it would boil over.

Sneer quotes around the word fact: I use quotes around fact to indicate my belief that all facts are provisional warrants. I am not sneering at you or anyone, but merely emphasizing that I see facts as conditional and open for discussion. I also use quotes to indicate my concern that these so-called "facts" be arrogated by one particular viewpoint, with what appears to me to be its attendant literalism and epistemological imperialism.

- A. G.

Defend East Lansing to the Last Man!

2007-03-12T23:42:00.000-04:00

Our local paper had a review of the boffo box office hard body swords and sandals epic, 300, now playing at your village barniplex. The author quipped that "Spartans!" is shouted so often you think you are at a Michigan State pep rally.

Rally on, CGI warriors, flash those glutes and six pack of Retsina abs!

Just In To The Culture of Privilege Desk: Lost Mail Division...

2007-03-12T11:33:00.000-04:00

...alas, from fall of 2003...postal delays...from the Northwestern Chronicle.

Freshman arrested for fabricating hate crimes

Posted 11-18-2003, 17:22 by David Weigel

Northwestern student Jaime "Xander" Saide, who claimed last week to be the victim of racist attacks, has admitted to Evanston police that his story was fiction. He was arrested Monday and charged on two counts of felony disorderly conduct for filing false police reports.

"I become really upset when childish pranks divert police resources away from investigations," said Evanston Police Chief Frank Kaminski on Tuesday. "I am absolutely appalled when such pranks instill fear into our community, and I will do everything in my power to ensure this case is carried to its conclusion."

Vice President for Student Affairs William J. Banis said in a statement that Northwestern "will respond appropriately to these developments," but did not disclose what actions are being taken.

"These fabricated incidents inflamed and upset the entire campus community needlessly,' Banis said in the statement. "At the same time, we are, of course, concerned about the health and well being of all of our students, including Xander Saide."

Saide, a freshman in the School of Communication, filed a police report on Nov. 5 and claimed that the words "Die Spic" had been written on his wall. Three days later, he told police that he had been attacked from behind and held at knifepoint while walking to his dorm. Saide told the Daily Northwestern that attackers had threatened him and said "Spic, we didn't run away this time."

Police later discovered that Saide had fabricated both incidents.

"When you're an investigator, you deal with people every day, and you develop gut feelings," Kaminski said. He told reporters that Saide confessed after the story fell apart.

The charges against Saide come after a week of heated campus activism. On Nov. 9, student leaders met to organize a three-part anti-hate campaign. On Nov. 11, minority students were encouraged to wear black clothing and maintain a vow of silence. The next day, all students were encouraged to wear black before changing into Northwestern attire and rallying at The Rock, a south campus landmark. More than 500 students came to the rally to cheer speakers, including Saide.

"The feeling of that knife is still with me right now," he said in a speech that was broadcast on local TV news.

When asked why Saide might have fabricated the police reports, Kaminski suggested that he wanted to "bring attention to himself and his cause." He did not repeat what was said between Saide and police on Monday.

Just In To The Culture of Violence: Higher Education Desk

2007-03-12T10:10:00.000-04:00

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Facebook Group Created by Football Player Ignites Furor at U. of Southern California

A Facebook group called “White Nation,” which featured a graphic of a black infant in handcuffs and the caption, “Arrest black babies before they become criminals,” has sparked outrage on the campus of the University of Southern California, the student newspaper, the Daily Trojan, reported.
Clay Matthews, the football player who created the group, later said he had no racist intent and apologized for an error in judgment.
The controversial group was brought into the limelight by another student, Stefanie Gopaul, a freshman majoring in psychology. Ms. Gopaul created a rival group called “Clay Matthews (USC football player) expresses anti-black sentiment.” She said she believed the explanation that the “White Nation” group was intended as an inside joke among athletes, but still thought its content was inappropriate.

Delbanco's Scandals of Higher Education

2007-03-12T10:03:00.000-04:00

I have this long NYRB essay review of several books on higher education, cited widely already, on my list to read next. I know a bit about the author, as he wrote an absorbing (intellectual, literary, and cultural) biography of Herman Melville I finished a few months ago.

Scandals of Higher Education By Andrew Delbanco

It is hardly surprising that lots of rich kids go to America's richest colleges. It has always been so. But today's students are richer on average than their predecessors. Between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, in a sample of eleven prestigious colleges, the percentage of students from families in the bottom quartile of national family income remained roughly steady— around 10 percent. During the same period the percentage of students from the top quartile rose sharply, from a little more than one third to fully half. If the upscale shops and restaurants near campus are any indication, the trend has continued if not accelerated.

A Glimpse into the Life of David Eggers

2007-03-12T09:52:00.000-04:00

I don't know Eggers personally nor have I read his books, but he appears to have lived a well-led life that I find inspiring. From Garrison Keillor's Writers' Almanac this morning:

It's the birthday of the writer and editor Dave Eggers, (books by this author) born in Boston (1970). He grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, a city that was famous when he was growing up for having been the setting for the movie Ordinary People. He originally wanted to be a cartoonist, but when he was in high school, he worked on a project where he had to write and illustrate his own book. He found that he loved all aspects of the process, from writing to designing the layout of the book. He went on to study art and journalism at the University of Illinois, and it was while he was in college that his mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Then, just after his mother went through severe stomach surgery, his father was diagnosed with brain cancer. Six months later, both of his parents were dead. Eggers was just 21 years old.

Of the experience of losing both of his parents so suddenly, Eggers later said, "On the one hand you are so completely bewildered that something so surreal and incomprehensible could happen. At the same time, suddenly the limitations or hesitations that you might have imposed on yourself fall away. There's a weird, optimistic recklessness that could easily be construed as nihilism but is really the opposite. You see that there is a beginning and an end and that you have only a certain amount of time to act. And you want to get started."

Eggers had to drop out of college to become the guardian of his 15-year-old younger brother. They moved to San Francisco, and Eggers used the insurance money from his parents' deaths to start his own magazine with some high school friends. They called it Might Magazine. It only lasted for 16 issues. But Eggers went on to start a new literary journal called Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. He wanted to experiment with graphic design and printing techniques, so he changed the format of the journal for every issue. One issue consisted of 14 individually bound pamphlets. Another issue included a music CD with a different piece of music composed specifically to accompany each piece in the journal.

All the while that he was starting up these magazines, Dave Eggers was staying up late at night trying to write a book about the death of his parents and the effect that it had on his life. That book grew into his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which became a big best-seller in 2000.

Eggers has gone on to write a collection of short stories, How We Are Hungry (2004), and two novels: You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002) and What Is the What (2006). He also founded a writing center for young people in San Francisco called 826 Valencia, which has grown into a national organization designed to help and encourage young people to write.

Blogging and Dialogue

2007-03-11T20:30:00.000-04:00

Thoughtful comment from my friend Len Waks on today's postings on the cultural context of the Duke lacrosse issues.

I wonder what you make of this event, now that you are able to step back from it a bit.

Is this (a) simply a built in danger (??) of blogging?

Or (b) is it actually a good thing to get your ideas out, even if they generate this sort of Ann Coulter/ Rush Limbaugh reaction??

Or (c)that the only likely reaction is of this sort, given that Ann-Rush have a built up response readiness while neither the left nor any reasonable public does?

Or (d) that it's a good thing even if only the pre-organized right replies, given that this gives them a pressure valve so they can get this off their chest, reveal their naked unloveliness in a way which does little actual harm??

Or what??

The Dewey Society commission on social issues actually has an interest in the answer to this question. Let's think about it leading up to AERA and the JDS CSI workshop on Wednesday 4/11.

Perfect Storm

2007-03-11T07:04:00.000-04:00

I got a barrage of comments greeting me this morning on my Duke lax case posting from last week. As a good blogger, I figured it must have spread out in cyberland somehow beyond my usual readership.

I exchanged emails in the last few days with a professor here, who copied a KC Johnson. I hit "reply all" to this professor whom I don't know. He took me to task for my apparent lack of sensitivity to the “facts” of the Duke case (even though I was commenting on another issue entirely, to wit, the culture of violence and privilege.)

Turns out that KC Johnson is a history professor at Brooklyn College who devotes a blog, Durham-in-Wonderland, to this case. I now appear in a posting, and his (or her?) acolytes have rained down on my head in comments to my original post.

I find it interesting that defenders of the Duke situation focus upon the miscarriage of justice by Nifong and others, rather than on the culture that spawned this situation in the first place. There is much to criticize in Nifong and the way the legal battle has been waged, I will grant that. Furthermore, the Purdue professor who took me to task does bring up some good points, in particular, by suggesting that the fallout from the case has more than tarnished a few lives. I probably didn't give that enough thought in my original posting.

*UPDATE 3/14: I have decided that a miscarriage of justice has occurred, Nifong appears to be mostly at fault with that, and some lives are already scarred and we are not at the end of it. I don't know enough about the gang of 88 or the potbangers or whatever but it appears from my scant knowledge that excess occurred with these groups, and I don't condone some of their tactics. But I do support their efforts to bring the wider issues to the fore. To wit...

...in contrast to the trolls I expunged from this blog, I stand by my views on a culture of violence, privilege and so forth, manifest at Duke and many other places in an increasingly violent, stratified, and uncaring America. In my mind, the trolls who spewed their anonymous venom here made the point without me having to do so.

This is not particularly controversial but self-evident to anyone who looks around America with an inquiring mind. Obviously there are wonderful people and wonderful things happening all over the country, ideas and movements that give me hope. The Duke lacrosse situation of last year is not one of them.

These ideas, not original to me, appear to be hard to convey, at least in this blog. I probably will post one more "essai" (French for "attempt," from Montaigne, that great skeptic I admire, well before pomo). I won't clarify or elaborate further on these ideas, as I have done so already.

The Duke lacrosse trolls focus upon the "no rape occurred" item as zealots. Okay, in examining the evidence available to me I believe no rape occurred. The prosecution appears to have withheld exculpatory evidence. But the trolls haven't addressed the probablility of sexual assault, demeaning behavior, racism, and execrable conduct reported upon that evening. That isn't what nice boys do, they shout in horror, we all know they are wonderful, even sons of a policeman and firefighters. It is that low life stripper (hired by the nice boys) who is to blame for whatever happened.

As a fraternity member and alumnus of the college whose notorious fraternity scene inspired "Animal House," I never witnessed or heard of behavior as extreme as the Duke lax house (lots came extremely close, however). It is patently evident to me from accounts from many sources (and I read widely, and watched right-wing oriented Fox News mostly on this, as Fox covers such cases ad nauseam, and I wanted to get the complete, ad nauseam look at it a year ago), the culture of violence and privilege conspired to create an atmosphere of simmering gang rape.

SIMMERING. As in it is already cooking along. Be careful to not turn up the heat too much, as a boil-over could occur. The boil-over didn't occur. But plenty of hands got scalded and some badly burned, and the healing will go on for a long time, and perhaps healing will never fully occur for some.

A Man After My Own Heart...

2007-03-08T14:21:00.000-05:00

"I’ve never regretted not having sons. And perhaps there is even some relief, though I’d never thought of it in those terms until you posed the question. A father of sons is supposed to know what he’s doing, whereas a father of daughters is entitled to be incompetent."

-Richard Russo, author of Straight Man, Empire Falls, and other novels.

Straight Man is one of my all time faves, and a centerpiece of my higher ed in film and fiction class that spawned this blog.

Ann Coulter, the latest...

2007-03-07T10:24:00.000-05:00

Good analysis from Andrew Sullivan of the latest bile from the miserable Ann Coulter (hat tip to Nick Burbules):

"I watched Ann Coulter last night in the gayest way I could. I was on a stairmaster at a gym, slack-jawed at her proud defense of calling someone a "faggot" on the same stage as presidential candidates and as an icon of today's conservative movement. The way in which Fox News and Sean Hannity and, even more repulsively, Pat Cadell, shilled for her was a new low for Fox, I think - and for what remains of decent conservatism. "We're all friends here," Hannity chuckled at the end. Yes, they were. And no faggots were on the show to defend themselves. That's fair and balanced. . . . I was in the room [at the CPAC conference], so I felt the atmosphere personally. It was an ugly atmosphere, designed to make any gay man or woman in the room feel marginalized and despised. To put it simply, either conservatism is happy to be associated with that atmosphere, or it isn't. I think the response so far suggests that the conservative elites don't want to go there, but the base has already been there for a very long time. (That's why this affair is so revealing, because it is showing which elites want to pander to bigots, and which do not.) . . . The word "faggot" is used for two reasons: to identify and demonize a gay man; and to threaten a straight man with being reduced to the social pariah status of a gay man. Coulter chose the latter use of the slur, its most potent and common form. She knew why Edwards qualified. He's pretty, he has flowing locks, he's young-looking. He is exactly the kind of straight guy who is targeted as a "faggot" by his straight peers. This, Ms Coulter, is real social policing by speech. And that's what she was doing: trying to delegitimize and feminize a man by calling him a faggot. It happens every day. It's how insecure or bigoted straight men police their world to keep the homos out. And for the slur to work, it must logically accept the premise that gay men are weak, effeminate, wusses, sissies, and the rest. A sane gay man has two responses to this, I think. The first is that there is nothing wrong with effeminacy or effeminate gay men - and certainly nothing weak about many of them. In the plague years, I saw countless nelly sissies face HIV and AIDS with as much courage and steel as any warrior on earth. You want to meet someone with balls? Find a drag queen. The courage of many gay men every day in facing down hatred and scorn and derision to live lives of dignity and integrity is not a sign of being a wuss or somehow weak. We have as much and maybe more courage than many - because we have had to acquire it to survive. And that is especially true of gay men whose effeminacy may not make them able to pass as straight - the very people Coulter seeks to demonize. The conflation of effeminacy with weakness, and of gayness with weakness, is what Coulter calculatedly asserted. This was not a joke. It was an attack. Secondly, gay men are not all effeminate. In the last couple of weeks, we have seen a leading NBA player and a Marine come out to tell their stories. I'd like to hear Coulter tell Amaechi and Alva that they are sissies and wusses. A man in uniform who just lost a leg for his country is a sissy? The first American serviceman to be wounded in Iraq is a wuss? What Coulter did, in her callow, empty way, was to accuse John Edwards of not being a real man. To do so, she asserted that gay men are not real men either. The emasculation of men in minority groups is an ancient trope of the vilest bigotry. Why was it wrong, after all, for white men to call African-American men "boys"? Because it robbed them of the dignity of their masculinity. And that's what Coulter did last Friday to gays. She said - and conservatives applauded - that I and so many others are not men. We are men, Ann. . ."

And, an update from my friend Alan: "I think Ann C. should be used for medical research except the results would not be necessarily useful for issues facing real people or other animals. Maybe at her death bed she'll explain that her whole life has been a psychology experiment to see just how much she could get away with and in fact she's a socially liberal lesbian."

March Dumbness

2007-03-05T21:13:00.000-05:00

Ah, March madness is upon us...I do enjoy it, especially just watching the Purdue women (watching meaning in between doing email and sorting articles and books) beat Ohio State in the Big 10 tournament championship game. Now if the men can make a run in their tourney this weekend...

But it is also time for dopey ads. Like the one for DQ, where the three chums around the table don't exhale lest they breathe spice-induced fire on each other (surprise, they do at ad's end).

Or the ad where a dadly figure sternly lectures sub par cleaning implements (in favor of a Swiffer duster I vaguely recall).

Of course, what would televised sports be without a raft of male fantasy ads, such as the chiseled stud who smears Gillette shaving gel on his face, swipes a blade over his cheeks, and is then kissed by a pouting beauty.

The Four Bluffton University Students, in more innocent times

2007-03-03T06:58:00.000-05:00

Site with their photographs.

Bluffton University is located in a small town an hour south of Toledo, and is affiliated with the Mennonite Church. The baseball team was enroute to spring games in Florida, the first to be with Eastern Mennonite University, when their bus took an exit mistakenly, at full speed, crashing through a bridge wall and falling onto I75 in Atlanta. These four students were killed as were the bus driver and his wife.

Memento mori.

The Culture of Violence and Privilege Behind the Duke Lacrosse Case

2007-03-02T07:03:00.000-05:00

Terrific commentary in Inside Higher Ed this morning on the culture of violence and privilege behind the Duke lacrosse case. And for all those who think Tom Wolfe's campus novel I am Charlotte Simmons (that I taught a year ago and will again in a few weeks to my graduate class) doesn't capture life on today's college campuses...read on. Of course this is not just Duke, nor just lacrosse. It is just the latest, most egregious, and shameful example of young privileged men behaving badly, how elemental urges (bonding like organized crime) take over at an elite liberal arts environment that is fragile and impotent to prevent such. Here's a snippet:

The scenario is one of privileged males proving their manhood by staging live porno shows for one another involving a wounded young woman. She is the duck or the quail raised and put in place for the hunter. Who she is doesn’t matter and she is quickly forgotten after it is all over – sloughed off like a used condom. The event operates to glue the male group as a unified entity; it establishes fraternal bonding and helps boys to make the transition to their vision of a powerful manhood — in unity against women; one against the world. The patriarchal bonding functions a little like bonding in organized crime circles — generating a sense of family and establishing mutual aid connections that will last a lifetime.

Now I know why I needed a sabbatical to read Don Quixote...

2007-03-01T23:08:00.000-05:00

This from a May 2006 Slate column on bookstores, reading, and such by econo-blogger and George Mason professor Tyler Cowen. I particularly like this paragraph from the article, for I find myself often distracted while reading. I sometimes don't know where to start, I have so much I am reading at the same time, and so much more I want to read.

The real change in the book market is not the big guy vs. the little guy, or chain vs. indie stores. Rather, it's the reader's greater impatience, a symptom of our amazing literary (and televisual) plenitude. In the modern world we are more pressed for time, and we face a greater diversity of cultural choices. It was easy to finish Tolstoy's War and Peace when there were few other books around and it was hard to find them. Today, finishing it means forgoing many other options at our fingertips. As a result, we tend to consume ideas in smaller bits, a proposition that (in another context) economists labeled the "Alchian and Allen theorem." Long, serious novels are less culturally central than they were 100 years ago. Blogs are on the rise, and most readers prefer the ones with the shorter posts. Our greater access to books also means that each book has less time to prove itself. A small percentage of the books published account for a large share of the profits, thus setting off a race to track reader demand. Many customers want very recent best-sellers, often so they can feel they are reading something trendy, something other people are talking about. Of course, that's its own kind of affectation—and not an entirely pleasing one.

"Community Letter" from Dartmouth's President

2007-02-28T20:25:00.000-05:00

I print in its entirety, with some formatting changes, a letter sent today by e-mail to Dartmouth alumni and others by President James Wright.

DEAR FRIENDS:

It has been a full winter in Hanover -- and a cold February. For winter carnival we had to haul in snow for the sculpture and a week later a snowstorm caused us to close down some campus operations! Our ski team is undefeated going into the nationals. Our men's and women's hockey teams won Ivy titles, the first for the men since 1980, and now advance in the playoffs. This weekend Susan and I saw men's basketball twice, including our first season sweep of Princeton since 1946; men's hockey; and the main stage production of "Arms and the Man." We met with a parents' group for a reception where the Dodecaphonics entertained us. Last week we had thirty students to our house for dinner and a discussion, and I had two student lunches in my office.

Last week Professor Ron Green of the Religion Department, the Director of the Ethics Institute and the Eunice and Julian Cohen Professor of Ethics and Human Values, gave the annual presidential lecture, a celebration of the work of a distinguished faculty member.

Professor Green's lecture addressed the subject of bioethics. Dartmouth has received national recognition recently for its sustainability efforts and for the accomplishments of the Greek system. And, with all of this, students and faculty are quietly going about their work to know more each day about those academic matters that intrigue them. It is in this environment that I write to share with you observations on a few important topics.

MISSION STATEMENT
Dartmouth's mission, as I have said on numerous occasions, has not changed but organizations periodically should remind themselves what it is that they are about.

Following wide consultation, I have drafted a more concise mission statement:

Dartmouth educates the most promising students of this generation to be leaders of the next generation with a faculty of scholars dedicated to teaching and the creation of new knowledge.

I plan on discussing the statement with the trustees at the March meeting and will then finalize it. I am confident that President Dickey would have recognized this as the mission of the College, even as I am confident that fifty years from now it will continue to inform Dartmouth's purpose -- and be affirmed by the contributions of our graduates.

In this process I also set out to describe a series of core values that mark Dartmouth. As I met with groups of students, faculty, staff from all levels including union employees, alumni and alumnae, and with the trustees, I asked them what it was that best described Dartmouth when it was at its best. What struck me through these many conversations was how consistent the responses were. We are surely all united around these values:

We are committed to academic excellence and to a culture that encourages collaboration, creativity, and innovation.

We expect faculty to embrace teaching and mentoring students with a passion and to be leaders in the scholarly or creative work shaping their fields.

We welcome and respect difference and believe that diversity is a key strength of our shared sense of community and contributes significantly to the quality of a Dartmouth education.

We recruit and admit exceptional students from all backgrounds, regardless of their financial means.

We foster a culture that instills a sense of responsibility for the broader community and the environment.

We encourage the vigorous and open debate of ideas within a community that encourages mutual respect.

If many fine institutions could claim to share these values, few have this combination and none have them along with Dartmouth's special legacy: Since its founding in 1769, Dartmouth has provided an intimate and inspirational setting for distinguished faculty and talented students to come together in one of the finest academic communities in the world.

Dartmouth faculty contribute substantially to the expansion of human understanding around critical issues. Dartmouth is committed to providing the best undergraduate liberal arts experience in the world and is enriched by excellent, historic professional programs in the Dartmouth Medical School (founded 1797), the Thayer School of Engineering (1867), the Tuck School of Business (1900) and the graduate programs in the Arts and Sciences. Together they sustain an exceptional learning environment that emphasizes independent thought, academic excellence, and the lifelong pursuit of learning.

Pioneering programs and continuing leadership in computation and international education are hallmarks of Dartmouth. The College provides a comprehensive out-of- classroom experience, including service opportunities, engagement in the arts, and strong athletic, recreational, and outdoor programs. Dartmouth graduates are marked by an understanding of the importance of teamwork, a capacity for leadership, and their keen enjoyment of a vibrant community.

Alumni/ae loyalty to Dartmouth is legendary and their engagement is a defining and sustaining quality of the College.

A couple of weeks ago, we posted the statement on the Dartmouth homepage and invited feedback. I have been gratified by the number of people who wrote to say that they thought it captured the essence of Dartmouth and who wanted to tweak one part of it or another.

Let me reflect briefly on a few of their observations.

Some respondents wanted more explicitly to recognize the critical role played by research as well as the contributions of the graduate schools. The mission and values statement aims to be inclusive of all of Dartmouth's schools and programs. We expect all of our graduates to assume leadership -- as they have done. And research -- the creation of knowledge -- is a vital part of Dartmouth's contribution to a better world and this culture of discovery energizes the teaching environment.

Other respondents noted, conversely, that we should not feature the graduate schools since Dartmouth is an undergraduate college. For sure, we aim to have at Dartmouth the strongest undergraduate liberal arts program in the world -- and we will protect and retain this position. We also have, and have had since the 1790s, exceptional graduate programs that are themselves leaders in their fields and that we can be proud of. They are fully a part of Dartmouth and their strength adds to the College's strength.

Some staff were concerned that they were not represented explicitly in the statement. I have always sought every opportunity to affirm the value of officers and staff in making Dartmouth the place that it is, so we will make what is implicit more explicit.

A few students pointed out that we do not have full financial aid for all international students. This is true -- although we have a very generous international financial aid program. Fully two-thirds of our international students receive financial aid, compared to around 45 percent of domestic students, and the aid package for the former tends to be higher.

FACULTY
One of the most important groups at Dartmouth is the Committee Advisory to the President, composed of six senior faculty members, selected by me from a group nominated by vote of the faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Dean of the Faculty is the agenda officer and the Provost joins in the meetings as well. This group considers promotions and tenure appointments within the Arts and Sciences, upon recommendation of the home department or program and upon review of evidence of scholarly standing and teaching effectiveness. It is a very responsible group that understands so well the importance of its decisions, for Dartmouth as well as for the individuals under review.

In their third year in rank we consider faculty for reappointment and in their sixth year we review them for promotion and for tenure. This month we reviewed a number of reappointment cases from different departments and programs. This was an inspiring and reassuring session. Many of these colleagues are publishing articles and books, receiving grants, giving papers, and taking on professional leadership. And most have established themselves as teachers. The promotion materials included the following comments from students: the "best course" at Dartmouth; "This course makes me think in a different way"; "cares about his students"; "The best teaching I have seen"; "challenged us to question accepted ideas." These faculty are Dartmouth's future.

TRUSTEE ELECTION
This spring the alumni/ae will be involved in an election to nominate a trustee. The election is important, and I hope that all alumni/ae will participate. Dartmouth trustees are dedicated individuals who volunteer their time, expertise, and talents to ensuring that Dartmouth -- at the end of the day and at the end of this century -- will continue to be an exceptional, competitive institution that is a model for education.

I wish all four candidates well, and I have a request to make of them and their supporters.

Dartmouth is enriched by vigorous, informed debate and strengthened by critical engagement. It does not, however, advance the College to make allegations or to misstate the facts. Dartmouth classes are getting smaller; faculty are as committed to students and to teaching as they have ever been; free speech is alive and well; we are fully committed to strong, competitive athletic programs; the Greek system is thriving; and administrative positions have grown more slowly than the growth in faculty. We will be recruiting students and faculty this spring, a very competitive process that is vital to Dartmouth's future. We will correct the record if campaign rhetoric interferes with these efforts.

Some people have claimed that one of the new trustee's assignments will be to elect the next president. This statement will likely prove to be correct -- someday. For now though, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of my retirement are premature. While I may look my age, I am not yet ready to act it. In my thirty-eighth year at Dartmouth, I have things yet to do and I enjoy immensely doing them. So let us hold off on the transition planning.

WOUNDED VETERANS
Many of you know that I served three years in the Marine Corps. Since 2005, I have been visiting wounded Marines at Bethesda Naval Hospital. I have also gone to Walter Reed Hospital. I go bed to bed talking to these young men and women, all of them seriously wounded, and I always urge them to consider returning to school. I have not sought to recruit students for Dartmouth, but a week before Christmas when I visited I gave out twenty-five Dartmouth caps! I am always moved by their stories and inspired by their courage and sacrifice.

From the outset it was clear that these Marines needed more specific educational guidance than any one person could provide. I contacted David Ward, the President of the American Council on Education. He immediately agreed to help develop a program that could respond to specific questions. I promised that I would raise the money for the program if ACE could organize it. President Ward assigned one of his colleagues, James Selbe, to the task. It has proven complicated, but Mr. Selbe, himself an old Marine, has done this. I have been pleased to help out in this effort. The counseling programs at Bethesda, Walter Reed, and Brooke Medical Center will soon be underway. As a result, these young men and women who served so unselfishly and bravely will now be better served themselves. I wish we could do more. We can do no less.

Sincerely,
James Wright

Hey Bro Jacques, can you lend me a dime?

2007-02-27T08:56:00.000-05:00

We don't make these up, we just report, on the bizarre twists in the Derrida archives tussle mixed up with a sexual harassment suit of another professor at UC Irvine. Read this article. This snippet is especially insipid:

"Toward the end of his (Derrida) life, he enjoyed the same status as Aristotle among the ancients, and every perception of injustice was routed to his desk," said Avital Ronell, a Derrida protege who teaches at New York University. "Even as he was crawling with fatigue, he put himself in the service of those seeking his help and needing the strength of his prestigious signature."

Hey, where was Hans-Georg Gadamer when my car was towed? I hear Juergen Habermas can be tapped to intervene on landlord disputes!

HT to Margaret Soltan.

The Last Straw by Joe Galloway

2007-02-26T22:19:00.000-05:00

Hat tip to my dear friend Manny Shargel in Tallahassee:

Walter Reed Hospital Scandal is 'The Last Straw'

As The Washington Post probe proves, there's more to supporting our troops than making "Support Our Troops" a phrase that every politician feels obliged to utter in every speech, no matter how craven the purpose. How can they look at themselves in the mirror every morning?

By Joseph L. Galloway

(February 21, 2007) -- There’s a great deal more to supporting our troops than sticking a $2 yellow ribbon magnet made in China on your SUV. There’s a great deal more to it than making "Support Our Troops" a phrase that every politician feels obliged to utter in every speech, no matter how banal the topic or craven the purpose. This week, we were treated to new revelations of just how fraudulent and shallow and meaningless "Support Our Troops" is on the lips of those in charge of spending the half a trillion dollars of taxpayer's money that the Pentagon eats every year. The Washington Post published a probe, complete with photographs, revealing that for every in-patient who's getting the best medical treatment that money can buy at the main hospital at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, there are out-patients warehoused in quarters unfit for human habitation. Some of the military outpatients are stuck on the Walter Reed campus, a couple of miles from the White House and the Capitol, for as long as 12 months. They've been living in rat and roach-infested rooms, some of which are coated in black mold. There was outrage and disgust and raw anger at this callous, cruel treatment of those who have the greatest claim not only on our sympathies, but also on the public purse. Who among the smiling politicians who regularly troop over to the main hospital at Walter Reed for photo-op visits with those who've come home grievously wounded from the wars the politicians started have bothered to go the extra quarter-mile to see the unseen majority with their rats and roaches? Not one, it would seem, since none among them have admitted to knowing that there was a problem, much less doing something about it before the reporters blew the whistle. Within 24 hours, construction crews were working overtime, slapping paint over the moldy drywall, patching the sagging ceilings and putting out traps and poison for the critters that infest the place. Within 48 hours, the Department of Defense announced that it was appointing an independent commission to investigate. Doubtless the commission will provide a detailed report finding that no one was guilty -- certainly none of the politicians of the ruling party whose hands were on the levers of power for five long years of war. They will find that it all came about because the Army medical establishment was overwhelmed by the case load flowing out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, brave soldiers who were wheelchair-bound with missing legs or paralysis, have been left to make their own way a quarter-mile to appointments with the shrinks and a half-mile to pick up the drugs that dim their minds and eyes and pain, and make the rats and roaches recede into a fuzzy distance. All this came on the heels of my McClatchy Newspapers colleague Chris Adams's Feb. 9 report that even by its own measures, the Veterans Administration isn't prepared to give returning veterans the care they need to help them overcome destructive, and sometimes fatal, mental health ailments. Nearly 100 VA clinics provided virtually no mental health care in 2005, Adams found, and the average veteran with psychiatric troubles gets about a third fewer visits with specialists today than he would have received a decade ago. The same politicians, from a macho president to the bureaucrats to the people who chair the congressional committees that are supposed to oversee such matters, have utterly failed to protect our wounded warriors. They’ve talked the talk but few, if any, have ever walked the walk. No. This happened while all of them were busy as bees, taking billions out of the VA budget and planning to shut down Walter Reed by 2011 in the name of cost-efficiency.
Among those politicians are the people who sent too few troops to Afghanistan or Iraq, who failed to provide enough body armor and weapons and armored vehicles and who, to protect their own political hides, refused to admit that the mission was not accomplished and change course. But it's they who are charged with the highest duty of all, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural in 1865: "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan. "How can they look at themselves in the mirror every morning? How dare they ever utter the words: Support Our Troops? How dare they pretend to give a damn about those they order to war? They've hidden the flag-draped coffins of the fallen from the public and the press. They've averted their eyes from the suffering that their orders have visited upon an Army that they've ground down by misuse and over-use and just plain incompetence. This shabby, sorry episode of political and institutional cruelty to those who deserve the best their nation can provide is the last straw. How can they spin this one to blame the generals or the media or the Democrats? How can you do that, Karl? If the American people are not sickened and disgusted by this then, by God, we don’t deserve to be defended from the wolves of this world.

*** Joseph L. Galloway (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is a legendary war correspondent, winner of a Bronze Star and co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young." His column on military affairs is distributed by Tribune Media Services.***

Sean Hannity: Kids, Do Your Homework!

2007-02-26T22:00:00.000-05:00

Just in from Fox News: Child development expert Sean Hannity considers a San Francisco school's decision to ban homework except for reading and special projects a bad idea. He wants his kids to do math, reading, "organized sports," and stay away from liberal friends.

When queried by his counterpart Alan Colmes about whether he believes in local control of schools, Hannity shrugged and intoned against "San Francisco values."

In other news, Dinesh D'Souza locates the source of campus left wing ideology in lax parents who didn't get Ashley or Biff to do their times tables and let them play with marbles and read Jacques Derrida instead.

The (now not so) secret life of Cory Kennedy

2007-02-26T20:49:00.000-05:00

A tale for our age, dear reader!

Remember Kato Kaelin? No, I figure you didn't or if you did, it is something completely in passing. However, he was on several channels of national TV for several weeks (not just YouTube).

How about the three guys who invented the "Whassaaaaaap" routine? Yes, they were interviewed by Katie Couric and Paula Zahn, but nobody has heard of them since.

What about Lawrence Turow, aka Mr. T? He had a big part in one of the Rocky movies, and was a star on “The A Team.” Remember that show? No, figure you didn't.

Popular culture thrives on novelty, and it seems that Cory Kennedy is the latest in this "phenomenon" of amusing ourselves to death with instant celebrity, sort of the logical extreme of other non-talents such as Paris Hilton and Edie Sedgewick, who are, as the saying goes, famous for being famous.

Hmmm: Parents run a diploma mill! (Hawking HS diplomas in "less than a week").

Post Oscar posting...

2007-02-26T10:02:00.000-05:00

Watching the Oscars is a tradition in our house. I didn't think I could do it last night, due to work, but I just stayed on my ole laptop and watched. I had just gotten back from a sleet filled drive to Evanston and back, to take our daughter back to college. Here are some snippets of an email I had with her last night and today. She is headed to Los Angeles this summer to try herself.

I am not above commenting on dress. Our favorite was Gwyneth Paltrow, for me it was the understated color (apricot?) as I am becoming partial to orange more and more (perhaps I am a closet Illini?). Our daughter liked Jada Pinkett Smith's dress and that of Kirsten Dunst, although said Kirsten looked like she was on something:

"I didn’t see Jada’s dress. I missed the first 15 minutes of the show. I remember from my recent viewing of Mona Lisa Smile again for my class that Kirsten Dunst, who basically shares the lead with Julia Roberts, has sorta lazy eyes, seems like they are half closed sometimes. Maybe just high cheekbones.

It was funny, but I was on email with a colleague at NC State and he made an Oscar reference, and I told him I liked Nicole’s look, and he said something funny, can’t remember exactly, but that he has found he really enjoys a cherry lollipop. I don’t remember the bow, but the paper mentions it.

The paper also criticized Ellen D. for being too low key, but that is what I liked about her. Her humor was appropriate, and unlike other Oscar hosts, she didn't draw undue attention to herself.

I didn’t like Jerry Seinfeld at all. One was the example of supposed “humor” in the reference to criminals who must pick up trash in orange jumpsuits with a stick with a nail on the end. I don’t like put down humor at all, especially by wealthy people of others less fortunate. The other was his stating that the films he was introducing were “depressing.” What IS depressing is having to look at his gawky face!

I liked the Melissa E. touch of acking her “wife” ole Jeff grad Tammy Lynn (note: Tammy Lynn Michaels is from Lafayette IN, and went to the big HS in that neighboring city, along with Axl Rose).

I thought some of the stuff about Gore was Hollywood getting on the latest bandwagon, because an A-lister like Leo is for it. Of course I am for Gore’s agenda, but truth be told, his movie was essentially a PowerPoint show with some stuff thrown in. He is to be commended, but he is not doing the science and so forth of combating global warming.

The Coppola/Lucas/Spielberg trio looked like three older white males, almost like the old Hollywood establishment, acking another older white male, Scorcese, for one of those awkward Oscar moments when the “prize” just has to go to someone who has been ignored over the years. Every year there is some sentimental favorite.

I generally liked the montages and retrospectives. Jennifer Hudson almost popped out of her dress, and her singing is more like screaming at times."

Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us

2007-02-21T21:41:00.000-05:00

Wow. Check out this haunting video, Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us, by Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropology faculty member at Kansas State and creator of a viral video!

Hat tip to 3Quarks Daily...what did I read before I found ya?

Compulsively Checking Email

2007-02-19T22:24:00.000-05:00

Mary McKinney, a psychologist in Chapel Hill, has another terrific column on her blog regarding the academic life, and how to manage (or mismanage) it, entitled Email Addiction. Here's a snippet...read the whole thing.

In my experience, email is the most insidious, seductive time-waster we face.
In fact, for many of us, email is a pernicious addiction.
Checking and replying to our electronically-delivered messages seems like a necessary, innocuous occupation, but it is also a major form of procrastination.
Sometimes we open our email browser with the intention of sending someone a specific message. Often, though, we are checking our email because, well, that is what we do. We check our inbox many times a day, even compulsively.
When I am giving workshops to faculty or graduate students, I take a poll of how frequently participants check their email. Everyone seems to check their email several times, and the majority of academics admit to more than a dozen incursions per day.
How much would you weigh if you ate a piece of chocolate every time you check your email? Would obesity - or even diabetes - be the result?

A Bit of Mourning for the Chief is Appropriate

2007-02-19T21:28:00.000-05:00

Though Chief Illiniwek is a caricature that is best retired, that will come this Wednesday during halftime at the UI-Michigan basketball game. So now it perhaps is appropriate to let those who honor something they call the Chief mourn his passing. They are sad and feel a loss because the Chief is not a caricature to them, it is something larger and grander. So let's let them mourn, and then help them move on to a new symbol.

This article gives a sense of the feeling surrounding the issue. Here's a snippet.

Shaun Gaston, 60, of Champaign, recalled her parents taking her to Dyche Stadium in Evanston to see the Chief perform at a UI-Northwestern game when she was 5 years old.

"My mother had tears in her eyes when he came out. I came to school here. I had the dance down so if they ever needed a sub, I'd be ready. It's a revered symbol, a tradition, an honor. It's not a mascot. I do not want to see a mascot – ever," she said, adding she never leaves the seat she's had for 30 years at basketball games when the Chief appears.

Farewell Chief Illiniwek...Good Riddance

2007-02-19T09:13:00.000-05:00

The Chief: Historically inaccurate and a degrading caricature.

Thank goodness the chief is gone from UIUC. But of course that is just the beginning of the healing. Having lived through a similar wrenching debate at Dartmouth, I am thankful for this at Illinois. But why did it take so long?

This article in Inside Higher Ed gives some of the background and discusses the length of the debate.

Here's a snippet:

The backlash against critics of the chief has been “very real” and has frequently reached the point of harassment, Spindel said, noting the recent furor over Facebook entries involving university students. One Facebook group that attracted over 110 members is titled “If They Get Rid of the Chief I’m Becoming a Racist.” One of its postings reads, “[W]hat they don’t realize is that there was never a racist problem before ... but now I hate redskins and hope all those drunk casino owning bums die.”

Promotion and Tenure Logic

2007-02-18T19:45:00.000-05:00

Ah, 'tis the season for the fate and rank of so many good faculty members to be decided. Thus, I thought I would pass along this tidbit I received a while ago, from my good friend and collaborator Len Waks, on the sometimes exasperating logic of tenure and promotion committees. The reference is to philosophy, but dear reader, it could apply to any discipline!

This reminds me of what my friend Mike Kelly (with whom I went to grad school and later spent a year with as a visiting professor at U. of Alberta) used to say:

"In P and T logic, every fact can count for or against any conclusion."

You know: Professor X says "Well, Professor A has published two articles in MIND." Professor Y says, "Right, and just look at the junk MIND now publishes."

An Honest Conversation about Alcohol

2007-02-16T11:39:00.000-05:00

From Inside Higher Ed. Kudos to the former president of Middlebury for doing something about this issue that vexes All our college campuses (well, not BYU). The 21 year old drinking age is counterproductive in so many ways. Here are some snippets:

The current law, McCardell said in an interview Thursday, is a failure that forces college freshmen to hide their drinking — while colleges must simultaneously pretend that they have fixed students’ drinking problems and that students aren’t drinking. McCardell also argued that the law, by making it impossible for a 19-year-old to enjoy two beers over pizza in a restaurant, leads those 19-year-olds to consume instead in closed dorm rooms and fraternity basements where 2 beers are more likely to turn into 10, and no responsible person may be around to offer help or to stop someone from drinking too much.

Any college president who thinks his or her campus has drinking under control is “delusional,” McCardell said, although he acknowledged the political pressures that prevent most sitting presidents from providing an honest assessment of what’s going on on their campuses.

Back Yard Snow, West Lafayette, Indiana

2007-02-15T19:39:00.000-05:00

The big storm, a February record 17".

It fits just right

2007-02-14T10:40:00.000-05:00

Now, they try to keep me from getting up here next to A. G.'s new George Foreman grill, where I can continue my wallpaper removal project, by putting this bowl here. Well, I will show them -Hazel Rud

For the Upcoming Interminable Political Campaign Season...

2007-02-14T10:35:00.000-05:00

Hat tip to my dear friend in Tallahassee for sending this along, and many more...

Not my job...

2007-02-13T21:01:00.000-05:00

Vox Clamantis in Deserto: Bill Moyers on Democracy

2007-02-13T14:58:00.000-05:00

Jim Horn, who blogs with me on the group blog Education Policy Blog, and who runs his own fine blog Schools Matter, brought this column by Bill Moyers to his readers' attention today. I post it here in its entirety.

Discovering What Democracy Means
Bill Moyers
February 12, 2007
Bill Moyers is chairman of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy andan independent journalist with his own production company. On February 7, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation presented Judith and Bill Moyers the first Frank E. Taplin, Jr. Public Intellectual Award for “extraordinary contributions to public cultural, civic and intellectual life.” This is an excerpt of his remarks.
We are often asked whether our kind of journalism matters. People are curious about why we give so much time to novelists, playwrights, artists, historians, philosophers, composers, scholars, teachers—all of whom we consider public thinkers. The answer is simple: They are worth listening to.
Some years ago I was invited to testify before a House of Representatives committee on funding of the arts and humanities. Opponents were making their skepticism felt toward PBS, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I had been present at the creation of all three during my time in the White House with Lyndon Johnson, and now all three were once again in the crosshairs of conservatives like Ronald Reagan who were asking: “Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?” Reading Shakespeare, it was said, does not erase the budget deficit. Plunging into the history of the 15th century does not ease traffic jams. Listening to Mozart or reading the ancient Greeks does not repair the ozone layer.
We had recently produced two series on poetry called “The Language of Life” and “The Power of the Word.” Our series on “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth” was resonating far and wide, much to the displeasure of sectarian dogmatists. We had created a documentary special called “The Power of the Past,” about how Florence valued art for public, and not merely private, consumption. Our series “A World of Ideas” offered conversations from a wide spectrum of voices: Chinua Achebe, Carlos Fuentes, Northrop Frye, Joseph Heller, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Rodriguez, Bharati Mukherjee, Jonas Salk, William L. Shirer, Tu Wei-ming, Toni Morrison, Joanne Ciulla, Ernesto Cortes, M.F.K. Fisher, Mary Ann Glendon, Leon Kass, and so many others who opened viewers to what my old friend and colleague Eric Sevareid once called “news of the mind.”
Critics said these programs taught no one how to bake bread or build bridges. And they were right. Despite public television—not to mention symphony orchestras, municipal libraries, art museums, and public theaters—crime was still rampant, the divorce rate was soaring, corruption flourished, legislatures remained stubbornly profligate, corporations cooked their books, liberals were loose in the world doing the work of the devil, and you still couldn’t get a good meal on the Metro to Washington. Why persist, some members of Congress wanted to know, when there are so many more urgent needs to be met and so many practical problems to be solved?I did not have a tried-and-true answer for members of the committee. I could not hand them a ledger showing that ideas have consequences. I chose instead to tell them what they could have learned if they had been listening to the people who appeared in our broadcasts.
They would have heard the novelist Maxine Hong Kingston say: “All human beings have this burden in life to constantly figure out what’s true, what’s authentic, what’s meaningful, what’s dross, what’s a hallucination, what’s a figment, what’s madness. We all need to figure out what is valuable, constantly. As a writer, all I am doing is posing the question in a way that people can see very clearly.”
They would have heard Peter Sellars, the iconoclastic director of Shakespeare in a swimming pool and Mozart in the Bronx, explain that he wants “to put our society up next to these great masterpieces. Are we thinking big enough? Are we generous of spirit? What does our society look like, next to the greatest things a human being ever uttered?”
They would have heard Vartan Gregorian, then head of the New York Public Library, talk about how “in a big library, suddenly you feel humble. The whole of humanity is in front of you. It gives you a sense of cosmic relation, but at the same time a sense of isolation. You feel both pride and insignificance. Here it is, the human endeavor, human aspiration, human agony, human ecstasy, human bravura, human failures—all before you. And you look around and say, ‘Oh, my God! I am not going to be able to know it all.’”
They would have heard the philosopher Martha Nussbaum confess that in one sense there is no message or moral in the ancient Greek dramatists—“simply the revelation of life as seen through the sufferer.” But there is a value, she went on, in seeing “the complexity that’s there, and seeing it honestly, without flinching, and without reducing it to some excessively simple theory.” You begin then, she said, to realize that trying to wrest a good life from the world may lead to tragedy, but you still must try.
They would have heard the filmmaker David Puttnam tell how as a boy he sat through dozens of screenings of A Man for All Seasons, the story of Sir Thomas More’s fatal defiance of Henry VIII: “It allowed me the enormous conceit of walking out of the cinema thinking, ‘Yeah, I think I might have had my head cut off for the sake of a principle.’ I know absolutely I wouldn’t, and I probably never met anyone who would, but the cinema allowed me that conceit. It allowed me for one moment to feel that everything decent in me had come together.”
And they would have heard Mike Rose talk about what it’s like teaching disadvantaged older college students in California. He had recounted to me his battle with a street-wise grownup who was flogging her way through Macbeth. “What does Shakespeare have to do with me?” she would ask. But when she finally got through the play she said to Mike Rose: “You know, people always hold this stuff over you. They make you feel stupid. But now, I’ve read it. I can say, ‘I, Olga, have read Shakespeare.’ I won’t tell you I like it, because I don’t know if I do, or I don’t. But I like knowing what it’s about.” And Mike Rose said: “The point is not that reading Shakespeare gave her overnight some new discriminating vision of good and evil. What she got was something more precious: a sense that she was not powerless and she was not dumb.”
Some members of Congress got it. They realized that we were talking not only about how to improve our lives as individuals but how to nurture a flourishing democracy. Wouldn’t we have been likely to deal more effectively and quickly with pollution if we had thought about where we fit in the long sweep of the Earth’s story? Could we better tackle our spending priorities as a society if we were prepared to acknowledge and confront the pain of conflicting choices, which the ancient poets knew to be the incubus of agony and the crucible of wisdom? Might we better decide how to use our wealth and power if we have measured and tested ourselves against the greatest things a human being ever uttered? Are we not likely to be more wisely led by officials who have learned from history and literature that great nations die of too many lies?
Furthermore, if we nurtured the higher affections of our intuition—what has been called our “inner tutor”—might we be more resolute in sparing our children from the appalling accretion of violent entertainment that permeates American life—what Newsweek described as “the flood of mass-produced and mass-consumed violence that pours upon us, masquerading as amusement and threatening to erode the psychological and moral boundary between real life and make-believe?”
We know who the enemies of democracy are. In his Jefferson Lecture the late Cleanth Brooks of Yale identified them as the “bastard muses” propaganda, which pleads, sometimes unscrupulously, for a special cause or issue at the expense of the total truth; sentimentality, which works up emotional responses unwarranted by, and in excess of, the occasion; and pornography, which focuses upon one powerful human drive at the expense of the total human personality. To counter the “bastard muses,” Brooks proposed cultivating the “true muses” of the moral imagination. Not only do these arm us to resist the little lies and fantasies of advertising, the official lies of power, and the ghoulish products of nightmarish minds, they open us to the lived experience of others—to the affirmations of a heightened consciousness—to empathy. So it is that when Lear cried out to Gloucester on the heath: “You see how this world goes.....” Gloucester, who was blind, answered: “I see it feelingly.”
Many years ago we produced a series called “Six Great Ideas” with the didactic, irascible but compelling philosopher and educator, Mortimer Adler—one hour each on liberty, equality and justice, truth, beauty, and goodness. From the deluge of mail I kept two letters that summed up the response. One came from Utah.
“Dear Dr. Adler, I am writing in behalf of a group of construction workers (mostly, believe it or not, plumbers!) who have finally found a teacher worth listening to. While we cannot all agree whether or not we would hire you as an apprentice, we can all agree that we would love to listen to you during our lunch breaks. I am sure that it is just due to our well-known ignorance as tradesmen that not a single one of us had ever heard of you until one Sunday afternoon we were watching public television and Bill Moyers came on with Six Great Ideas. We listened intensely and soon became addicted and have been ever since. We never knew a world of ideas existed. The study of ideas has completely turned around our impression of education…We have grown to love the ideas behind our country’s composition, and since reading and discussing numerous of your books we have all become devout Constitutionalists. We thank you and we applaud you. We are certain that the praise of a few plumbers could hardly compare with the notoriety that you deserve from distinguished colleagues, but we salute you just the same. We may be plumbers during the day, but at lunch time and at night and on weekend, we are Philosophers at Large. God bless you.”
The second letter came from Marion, Ohio—from the federal prison there. The writer said he had been a faithful viewer of the series, and he described it as “a truly joyous opportunity… for an institutionalized intellectual. After several months in a cell, with nothing but a TV, it was salvation.”Salvation. Deliverance. Redemption.
I had to think about this a while before I realized what he meant. He was, after all, a lifer. How is it a man condemned to an institution for the remainder of his years finds salvation in a television program? And then one day I came across something Leo Strauss had written. The Greek word for vulgarity, Strauss said, is apeirokalia, the lack of experience in things beautiful. Wherever you are and however it arrives, a liberal education can liberate you from the coarseness and crudity of circumstances beyond your control.
As I watch and listen to our public discourse today, it seems to me we are all “institutionalized” in one form or another, locked away in our separate realities, our parochial loyalties, our fixed ways of seeing ourselves and others. For democracy to prosper it requires us to escape those bonds and join what John Dewey called “a life of free and enriching communion”—to become “We, the People.” The late James W. Carey, one of our noted scholars of communication, wrote that the very concept of “public” could once be defined as “a group of strangers who gather to discuss the news.” In early America the printing press generated a body of popular knowledge. Towns were small, and taverns, inns, coffeehouses, street corners, and the public greens—the commons—were places where people gathered to discuss what they were reading. These places of public communication “provided the underlying social fabric of the town and, when the Revolution began, made it possible to quickly gather militia companies, to form effective committees of correspondence and of inspection, and to organize and to manage mass town meetings.”
The public was no fiction, Carey said. The public had no life, no social relationships, without news. The news was what activated conversation between strangers, and strangers were assumed to be capable of conversing about the news. In fact, the whole point of the press was not so much to disseminate fact as to assemble people. The press furnished materials for argument—“information,” in the narrow sense—“but the value of the press was predicated on the existence of the public, not the reverse.” The media’s role was humble but serious, and that role was to take the public seriously.
It would be hard to argue that we do so today, except in isolated examples. Our public conversation is mediated by politicians who have mastered “sound bites” sculpted from polling data, by “pundits” whose credibility increases with the frequency of exposure despite being consistently wrong, and “experts” whose authority depends not on reason, evidence or logic but on ideology and affiliation. The public, J.R. Priestly observed, “has been transformed into a vast crowd, a permanent audience, waiting to be amused.”What kind of “public intellectual” survives in such an environment? Turn on the television and you’re likely to see them talking about the war in Iraq, for which they were cheerleaders, or the upcoming presidential race—still a year away. Notice where they sit—in a Times Square studio or a media stage in Washington, their messages beamed across the public airwaves courtesy of huge media conglomerates whose intent is not the informing of citizens but the maximizing of profit through the delivery to advertisers of mass audiences addicted to consumerism.
How forlorn a figure Socrates of Athens would be in this environment. Arguably the first public intellectual, proclaimed by the oracle of Delphi as the wisest of men, Socrates went about Athens on a divine mandate of self-reflection, some celestial spark glowing in his breast, some voice whispering in his head that only he could hear. Led by this voice he went to the wise men and great poets and master technicians of the city to cross-examine them, casting doubt on their knowledge by exposing their received opinions and unexamined assumptions, the deep-seated corruption of thought which leads to grave moral danger; or sometimes simply pointing to the common failing of so many experts: that of mistaking their expertise in one subject or practice for universal wisdom about the human condition.
Exposing the ignorance of the leaders was Socrates’ way of helping the “cause of God,” as he explained when he was put on trial. He reasoned thus from his interviews with them that the wisest of men—as the oracle, remember, described Socrates to be—is the one who is most conscious of his own ignorance, most aware of the limits of knowledge which are introduced by our limited methods of obtaining knowledge. Meletus, the main accuser featured in Socrates’ Apology (as told by Plato), was a young religious fanatic who charged Socrates with believing in deities of his own invention rather than the gods recognized by the state. Scholars now believe that Meletus was simply a “front man” for political interests, put forward to stir the public against the philosopher—a forerunner of modern punditry, or maybe something quite like today’s political fundamentalism.
I sadly think of [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell addressing the United Nations in February 2003, with his artist’s renderings of those trailers that were supposed to be mobile biological warfare factories; and I think of all the rest of the cooked intelligence that sold so many of our public intellectuals on invading Iraq. It was too crude to even qualify as false wisdom on the Socratic model, really, but the resulting disaster—as great a blunder as Vietnam to which many of the same mistakes could be assigned—would result from relying on the knowledge of self-interested experts and deluded leaders. When they sentenced Socrates to death, he reminded them that they were proving how groundless knowledge made it impossible to escape from doing wrong. Succumbing to wishful thinking that leads to disastrous self-delusion, he pointed out, is the only real death. “When I leave this court,” he said of his jurors, “I will go away condemned by you to death.” But his accusers, he told them, “will go away convicted by truth herself….”
The Hebrew prophet was another kind of public intellectual, one who was also condemned and persecuted by the political elites he addressed. A century before Socrates, one of those prophets—Jeremiah—came from a small village into Jerusalem to preach repentance to a faithless Israel, with its houses full of treachery, and its rich kings and princes who gave no justice to the poor widow and the fatherless child.And of course, near the end of his life, Jesus of Nazareth also went to Jerusalem, to preach the same message in an even more dangerous public way, confronting the ruling elites before great crowds on the Temple grounds. When he predicted their imminent destruction in his parable about the wicked tenants who hoarded the fruits of creation, his fate was sealed.
Jesus would not be crucified today. The prophets would not be stoned. Socrates would not drink the hemlock. They would instead be banned from the Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages by the sentries of establishment thinking who guard against dissent with the one weapon of mass destruction most cleverly designed to obliterate democracy—the rubber stamp.
A stock broker who makes bad picks doesn’t last too long. A baseball player in an extended slump gets traded. A worker made redundant by cheaper labor abroad or by a new machine—well, she’s done for, too. But four years after the invasion of Iraq—the greatest blunder in foreign policy since Vietnam—the public apologists and advocates of the war flourish in the media, while the costs of their delusions accrue in body counts and lost treasure. A public that detests the war is relegated to the bleachers, fated to watch from afar the playing out by political and media elites of a game that has been rigged.
Yet the salvation of democracy requires a public aroused by the knowledge of what is being done to them in their name. Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don’t talk about what democracy means—what it bestows on us—the revolutionary idea that it isn’t just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency. “I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.” So spoke Woodrow Wilson, the namesake of your foundation and, I would suggest, still your guiding spirit.
The only PhD ever to reach the White House was a public intellectual and genuine reformer who understood what a major battleground higher education was. He learned what the political struggle was about while a professor and later the president of Princeton, where he lost his share of institutional battles with wealthy alumni who largely controlled the university’s development, and the nation beyond.
In his forgotten political testament The New Freedom (1913), Wilson took up something of the ancient, critical task of the public intellectual, a fact all the more remarkable in that he was president at the time. Louis Brandeis, the people’s lawyer, was his inspiration and the source of this vision, but Wilson stood for it, right there at the center of power. “Don’t deceive yourselves for a moment as to the power of the great interests which now dominate our development.” “No matter that there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States. They are going to own it if they can.” But “there is no salvation,” he said, “in the pitiful condescensions of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of freemen. Prosperity guaranteed by trustees has no prospect of endurance.” From his stand came progressive income taxation, the federal estate tax, tariff reform, and a resolute spirit “to deal with the new and subtle tyrannies according to their deserts.”
Wilson described his reformism in plain English no one could fail to understand: “The laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak.” That was true in 1800, it was true in 1860, in 1892, in 1912, and 1932; it was true in 1964, and it is true today. We have often been pressed to the limit, the promise of the Declaration and the ideals of the Gettysburg Address ignored or trampled upon and our common interests brought low. But every time there came a great wave of reform, and I believe one is coming again, helped along by the bright young people this foundation is nurturing.
We cannot build a political consensus or a nation across the vast social divides that mark our country today. Consensus arises from bridging that divide and making society whole again, the fruits of freedom and prosperity made available to the least among us. What we have to determine now, as Wilson said in his day, “is whether we are big enough…whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own. We haven’t had free access to it, our minds have not touched it by way of guidance, in half a generation, and now we are engaged in nothing less than the recovery of what was made with our own hands, and acts only by our delegated authority.”
As we face that challenge even today, a story about Helen Keller is worth remembering. Toward the end of her career, as she was speaking at a Midwestern college, a student asked: “Miss Keller, is there anything that could have been worse than losing your sight?” Helen Keller replied: “Yes, I could have lost my vision.”

How Romantic!

2007-02-11T21:54:00.000-05:00

A marriage proposal in a funeral home's embalming room...ah, those desperate housewives...funny as hell.

I STILL don't believe it!

2007-02-11T21:18:00.000-05:00

This grabs your attention: A Toyota Tundra accelerating through a closing door and then braking hard before the abyss. I know they say actual demonstration, but I don't believe there is a human in that driver's seat!

Watch the video...

Back to Work

2007-02-11T20:10:00.000-05:00

Trying to get an essay review with a grad student polished off, but...

1 Caught last few minutes of Purdue v. MSU women's hoops game, especially to see MSU freshman center Allyssa DeHaan, who is, not a typo, 6'9"! Er, we lost, at home, to complete a 0-4 record when on national TV.

2 Call from daughter who left notes and text at home, and needs them for English test tomorrow. So typed in notes about Cartesian mechanism, vitalism, and so forth into an email.

3 Made and ate dinner.

4 Cat kept pushing open door. So, found out latch didn't work. After putting in a shim, unscrewing and rescrewing, finally figured it out (some banging and cursing later).

OK, now back to essay review.

World's Shortest Article

2007-02-11T20:09:00.001-05:00

From the academic journal, Higher Education in Europe:

The Attractiveness of the Academic Workplace in Germany
Author: Romuin Reich

It's a small house, but there are those who love it...

2007-02-07T22:55:00.000-05:00

The 28,000 square foot estate of John Edwards, outside Chapel Hill NC

A Slighter Sycamore

2007-02-07T21:17:00.000-05:00

Indiana State University is moving to eliminate majors in physics and philosophy. Apparently the faculty will stay, but they will be merged to other programs. I fully agree with this comment on the Inside Higher Ed story:

According to the article, the plan is to eliminate the philosophy and physics majors, not to disband the departments entirely. It is important to note this distinction, as many comments have done. But eliminating the major will have the (presumably unintended) consequence of making it much more difficult to hire qualified faculty to teach the introductory classes that the university (presumably) will want to continue offering. Teaching the same introductory classes over and over again gets real old real quick. If you want to retain good faculty, you need to give them the opportunity to grow and develop as scholars and teachers—and that happens by letting them teach the advanced classes, which you can’t offer if you don’t have majors who are qualified to take them.

Lust in Space

2007-02-06T22:10:00.000-05:00

OK, not original to me, Fox's title to the weird case of Lisa Nowak. Yes, I watch Fox, for Greta Van Susteren's updates on the missing Purdue student Wade Steffey. And I confess a perverse pleasure in listening to Sean Hannity and making me irritated!

Now, back to Nowak. WTF? There is nothing in her background that indicates she would drive from Houston to Orlando to attempt to kidnap and possibly murder her romantic rival. She drove IN A DIAPER so as not to delay her arrival in Orlando! Married 19 years with 3 children, a brilliant engineer and elite, an astronaut. Can anyone offer any thoughts?

Happiness is...

2007-02-04T22:29:00.000-05:00

...ordering a Colts Super Bowl T-shirt on QVC. To go with my other Colts T-shirt and Colts mug.

At one point in the game, I thought they should rename themselves the Indianapolis Addais. Did ole Joseph run and catch it like 25 times in a row?

So sodden. But seeing Prince rip that dripping guitar shaped like his glyph or whatever it was he was formerly known as...in the rain...singing Purple Rain. Well, that and Paul McCartney two years ago and Shania Twain flying out on a wire several years ago, they be my fave halftime shows.

Now about those ads. The weirdest one had to be that Robert Goulet ad, especially when he crawled out at the end on the ceiling like Spidey-man. Weird! Some of the other ones were a bit tame. A bit of Brokeback Mountain under the hood with a...candy bar?

Smash Mouth Religion

2007-02-01T09:45:00.000-05:00

But let's get back to Dr. Falwell. "My respect for Catholicism and Mormonism goes straight up watching Notre Dame and Brigham Young play," he told me. He hoped that, someday, Notre Dame and Liberty, his evangelical college, would meet for the national championship, thus informing the nation that "the Christians are here, we're not meek and we're not going to fall down in front of you. We're here to stay."

Read more from the Church of Football.

Weekend Bliss

2007-01-27T13:41:00.000-05:00

1 Brew cup of PG Tips

2 Put on headphones

3 Turn on Click 'n Clack, the Car Guys (Here they come on at 10 Saturdays on our FM NPR station, with a repeat Sundays at 2 on our AM NPR station)

Manning Throws Couch into White River

2007-01-25T12:22:00.000-05:00

Indianapolis (AP): Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning was seen yesterday throwing a black leather couch into the White River in downtown Indianapolis.

"It's my Super Bowl couch," the most prolific quarterback in NFL history exclaimed as he pushed it into the freezing water, " and I don't need the dang thing this year."

Manning overcame the jinx of the New England Patriots, silencing those who said he could never win the big one, and now advances to the Super Bowl on February 4.

However, not all were convinced. John Jetzinski of suburban Carmel told a reporter for Eye Witness News that he won't be satisfied until Manning wins the Super Bowl. "After all, this guy usually spends the postseason on his couch. It is a good sign that he ditched it in the river, I suppose."

Thrown Down...

2007-01-24T19:58:00.000-05:00

I am still digging out from under writing deadlines. Got a book review off today, very belatedly, a fine book on Dewey, inquiry, and education. Also done with my "faculty activity reporting time" as a friend of mine in Blacksburg calls it (do the acronym), that time of year when you list all your publications, your service, your teaching evaluations, all the publications you wish "in press" and all the ones you are talking about, in hopes of getting a munificent few percentage points on your next year's salary, or a nod for promotion.

I feel a need to feed the blog. Tomorrow should be fun, though, the first "books and coffee," a wonderful tradition here at olde Purdue. Dan Morris will be discussing M. Bérubé's "What's Liberal...." I will post the sound file if they are still doing that and letcha know how it went.

But we did have a great Lucky Jim conversation last night in class. I will get to that soon...discussing the book and then watching the 1957 film...

"Thrown down...like a barricade." Walking around a clothing store last week, I kept hearing that...long story short, I was hearing a just gorgeous, recent, Stevie Nicks song from the Fleetwood Mac Say You Will effort of a few years ago, made me first Itunes purchase...hey, not to mention the usual enchanting, much underrated, guitar pickin' of her on again now off again, just wonderful, and just right.

Long week

2007-01-19T19:41:00.000-05:00

and no blogging. Just been writing my hands numb and reading my eyeballs red. Working with multiple graduate students on coauthored journal submissions, and finishing up another piece on reverence and school leadership with another colleague. With winter hitting Indiana finally, my energy a bit lower this week.

Then, too, the disturbing news about a missing Purdue student been a bit preoccupying here. Hope to get back to some regular blogging soon.

LIve Blogging BCS Title Game Coverage

2007-01-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

An EAGLE flying over a humongous American flag? Quite an image, but I always cringe when animals are so deployed.

On to the real animals...

In Effort to Top 'Bama, Purdue Offers Saban The Entire State of Indiana

2007-01-02T14:09:00.000-05:00

West Lafayette, Ind. (UPI): Today, in an effort to improve the Purdue Boilermakers' weak appearances in the postseason, the Purdue athletic department announced that they would fly from West Lafayette to Miami to offer Dolphins coach Nick Saban the entire state of Indiana.

Purdue coach Joe Tiller, resting after his Champ Sports Bowl loss to Maryland, expressed surprise. "Nick is a fine coach, I knew him when he was at Michigan State. But the entire state of Indiana? They only offered me Tippecanoe County 10 years ago. But heck, that is big time sports, what can you say?"

Tiller said he was approached to be coach emeritus, and would call special teams plays from the pressbox if Saban accepted the offer.

Saban is currently being wooed by the Alabama Crimson Tide, who would like to have him take over from Dave Shula and bring the Tide back to its former glory. Merchants in Tuscaloosa are already offering Saban Caps, made of houndstooth but with a sportier brim, to both bring back the memory of the legendary Bear Bryant and to point to the future rise of 'Bama pigskin prospects.

Officials at the university in Tuscaloosa are offering Saban $40-$50M to take over as coach. They are unable to offer him the entire state, however, as Auburn already has protested this possible move to counter Purdue's offer.