Obama's former green jobs czar on standards in Ivy League law schools

I had a professor who encouraged me to apply to Harvard and Yale [for law school], which was almost unheard of for students coming from the kind of public schools that I was coming from in the rural South. I was accepted to both places, and decided to go to Yale because Yale didn't have any grades and was smaller than Harvard. I figured, once I enroll I'm guaranteed to graduate, so I can just go and be a radical hellraiser student, and they can't do anything about it. Which is pretty much what happened.

Remember this when people call law school grads "smart".

Oh, more fun from the AAUP.

Cary Nelson has yet another morally preening missive. While universities are hemorrhaging money, this hippie decides that his organization has to anguish on whether the "despicable" (his word) Prof. John Yoo should have the right to speak. Eight paragraphs of first-person agonizing over whether law professor (this is red-on-red for KilltheHumanities, but we'll continue) Yoo, who is an author of memos which argued the legality of harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, was apparently the subject of demonstrators demanding that he be fired.

As we all know, the academy is a place for open inquiry so if you have undesirable opinions, we have to consider whether or not to fire you. The open-mindedness of the free speech left was documented: "Some students vowed they would never take a course with him." And, of course, Cary showed those Neanderthals how much wiser he was: "Others were mightily offended that his presentation (a response to an earlier speaker) had twice been interrupted by protestors who were then escorted out. When they characterized that as a heckler’s veto, I suggested that an interruption of a speech that was allowed to continue was not quite a veto; at that point the conservative students refused to speak to me any longer."

Yeah, Cary, your cutting incisive logical statement "not quite a veto" really put them in their place.

I felt like I was reading George Costanza recounting his brilliance after the event and he inserted all the things he wanted to say.

The second sentence of paragraph three is:

"A tenured faculty member cannot be dismissed for his political views."

Well, that should end it, but he spent the remaining time undermining that point trying to say how much he really really really wanted to have Yoo fired.

In addition, he freely throws around the word "torture" and, unless Yoo's memos address the rack and bamboo under the fingernails, I think the president-for-life of the AAUP -- who purports to represent Yoo and others in academia -- should at least take care in his official correspondences as the organization's representative.

Then he indicts, convicts and executes:

"Of course in Yoo’s case the arguments in his memos justifying torture, intellectually irresponsible or not, are not the entire issue. It is their purpose, their use, and their effect that may put him at risk. Thus people have argued that the brutal impact of his memos on the lives of real people bear on his moral authority as a faculty member. His advocacy activities on behalf of the Bush administration, his participation in potential war crimes, are an affront to human decency. Yet had Yoo published his views in scholarly essays and a time when no US sponsored torture was taking place, his legal opinions might have been seen as more absurd than sinister. Yoo’s case is thus inescapably moral and political."

If this is the man standing for academic freedom, we're all lost. Nelson, you'll note, stops the first person and uses "people have argued" instead of taking credit himself. But what's the deal here? Is Yoo right? Or is Cary Nelson saying that if so-called torture, however he defines it, is legal then John Yoo should lie and say it isn't? I think maybe he is.

Nelson himself has defended radicals like Bill Ayers who have had their hands in actually killing people. What have Yoo's memos done? The worst interrogation tactics were waterboarding, performed on three people. Having experienced the actual sensation of drowning, let me say that they will get over it. Other accusations range from sleep deprivation to cigar smoke in the face.

But Nelson talks in abstracts: "torture," "brutal impact," etc. even though friends of his and people and nations they have defended or implicitly defended participated in what most everyone would recognize as torture. Saddam Hussein would put enemies into wood chippers -- feet first. Castro's political prisoners are put in cells with spiked walls so that they cannot rest against them. Now that's what I call torture.

But buried in this nonsense is a gem:

Such considerations are clearly fair when deciding whether or not to hire a faculty member in the first place. You have a right not to hire someone whose views you consider reprehensible, though the bar must be very high.

And there we go. The head of the AAUP admits that departments should hire based on PC.

One might thus choose not to invite an avowed Ku Klux Klan member, a Holocaust denier, or an advocate of state torture into your departmental community.

Really, Cary? Really? You're going to compare John Yoo to the Klan or Holocaust deniers? It seems to me that his bar isn't very high at all. I guess it doesn't apply to guys of Nelson's or Ward Churchill's bent. Don't like racism? There are whole departments dedicated to (certain approved forms of) racism. Does it occur to Nelson that any professor who hints that socialism is an appropriate could be easily linked to Stalin's crimes? Ward Churchill called the people who died in the towers on 9/11 "Little Eichmanns". Is he not advocating the trial and execution of the population of New York City?

No, because he doesn't think that the bludgeon will be applied to him, that it will always be in his hand.

Cary Nelson, quit defending academic freedom. You're not helping.

Women’s studies program protests budget cuts

From the Ames Tribune.

By Kathy HansonStaff Writer
Published: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 11:26 AM CDT

Monday’s protest of budget cuts to the women’s studies program, “Speak Out! Act
Up! Teach In!” was endorsed by the program’s director, Diane Price-Herndl.

Just goes to show you what total garbage this field is that the director of the program has time for a protest. The rest of us have to publish, teach or engage in actual scholarship.

Price-Herndl said she fears the budget cuts will cause women to lose
ground, when they’re already lagging behind men in several areas. She said ISU
has only 43.8 percent female students, while the national average for
undergraduates is 55 percent.

So the latter is not a problem but the former is? If women are lagging behind at Iowa State, why would the solution be to give them some courses in bovine feces (but not an Ag course)? Shouldn't the point be to get them to take real courses, like mathematics or...well, it all starts with mathematics, doesn't it?

“What is important is the budget represents a 6.68 percent increase in the
dollars for teaching,”

Teaching? What else do they do? I shudder to think what these people think is research.

Whiteford said the women’s studies program budget reflects a reduction in
staffing to bring the women’s studies clerical and programmatic support more in
line with “other cross-disciplinary studies programs we have in the college.”

In other words, they've had it too good for too long.

“In the various budget cuts earlier this decade, the women’s studies
program’s budget was left untouched,” he said.

Way too good. And it should be noted that these programs do not belong to a department. In some sense, they shouldn't have much of a budget at all. The departments should be providing the bulk of the money for teaching.

This is how the humanities and social sciences work at ISU. Each faculty member typically belongs to several programs. This permits a bloated and inflated budget for them collectively.

Another Liberal Arts and Sciences program for women, the Catt Center for Women
and Politics, was the only entity in the college not to receive a budget cut
for fiscal year 2009-2010, Whiteford said.

There are two? Why are there two? Either kill the Catt Center or kill the Women's Studies program. Or merge them. These budget cuts are really showing some major cracks.

Whiteford said he has been a strong advocate of diversity since before he became
dean. “I established the LAS College’s first diversity committee, in
existence since 2003,” he said.

Well, Dean, you made your bed, now lie in it.

AAUP spam

Somehow I got on the American Association University Professors email list. The president of this organization that feels the need to spam anyone with an .edu email address is Cary Nelson -- an English professor.

In this essay, Prof. Nelson addresses invitations to campuses. He seems to be writing exclusively to defend Ward Churchill and William Ayers by, ironically, comparing them to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the former head of the American Nazi Party.

Regarding the visit of the Nazi leader to campus:

Although Antioch may not be anyone's image of a disciplined campus, the 500 students and faculty in the auditorium that day in 1964 were well disciplined indeed. They sat in absolute silence throughout the talk. When the question period came, no one raised a hand. Instead, everyone rose and exited, again in silence. So Rockwell began to curse us all. Still no one reacted. Eventually he gave up and left.

Interestingly, there are plenty of modern examples of speakers being shouted down. Here's one I found in a Google search in which the behavior was defended by an academic. Most of the repressed speakers are conservatives and very few engage in the academic buffoonery or intellectual parlor tricks of Ayers or Churchill. It's not Ayers' or Churchill's scholarship for which they are being invited to campus.

College audiences have special reason to see such people [as the Nazi leader] in the flesh, so as to try to understand how they might draw people to their cause.

Then why invite (and give honoraria to) "distinguished" college professors when the students have access to people with exactly the same views throughout their faculty? It isn't like Ayers and Churchill have an obscure constituency hard to find on college campuses.

What I learned in 1964 was to value the power of silent, nonviolent witness;

His silence, apparently, doesn't extend to my email inbox.

Many faculty and students across the country expect Churchill to be a relentless ideologue. If you spend time with him, as I have, you meet a rather low-key, affable fellow, who wears his trials surprisingly lightly.

Ah, yes, having no earned Ph.D., a high salary at a top university and plagiarized scholarship must have been a trial. As to not being a relentless ideologue around Prof. Nelson, I suppose Churchill drops the clown act around his like-minded fellows.

Ayers, billed as an unrepentant radical...

Billed? Billed by himself. Although he has said (in the eloquence one can expect from the top rungs of Education scholarship), “I wish I had done more, but it doesn’t mean I wish we’d bombed more shit.” He has not said that he actually wishes they had bombed less shit. Or even, not at all.

...is an accomplished education professor...

Damning with faint praise.

But then efforts to get an invited speaker disinvited are not necessarily really based on anger at giving the person a platform, especially since real monsters often acquit themselves poorly on stage.

Does Prof. Nelson actually think about what he writes? Of course they acquit themselves well. Hitler, just to pick the Godwin example, was a mesmerizing speaker. Although Nelson earlier in the letter ridicules Columbia's president Bollinger for distancing himself from Ahmedinejad, the only reason that the Iranian president was made to look foolish was that the speech got national exposure and his statement about no homosexuals in Iran was blasted all over the media. In fact, if he were the usual "activist" campus speaker, his words would go unscrutinized.

They are as much as anything else efforts to housebreak American higher education, to establish external forces and constituencies as campus powers.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Get a university to cancel Churchill or Ayers and anyone on the political or cultural spectrum whose views you oppose can be your next target.

What is more disturbing are the people who are never invited at all.

Then state legislators could pressure the University of Oklahoma to cancel a talk by biologist Richard Dawkins. Why? Because the man treats evolution as an established fact.

Really? So there's no one at UO that treats evolution as an established fact? Could it be that Dawkins is a provocateur who is not being invited to give a dry talk on whatever aspect of biology in which he's an expert (I'm sure Dawkins himself doesn't remember anymore.) but to give an anti-religious screed. Well, an anti-Christian screed, anyway.

The new weapon of choice is the anonymous threat of violence delivered by a phone call from a public booth. Then the president or his spokesperson can cancel a speech in a voice filled with regret, ceremoniously invoking "security" concerns, as Boston College did in canceling an Ayers talk.

Am I the only one who sees the irony here? What? Did somebody threaten to set off a bomb? Did they call their group the Weather Overground?

I suppose Prof. Nelson, who sees his university position as an attempt to push an ideological agenda, is suddenly stung by the notion that his ox is being gored. "Security concerns" have kept speakers off campus for a long time. The most common is to cite a concern for security and then to charge the inviting student group with the costs of bringing the speaker to campus.

Thus we all benefited when Pennsylvania's Millersville University resisted legislative pressure and held an Ayers lecture as planned.

Except the Millersville students. They would have been better educated by watching a few Three Stooges shorts. When pseudointellectual tripe is on the menu, no one is filled.

That is the price of retaining academic freedom for a free society.

He uses the word "free" but this is really about money. Ward Churchill and William Ayers have the right to speak freely. But freedom of speech does not entitle them to a salary for their speech.

Nor does it entitle them to a large share of mandatory student fees.

Ward Churchill's worth $1

A jury awarded Ward Churchill $1 for being "wrongfully terminated" from Colorado University.

It's hard to make out what the jury was thinking. The $1 was intended as a slap, the jury asked the judge if they could award $0.

"When you tell the truth about the master narrative, the master slaps you down for it," [Churchill attorney David] Lane said. "Basically, white guys in suits write history," he added later.

One can only assume that the lawyer was appealing to some narrow ideology on the part of at least some of the jury. Perhaps some jurors were persuaded to vote on Churchill's behalf knowing that more ideological jurors would settle for the $1 (or in their mind at the time $0) verdict.

It's difficult to argue that there was not sufficient cause for firing. Churchill's plagiarizing was done with the same blatancy and juvenile desire for attention that motivated his essay on "little Eichmanns".

I suppose that without the little Eichmanns essay, Churchill would have flown under the radar like most professors whose classes are little more than ideological rants or unprepared class discussions. Such professors are little more than gurus, popular among the self-selected students who gather around them.

A quick perusal of Churchill's academic credentials (at least to the extent that Wikipedia records them) should have made CU embarrassed to hire him in the first place:

Churchill received his B.A. in technological communications in 1974 and M.A. in communications theory in 1975, both from Sangamon State University, now the University of Illinois at Springfield. Churchill began working as an affirmative action officer at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1978. He also lectured on Indian issues in the ethnic studies program. In 1990, he was hired as an associate professor, although he did not possess the academic doctorate usually required for such a position. The following year he was granted tenure in the communications department, without the usual six-year probationary period, after being declined by the sociology and political science departments. He was presented with an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Alfred University after giving a lecture there about American Indian history in 1992. He moved to the new ethnic studies department in 1996 and was promoted to full professor in 1997. He became chair of the department in June 2002.

So he had no earned doctorate, just a lot of opinions and an ability to convince a gullible administration that he had a desirable ancestry. Clearly, Colorado University was in need of an "ethnic studies" department and was unconcerned with what went on there. Just as disturbing is that Churchill could manage early tenure in the communications department without an earned doctorate after being turned down by two other departments.

That he would have anything resembling expertise in all three of those areas demonstrates that there are no standards. Apparently, any fool can be a communications professor and can at least fake at sociology and political science.

Will he get his job back? Probably not. Now that Churchill has been uncovered, CU would be foolish to allow him to get back on the faculty. The retaliation from donors and the continuing melodrama would produce a distraction that the university won't want any part of. They'll gladly take the PR hit from a big settlement than put up with his ongoing presence.

Unfortunately, Ward Churchill is the tip of the academic iceberg.

No comments?

I have decided to disable comments on this blog as I have no time to moderate them. However, if you wish to send me particularly egregious examples of the product our humanities and social sciences departments are churning out, send them to killthehumanities@gmail.com

Welcome to the blog!

This blog is dedicated to the deconstruction, de-funding and destruction of the humanities and social sciences at the university level in America.

The humanities and social sciences have declined precipitously enough so that their academic and intellectual standards are nonexistent.

In this time of budget crunches, it is essential for legislators, regents and trustees of universities to take a hard look at the weak scholarship that continues to be promoted at their institutions.

States that fund universities should insist on a massive reduction of these fields and, ideally, insist on eliminating them rather than use scarce taxpayer dollars to reward students for spending 4 (or more) years as they pretend to study this twaddle.