|
stemwedel
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Janet
Country: United States
State: California
Gender: Female
Interests: Reading, writing, trying to get to the bottom of deep questions and enduring mysteries.
Expertise: Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, being in school.
Occupation: Education/training
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
7/1/2003
|
|
| Some insight into disciplinary wrestling matches.
Given the recent public arguments about what the university is supposed to be doing, what it is actually doing, who is to blame, and how it might be fixed, I found this post remarkably insightful.
You really should read the whole thing, but here's the part that that really got me:
As gzombie said, literary study is not a vocational degree. And that is perplexing to administrators or researchers in other fields where the goals and outcomes seem more clear cut. The liberal arts degree in the modern university often fuctions as a site of resistance to or critique of the utilitarian vocational model that has proven its profitability. So, business majors say "what will you do with that" and English majors say "it doesn't matter because right now, I'm doing what I love: reading, writing, and thinking." I'm vastly oversimplifying, but I think that pleasure is threatening to some observers. I've never yet encountered a student who's told me "well, I really want to be an accounting major, but my parents are forcing me to study English." The great joy of teaching upper-level English courses is that students are there because they want to be.
Works for philosophy too. And, in a perfect world, it would be true of just about every field of study. Why does what you study need to be about what you're going to be when you grow up? Why can't everyone study what they love?
(Of course, if everyone could study what they loved, the next logical question would be, why can't everyone do what they love? And that poses a little bit of a threat to the status quo, I suppose ...) | | |
| Wanting to blog anonymously doesn't always mean you'll succeed.
However, there's advice here that may improve the chances of success.
| | |
| Religion versus Science: Is Philosophy the answer?
It would seem that on March 28 I was not the only one blogging about the conflict between certain religious types and science. Over at Ono's thougts I found the following thoughts:
So what's the big deal: faith and science? The big deal is that faith is understood in subjective terms and established upon that which is unseen and unproven to the secular eye. Jesus is the Son of God, but can anyone prove that? No. Jesus rose from the dead. Can anyone prove that? No. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." So on the one side we have faith that eschews evidence as a warrant for belief while on the other side, there is science, a discipline or mindset that refuses to commit or trust or believe without solid evidence and even then, it is willing to change positions as the evidence warrants.
Science is thus seen as the province of objectve truth, because the evidence for scientific truth is available to all and verifiable. Faith claims, on the other hand, are painfully lacking in this objectivity. These are the two poles that these evangelicals are dealing with. Things either fall under faith or science for them. If something is objective truth, then it falls under science, if it is subjective truth, then it falls under faith.
But then, the problem is that as Christians, they are aware that, though physically unverifiable, the unseen truths of the Christian faith are no less true than the visible, verifiable truths of science. In fact, the truths of the Faith are more noble and "real." But how then can these be communicated? How do you express the sublime and subject truth in terms that underscore its authentic objectivity?
Ono provides an interesting diagnosis of the problem the evangelicals seem to be having with science (and with the lack of respect they feel their own beliefs get):
Unlike Catholics, Protestants do not have a tradition of philosophy that is essential to their identity or theology. The Catholic tradition has numerous first rate philosophers whose works are never far from the Catholic mind. The Protestant tradition operates somewhat differently. Traditions "closer" to Catholics such as Anglicans, Lutherans, perhaps Methodists, etc, do engage philosophy, but the extent to which philosophy is essential to what they do pales when compared to Catholicism and secondly, there isn't a "magisterial" body of philosophers or philosophical works that these denominations agree on.
The "further" the Protestant form differs from Catholicism, the more likely we are to see an absence of any coherent philosophical structure, in terms of established philosophical schools. What this means then is that with these groups, which I will loosely call Evangelicals, there's faith and there's science, but nothing to mediate between the two.
This is important in how Ono answers the question, "How do you express the sublime and subject truth [arrived at by faith] in terms that underscore its authentic objectivity?"
The answer is philosophy. This is the role that philosophy has played for Catholics for centuries. Evangelicals do not have this tradition of philosophy, and so even though they rightly discern that the things believed deserve more than to be casually dismissed by the scientist, they have no way to communicate these truths. Philosophy is the mediating discipline between faith and science.
Wow!
(Of course, this may not work if the only tools one has in one's philosophical toolbox are things like metaphysical naturalism. Still, nice to see that one's own discipline has the potential to be the honest broker that could put out one of the culture war's biggest current conflagrations!)
| | |
| Weblogs, professional development, and the academic food-chain.
Daniel W. Drezner has an interesting discussion of whether academics can be bloggers. In it, he points out some of the pleasing features of blogs that, perhaps, could make blogging challenging for academics.
As Drezner points out, there are some obvious criteria for good blogging that academics possess (they can think critically and they can write). However, the blogosphere is a different kind of audience: it may be less tolerant of jargon, and it doesn't necessarily respect the same hierarchies as one's university or academic discipline. Moreover, many academics have had the luxury of working out their ideas in private before exposing the beautifully assembled finished product to peer review at a scholarly journal. In the blogosphere, potentially, everyone's a critic. And, of course, there's the time-suck issue.
Drezner, being a political scientist, discusses this issue in the context of keeping a political blog "rather than blogging only about one's research, which is an unalloyed good." So he identifies certain dangers that might accompany taking political stands in the blogosphere (grudges nursed by colleagues who disagree, public uproar directed at an institution if one's views are not tremendously popular, uncomfortable encounters at the watercooler, etc.). It's not entirely clear that taking a strong stand on, say, issues in one's philosophical research in a blog couldn't have the same effects (although I imagine that public outcry is more likely if your an ethicist than if you're solving problems in modal logic). Certainly, to the extent that "being wrong" in the eyes of your colleagues and luminaries in your field is a problem, a weblog carries dangers. It leaves a paper-trail that a conference presentation might not. But you presents your research, you takes your chances.
Of course, there are two implicit assumption in Drezner's discussion that might not hold true all that frequently (at least judging from the academic blogs I've been reading lately):
- People are actually reading your blog, and
- You're writing under your own name rather than a pseudonym.
Lace Marie Brogden has a nice discussion of what might ride of writing as yourself versus writing under a pseudonym. She seems to suggest -- and I think she's right -- that at this point we really don't know what kind of effects blogging might have in the tenure process, how stepping up on a cyber-soapbox will play into recent controversies over academic freedom, etc.
Not that it advances the conversation all that much, I'm going to post here the comment I tried to post to Lace's entry. (It was rejected due to "questionable content", which ... I dunno. You tell me what the red-flag content might be!)
The anonymity in blogging issue is one I've been thinking about (in that way one thinks about things below the surface when one ought to be grading papers) ... so I really enjoyed this post.
As someone whose blogs are either not anonymous or only vaguely so (because, for example, they're linked back to my professional website), I didn't make a firm decision either to disclose or to hide my real identity because I'm fairly certain that hardly anyone is reading me most of the time. So it's me thinking "out loud" in cyberspace. I think my department would be fine with most of what I write in my blogs -- as philosophers, they're just that way. I don't know how powerful people beyond my department would react to my blogs. But, since I'm not even on their radar, why would they be reading me anyway?
There are people in my field who write on high-profile philosophy blogs, under their own names. But the thoughts in those blogs are much more journal-like than blog-like. I guess if you know people in your field are watching, you might want your writing to be journal-like. Myself, I enjoy the flow of ideas in the blog-like explorations, so I'm enjoying not being on the radar.
(See, no naughty words, passable grammar and spelling. What's the problem?)
Edited to add:
I just found this discussion about "Morality & The Blogosphere". One of the main assertions is that when I blog, I am not writing for me -- I am writing for you.
That kind of depends of whether I think there's a "you" there reading me, doesn't it?
But I do agree (as I've said before) that there is something that writing as if for a potential audience (about whom I cannot make very many assumptions) does to the content and presentation. If this were just a Word file on my laptop, it would be a different kind of thing.
I wonder: Is it mostly boy-bloggers who assume that they'll have readers? | | |
| Academic Freedom, Political Diversity, and Who I'm Working for Really.
I really hadn't felt the need to blog extensively about this subject. It's been blogged within an inch of its life already, by people who have actually done studies, analyzed the methodology of other studies, examined the "money trail", and have a great deal more historical perspective on this than I do.
But this weekend, a troll appeared on one of my listservs and began the bombardment of ... let's call it "concern".
Said troll claims to be interested in dialogue about this issue. Of course, this means the hopelessly naive philosopher in me wants to engage in reasoned discourse. The hard-headed realist (which is to say, my spouse) insists, however, that one ought not feed trolls. So I'm bringing it here.
Before I give a brief synopsis of the points I feel need addressing, here's a sample of one of the calmer posts that has appeared on the list from the troll:
Many university instructors view themselves as above society, above the need to heed the law, and any efforts by society to reign in their out-of-line political indoctrination in university classrooms and efforts to radicalize the student body towards political action in the community in the name of "social justice" or other such collectivist slogans. Their common view (amply displayed on the campus dialog list in the past couple of days) is that it does not happen, and even if it does, they should be allowed to do it, in the name of a perverted interpretation of "academic freedom."
Tenure appears to have much to do with creation of this moral hazard.
In my opinion, this stance of university instructors is hypocritical and self-serving. The university is established to serve the community, not to dictate to the community that it serves, what the community may or may not do, especially if the community funds the university. Political indoctrination in the public university classroom is tantamount to taxation without representation. The problem with indoctrination on campus now is that the public is beginning to become aware of it. This puts university instructors on the defensive, and all they can do is to continue to pretend that the problem is drummed up by paranoid visions of a vast, right wing conspiracy, attack the messenger (a typical leftist tactic so ingrained that university instructors don't even think twice on how badly it reflects on them when they use it), or censorship of views that they are suddenly at loss to be capable of refuting in a rational and unemotional manner.
It is a law of nature that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In my opinion, academia is in mass denial that they deserve immunity to, or have the power or moral authority to indefinitely resist, political blowback from community as a direct result of continued practices of political indoctrination on campus.
For the moment, let's side aside the large number of emails this person sent to the list in a rather short period of time (25+ in less than 2 days). Further ignore for the moment that the articles that these emails shared with the list come from sources that most commentators would identify as having a pronounced right wing bias. Let's just take the substance of the claims.
- Academics at public universities are supported by tax dollars and as such they have certain duties to the public.
- Among these duties is the duty not to indoctrinate students into holding political views contrary to the views of the public at large.
- To the extent that the community is unhappy about the political views of students and graduates of public universities, the community is entitled to reign those universities in (whether through political pressure or funding cuts).
- If the public pays for the public universities, it is the public's political views that ought to be advocated in the classroom (else we have an instance of "taxation without representation").
- Tenure is bad because it places tenured professors, even those whose views are widely at odds with the views of the general public, out of the reach of the general public's ability to reign them in.
- Rules on a listserv are tantamount to censorship.
A few claims that appeared in some of the other messages, not quoted above:
- Intellectual diversity ought to be imposed on the faculty of the public university. As "[c]ampuses across the nation have become havens for unreconstructed
radical socialists caught in a time warp from the 1960's," this would mean, apparently, targeted hiring of right wing professors.
- The dearth of conservative on the faculty is due to discrimination against them.
- Maybe it's not blatant anti-conservative bias so much as handing out too many posts to women and minorities, though.
- Campus conservatives aren't participating in dialogues about academic freedom and intellectual diversity because they're scared of the chilling intellectual environment imposed by the leftists.
- Meanwhile, Ward Churchill should be fired for his views.
- "[T]here is a significant gap between what the public wants out of higher
education, and what many tenured professors unfortunately dispense in the classroom
from the relative safety of their tenured positions of near-absolute authority and control over students' GPAs and (indirectly) future job prospects." (This is really two points, I think. One, the university isn't delivering the product the consumer wants. Two, the professors will give you bad grades unless you fall in line with their ideology.)
Where to begin with all this?
Perhaps I should begin with a point of agreement. I think it is true that, given its reliance on tax support, the public university has a duty to the public. (I think the private university has a duty to the public as well.) And, the public could well change the extent to which it supported the public university if it felt it were not well served by it.
There is, of course, sometimes a mismatch between what we think serves us well and what actually serves us well. (The illustrative examples here range from 24 hour news networks to bad college boyfriends. Choose your own favorite example.) This is not to say the public isn't allowed to lobby for funding cuts even if it is mistaken that the public university is not serving it well. Sometimes the mismatch between perception and reality has unfortunate consequences. That's life.
The biggest question on the table, as far as I'm concerned, is what the university is supposed to do. Without getting clear on that, it's pretty hard to say whether our universities are doing a good job or a bad job. The, as I understand it, is to give people the tools to think critically; to gather, evaluate, and make effective (and intellectually honest!) use of information; and to examine their own views and the views of others rather than being led solely by authority or habit.
Is that a recipe for political indoctrination?
I must confess that I haven't spent a lot of time visiting the classrooms of others who teach at this university. (Hey, I'm trying to get tenure here! Already very busy!!) But I imagine I'd be able to spot some telltale signs of opposition to this educational philosophy in my chats with people about their pedagogy. I imagine the students in my department wouldn't be shy about slagging on professors who shut down debate (at least when they're shooting the breeze in the student lounge). So, in the absence of empirical data to demonstrate that Marxist-Leninist indoctrination is what's for breakfast this semester across campus and across the curriculum, it's hard for me to imagine it's really happening on this campus.
But maybe there's a perception among students that there are certain politically loaded claims one ought not to make in class, for fear your professor will think you evil or stupid and call you out or flunk you out. Maybe that perception is chilling debate and isolating students of a particular political persuasion from getting the education they're entitled to.
It's possible ... but given that many of the professors I know here will stop just short of setting themselves on fire to get a lively discussion going, it's hard to imagine that the perceived chill isn't really a manifestation of shyness or an unwillingness to go out on an intellectual limb. Going out on those limbs requires courage, no matter what your ideological baggage. Working up that kind of courage is one of the things you're supposed to learn in college. (And, it's something where you pretty much have to learn it yourself -- no one else can learn it for you.)
Sometimes students work up the nerve to say something they think the prof won't agree with, and then they react in horror when they are challenged to defend their claim. May I point out that this is exactly what is supposed to happen and, indeed, that professors similarly demand support and argumentation for views they happen to agree with?
And here's the rub: The problems the public has with the public university arise at least in part from a misunderstanding of what a college education is supposed to do. We're teaching your kids how to think for themselves. One consequence of that is that sometimes your kids end up coming to different conclusions than you do, and holding different views. voting differently, and taking professions you might not see the value of. (Maybe you'd like to speak to my parents about that one!) If the public doesn't want this, then it really doesn't want education at all.
(Society might still owe it to the kids, though, even if the parents object. Not going to follow that thread today.)
When I taught at that private university up the road, there were certain students (and parents) who seemed to think that $40K per year in tuition entitled them to "A"s. Of course, that belief rested on a big misunderstanding about the "product" they're buying in a college education. By the same token, those who think college should just transmit job skills while replicating the political views of the public as a whole need to read the fine print.
More later.
| | |
|
