Unpaid thinking work while on furlough

More than a fortnight into the summer, I have been tossing around the word furlough a lot, whenever strangers and friends alike ask me about my "summer off."

"So, how do you spend your time then," asked a neighbor who is a year away from reaching sixty.  Perhaps he is contemplating retirement and, therefore, how to spend time post-work.  I suppose not everybody can goof away in a prematurely retired life like how this guy does! ;)

There is a paper that I am writing for a journal--it is almost done.  I need to wrap it soon because the deadline is nearing.  There are other things related to my professional life that I am able to address only during the uninterrupted summer days.

Meanwhile, student emails keep coming.  Like this one, from "A":

I hope you're having a good summer break so far and was wondering if you could send me more articles on economic geography or really anything interesting that you would like to share with me.
Thank you for your time,

How can I not engage with this student, right?

Life in the academy is not really about what happens in the classroom.  It is about what I do outside the classroom preparing for those minutes in the classroom.  Those minutes require days and days of reading, thinking, discussing, and writing.  Else, as Kalidasa wrote more than 1,700 years ago:

He's but a petty tradesman at the best,
Selling retail the work of other men

Perhaps even back then there were people who wondered what teachers did in their easy lives!

Almost always, everybody has comments on teaching and teachers, on what has to be taught and how anything has to be taught.  I am glad that there is such an interest in teaching and learning.  But, as one can imagine, this level  of outside commentary on teaching can easily slide into judging what is "correct" and what is not.  And if something about the teacher is not "correct," then off with her head.  Or, at least, fire the teacher.

Academic freedom, which is something that very few teachers around the world have, is, therefore, precious.  And tenure plays an important role in academic freedom:

Tenure for professors protects the right to pursue unpopular research and take unpopular positions. It is one of the counter-majoritarian bulwarks of a free society, like a free press or an independent judiciary. 

Trump America and opportunistic populism has started going after tenure and academic freedom.

Aversion to “expertise” and rejection of “establishment” authorities is a central element in the politics of populism. The honest, practical, plain-speaking majority is pitted against the complacent, condescending, and entitled mandarins.
The truth, however, is that populism is a politics of bad faith. Our societies would stop functioning without the expertise that comes from academic knowledge. Populist political leaders who win votes by disparaging experts – we can all choose our favorite examples – are bound to find themselves fumbling for the light switch when they come to power. Expertise remains essential to any decent governance whatsoever.  

Here in the US, while conditions in higher education are getting dark, it is nothing compared to many other countries, like in Turkey or Russia.  In Hungary, Central European University (CEU) "is fighting to remain a free institution in Budapest, Hungary’s capital, following the passage of new legislation that would, in essence, require the university to close."

Ultimately, academic freedom depends on the health of democratic institutions. When democracies are weak, when majoritarian populists erode checks and balances, press freedom, and judicial independence, universities are especially vulnerable. That is what has happened in Hungary. 

Populists and authoritarians always go after artists and professors--these are groups that always question the status quo.  I cannot understand how within a matter of months the political environment has become so toxic.  At least for now, I have the furlough months to think about all these, and more.

PS: If you are interested, I sent the student,"A," this reply:

I will start you with these two, both from the NY Times: One and Two.
Read them preferably in that order.
They are on completely different topics, but you will see that they will wonderfully enrich your understanding of the world, and will make you think about quite a few things.

Academic freedom is dead. Long live academic freedom!

The more "funny" things happen at my college and elsewhere in academia, the more I worry that "academic freedom" has been hijacked to mean things very different from what it really means.

We will begin with the first principles--on how Academic Freedom was/is defined by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) :

1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.
2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.
3. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

How simple and yet lofty in its ideals, right?

That was the statement in 1940.  As valid then as it is now.

Here is where it gets even more profound:

Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.

That is from the opening paragraph before those three points about Academic Freedom were listed out, and before the statements on academic tenure.

How many faculty and administrators truly understand that academic freedom and tenure are not about the individual nor the institution but for the common good?

It is perhaps always depressing to look at how far we stray from what we thought we were setting out to do.  When a student complains that most of the time in one of their classes the faculty was ranting about something political that had nothing to do with the course, that is not a freedom that the faculty thinks (s)he has.  When a faculty engages in lewd conduct in a public park, (s)he forgets that "the public may judge their profession and their institution" and the "academic freedom" comes with obligations toward that public good.  When faculty have on their office doors and walls cartoons and statements that put students who have differing views on the defensive, they fail to "show respect for the opinions of others."  Academic freedom is not to simply offer courses on whatever, when its contribution to the public good is questionable.

Yet again, I feel like I was born thirty years too late. I am not cut out for this contemporary world where faculty and universities do not care about the public good and, instead, seem to only "further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution."

Here's to hoping that tomorrow is another day!

Yep, from there

Nutty Republicans dig into Wisconsin professor's emails!

Just when I thought the Republicans had sunk low enough and had hit rock bottom, they provide more evidence for "it ain't over till it is over." (Oh, the Dems are screwed up in their own ways, as if it is all a variation of Tolstoy's famous line that "all happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way")

What is the latest?  The Republicans in Wisconsin want to get their dirty political hands on a University of Wisconsin history professor's emails:

the Republican Party of Wisconsin has filed an open records request demanding access to any emails Cronon has sent or received since Jan. 1 containing the search terms "Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell."
The obvious goal is  to find something damaging or embarrassing to Cronon -- although judging by Cronon's account, smoking guns seem unlikely to be lying around in plain sight. (Eight of the names referenced in the request belong to the eight Republican state senators targeted by Democrats for recall.)

Is the request legal?  Sure it is.  I have always operated under the understanding that emails received at, or sent from, my work address is "public property" because I work at a public university.  But, this Republican tactic appears to be be for all the wrong reasons. 

How much ever I find this Republican approach reprehensible, I agree with Jack Shafer, who points out that, well, this is allowed under the Freedom of Information Act:

Cronon's beef isn't with the Republican who filed for his emails but with the law. If he thinks that exposing university emails to the scrutiny of FOIA laws is an abomination, he should spend less time crying wolf about how the university's precious academic freedom is under assault and more time getting the law changed.
Professor Cronon also betrays a bit of naiveté in railing against "highly politicized" open records requests. Has he never inspected the FOIA docket? Many requesters have "highly politicized" motivations, and those motivations don't nullify their petition. Nor should they.

Yes, we have academic freedom.  But, academics in public universities ought to have known that academic freedom doesn't trump the laws of the land.  For some reason, even Paul Krugman argues that the law doesn't apply:

nobody, and I mean nobody, considers such academic email addresses something specially reserved for university business. Actually, according to Cronon he has been especially careful, maintaining a separate personal account — but nobody would have considered it out of the ordinary if he mingled personal correspondence with official business on the dot edu address. And no, the fact that he’s at a public university doesn’t change that: when my students take jobs at Berkeley or SUNY, they don’t imagine that they’re entering into a special fishbowl environment that they wouldn’t encounter at Georgetown or Haverford.

Uh, hello?  Really?  We might want to adopt a Dickensian stand that "the law is a ass, a idiot," but the law is the law, even if we are academics.

Andrew Leonard writes that perhaps this is the best time to pick up books by Cronon:

I just bought two of Cronon's books. We can't shape the future without understanding the past. The potency of Cronon's current involvement in the hottest political struggle of the day is all the proof I need that my own understanding of how the world works will benefit from more exposure to his work -- whether manifested in a blog post, New York Times Op-Ed, or book. What better response could there be to an attack on academic freedom than to spread that academic's ideas as widely as possible?

Save academic freedom ... by killing it first

[Academe] has far fewer checks and balances than other peer review professions. Doctors can lose their licenses. Lawyers can be disbarred. But incompetent or dishonest professors are often forever. If they have tenure, they are very hard to fire, and just about impossible to retire.How did such a sorry state of affairs arise?

As a tenured faculty member, I am in agreement with that excerpt (editor: how did your colleagues make the mistake of granting you indefinite tenure? Awshutupalready!  It is their problem now, isn't it?)

Anyway, back to the question that Erin O'Connor and Maurice Black raise: "How did such a sorry state of affairs arise?"

Back in the days when at least a few faculty bothered to chat with me and ask for my opinions, I shared with them my worries that we are screwing things up big time in higher education.  And that we are violating the contract we have with society--that they should leave us alone and we will deliver the best service ever.  Now, it is becoming clearer to the public that we are not delivering anywhere near what we promised and, predictably, they don't want to leave us alone. 

O'Connor and Black write that:

Nearly a century ago, the AAUP predicted that failure to ensure professional integrity would license the regulatory intrusions of trustees, legislators, and others. Now that is happening. And while the professoriate’s collective abdication of responsibility is not the sole explanation for these intrusions, it is a shamefully neglected piece of the puzzle.
Academic freedom belongs to the public — it is not the property of academics. Professors must explain why academic freedom is vital to our democracy — and prove that they deserve it.

Unfortunately, we didn't explain and prove.  And they are coming after us, and not merely in Wisconsin.  The AAUP's leader is upset:

Cary R. Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, believes higher education will see more legislative attacks on matters that colleges themselves should regulate, and questions whether lawmakers are right to micromanage campus policies: "Do we really need legislators deciding if Sally should get a sabbatical next year?"

Sally would have had hers without any interference if we had been doing the job well, Professor Nelson.  (editor: ahem, full disclosure? yes, I will on sabbatical in winter 2012.)

The tyrannical group called "faculty" :)

The world outside academia is often confused, at best, whenever there are reports of faculty being reprimanded or fired for saying something "wrong" because of the pervasive belief that we faculty have academic freedom.  Yep, we do have freedom, but only if we say what is ruled as the correct thing to say.  If otherwise, it is the tyrannical equivalent to "off with their heads."

Hey, I ought to know this--the faculty body and its leaders ruled that I do not have a right to expression, and also advised their peeps not to ever listen to me.  Yes, academic excommunication :) 

So, it does not surprise me at all that a religion professor--an adjunct--who had been "recognized by the religion department in 2008 and 2009 for being rated an excellent teacher by students" was fired not because he groped students or that he yelled and screamed, but "for saying he agreed with Catholic doctrine on homosexuality."

He was a religion professor in Illinois, and taught Roman Catholicism.  Is it difficult for anybody to imagine that he had his religious beliefs as well?  And he was fired for stating his belief in the context?  Despite the recognition the last two years for the excellent teaching?

Oh well, yet another evidence of the tyrannical ideologues who masquerade as faculty in colleges and universities. I tell you, the real news from academe will be if and when a Marxist professor ever tells students that maybe a liberal democratic economy is not that bad after all :)

(Source: 1, 2, and 3)
ps: No, this post is not because I agree with the Vatican's stand on homosexuality.  I don't care what the Catholic church thought or what the Ayatollah thinks.  Those are for the respective believers to sort out.  I am more worried about the physical and emotional abuse to kids ...
Nor am I one of those in-your-face atheists who wants to convert the believers away from religion.
What worries me is when democratic governments rule on how people ought to live. Like when France decides that a religious garb is illegal. Or when the US Congresses decides that a marriage is only between a man and a woman.  Or when the Anglo-American alliance decides it can freely torture the lives out of anybody it thinks is worth torturing while conducting the War on Terror.

Faith-based thoughts and actions, well, people can always exit those religions if they do not agree with those views ...

Quote of the day, on teaching and teachers

In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates warns a student that teachers can be dangerous. "You do not even know to whom you are committing your soul," Socrates says, "and whether the thing to which you commit yourself be good or evil."

Of course I agree with this quote, which is from Professor Steven Cahn who teaches a graduate course in philosophy to remind doctoral students about the profound seriousness of teaching.  It is with a "handle with care" that I approach teaching because I neither want to to brainwash students, nor to turn off any potential interest in the topics I teach.

This essay comes at a good time for me--during a light-hearted sidebar chat about giving students a break in the class, which I always do, a few students noted that they do not get any break in some of the other classes that also meet twice a week for an hour and fifty minutes each.  I explained to them that they have a right to a ten-minute break, and that such a break is factored into any class that meets for more than 50 minutes.  My point is this: every aspect of teaching--contents, behavior, and even breaks--are far too important for teachers to ignore and neglect.

China @ 60

I am glad I don't live in China. I mean, when I have a tough time even dealing with oppressive faculty colleagues who have successfully killed my freedom of speech, I bet I would not have literally lived under the Communist regime.  But, hey, thanks to the all-controlling government, they put on quite a show to celebrate turning 60.  Here is a video summary of the parade--the entire parade packed into four minutes: (HT)

China's 60th Anniversary national day - timelapse and slow motion - 7D and 5DmkII from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

More on Yale banning cartoons in a book

I blogged earlier about Yale University Press forcing the author of a forthcoming book on the Danish cartoon controversy not to include the cartoons in the book.

Christopher Hitchens says it best (as always):

[Now] the rot has gone a serious degree further into the fabric. Now we have to say that the mayhem we fear is also our fault, if not indeed our direct responsibility. This is the worst sort of masochism, and it involves inverting the honest meaning of our language as well as what might hitherto have been thought of as our concept of moral responsibility.

Last time this happened, I linked to the Danish cartoons so that you could make up your own minds about them, and I do the same today. Nothing happened last time, but who's to say what homicidal theocrat might decide to take offense now. I deny absolutely that I will have instigated him to do so, and I state in advance that he is directly and solely responsible for any blood that is on any hands. He becomes the responsibility of our police and security agencies, who operate in defense of a Constitution that we would not possess if we had not been willing to spill blood—our own and that of others—to attain it. The First Amendment to that Constitution prohibits any prior restraint on the freedom of the press. What a cause of shame that the campus of Nathan Hale should have pre-emptively run up the white flag and then cringingly taken the blood guilt of potential assassins and tyrants upon itself.

Do professors think and say foolish things?

YES, they do. A lot more than we let the public know. Unfortunately.

Christina Hoff Sommers has a wonderful essay, again. When she writes about the lack of professional and academic integrity, I cannot think of any flaw in her argument. Her comments below, in the context of feminism, are applicable to any field:

Why should it matter if a large number of professors think and say a lot of foolish and intemperate things? Here are three reasons to be concerned:

1) False assertions, hyperbole, and crying wolf undermine the credibility and effectiveness of feminism. The United States, and the world, would greatly benefit from an intellectually responsible, reality-based women's movement.

2) Over the years, the feminist fictions have made their way into public policy. They travel from the women's-studies textbooks to women's advocacy groups and then into news stories. Soon after, they are cited by concerned political leaders. President Obama recently issued an executive order establishing a White House Council on Women and Girls. As he explained, "The purpose of this council is to ensure that American women and girls are treated fairly in all matters of public policy." He and Congress are also poised to use the celebrated Title IX gender-equity law to counter discrimination not only in college athletics but also in college math and science programs, where, it is alleged, women face a "chilly climate." The president and members of Congress can cite decades of women's-studies scholarship that presents women as the have-nots of our society. Never mind that this is largely no longer true. Nearly every fact that could be marshaled to justify the formation of the White House Council on Women and Girls or the new focus of Title IX application was shaped by scholarly merchants of hype like Professors Lemon and Seager.

3) Finally, as a philosophy professor of almost 20 years, and as someone who respects rationality, objective scholarship, and intellectual integrity, I find it altogether unacceptable for distinguished university professors and prestigious publishers to disseminate falsehoods. It is offensive in itself, even without considering the harmful consequences. Obduracy in the face of reasonable criticism may be inevitable in some realms, such as partisan politics, but in academe it is an abuse of the privileges of professorship.

"Thug," "parasite," "dangerous," a "female impersonator" — those are some of the labels applied to me when I exposed specious feminist statistics in my 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? (Come to think of it, none of my critics contacted me directly with their concerns before launching their public attacks.) According to Susan Friedman, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, "Sommers' diachronic discourse is easily unveiled as synchronic discourse in drag. ... She practices ... metonymic historiography." That one hurt! But my views, as well as my metonymic historiography, are always open to correction. So I'll continue to follow the work of the academic feminists — to criticize it when it is wrong, and to learn from it when it is right.

Oh, yes, save the whales, er, males :-)

Sommers mentions Sarah Blaffer Hrdy as one of the models for scholarship. Interestingly enough, it was yesterday that I was reading a review of a book by Hrdy--the book is an anthropological exploration into why humans might be interested in raising children who are not their own.

Groupthink in Academia: screw the minority opinion :-(

“Generally speaking, we can observe that the scientists in any particular institutional and political setting move as a flock, reserving their controversies and particular originalities for matters that do not call into question the fundamental system of biases they share.”
—Gunnar Myrdal, Objectivity in Social Research

“Perhaps we avoid studying our institutional lives because such work is not valued by our colleagues. The academy is, after all, a club, and members are expected to be discreet. Like any exclusive club, the academic world fears public scrutiny. Research is in the public domain. Outsiders might use what the research reveals against the academy.”
—Richard Wisniewski, “The Averted Gaze”

“The thousand profound scholars may have failed, first, because they were scholars, secondly, because they were profound, and thirdly, because they were a thousand.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Rationale of Verse”

In baseball, fans of different teams can agree on general issues concerning rules, umpiring, and performance evaluation because such matters are separable from support for a specific team. In academia, however, we find that rules and standards for performance are not separable from support for specific beliefs. Ideological sensibilities and commitments in academia tend to be bound up with notions of the whole academic enterprise. Thus, one’s positions on how performance should be umpired or evaluated and one’s support for a certain “team” are not separable.

We think that discussion of ideology in academia is itself bound to be ideological and that good scholarship calls on us to declare that our principal motivation for the present investigation is our belief that, by and large, professors in the humanities and social sciences are weak in certain sensibilities that we ourselves hold. In particular, classical liberalism has few adherents among academics.

Need I say more? :-) Read the entire essay, by Daniel B. Klein, Charlotta Stern, from which I have excerpted the above.
via: Peter Gordon

Academe's Ax Murderers

In addition to dealing with academic bullies, according to this author we need to watch out for academic "ax murderers" also. Hey, I survived some ax murderers, who are still practicing their craft!

"Remember that every department has at least one ax murderer, but you won't know in advance who it is so you'd better be on your guard."
... what has become a lamentable fact of faculty life: Many academics regularly engage in a kind of "gotcha" politics.

Decouple Academic Freedom from Tenure

The real threat to academic freedom today, then, generally comes from outside academe, not from within it. How can we secure academic freedom when its guarantor — tenure — is on the wane, and the public is indifferent or even hostile to it?

Good question, right?
Wait a minute. Before we get to the answer to this question ... I know I have a piece of paper that says I have indefinite tenure. But, to my knowledge, my freedom is absolutely restricted. Well, maybe it is just me!
Anyway, that quote is from an opinion piece in the Chronicle, and is authored by the former general secretary of the AAUP. BTW, I don't know how the AAUP came to create an office in its structure called the "general secretary". I mean, the UN has its Secretary General. And the only place with such a title? Well, that was the official title of the most powerful leader of ****--I won't tell you; email me if you want the info :-)

Ok, back to how that question is answered. Ready? Here it is:

I have given up hope that the trend to replace full-time, tenure-track positions with non-tenure-track, part-time ones can be arrested, let alone reversed. Tenure, it seems to me, is bound to be eventually scuttled.
Yet asserting a possibility is not the same as passively accepting its inevitability. The 1940 statement began by saying that its purpose was "to promote public understanding and support of academic freedom and tenure." Almost 70 years later, it is evident that this purpose has not been fulfilled. Decoupling academic freedom
from tenure just may be, as my British colleague asserted, the best way to protect academic freedom.
Elevating that ideal and aspiration into a legal right, possibly into an enumerated constitutional right in certain states, with a force equal to the First Amendment, may be a Faustian bargain, but also, alas, it may be the very best deal that America's faculty members can cut. Tenure, after all, has always been a means to an end — securing academic freedom. Perhaps the time has come to rethink the best way to preserve academe's highest value.

Scholarship and tenure in academe

While tenure allows established scholars to navigate uncharted waters and cross disciplinary boundaries, young scholars still feel that they pay a price for working on the edge of their disciplines. Faculty must obtain tenure in order to gain the freedom to pursue innovative research, yet ironically, the process of acquiring tenure may constrain talented scholars to normative modes of scholarship and pursuits within established paradigms. If the essential value of tenure lies in providing a secure environment for the development of new knowledge and innovation, then our review processes must adapt to changes in scholarship.

Amen! Looks like today I am merely saying amen to posts!!! Read Sylvia Hurtado's essay, and other related essays, in the latest issue of Academe--which is from the AAUP.
Tenure is wonderful, and ought to be protected. But, the process for review for tenure and post-tenure are horribly outmoded. It is way past time for an overhaul.

Academic bullies

[In] academe, where some faculty members prefer to hole up with their books
rather than interact with colleagues, an aversion to conflict is not uncommon.
Those who have been bullied will often elect to keep quiet rather than risk a
nasty public battle.

Amen!
That was from the Chronicle of Hr. Ed.

Academic freedom is not an inalienable right

We can always count on Stanley Fish to write something that will surely upset a bunch of faculty. (The small subset of the global population that we are!)

The latest is about academic freedom. This time around, I am not in the group upset with his column :-) Fish articulates a fine point that academic freedom is related to the job that we have to do, and is not the freedom to do whatever we want to do.
To quote Fish, To those who regard academic freedom as an unwarranted indulgence you can say, No, it's not an indulgence, it's a necessary condition for engaging in this enterprise, and if you want this enterprise to flourish, you must grant it. To those professors who turn freedom into license by using the classroom as a partisan pulpit, or by teaching materials unrelated to the course description, or by coming to class unprepared or not at all, you can say, Look, it's freedom to do the job, not freedom to change it or shirk it.
This is what it means to say that academic freedom is not a general freedom like the freedoms guaranteed you by the Constitution and the First Amendment; it is task-specific and task-limited.

I am reminded of an instance where a professor got upset at suggestions directed to all faculty not to convert classes into platforms for presidential elections, particularly when the course materials are not directly related to that. The response: "it is my academic freedom to teach whatever I want to teach in my classes." I agree with Fish that simply aint so.

The same issue of the Chronicle has a review of Fish's latest book. The reviewer is in the "other group" that is not happy with Fish's arguments--a group that I fall into every once in a while. But, perhaps when I am in the "other group" people like the reviewer are in the happy group?