Blogging, public intellectuals, and faculty

Of course I am talking about myself; this is my blog!

A few years ago a student exclaimed in class that he was reading my blog and realized that he need not ever come to my classes; instead he could get everything that I might have to say in the class right from the blog itself.

Whenever students discover this, I tell them that my blog serves multiple purposes for me, of which one is that this blog serves as my own notes that I can refer to if/when needed.  And, of course, it also serves the curiosities of anybody who is interested in the content here.

Over the years, I have wondered why faculty do not operate in such modes, within and outside the classroom.  And why faculty do not go to classes and treat students as members of the public with whom they have to intellectually interact. 

Tyler Cowen, who is one heck of a prolific, accomplished, polymath of a professor across the continent, and whom I have cited many times here, says:

What’s a university and what is not? Those distinctions are crumbling. If we’re not a university, maybe no one else will be either. There’s a lot of content on the web. A lot of it’s free. That will be increasingly important. I think it’s already the case on a given day. More people read economics blogs than are taking "Principles of Economics" classes in the United States, so why aren’t the blogs already a kind of university? They’ve sort of won that competitive battle in some way.
The people who read the blogs want to read them. A lot of people in "Principles" class, they’re not paying attention, they don’t want to learn, they feel they have to, so blogs are in some ways doing a better job of educating.

While Cowen uses the example of economics, the same can be said about any subject.  People want to know about any number of topics but somehow we have convinced ourselves that the old buildings with ivies crawling on them is the only way to meet that desire to know.  In fact, it increasingly works the other way around--those who come to the universities are some of those who are least interested in learning and are in college only to pick up a diploma.

Cowen has moved beyond blogging itself--to a "university" that offers a whole bunch of videos.  The interviewer signs off with this:

Maybe the biggest impact of upstarts like Marginal Revolution University will be that traditional colleges will feel more like, well, like blogging. Maybe the line between the formality of college education and the informal materials found online throughout one’s life will blur, and maybe those distinctions will just matter less and less. Authority may sound less like a lecture from a podium and more like a Facebook post.

But, are the faculty, who are busily writing books that nobody ever reads, thinking about such important questions as "What’s a university and what is not?"

Source

You read until here?  Check this out.

On teaching and blogging ...

A few years ago, a student remarked in class about my blog; he said that the more he kept reading a few old posts, the more he realized a striking similarity between the blog content and the class content.

Of course those were the old days before trump, when my writings here were rarely unprofessional.  Which is also why I have now stopped telling students about my tweeting and blogging.

But then, maybe I should, because it will be a powerful evidence that while I am highly charged and definitive about issues and people here in my private space, none of that spills over into the classroom.  In classes, even when students ask me what I think about whatever the issue is that we are discussing, my typical response is that while I certainly have my own opinions, my job is not to bring them to the classroom, but to push them into thinking from multiple perspectives.

You, dear reader, on the other hand, have never observed me in my classes.  And perhaps you have often wondered whether I am a ranting nutcase in the classroom.  Rest assured that I am one hell of a straitjacketed professor in the professional environment.

So, in that spirit, I provide here a task that I assigned a class.  You will notice that the topic is not new to this blog, but the tone is markedly different from how I would have written about it here.  Right?

Finally, you will also notice a parallel between blogging and teaching.  In both, the structure is the same: We lay out the arguments, and bring in appropriate quotes, right?  Even the task that I assigned is the same way ... The real difference between my teaching and blogging is how "professional" I am in my language ;)

Go ahead, and write up the 2,000-word essay, and I will give you feedback ;)
****************************************************************

In his op-ed (from class discussions on 11/15, or click here) the Dalai Lama writes:

The time has come to understand that we are the same human beings on this planet. Whether we want to or not, we must coexist.

He adds that “empathy is the basis of human coexistence.”

Such a coexistence, the Dalai Lama argues, requires the United States, too, “to think more about global-level issues.”

While the Dalai Lama does not refer to any specific event or issue in that particular op-ed, he has been vocal about the ongoing Rohingya crisis. In other contexts, he has also explicitly called on the global leaders, which includes the United States, to act on the Rohingya crisis.

The Rohingya crisis brings together, unfortunately, many aspects that we would want to understand: For instance, the role of religion and religious differences; the level of economic development; the structure of governance in the country/countries directly affected by the crisis; and even the “different” looks of the people. Thus, in a tragic manner, the Rohingya crisis makes an ideal candidate as a global issue, and also makes as a final exam topic.

Your task for the final paper is this: In addition to clarifying the complexity of the Rohingya crisis itself, do some background reading in order to understand:

• What has the Dalai Lama said about the Rohingya crisis?
• What has the current president of the US said about the Rohingya crisis?
• What has the president’s secretary of state said about the Rohingya crisis?
• How do their views compare/contrast with the Dalai Lama’s call “to think more about global-level issues” and with “empathy is the basis of human coexistence”?

Based on all that reading, and based on the relevant materials from the course, you will write an essay in response to the following:

Do the views of the president and his secretary of state agree with the Dalai Lama’s views—about the need for global thinking and about the Rohingya crisis? If they are not in sync, then whose position do you agree with and why?

In writing the essay, keep in mind that the essay is an end-of-term demonstration of how you have met the course goals:

• Understand the complexity and interdependence of contemporary global issues.
• Appreciate how one’s own culture and history affect one’s worldview and expectations.
• Appreciate the vastness of the world and the opportunities to create a better future for all peoples.

On not blogging. As in taking a long break from it.

Calm down.
Don't panic.
I am not going anywhere.
I will continue to blog.
Ok?
Breathing easier now?
Good.

There are people who strum their air guitars and imagine themselves to be rock stars. You know a few of them, right?  I can relate to them--by reading, thinking, blogging, and writing op-eds, I imagine I am a writer.  I know my claim to being a writer is as ridiculous as those lunatics pretending to be Eric Clapton.  But, hey, we do whatever that gets us through life.

If I pretend that I am a writer, then I suppose I can also pretend that I have writer's block?  Or that I should take a break from this imaginary qualification in order to get some fresh and original insights?

But, I suppose the best thing about this Walter Mitty alter ego is that I don't ever run out of material to write about.  I mean, think about what you have read until now.  Isn't all that nothing but a truck load of bovine refuse?

Real writers have serious issues because they have reputations to defend.  I don't have any reputation.  No honor and all oblivion.  No wonder that at some point writers quit. For some it is earlier than for others.  Even a celebrated writer like Philip Roth called it quits:

My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life. It was also my good luck that happiness didn’t matter to me and I had no compassion for myself. Though why such a task should have fallen to me I have no idea. Maybe writing protected me against even worse menace.
Now? Now I am a bird sprung from a cage instead of (to reverse Kafka’s famous conundrum) a bird in search of a cage. The horror of being caged has lost its thrill. It is now truly a great relief, something close to a sublime experience, to have nothing more to worry about than death.

At least Roth did that after decades of quality writing, unlike:

After “Joe Gould’s Secret,” Joseph Mitchell published nothing new in his remaining 31 years. E.M. Forster published no more novels between “A Passage to India” and his death 46 years later. And then there were those hall of fame figures: J.D. Salinger, who published nothing for the last half of his life, and Harper Lee, whose post-Mockingbird silence should be enough to canonize her, the patron saint of not-artists of any discipline.

Not a problem for us fakes. We can keep going for a long, long time.

So, my dear reader, take it easy--I am not quitting anytime until, well, you know!

source

I don't care about the uselessness of what I do

I am amazed, and sometimes even envious, of people who are single-minded in their approach to life. There might be that one thing which is their thing, which they know and do well, and they care not to spend time on anything else or even know about anything else.

I am very much unlike them.

If only I knew how to confine myself within some narrow walls, is what I think every once in a while. Quickly those thoughts vaporize, thankfully.

Which is why, as informative and a great reading experience as Wendy Doniger's The Hindus is, I had to take a break from it and look around at the rest of the world.

Not only look at the world, but also blog about it!

Not that the blogging about all things wonderful (and not) about this world yields any tangible and positive results.

source

The world being such a fascinating place, there is no shortage of topics to blog about.  But, I can see that sometime in the future, I will, for certain, feel like how Philip Roth explains his retirement from writing:

Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-­preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life. It was also my good luck that happiness didn’t matter to me and I had no compassion for myself. Though why such a task should have fallen to me I have no idea. Maybe writing protected me against even worse menace.
Now? Now I am a bird sprung from a cage instead of (to reverse Kafka’s famous conundrum) a bird in search of a cage. The horror of being caged has lost its thrill. It is now truly a great relief, something close to a sublime experience, to have nothing more to worry about than death.

Yes, keeps me out of trouble, as I like to say.  Though, there are times when I wonder if I my identity is so wrapped up with such a behavior that not engaging in what I do will then be a cause for a complete breakdown. Thankfully, those thoughts also quickly vanish.

I am stuck with reading, and thinking, and commenting, for a long, long, long time to come, I hope.  What a wonderful problem to have!

I don't get paid for writing. I should sue somebody. Anybody!

I understood early on that it won't be easy, if even possible, to monetize my professional interests and expertise (if any.)  At dinner table conversations, I freely share my "asset" but will have to pay for the consultation with an attorney or physician at the same table.  That is how the world operates.

Thus, when I started writing op-eds, I knew I was giving it away for nothing.  After spending my time, and a little bit of my money, in formally educating myself, I was then spending 45 to 60 minutes to write an op-ed for which I would not get paid anything.  Yet, that is exactly what I chose to do.  Which is why it was one heck of a pleasant surprise when a few years ago the editor at the Register Guard offered to compensate me with a honorarium that might just about pay for dinner for two.  A huge bonus!

There are plenty of reasons why we engage in such writing that does not pay.  At least, in my case, I have a day job that takes care of my expenses.  What about those who like to engage in interests similar to mine, are even more qualified and able than I am, but do not have a regular job?  The web is simply killing their abilities to sell words, leading to this NY Times op-ed with a catchy lead of "Slaves of the internet, unite!"  While it was never easy to have a lucrative career as a professional writer, the internet has certainly made it even tougher for writers to sell their work when so much is being written for free.

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes recalling his own experiences and notes this about the "exposure" element:

ask yourself how often you've seen writers/thinkers/historians/intellectuals etc. in online "conversation." Ask yourself how often you've seen guest-bloggers at sites like The Daily Dish. Do you believe these people to be paid? Do you believe them to not actually be doing work? Tomorrow I will go on television, a prospect that I try (lately unsuccessfully) to avoid. I try to avoid it because it is work. I have to prepare information that I hope to provide. I have to think about what I'm saying. I have to make sure I know what I'm talking about. I have to tell my nervous self to shut up. No one pays me--or any other guests--for these contributions. We work "for exposure."

One simply cannot buy this "exposure" but has to earn it.  Tongue-in-cheek, a colleague commented that I might just about be the most well known academic up and down the Willamette Valley--because of this "exposure" for which I have worked for free.

In a way, it is also this working for free, for exposure, that is behind the idea of internships.  Students provide their time and work for free, or at best for low compensation, knowing that the exposure would pay off.  When I worked as a planner, our agency routinely hired interns.  Private companies hired interns.  Everybody did that.  Some even paid their interns.

Of course, as with anything, here too there were organizations that abused this system--they sucked the energy out of their interns, by essentially treating them like full-time staff without paying them like full-time staff.  Which then led to a law on internships.

As Charles Dickens expressed via the Mr. Bumble character in Oliver Twist, "the law is a ass, a idiot."  It generates all kinds of unintended consequences.  Internship opportunities quickly evaporated.  At public and private agencies alike.  After all, it is easy to comply with the law by not offering internships at all, than it is to make sure that the internship program conforms to the letter of the law.

The latest in this:

Condé Nast, the globally renowned media publisher that produces magazines like Glamour, The New Yorker, and Wired, announced late last month that it will no longer offer its internship program.

Why?

The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed by two former interns, Lauren Ballinger and Matthew Leib; in June, the interns sued Condé Nast for months of backpay, alleging that the publisher violated federal and state labor laws.

Reason adds this:

Condé Nast is the first major firm to eliminate its internship program since the flurry of unpaid intern lawsuits sprung up this summer. However, lawyers and employers are predicting that many firms may start to cut their programs - or offer just a few paid positions instead of many unpaid ones. So despite advocates' desire to open doors for struggling students, it seems the "Great Unpaid-Intern Uprising" may result in employers closing off opportunities altogether. 

Again, "the law is a ass, a idiot."

Meanwhile, this essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education argues that academics should not write for free.  Ahem, the author has not read Chekov's Uncle Vanya, which I quoted in my essay on academics and research--more than a decade ago--in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  If they know what they are getting, people will not part with their money in order to buy an academic's writings!

I will continue on with my writing for which I don't get paid.  But, hey, if you want to pay me, I am all for it ;)

When trolls come visiting to this blog, well, I blog about that too!

After a long time, I checked the Feedburner statistics for my blog:

Perhaps soon the subscriber count of 99 will roll over to triple digits, eh.

There are ten others, Feedburner reports, who have subscribed to receive my posts via email.

And finally the visitors to the blog itself.

Of course, I have no idea how many of these subscribers and other visitors are real people versus some automated programs phishing for information.

No serious hate mail other than this one

And occasional nutcases like what I experienced earlier today!  

What if I don't have anything to write about in this blog?

Even as a kid, I got into a habit of the reading the newspaper, The Hindu, every single morning.  Back then--I don't know if things have changed now--the paper's staff had a day off during major holidays, which meant that there was no paper delivered the morning after. Those non-paper mornings were tough for me.  It was an awful feeling until the day after when the paper resumed.  Ah, those fascinating years before television and the internet!

It was one of those no-paper-mornings when my great-uncle was also visiting with us.  I complained to him about not having The Hindu to read.  He was known for his sarcastic, and often insulting, repartee, sparing nobody--it didn't matter to him whether it was an older woman or a kid like me.  "Why?  Do you have to issue any statement to the press?" was his response to my complaint.

I distinctly recall even now, after all these decades, that I didn't feel insulted at all.  His sarcasm there made me think.  It occurred to me that I did, indeed, want to talk about a lot of issues, but the reserved personality that I was--mistaken by classmates as "shy"--I kept those thoughts to myself.  The adults didn't seem to want to know what I thought about Indira Gandhi or the USSR or anything.  If only the internet and blogging had been invented even by then!

Thoughts I have always had in plenty.  I suspect that most people have plenty going on in their heads.  The question is whether we can say or write anything meaningful to an audience, however small or large that might be.  It is not that there is an audience waiting for me; but, yes, I have statements to issue on matters that I consider pressing.

I blog about all these .... and that is why I am a "failure?"

As I get older, I seem to get even more amazed at how little I know.  As I joke around with students, the library building on campus serves as a physical reminder that I don't know a damn thing.  At USC, there were libraries all over the campus, and they all served me well in conveying whatever I needed to know and ensuring that I knew that I didn't know.

My innate interests in a whole variety of topics draw me into strange readings and places.  For instance, I was reading a news item at the Christian Science Monitor website, and it had a related link, which was a test on science literacy.  So, of course, I took that test and got a tad disappointed that I got only 44 out of the 50 questions correct.  It should be 45, I thought to myself, because my finger slipped over the touchpad and I clicked an incorrect answer.

My blogging also reflects this curiosity about everything around me.  It also means that sometimes the visitors to the blog are people who have searched for, ... well, like in this list of some of the search words that brought visitors to my site yesterday. 

It is neat to look at this list and think that my interests are so diverse--from half-sarees to ecuador to the armenian genocide! 

There is a serious downside to such a diverse intellectual interest: the half-wit that I am, this means that I "lose out" in the professional world of specialization.  After all, I am not a Freeman Dyson, for instance, to be a specialist in a gazillion things. 

Thus, choosing not to be a specialist in any one topic means that I am not the expert on the productivity of left-handed female labor in farming in Timbuktu.  While this is an exaggerated example, intellectual specialization has become so reductionist that talking to academics has become boring anymore, given that most want to talk about is only a topic or two in which they are "experts."  Intellectual insecurity also seems to preclude most academics from getting out of their comfort zones; it ain't easy, I suppose to say "I don't know" when we have PhDs :)

I am very happy to tell students I don't know a damn thing.  Strangely enough, my admission of ignorance makes most of them convinced that I am putting on a show that I don't know.  One student remarked in class a couple of years ago, "oh, false modesty!  we better be careful with you then."  Students have also told me that this attitude of mine is such a contrast to most faculty they have experienced, who, apparently are so convinced that they know it all that they freely bullshit on topics that are far outside their "expertise." 

I would rather be a failure in the twilight of a mediocre career than pretend to be an expert bullshitter in a medicore career :)

And my blogging on all things that interest me shall continue as well!

Quote of the day, on blogging killing good writing

Occasionally over the years I have attempted to argue that factual accuracy is overrated. I won't bore you with the reasons, but it struck me as a good, solid, counterintuitive belief to lug around and display occasionally. Never did it occur to me, until I read Felix's blog post, that it might be possible, without seeming insane, to argue that all aspects of good writing — accuracy, logic, spelling, graceful turns of phrase, wisdom and insight, puns (only good ones), punctuation, proper grammar and syntax (and what is the difference between those two again?) — are all overrated.

Awesome, right?

That wonderful prose was from Michael Kinsley, who worries about the lack of good quality professional writing.

I am a bat-poet? Hanging upside down and observing the world?

Sometimes, a book is not simply a book.

The high school reunion happened.  Over the thirty years, we have traveled many different journeys.  Very few were simple, and most were over meandering paths.  And, yet, there we were.

I was amazed at how much I didn't know my classmates.  I suppose it is understandable, given that we had gone our separate ways when we were seventeen, or eighteen.  With a few, it was even earlier when they switched schools.

As much as we had already re-acquainted ourselves in cyberspace, it was an entirely different and wonderful experience re-connecting with each other in the real world.  What a pleasure to know them, at least now.

While chatting with them, sometimes in groups and other times in one-to-one settings, however brief they were, one of them, "J," said, "I have this book that you might like to read."

She meant it.  When I saw her again after a few minutes, there she was with the book.

"You are giving this to me because .....?" I asked "J."

"If you want to read it.  Not necessarily right here.  You can return it to me later when you visit my place."

That too is a beautiful aspect of this reunion--it is also a desire to take the re-connecting to more substantive levels.  Another classmate, "S," for instance, has been a serious reader of my blog posts over the past few months, and sends me interesting reads as well.  It was through "S" that I ended up trading emails, on the topic of atheists in carnatic music, with TM Krishna, a leading voice in that art/profession.

Anyway, I thanked "J" for the book, which I safely tucked away in my backpack.

The book "The Bat-Poet" is not any heavy reading.  It has a deceptive appearance and presentation--as if it is a children's book.  At forty-three pages, which includes quite a few illustrations, it certainly seems like ten-year olds are the intended audience.

But, there is a lot in the book even for this forty-seven year old.

The bat-poet is curious, which then leads the bat to observe and think about life around him all by himself.

As I read the book, I wondered whether "J" meant that I, too, was like that bat-poet who was hanging from the porch all by himself and noting the life and activities all around me.  At one point, I thought that a modern day re-telling (the book was published in 1964) will have the bat-poet as a blogger!

When he would wake up in the daytime and hang there looking out at the colors of the world, he would say the poems over to himself.  He wanted to say them to the other bats, but then he would remember what had happened when he'd said them before. There was nobody for him to say the poems to.

As a blogger, I don't have to know that there is no "bat" audience for this bat-poet.  If somebody reads them, and finds them worthwhile, and I hear from them then, hey, I am not merely saying my poems to myself!

Later, the bat-poet thinks:

I'll go to the chipmunk and say, 'If you'll give me six crickets I'll make a poem about you.' Really I'd do it for nothing, but they don't respect something if they get it for nothing."

Yep.

At the end of the book, the bat-poet, who explored these by himself, gets back to hanging upside down with the other bats.  Did "J" mean that it paralleled the high school reunion too?  I will find out soon when I get to meet her and her family at her home, and her family at her work.

For now, I like the idea of me as a bat-poet, however awful and out-of-meter my blog posts are :)

What do Latvians and the Dutch want from my blog?

The chart below gives an idea of the countries from where visitors came to my blog last week (the single-digits are not included)

My blog provides only such a big picture--there is no way to match the visitor with the post they read.  So, I am curious about whatever it was that drew the Latvians ... I haven't tagged any post with Latvia, though the name of the country is to be found in these three posts that, however, do not discuss anything specific to Latvia.  

Maybe the CIA or the FBI keeps an eye on me through some proxy server in Latvia :)

Academic bloggers. I wish all faculty did this

The NY Times lists a few academic bloggers ... a strange listing though ... Dan Drezner is a conspicuous omission here--I wish the paper had profiled his blog instead of Mankiw's ... Mankiw rarely does any serious analysis in his blogs, but Drezner does.  And, of course, who can forget that it was his blogging that supposedly made Drezner a lesser scholar, and then all those controversies over his tenure, or being denied one ...

I started blogging back in 2001, when I was in Bakersfield.  Lacking the big time credentials, I thought perhaps a few of us fellow academics could blog together, at least about issues of relevance to the Central Valley.  I figured that this collective output might draw web traffic.  But, the few faculty I chatted about this couldn't care.  An active local resident, a fellow planner, Graham Kaye Eddie, suggested that I team up with him and we recruit a few more people from the city and that we blog about local political issues.  But, I didn't want to be restricted to the really local topics alone.

After I got here to Oregon in fall 2002, again, lacking the gravitas to go solo, I tried to interest a few fellow faculty who engaged me in discussions.  This was before I was excommunicated.  But, they too didn't care for blogging, and as far as I know are yet to blog.  Perhaps a fear to face public scrutiny?

Anyway, here I am tilting at windmills :)

Image of the day: on Juan Williams and NPR

I was one of the many who had opined that Juan "I fear Muslims" Williams ought to be fired from NPR as soon as I watched that video.  And, was glad that NPR did, though the "psychiatrist" remark ought to have been avoided.

Well, I came across this tweet today:
(on Twitter, I am "congoboy," which is how I sometimes called my dog, Congo, who died almost five years ago!!!)

I suppose Ceeb2 will be happy to know that my faculty and administrative colleagues decided that I am not qualified to be a "Professor" and I am only an Associate Professor :)

My blog attracts traffic. even for searches like ...

I thought I might check the keyword searches that apparently generated some of the traffic to my blog. Interesting patterns.

Get this: my blog comes out as the first link (at least when I checked last) for quite a few.  I was impressed with these examples (all are Google searches)

• For readers who are curious about the intellectual (and personal) debate between Paul Krugman and Raghuram Rajan: the search for krugman rajan shows that my post is #1, even ahead of Greg Mankiw :)
• For those who are thinking of quitting engineering in favor of a different profession; such a search results in traffic to my page 

Who would have thought! 

And, of course, all the interest in the Ambanis and Tina Munim :)

Image of the day: A good deal on the web :)

What does my blog say about my personality?

The Mechanics
The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

That was the result from Typealyzer (which I found from Greg Mankiw's blog.) Other than the last sentence about adventure, race cars and firefighting, I suppose the pattern analysis is not that far off the mark. Soon, some computer can start blogging like me, pretending to be me? That will be fascinating.