Sapere Aude!

News: University Sues Student Blogger - Inside Higher Ed

News: University Sues Student Blogger - Inside Higher Ed.

In January, the university filed a libel and defamation suit against “Soodo Nym,” listing numerous statements from his blog that they argue “have harmed the honesty, integrity, and professional reputation of Butler University and two of its high-level administrators.”

I seriously doubt one little blog is capable of doing much harm to the reputation of a major university.

Does That Follow?

On a conservative philosopher's blog a reader asks:

Second, a question. I know you're a philosophy professor who openly identifies as conservative. Is it your experience that universities are typically liberal-biased? As in, they intend to promote liberal views, indoctrinate students into liberal ideas, etc.

And, the conservative philosopher answers:

That is indeed my experience, but, quite apart from my experience, it is a fact that cannot be denied.  Conservatives are in the minority especially in the humanities and social sciences.  For example,  in the 2004 election, one survey showed that 87.6% of the social sciences professors queried voted for Kerry, while only 6.2% voted for Bush.  In the humanities, the numbers were 83.7% for Kerry and 15% for Bush.

I understand the claim being advanced above in the following way:

1. If the majority of people hold a view in an institution, then they intend to indoctrinate those who do not hold their views but who attend that institution.

Is that premise true?  Does it follow from the fact that there are more liberals that these liberals have an intention to indoctrinate people?  If think if they did David Horowitz could get one of his conservative persecution lawsuits to stick.  Sent this conservative philosopher and email to ask how he knows the intentions of all these academics and how he knows liberal bias is intentional rather than unconscious bias.  I'm not expecting a response, but we'll see.  Religious skeptics are in the minority in America, does it follow that the majority of religious believers intend to indoctrinate others?  Seems like studies show it's mainly just the right-wing ones.

Political Correctness and Conservatives

The Maverick Philosopher writes:

So it is too bad that Antioch College has suffered Death by Political Correctness. This excellent piece confirms my view of contemporary liberals: they are simply incapable of arresting their slide into the looniest precincts of hard Leftism. Quentin Smith was on campus during the beginning of the end in the early '70s. I recall him telling me about the bringing onto campus of unprepared ghetto blacks who proceeded to terrorize the place with Black Panther type demands and armed thuggery.

What fools these liberals be!

Yes, these liberals are stupid, at least in some respects.  But, so are the conservative activists that appropriate political correctness for their own agenda.  Here's David Horowitz spilling the beans.

"I encourage [students] to use the language that the left has deployed so effectively on behalf of its own agendas. Radical professors have created a 'hostile learning' environment for conservative students. There is a lack of 'intellectual diversity' on college faculties and in academic classrooms. The conservative viewpoint is 'under-represented' in the curriculum and on its reading lists. The university should be an 'inclusive' and intellectually 'diverse' community" ("The Campus Blacklist," April 2003).

And, in his article, "Academic Cross Dressing", Stanley Fish recounts the Intelligent Design advocate Philip E. Johnson's strategy.

"I'm no postmodernist," he declares in a 1996 interview with the sociologist Amy Binder, but I've learned a lot" from reading them.  What he's learned, he reports, is how to talk about 'hidden assumptions' and 'power relationships,' and how to use those concepts to cast doubt on the authority of 'science educators' and other purveyors of the reigning orthodoxy.  His views, he says, 'are considered outlandish in the academic world,' but the strategy he borrows from the postmodernists-the strategy of claiming to have been marginalized by the powers that be - is, he boasts, 'dead-band mainstream academia these days.''"

Intelligent Design and Horowitz's "intellectual diversity" are the two biggest conservative activist fronts in regard to education.  On both fronts they have adopted the very tactics that they earlier denounced as attacks on free speech, liberal bias, and indoctrination.  Conservatives just love to complain about the evils of political correctness, when they are not using them to promote their own agenda that is  But, at least the liberals cannot be accused of hypocrisy on this point whereas the conservative are just full of bullshit.  They do not have a principled stand on political correctness, academic freedom or intellectual diversity.  They adopt them because they are politically expedient.  They are also often forms of domination.  By claiming the status of a victim for oneself and demanding others recognize them as such and circumscribe their conduct in such a way as to promote the self-esteem of the victim the so-called victim becomes the oppressor.

Texas Tech Hires Alberto Gonzales

Texas Tech has a new faculty member: the torture defending Alberto Gonzales.

Alberto Gonzales, who resigned as the Bush administration’s embattled attorney general nearly two years ago, has lined up a fall-semester teaching spot at Texas Tech University, the university confirmed today.

Gonzales, who was Gov. George W. Bush’s lawyer, Texas secretary of state and then a Texas Supreme Court justice before joining Bush in Washington, will be working as an visiting professor in the political science department, teaching a “special topics” course on contemporary issues in the executive branch, according to Dora Rodriguez, a senior business assistant in the department. The university later said it will be a junior-level course.

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what "special topics" on the executive branch he'll teach?  I think "How to Shit on the Constitution" would be a good course title for him.  And, I hope he manages his classes better than he managed The Department of Justice.

WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department officials broke the law by letting Bush administration politics dictate the hiring of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers, according to an internal investigation released Monday.

For nearly two years, top advisers to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales discriminated against applicants for career jobs who weren't Republican or conservative loyalists, the Justice report found.

At times, their search for GOP activists delayed filling judgeships and threatened to clog immigration courts, the report said.

The federal government makes a distinction between "career" and "political" appointees, and it's a violation of civil service laws and Justice Department policy to hire career employees on the basis of political affiliation or allegiance.

Yet Monica Goodling, who served as Gonzales' counselor and White House liaison, routinely asked career job applicants about politics, the report concluded.

I wonder if there will be an ideological test for students in his class as well?  I know I should not worry though because David Horowitz will surely keep an eye on him to make sure those students get a fair and balanced education.  Meanwhile . . .

Conservatives, Ricci v. DeStefano, and Bias in Education

I've been reading the SCOTUS decision on Ricci v. DeStefano.  I'm not all the way through it, but it looks like the court basically said that unequal outcomes are necessary to show bias, but not sufficient to show bias.  You do not have to convince any educators of that, duh.  Conservatives have been arguing that this counts against Sotomayor because she was one of the judges that decided the case in a lower court.  I'm not sure about that given that she was only one of the judges involved.   But, I am absolutely sure that if conservatives are going to hang their hats on the idea that unequal outcomes are insufficient to show bias then there are at least two issues about which they are going to have to shut the fuck up about if they are to have a logically consistent and principled, rather than partisian, position on bias and discrimination: (1) liberal bias in higher education based solely on the unequal ratio of Democrats and Republicans among faculty and (2) the naturalistic bias in the natural sciences.  The inequality of these outcomes is insufficient to show bias against conservatives or intelligent design theorists in education.

Brigham Young University Lifts YouTube Ban

BYU has lifted their bann on YouTube.  About time.  I use YouTube at work all the time.  It's a great resource.  You can find great examples of people making idiotic arguments to teach fallacies and critical thinking.  Plus, some people on there are pretty darn smart.  Universities post lecture series, etc.

Do We Need a List of the Most Dangerous Conservative Professors?

I think we might given that some of them are apologists for murderers.  I mean the neo-cons have a list of professors they do not like so maybe we should just come up with a list of undesirables.  I guess we could also add John Yoo to the list too, huh?  Who else should we add?

Harvard to Endow Chair in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies - NYTimes.com

Harvard to endow chair in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.  I cannot wait to hear the conservative critics of academia complain that there should not be an endowed chair in LGBTS because there's no "Conservative Studies" endowed chair.  Of course, this is a joke.  How many of authors of Great Texts in the Western Cannon are conservatives?  From what I can tell the history of philosophy is pretty conservative.

Colleges Weighing 3-Year Degrees

It looks like some colleges are considering a three-year degree option.

Advocates of a three-year undergraduate degree say it would work well for ambitious students who know what they want to study. Such a program could provide the course requirements for a major and some general courses that have long been the hallmark of American education.

The four-year bachelor's degree has been the model in the United States since the first universities began operating before the American Revolution. Four-year degrees were designed in large part to provide a broad-based education that teaches young people to analyze and think critically, considered vital preparation to participate in the civic life of American democracy.

[. . .]

But critics said they fear that an undergraduate's academic and social experience would be compromised by shortening it to three years. College would tilt more toward job training and away from the broad-based education many U.S. schools have offered.

I've got news for the critics.  Colleges have already moved away from broad-based education vital to American democracy and essentially provide some basic professional training with some liberal arts and natural science window dressing to make the degree look like something more than a vocational certificate of approval.  The courses that teach communication and critical thinking skills are the very courses that today's students tend to consider a waste of time and an obstacle to studying more worthwhile subjects, like business and engineering which lead to an obvious pre-established career path.

Higher Education in Colbert Nation

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That looks like an interesting read. Most of the people I know in academia have some problem with it.