Keith Burgess-Jackson provides an interesting defence of the fairness of tenure over at AnalPhilosopher. (You have to scroll down a bit to get to it) The defence is this: academics are capable people who could have chosen to compete in a variety of fields. Academia provides a particular mix of goods — including the ability to teach, the freedom to research, and tenure, which compensates us for our low (relative to other professions we might have chosen) pay. There’s nothing unfair about people enjoying a benefit which is part of a package which includes countervailing costs. He rightly suggests that if you really abolished tenure you would be raising the costs of competently delivered higher education.
From the monthly archives:
November 2003
In my role as Adam Swift’s unpaid publicist I want to point out this piece in The Telegraph (you have to register, but its free, quick, and easy, and there’s lots of other good stuff). Swift explains — to Telegraph readers, remember — why the standard arguments in defence of private schools don’t work; either because they appeal to false values, or because they appeal to correct values but are beside the point. A great challenge to private schools — and kudos to John Clare, the Telegraph education editor, for running it. (For Americans who don’t know it the Telegraph is the furthest right of the UK newspapers, so this is a particularly incendiary piece for it).
Catherine Bennett has “a column in todays’ Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1083907,00.html making the points I made yesterday about the HFEA report on sex selection. She has a great opening paragraph:
bq. Here are some things that people think. The majority of people, anyway. People think that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is one of the best books ever written. People approve of the reintroduction of capital punishment (lethal injection, for preference). People want fox hunting banned. Their favourite song is Bohemian Rhapsody. People believe in ghosts and are in favour of identity cards. Their favourite meal is fish and chips and they feel sure GM food is a very bad thing. Almost half of them don’t think the MMR jab is safe. People underestimate the hygiene complications of preparing a Christmas turkey. They have never heard of the European Constitution. They think parents have the right to know the name and address of any sex offender in the neighbourhood. They think parental selection of a baby’s gender is so awful it should be banned.
Jim Henley defends SUVs by comparing them to his recently much-improved level of fitness:
bq. Now consider a common complaint against sport-utility vehicles: Most people who buy them don’t need that much power … A comparison with personal fitness is suggestive: SUVs are anaerobic strength vehicles; high fuel-efficiency cars are aerobic. Vehicle power is like muscle power: When you need it, you need it. Maybe you have to cart a new refrigerator home. Maybe your area reliably gets one bad snowstorm a year. (In the D.C. metro area, whenever a snowstorm hits, the call goes out for SUV and four-wheel drive owners to ferry hospital workers to their jobs.) Maybe you go camping twice a year or once a week transport supplies to your Cub Scout pack.
It’s a nice analogy as far as it goes. The problem with it is that it breaks down once you consider any of the other virtues we might want vehicles to have. Extra weight-training notwithstanding, Jim’s new biceps are unlikley to cause him to flip over onto his side as he jogs round corners. Nor were Jim’s target weight and diet specially designed with the assistance of the government to help keep his employer in business. And even though I don’t read comics much, Jim is not significantly more likely to kill me if I accidentally bump into him in DC. (Max Sawicky might be a different story.) It’s reasonable to say, as he does, that “As with physical fitness, there is value in maintaining the capacity for marginal exertion well beyond the daily norm. And as with physical fitness, having the extra power available may inspire you to change in ways you didn’t anticipate — you do more because, well, you can.” But Jim can have that extra power available without inconveniencing or endangering others, and he won’t accidentally misuse his strength to crash into a snowdrift once a year in DC, either — the only off-road adventure many SUVs ever have. So I don’t think the comparison holds up. And indeed, a quick glance at the new Jim shows that he’s chosen to strike his own aerobic/anerobic balance well towards the aerobic end of things.
From Jeb “Compassionate Conservative” Bush:
bq. It looks like the people of San Francisco are an endangered species, which may not be a bad thing. That’s probably good news for the country. (AP Nov 12: link via Atrios)
As the old cliche goes, some of my best friends are San Franciscans, so I’d be a little disappointed if someone wished them to be endangered. Fortunately that wasn’t what Jeb really meant.
bq. Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre later explained the governor’s thinking: “The Cabinet was talking about endangered species and everyone knows that Republicans are an endangered species in California.”
So Jeb thinks it’s a good thing that Republicans are endangered in California. Well that’s OK then. I certainly don’t have any Republican friends out there. I suspect the only thing in danger though is Mr DiPietre’s credibility.
A March for Freedom of Choice is being organized by several big organizations for this coming April in DC. There’s a Meet-up day next week for those interested in getting involved.
Salon has an informative piece today about some of the bills in the pipeline that would curtail abortion rights. If you’re not yet really concerned about the state of reproductive rights in the U.S. then go read it. And see you in DC on April 25th.
we learned that opponents of the Iraq war are unpatriotic ghouls who are glad when Americans die.
I actually got several variations on this theme, from antiwar types who always seem glad when people die in Iraq, so long as they’re Americans or our allies. They’re usually the same people who puff up if you “question their patriotism.”
I don’t question it. They’ve put its existence beyond question by wishing for America to lose.
Oh Brave New Media, that has such Pundits in it!
(via Matthew Yglesias)
P.S. Oh, and don’t try to excuse it by saying “he wasn’t talking about everyone who opposed the war.” Glenn Reynolds and Lt. Smash have taught me to see right past that kind of tricksiness.
I’ve just happened upon a “piece in Guardian on the difficulties of televising philosophy”:http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/artsandhumanities/story/0,12241,1077474,00.html . It is full of interesting anecdotes about the attempts that have been made.
bq. The director took him to Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s Building in London and filmed him going up and down the escalators while he expatiated about Plato. When I met Rorty recently, I asked why they shot him there. “I have no idea,” he said. “It had nothing to do with what I was talking about so far as I could tell.”
8:00- 9:30 Breakfast (check ticket for meal time)
9:45: (Deck 2) Two Minute Sneer: Joseph Wilson, long-haired “Ambassador” (led by Jonah Goldberg)
10:00 (Lounge 1) Seminar:
Charges of Anti-Semitism = Real Ultimate Power!
Criticism of anti-Semitism isn’t just for criticizing anti-Semites anymore. The National Review has been a pioneer in aggressively pursuing charges of anti-Semitism, which can be an essential part of a conservative media strategy to get through the filter of the liberal media.
Many people feel uncomfortable accusing others of anti-Semitism without real evidence. We can help! Criticizing Israel, using the term “neo-conservatives”, opposing the war in Iraq, being French: Joel Mowbray and Donald Luskin will show you how these offenses (and many more) can be labeled “anti-Semitism” for a powerful rhetorical punch.
Donald Luskin also has a few tips on accusing a Jewish person of anti-Semitism without giggling.
(Note: Rod Dreher will fill in for Donald Luskin, after last night’s unpleasantness)
The Guardian “reports that”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,2763,1082860,00.html
bq. Selecting the sex of a child is to be banned in the UK after a consultation exercise found the public outraged by the idea.
This is a recommendation from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to the British government and admits of some exceptions to cover families with sex-specific genetic disorders. The HFEA chairwoman, Suzi Leather expressed the body’s reasoning:
bq. We are mindful of their far-reaching nature. Nevertheless, it is clear that there is a substantial public consensus against sex selection for social reasons. We are not persuaded that the likely benefits of permitting sex selection for social reasons are strong enough to sustain a policy to which the vast majority are overwhelmingly opposed.
I don’t know whether there are other, good reasons, for banning sex selection, but I do believe that the reasons as stated are outrageous. The HFEA is arguing (and the Secretary of State is agreeing) that acts should be prohibited where a majority opposes them unless permitting those acts would have definite benefits for society at large. But this is to get the burden of proof completely the wrong way round. Whatever majorities think about some aspect of individual conduct, in a liberal society it has to be clearly demonstrable that an action would be _harmful_ if prohibition is to be justified. No such justification has been produced.
Daniel Davies lives in the south east of England and likes Brahms.
There, I’ve said it.
Now, how much could I be fined for breaking data protection law? If I also mention that, perhaps, one of Daniel’s legs is longer than the other, or that he’s a poor sleeper (invoking protections for sensitive medical data), I may be liable for a 450 euro fine.
Sounds crazy? Well, the European Court of Justice handed down last week a ruling about a Swedish parish council that should put the fear of god into bloggers who make comments about us Europeans and our hobbies.
Norman Geras has some further thoughts on the “greatest Marxists” question discussed below. Norm’s list set off a train of thinking last night as I noticed how many of the books “he lists in his latest post”:http://normangeras.blogspot.com/2003_11_09_normangeras_archive.html#106858726244078850 are “meta-” studies: books agonizing about the Marxist method or about the history of Marxism by Marxists. Surely it can’t be right that the best examples of Marxist thought are not attempts to think about the world using the resources of Marxism, but rather Marxist books about Marxist thinking? Norm’s cricketing interests led him to mention C.L.R. James’s “Beyond a Boundary”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822313839/junius-20 , but the book by James that I most value is his study of the slave revolt in Haiti, “The Black Jacobins”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679724672/junius-20 — a work of history. So where are all the historians on our lists? E.P. Thompson, Albert Soboul, Christopher Hill et al? A striking and unwarranted omission by all of us.
Apparently, some of the panelists at the Rawls conference were unhappy with Larry Solum’s coverage. Brian Leiter voices their “criticisms”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000455.html and adds some of his own. Leiter’s main concern is
bq. whether it’s fair to presenters to translate their ideas and arguments, and then present them to potentially thousands of students and faculty elsewhere via a blog. It is [fair] if one is consistently on the money, as Solum was in the session on public reason. But it’s unfair, and does a disservice, when the accounts produce the kinds of [negative] reactions from presenters quoted above.
Solum has “replied”:http://lsolum.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_lsolum_archive.html#106856738152057478 to this criticism in what I think is a thoughtful and, to my mind, persuasive post. Those who take issue with his coverage can certainly write to him about it. I’ve never seen Solum shy away from objections to what he writes, and I have no doubt, as he says in his reply, that he would engage the merits of any serious criticism.
But not for me. David Bernstein today:
EGREGIOUS MISUSE OF THE LEGACY OF NAZISM:
Soros believes that a “supremacist ideology” guides this White House. He hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary. …
Yes, the Nazis were at war, and the United States is now at war. … What all this has to do with a “supremacist ideology” in today’s U.S. is beyond me, and I’m sure beyond Soros as well. Just goes to show that the fact that someone is a brilliant businessman and philanthropist doesn’t mean he always exhibits common sense.
David Bernstein yesterday:
bq. But my ultimate concern is that the radical Left would like to bring to society as a whole the kind of authoritarianism they are constantly trying to, and sometimes succeeding in, bringing to universities … [their] ultimate goal, to be achieved through “harassment” law, hate speech rules, and changes in First Amendment jurisprudence, is to have the government enforce PCism throughout society. … By 2003, Robert Martin, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Western Ontario, commented that he increasingly thinks that “Canada now is a totalitarian theocracy.”
Just goes to show that [fill in the blank yourself]. On mature recollection, Bernstein has edited his post to tone down — I mean, clarify — its more wild-eyed bits, in response to several critical comments.
When I lived in South London a few years ago, there were a handful of small cemetaries within walking distance of my house. It was an interesting contrast. American gravestones tend to be fairly minimalist; it’s unusual to see much more than “Beloved Father” or a Bible verse. In British cemetaries, we saw a number of memorials with very personal, heart-rending epitaphs. Widows and widowers inscribed “I’m lost without you” on the graves of their spouses; parents wondered why God couldn’t wait a little longer to take their beautiful children.
The gravestone that sticks with me is a memorial for a soldier from New Zealand who didn’t come home. His parents bought a plot for him in a graveyard in South London that they probably never saw. I wish now that I had thought to write down the epitaph. It was not an appeal to patriotism, or to the good cause. It was a controlled cry of anguish from parents who had lost their beloved son to a small piece of land on the other side of the world.
People like me, who have never really been cold or hungry or frightened in their whole lives, have the duty to be grateful for his sacrifice. But to his parents, it was surely more than they could stand.
I owe more than I can say to our soldiers and our veterans, to people like Kos and Tacitus and Wesley Clark and George H. W. Bush and my brother Scott. Thank you.