Academia

Over the past several months, French academics have been facing a grave situation. The Sarkozy Government has proposed a reform of the universities that would put more power into the hands of the president of their university, and weaken the role of peer review. This reform will significantly affect the degree of autonomy of faculty teaching in universities. It is feared that university presidents will depend on their local protégés (who are often selected on political, instead of academic criteria) to make a number of important decisions that will affect the lives of faculty. Universalistic mechanisms had been put in place at the national level to prevent local favoritism and particularism. This system is now threatened from within. [click to continue…]

Following Michael’s pointer, I read William Deresiewicz’s “piece”:http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090608/deresiewicz with some interest – while I’m as happy as the next person to read good take-downs of dodgy ev-psych arguments, I found some of the claims a little … sweeping. Take, for example, the suggestion that:

Having colonized the social sciences–where it has begun to displace the view, predominant throughout the twentieth century, that the mind is a highly malleable product of culture–[Darwinian evolutionary thinking] has now set its sights on the humanities, the last area of resistance.

I’m sure that ev-psych types would _like_ this to be true¹, but as a card-carrying social scientist, I have yet to be informed of the successful colonization of sociology, political science, economics and anthropology by explanations based on Darwinian theory. Nor, for that matter, did I know that economists _ever_ believed the mind to be a highly malleable product of culture.
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Since I have to do one last gig before I take off on vacation, and since the gig happens to be a conference titled <a href=”http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/cp/research/duke/”>“Beyond Utility and Markets: Articulating the Role of the Humanities in the Twenty-First Century,”</a> I thought it would make sense to begin this post where I end my contribution to that symposium, namely, with the closing passage from <a href=”http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090608/deresiewicz”>William Deresiewicz’s recent <i>Nation</i> review essay</a> on the new wave of Darwinist literary criticism:

<blockquote>There is much talk among the literary Darwinists and their allies about not wanting to go back to the days of “old-boy humanism,” with its “impressionistic” reading and “belletristic” writing. (Only in English departments could good writing be considered a bad thing.) But no matter the age or gender of the practitioner, any really worthwhile criticism will share the expressive qualities of literature itself. It will be personal, because art is personal. It will not be definitive; it will not be universally valid. It will be a product of its times, though it will see beyond those times. It will not satisfy the dean’s desire for accumulable knowledge, the parent’s desire for a marketable skill or the Congressman’s desire for a generation of technologists. All it will do is help us understand who we are, where we came from and where we’re going. Until the literary academy is willing to stand up in public and defend that mission without apology, it will never find its way out of the maze. </blockquote>

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“Felix Salmon”:http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/06/23/actual-candor-from-jack-welch/ quotes _Economist_ American business editor (and former CT guest-blogger), Matthew Bishop.

This columnist once heard Mr Welch tell a chief executives’ boot-camp that the key was to have the compensation committee chaired by someone older and richer than you, who would not be threatened by the idea of your getting rich too. Under no circumstances, he said (the very thought clearly evoking feelings of disgust), should the committee be chaired by “anyone from the public sector or a professor”.

But it is more or less along the same lines. “Inside Higher Ed reports”:http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/23/elsevier

Elsevier officials said Monday that it was a mistake for the publishing giant’s marketing division to offer $25 Amazon gift cards to anyone who would give a new textbook five stars in a review posted on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. … Here’s what the e-mail — sent to contributors to the textbook — said:

“Congratulations and thank you for your contribution to Clinical Psychology. Now that the book is published, we need your help to get some 5 star reviews posted to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble to help support and promote it. As you know, these online reviews are extremely persuasive when customers are considering a purchase. For your time, we would like to compensate you with a copy of the book under review as well as a $25 Amazon gift card. If you have colleagues or students who would be willing to post positive reviews, please feel free to forward this e-mail to them to participate. We share the common goal of wanting Clinical Psychology to sell and succeed. The tactics defined above have proven to dramatically increase exposure and boost sales. I hope we can work together to make a strong and profitable impact through our online bookselling channels.”

.. Cindy Minor, marketing manager for science and technology at Elsevier … called the request for five star reviews “a poorly written e-mail” by “an overzealous employee.”

I don’t always get xkcd although often enough I think it’s quite funny and on occasion I think it’s just brilliant. Here’s one I’m surprised my students haven’t put on a T-shirt for me yet. And you might recall our CT discussion of this one. Today, Randall Munroe has added another to my collection of favorites, check it out. (I even forgive him for a slight misspelling at the end. I won’t get into specifics, because it would be a spoiler. See the first comment below for more. UPDATE an hour later: typo I write about has been fixed.:)

So I’m back from the AAUP national meeting, and I’ve decided that I’m a bad person for not blogging about <a href=”http://www.law.duke.edu/publiclaw/supremecourtonline/certgrants/2005/garvceb.html”><i>Garcetti v. Ceballos</i></a> or <a href=”http://www.umich.edu/~sacua/sacmin/hongvgrant.pdf”><i>Hong v. Grant</i></a> (.pdf) until now.  (Marc Bousquet was all over it <a href=”http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bousquet/high-noon-for-academic-freedom”>more than a year ago</a>.)  The <i>Hong</i> case is just one example of what I call the Children of Garcetti, and if you teach at a public university in the United States (or if you know someone who does), you should know about <i>Garcetti</i>.

Here’s the <i>Oyez</i> <a href=”http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2005/2005_04_473″>summary of the case</a>.  Since <i>Garcetti</i> involves the fate of a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who was whistleblowing with regard to what appeared to be a fraudulent affidavit, most people didn’t realize that it might have implications for academic freedom.  Ah, but not the AAUP’s legal staff!  They were on the case, so to speak, from the start (here’s a .pdf of <a href=”http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/FA297466-D642-4040-987D-BAF46DDA0CA0/0/GarcettiSupremeCourtFinal.pdf”>the brief</a>).  Which is yet another reason you all (if you’re college professors) should have <a href=http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/involved/join/>joined the AAUP</a> by now, because (a) the AAUP sees these things coming when most of the rest of us don’t and (b) helps to fight ‘em in court.  Indeed, the AAUP/ Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression brief seems to have caught the attention of David Souter, who, bless his retiring heart, wrote in dissent:

<blockquote>This ostensible domain beyond the pale of the First Amendment is spacious enough to include even the teaching of a public university professor, and I have to hope that today’s majority does not mean to imperil First Amendment protection of academic freedom in public colleges and universities, whose teachers necessarily speak and write “pursuant to official duties.”</blockquote>

In response, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, citing Bugs Bunny, replied, “ehhhhhh … <i>could be</i>!”  Though the actual language was this:

<blockquote>There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.</blockquote>

In other words, <i>we’re leaving that door open, thanks — if any lower courts want to walk through it, just make sure they wipe their feet on the 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom</i>.

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While we all wonder what is going to happen in Iran, a trivial question: what are single quotes for?

I just got my Plato book [yes, you can read the whole thing!] ms. back from Pearson for final-final-final corrections and it’s clear the proofreader is not a philosopher. That’s actually not a bad thing, since it means fresh eyes about some things. One thing I’m not sure about: I’m being told not to use single-quotes. Since there are a number of places where I definitely need them for use-mention purposes, I’m going to have to put my foot down. This probably means I should announce to the reader what the convention is. But then I have to state it and, the truth is, I also use ‘scare quotes’ – single-quotes to indicate that there’s something questionable or problematic about a term or phrase. There are a few bits where I briefly conjure a bit of hypothetical dialogue and use single quotes to make it look more speech-like. Looking at all these red marks, I gotta clean up my act. Maybe the proper thing to do is restrict myself to necessary use-mention uses and don’t use the things for anything else. What is your preference, if any? (I don’t mean just about my book. In general. What are single-quotes for?)

Between the topic of Michèle’s posts, the discussion that followed John H’s note on manners and now John Q’s query about seminar questions, it’s a good opportunity to describe an incident I experienced years ago. I was surprised economists didn’t get more of a mention in the thread following John H’s post earlier given what I’ve seen in their colloquia. I have close-to no experiences in philosophy exchanges (and yet I dare call myself a Timberite…), but I’ve attended quite a few talks among economists so I’m used to their style of Q&A. As some have noted, it often starts a few slides in – or in some famous cases the speaker doesn’t get to proceed past the title slide for most of the time allotted – and being rather aggressive seems standard. If that’s the local norm, they are likely used to it and it doesn’t raise any eyebrows. However, what if you put such an economist in a room full of sociologists? Is it okay for him to import his style or should he take a moment to familiarize himself with the local norms? [click to continue…]

While Michèle Lamont is visiting us, and talking about cross-disciplinary comparisons and interactions, I thought I would raise a question about questions.

As background, my first “real” job was in a government research agency. Seminars were part of the process, and the norm was that senior staff would open the questions. In this context, it was almost invariably safe to ask “What are the policy implications”. That’s still true for some of the seminars I attend, but in others (economic theory, for example), such a question would be at best a faux pas, and the all-purpose question might be something like “Does this work in a monetary economy?”.

So, what are the all-purpose questions in different fields (or are there fields without such questions), and what, if anything does this reveal about those fields?

And still they come … in response to the latest pieing episode (actually an egging of Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party), the usual crowd of wowsers and pursed-lip good-government types come out of the woodwork, sorrowfully wagging their fingers and telling us “this is just what the BNP want”, and “this sort of thing makes people sympathetic to the BNP”. And once more I say “where’s the evidence?” Nick Griffin certainly doesn’t look like he’s executing the culmination of a cunning master plan to gain favourable publicity – he looks like he’s being egged and not enjoying it. And I really don’t understand the sort of mind that would look at the chubby fascist with yolk running down his coupon and say to themselves “gosh they must have a really important point to make if the so-called anti-fascists have to stoop to these depths to silence them”. Rather than, say, my own reaction, which was roughly “Cracking shot, sir!”. As I’ve noted before, there’s a Laffer Curve implicit here. If nobody ever egged Nick Griffin, then he’d never get egged, which I presume nobody wants. On the other hand, if he was egged every single time he went out, then he’d never leave his house – result, no eggings. But I really don’t believe that we’re on the right hand side of that Laffer Curve, not yet.

And in this particular case, the egging itself is actually a very important speech act and a significant contribution to our national debate. Based on the fact that they got two MEPs elected, non-white British citizens might justifiably be looking with suspicion at their white neighbours today, thinking that a significant proportion of us were secretly harbouring fascist sympathies. In fact this isn’t true; the absolute number of BNP votes was slightly down on 2004, and their electoral success was purely an artefact of overall low turnout. It’s therefore an important point to be made, to our own population and to the world’s watching media, that Nick Griffin isn’t in fact a newly popular and influential political figure; he’s a widely reviled creep who not only doesn’t lead a phalanx of jackbooted supporters, but actually can’t even set up for a TV interview without being pelted with eggs. The voice of the British populace does not shout “Hail Griffin!”, it shouts, “Oi Fatty, cop this! [splat]”. And the only efficient and credible way to demonstrate to the world that Griffin is regarded as an eggworthy disgrace, is to actually and repeatedly pelt him with eggs.

One does worry about the “heckler’s veto”, however. Repulsive as the BNP’s message is, they do have a sacred democratic right to make themselves heard, and it would be a shame if the praiseworthy efforts of the egg-throwers were to stray into the excessive and unacceptable territory of silencing them from the debate. I therefore suggest the following compromise – Unite Against Fascism ought to agree to allow Nick Griffin to give his press conferences in peace and without interruption, and in return the BNP ought to schedule an opportunity at the end of each press conference for their leader to stand around being pelted with eggs.

Larry Elliott (the Guardian’s economics editor) is in my view right to say that a lot of modern macroeconomics has gone off the rails pretty badly and that most general equilibrium models are a tragic waste of time. But I think he (and most other similar critics of excessive maths in economics) really badly misidentifies the nature of the problem, and his choice of an example of a worthless piece of mathematical formalism is quite unfortunate and unfair. Let’s see if I can explain what “Generalised non-parametric deconvolution with an application to earnings dynamics” is, and why someone might care about it.
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<a href=”http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/LAMHOW.html”>How Professors Think</a> shows that across all disciplines, evaluations depend on taste and expertise.  Because tastes are often idiosyncratic (what is “fascinating” is what looks like me or reinforces my own line of scholarship), funding agencies should explicitly instruct panelists to value the quality of the proposal (expertise) more than what excites (a matter of taste).

How Professors Think also shows that economists and historians have very different views concerning where excellencet resides – in the object being evaluated or in the eyes of the beholder. While economists think that excellence is objective and is to be found in the proposal itself (that a clear line separates what is first rate from the rest), scholars hailing from more interpretive fields believe that evaluators play a central role in giving value to the proposals – indeed, that they are engaged in the coproduction of excellence. While participating in panel deliberations, they produce what they hope will be convincing arguments about what is good work. They don’t think that their views – their subjectivity – corrupt the process. Instead, they think it is essential to the process, because they are asked to serve in their quality as connoisseurs, as experts who have spent many years developing a very refined classification system for understanding what the field has already produced and what is new and promising. [click to continue…]

My Philosophy: Mind and Manners post provoked good discussion but left certain things unsaid. Let me say something more that may help the discussion stay on a generally useful track. I mentioned in passing in that post that, while there were things that philosophers do, which they regard as conversation-starters, which others regard as conversation-stoppers, which causes confusion, the opposite is also true. There are things other humanists do that they think of as conversation-starters, that strike philosophers as rude and inappropriate, because, to the philosophers, they seem like conversation-stoppers – argument-stoppers. (In philosophy, there is hardly a distinction between conversation and argument, after all.)

But first let me back up a bit. What I was talking about in that post was a tendency for a certain style of ‘but it’s your central premise just false?’ question to be taken amiss by outsiders. Let’s be precise about this: the problem is that outsiders take these questions to express deep contempt – ‘I challenge you to prove you are not an idiot, and I very much doubt you will succeed. I am going to shame you in the eyes of everyone here today.’ But to philosophers themselves, this style of question is normal and perfectly consistent with mutual respectfulness (although, of course, it is also consistent with contempt – a thing unknown to the troglodytes of the philosophy cave by no means! yet it is not a dark fungal growth peculiarly indigenous to the philosophy cave. Am I making myself clear?) [click to continue…]