ACTA's Must-Reads

While it's all well and good, I suppose, to dissect blog comments, I'm coming to this site hoping for a more substantive discussion of the isssues raised by the report and by its most intelligent critics. Anne Neal's response to Tim Burke was inept and content-free, which is really disappointing given the thoroughness and specificity with which Burke addressed the report's assertions. Burke may be wrong, but he was careful and detailed, which is more than I can say for Anne Neal. Her first response to Burke is an incoherent assertion (simply stating without evidence, and without refutation of any of Burke's specific claims, that he is guilty of the errors in reasoning he attributes to the report). Her second response is if anything even less comprehensible: course descriptions are supposed to "stand alone"? What in the world does that mean? How can a document whose very purpose is to give a summary description of something else be said to "stand alone"? Perhaps Neal has never had to write a course description, but as someone who has written dozens of them I can testify that it's not possible to be very nuanced when trying to put the work of a whole semester into a single paragraph. I'd like to see Neal, or someone at ACTA, address Burke's main point: that you can't tell from a course description's use of a term, or from a symmabus's listing of a book, how the teacher will approach that term or that book. ACTA's method is simply too coarse-grained to enable the necessary distinctions.

I saw this as a conservative, and someone who is deeply concerned about the truly serious political distortions of the American academy. But the ACTA report, and Neal's comments, do not indicate to me that ACTA can tell the difference between Ward Churchill and Tim Burke, and that worries me almost as much. I'd like to see ACTA refine and clarify its thinking in response to the genuinely thoughtful critique of Burke (and others). That's something that I would really like to see this blog do, not just point to the absurdities to be found in blog comments, of which there will always be plenty.

I guess I'd just respond by asking what evidence you have that Concerned Observer is in fact parodying ACTA supporters rather than genuinely supporting ACTA (I'm willing to believe that you have evidence of this, but I don't know what that evidence is, so I'd like to have it explained.) I may be assuming that it's not a parody, but I'd like to know whether your argument that the comment is a parody is based on something more than assumption or not. If we're both operating on assumptions, it seems we're at a stalemate. (And I am ready to concede if you have evidence that it is a parody, but given that I've encountered attitudes like that before, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Concerned Observer is serious.)

As for the rest of the piece - I'd like to point out that in fact, I was careful NOT to comment on the ACTA report itself; if you read carefully, you'll see that my criticism was directly solely at IHE commenters, and had nothing to do with the actual content of the pieces on which they were commenting. (No, I don't agree with the ACTA report, but that wasn't my focus in posting.) Similarly, I was EXTREMELY careful not to suggest what the comment to Baron's piece suggests, that clear-minded thinking etc. automatically leads to leftist views. I strongly disagree with such a statement, having encountered any number of thoughtful, intelligent, educated people who disagree with me, politically. In fact, something that disturbs me greatly about liberals (among whom I do place myself) is the tendency to think that if people just think long and hard enough they'll "see the light" and adopt a liberal perspective. I do NOT believe this and try very hard not to suggest this in my writing.

I don't think my comments about non-academics' assumption that they can understand academia from the outside are a function purely of my political stance. (Again, this criticism is not directed at the ACTA report, but at the commenters on IHE.) They are a function of the fact that I have studied and trained many years to enter a profession. Again, I use the analogy of a doctor: while there are elements of medicine that a patient is in a position to critique (constantly running late for appointments, for instance), there are specialized elements of medicine that a layperson is not in a position to critique, just because they go to the doctor regularly. Academia is similarly a profession: There are specialized elements of academia that non-academics are not qualified to critique (without further study, a qualification I included in my original post) just by virtue of having gone to school.

But again, let me point out that these comments were not intended to describe ACTA and the ACTA report, but people leaving comments at IHE. The ACTA report is a lightning rod for such contentions, obviously, but I have seen such comments on any number of posts at IHE that have nothing to do with ACTA per se, and it was to the nature of such comments that I was responding.

New Kid,

Concerned Observer openly admits that he was attempting to parody "ACTA fans" with his comment. He then goes on to discuss those attempts at some length further down in the thread where he posted the comment you quoted on your blog.

Okay, having reread your post more carefully, I've gone back and reread the comments to the IHE column, and seen Concerned Observer's retraction as parody, so I concede that point, I apologize for misrepresenting his/her comment, and I will make an adjustment to my post. However, the point is that I have indeed seen genuine reactions to certain courses (especially gender history) that read very similarly to what Concerned Observer parodied, so I don't think it was unthinkable to take it at face value. My broader point about the IHE commenters is based on longer reading, not just this one post.

(Moving away from the content of my own post a little: I do agree with the criticism of Alan Jacobs and Tim Burke about using course descriptions as evidence. The administrative purpose of course descriptions is such that they tell you very little about what students will experience in a course. They are also intended to make a course sound appealing to students, so what professors emphasize from one campus to the next may well differ according to student body. Essentially, course descriptions are minimal enough that it seems to me that anyone can read into them what they choose. I know that I have seen the same course description be misinterpreted simultaneously by conservatives, who believe it's too liberal, and liberals, who believe it's too conservative.)

The logic of Mr. Burke's criticism of the ACTA report is fatally flawed because he makes a category error: Though it may be true that all Fords are cars, it doesn't necessarily follow that all cars are Fords.

So -- while it may well be true that all reports produced according to Burkian dogma may well be useful, it does not follow that all useful reports must be conducted according to Burkian dogma.

Epidemiologists routinely conduct surveys according to the principles which ACTA used in their report: empirically, they target a region, a population within the region, and a cluster of signs and symptoms to identify the "index case" of a specific disease.

Initial epidemiological surveys are properly and importantly aimed at detection and are purposely neither comprehensive nor definitive Nor are they without value because they fail to conform to Burkian dogma. Quite the contrary.

So if you are going to dismiss the ACTA report as "without value" because it doesn't meet Burkian standards, you also need to dismiss a sizable part of science as being "without value."

Frankly, I'm appalled that so many highly "educated" people have jumped so uncritically on the Burkian bandwagon when the flaw in his reasoning is so blatant. (Have these critics no concept of how to reason? Are they completely ignorant of such scientific concepts as "specificity" and "sensitivity"? How can this be?)

I think Mr. Burke owes ACTA an apology for his logically-indefensible and aggressive attack on their perfectly legitimate report.

Clawmute, I don't know what you're talking about. Can you give me a quotation from Burke in which he makes the error you say he does, in which "the flaw in his reasoning is so blatant"?

It is convenient to "recognize" Concerned Observer as a parody after his admission. If you had posted this before his own admission, it would be much more impressive. After his admission, it is simply a cheap shot.

Actually, Moral Majority, if I had posted this before Concerned Observer's own admission, it would not have been impressive; it would simply have been an assumption in another direction (assuming that someone writing in such a vein would HAVE to be a parody is as much an assumption as my original post). I don't see how acknowledging an error on my part is a cheap shot. When I posted my original comments on my blog, Concerned Observer had not yet admitted to being a parody (I would imagine you can check the time stamps to confirm that), and I maintain that until s/he had acknowledged parodying ACTA supporters, there was no evidence one way or another whether it was a parody or not. Again, I have seen comments similar to her/his parody posted in what I have to believe is all seriousness, as there was no indication that readers should take them as parodies, so I think it was legitimate to take Concerned Observer at face value until s/he revealed her/his purpose.

Clawmute, your analogy is problematic. Seeking to trace back the history of a disease is one thing; seeking to quantify prevalence/incidence is another. In the latter case, quantitative measures are critical; in either case, accurate diagnoses are critical.