ACTA's Must-Reads

"Defenders of the academic status quo don't want to be argued with, and they go to great lengths to shut down such argument in advance. But that's all the more reason for substantive debate."

You cannot "debate" the stone cold deaf (and untouchably tenured). The only thing that will change the current problem is assessment testing: Once the numbers are clear about how many functionally illiterate enrollees colleges graduate every year, their narrative is done for.

Until that point, however, they're all Bill Clinton melting down on Fox at even the slightest suggestion of criticism. You cannot
"debate" unstable narcissists.

Do you mean the kind of functional illiteracy required to write "Berube's admirers are already pre-emptively mocking readers who might disagree with his argument" where one should have written "Berube's friends are already poking fun at his book"? Because I agree that's pretty damned disheartening.

Again, let's remember the genetic fallacy: just because a group of scholars share a set of political beliefs is not a sufficient condition for concluding that their scholarly ideas, research, or teaching are propaganda or that "open-minded inquiry" isn't taking place in their classrooms.

Judge seems to think that a scholar of Shakespeare who votes Democrat cannot be open-minded. Then again, the same would have to be true for someone who votes Republican. So hiring Republicans wouldn't lead to open-minded inquiry -- it would just lead to a different, but still closed-minded, political bias.

Berube's point is that liberal political ideas don't necessarily lead to indoctrination or closed-mindedness. Judge makes a horrible logical blunder that makes me wonder just who the closed-minded one really is.

Here's my favorite line from the review: "Berube admits that universities are liberal reeducation camps." Wait, where does he do that?

Aside from the stupidity of complaining that the world is ignoring somebody's review of Alan Wolfe's NYT review of Michael Berube's second to last book-

it's funny that you speak of 'functionally illiterate enrolees colleges graduate every year'. Are you perhaps talking about the business and engineering schools? I would imagine so, as that has been my experience in universities in Canada.

Fed Dog, do you have any evidence that colleges are turning out functionally illiterate students? If so, can I see the charts and graphs and statistics?

Even relatively conservative scholars, like Eric Hirsch, agree that America's colleges are the envy of the world. This isn't to say there's not room for reform, but you'll need more "skills," as the kids say, to take on Berube's claim that the universities in our country work on the whole.

And if American humanities scholars' research is so close-minded, why don't we see other nations' scholars producing ground-breaking research to a greater degree? I'm sure if there was a university system in the world producing groundbreaking conservative literary criticism, ACTA would be advertizing it to high hell. But where is it?

"I'm sure if there was a university system in the world producing groundbreaking conservative literary criticism, ACTA would be advertizing it to high hell. But where is it?"

I was unaware that universities hired conservatives. Is that possible?

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/

This study has been commented to death in the media over the past nine months. 31% of college graduates demonstrate proficient literacy skills.

31%

Again, let's remember the genetic fallacy: just because a group of scholars share a set of political beliefs is not a sufficient condition for concluding that their scholarly ideas, research, or teaching are propaganda or that "open-minded inquiry" isn't taking place in their classrooms.

Judge seems to think that a scholar of Shakespeare who votes Democrat cannot be open-minded. Then again, the same would have to be true for someone who votes Republican. So hiring Republicans wouldn't lead to open-minded inquiry -- it would just lead to a different, but still closed-minded, political bias.

1. What if the the scholar of Shakespeare sits on committees assessing candidates for promotion and tenure, including candidates in the social sciences? Does not our Shakespeare aficionado's sense of what is and is not a social problem worth studying enter into his evaluation of the candidate in question? What if said scholar has spent the bulk of his adult life in and amongst people who would never question the assumptions about moral norms he brings to scholarship and administrative work?

2. What if said Shakespeare scholar sits on academic committees assessing applications to teach new courses, including those in the social sciences?

3. What if said Shakespeare scholar sits on committees assessing proposals to add new academic programs? Will there be anyone to argue against his assumption that 'peace studies' is a worthwhile discipline?

Berube's point is that liberal political ideas don't necessarily lead to indoctrination or closed-mindedness. Judge makes a horrible logical blunder that makes me wonder just who the closed-minded one really is.

Not necessarily, but is it really your contention that the decline in the possibility of intramural argument among faculty is going to have no effect on their understanding of what does and does not constitute a reasonable opinion and thus of their inclination to be other than dissmissive of their students and the larger society? Why is this sort of diversity so readily dispensible?

Sir Dog:

"Not proficient" is not the same as "functionally illiterate" (except perhaps to the functionally illiterate).

There are many interesting things in that study, including things that are never remarked, let alone commented to death.

For instance, the fact that almost all ethnic groups in the study are improving, except Hispanics. Yet the averages are dropping -- in the case of the one you cited, reading proficiency of college grads, from 40% to 31%.

That suggests a lot about what is really going on.

Art:

In my experience, English professors don't often decide on the curriculum or tenure cases of social scientists, mostly because an English professor wouldn't be able to assess the quality of the social scientists' research or curriculum ideas. Tenure cases are decided mostly at the levels of the department and the Dean of the school (i.e., sociology and Dean of Social Research School), as are most curricular decisions (except those involving requirments for all students across the board).

Nor does the similar voting records of professors mean that they won't disagree about fundamental issues in their discipline. Physicists are also mostly liberal in the States, but that doesn't mean they don't disagree about the validity of string theory. Likewise, literature scholars might mostly vote Democrat, but that doesn't mean you won't find historicists, new historicists, psychoanalytic critics, poststructuralists, historical materialists, formalists, aesthetes, cultural studies (UK and US versions), biographical critics, and so on in English departments.

Assuming ACTA aspires to be more than a right-wing echo-chamber, I assume you'll be taking note of the fact that the bit about anthropology depts that you quote Judge repeating from Wolfe was in fact made up by Wolfe.

*If* you want to climb up on high horses and call for substantive debate, you might start by reading books yourself and not just calling on others to do so, meanwhile retailing hearsay from other people who haven't done the reading either.

Given the absence of any correction, I think we can take that ACTA's aspiration is precisely to be a rightwing echo chamber. It is, after all, a large and profitable market niche.

The central mode of activity throughout the echo chamber industry is the recycling of unverified quotes, factoids and so forth, with gradual embellishments along the way. Ask Stephen Schneider or Al Gore, to name but two examples.

WHAT A CROCK!

" .. Berube has styled himself as an authority on matters of intellectual diversity, academic freedom and the culture wars .."

Someone in a field so overwhelmingly over-populated with PhDs and MAs that Starbucks is a major employer of grads, with a 50:1 bias toward one of two major political parties (guess), attempts to loft himself over the chattering masses that pay his over-inflated, government-protected and -funded salary.

Bonn, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, et al., are laughing at the U.S., for the obvious fools that we are. Taxpayers should ship Berube, Bernadine Dohrn, Angela Davis, Billy Ayers, Ward Churchill, Grover Furr, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, et al., to Bonn, Tokyo, et al., in hopes of destroying their cultural societies, before ours is.