taste the irony

So, let me get this straight. Think tanks are generally non-profit institutions dedicated to improving humanity. University faculties are all “liberals” that seek to brainwash kids. A think-tank is angry because some of its employees stole its trade secret, which is which faculty members are not “liberal.” (They call these people the “Faculty Associate Program.)

I like how their employees are referred to as “top lieutenants.” (p. 4). Also, paragraph 14 goes a little something like this, “ISIS works to ‘educate for liberty’ by identifying the best and brightest colleges students at our nation’s institutions of higher learning and nurturing in these future leaders a better understanding of the economic, political, and spiritual values that sustain a free and virtuous society. ISI seeks to enhance young people’s knowledge of our nation’s founding principles – limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, a free market economy, and moral norms.” Then they went to court and asked the court to sort the mess out.

The next paragraphs go on to explain their projects and strategies to “enhance” views, but not brainwash people and develop courses to push the views of their donors on students (which in the later pages they explain how the defendants made it difficult to do).

Larry, at 7:20 am EDT on October 19, 2007

So Sue Me! Oink! Oink!

So lets get this straight. A typical inbred intellectually bankrupt right wing think tank sues another for using their own dirty tricks to start another short sighted and intellectually bankrupt right wing think tank! Since when is historical intellectual dishonesty a trade secret? LOL! Guess they’re upset that this new useless group will use these same dirty tricks and intellectually dishonest fairy tales to deceive the American people better than they do! WAY TO GO PARTY OF GOD! And you wonder why every one with a few brain cells firing sees these crackers as a joke? Keep it up! Which car full of clowns is Horowitz siding with today? The one with the bigger, browner noses to match their shirts? Its a laugh a minute lately! Right on time for the Islamo-Fascist Week Buzzword Blitz! Keep it up. Prove your irrelevance again! Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

Diogenes, LOL, Pwned!, at 8:05 am EDT on October 19, 2007

Jack Miller and ISI

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has taken down the Jack Miller Center for the Teaching of America’s Founding Principles website, but you can look at the cached version.=============

Intercollegiate Studies Institute The Jack Miller Center for the Teaching of America’s Founding Principles Join the Miller Center effort today.http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cac...hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

Kathleen, at 8:15 am EDT on October 19, 2007

Sounds fairly simple

I see what entices people to post snide comments with this article: two conservative institutions airing dirty laundry. However, the core issue as I see it is very simple. Did employees of or donors to the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History or ISI take, without permission, proprietary databases from ISI? If so, it seems that ISI ought to be compensated.

rkevins, OBM, at 11:10 am EDT on October 19, 2007

Neat-o

How can I get a gig at “Regional Public University?”

Jon R. Pike, soon to be tenure track, at 12:40 pm EDT on October 19, 2007

In Response To Gerard and Larry ...

I write so many smart-assed responses to InsideHigherEd, it may be difficult to know when I am serious and when I am in S-A mode. I mean this post with complete seriousness.

I have been teaching for 47 years now. I have taught at four tier-one universities, two tier-two universities, and three truly mediocre universities. I have taught mathematics, statistics, social methodology, political science, management science, ed research and evaluation, the so-called quality sciences ... and probably some other stuff as well. All but two of my positions have been tenure track.

I have racked my brain for the past half hour, and, to the best of my ability, I cannot identify a single student I have known during those 47 years that I would classify as “brain-washed.” Not even close. I have had many students – with intellectual perspectives all over the political landscape – that I would classify as “true believers,” but I cannot think of a single one who reached that stage by virtue of being subjected to anything approximating “brain-washing.”

I believe faculty in this country — many of whom tend to classify themselves as leftists, Democrats, Republicans, or right-wing — greatly exaggerate how compelling their and their political opponents’ social and political arguments are. When I overhear students discussing their professors the most common body language I witness is shaking their heads and rolling their eyes.

One reason I have difficulty taking some InsideHigherEd news reports and views articles seriously is that sooooo many respondents imagine sinister political agendas driving every academic decision or action, no matter how far-fetched their associations may be. I think it is just a matter of time until someone blames Ward Churchill for professional management not having a paradigm that drives theory and practice ... or blames David Horowitz because there is not uniform acceptance of the Alverno College assessment theory of pedagogy. I certainly don’t believe in censorship, but I think if IHE effected a temporary ban on any mention of Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, David Horowitz, and Ann Coulter (I can name a few others whose proclamations about education are so intellectually vacuous they should not command our attention), the intellectual level of IHE posts would increase by at least one standard deviation. Whew!

In conclusion ... not a single “brain-washed” student in 47 years.

Frizbane Manley, at 12:40 pm EDT on October 19, 2007

just in case people want to know about money

Oh, just in case any of you are interested in knowing the salaries of the key players, you can get them on Guidestar.org.

Larry, at 2:50 pm EDT on October 19, 2007

Al, No. All non-profits. Your question about whether it only applies to things I disagree with is a smear and unfounded. First of all, I am not “saying” but rather I am “saying” that it is disputed. I was not saying that people argue that they are not entitled to any protection, but I am saying that the value of their trade secrets is negligible (since they are not operated for a profit), and that courts should not exercise their equitable power in trade secret disputes between dueling non-profit corporations that both supposedly operate for the greater good of society. (This analysis doesn’t apply to patents or copyrights for other reasons not relevant here.)

Larry, at 3:10 pm EDT on October 19, 2007

I am a professional at a fairly large private foundation that funds in the educational arena. The facts of this case seem fairly straightforward and, if accurate, quite serious. As a private foundation we must handle proprietary donor information on a daily basis for hundreds of grantees. We must observe absolute professional confidentiality because of the significance of such information which is the lifeblood of most nonprofit organizations — including, by the way, universities and colleges which regularly raise hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations. I am startled by the politicization of the comments in response to this article, and more than a little surprised at the level of discourse. Those of you who are currently students or faculty of institutions of higher education should realize that your college or university would engage in similar litigation tout de suite if several senior employees in the development department engaged in what the defendents are accused of having done. This has nothing to do with political leanings. The nonprofit world may be engaged in mission-driven work instead of profit-driven work but the nonprofit organization is still a business. If a proprietary donor base was indeed stolen by employees, for whatever purpose, this is a very serious issue. The frivolous political sniping is disappointingly fatuous.

Anonymous, at 8:25 am EDT on October 20, 2007

On the Question of Fanaticism

There appears to be very little actual willingness to understand this situation, or the nature of the group and people involved. Yes, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute is a conservative organization, but it is a group that is far from “doctrinaire” or an extension of the Republican Party. I.S.I.’s conservatism is mainly manifested in its support of a college curriculum built around the “canon,” or the fundamental texts of Western civilization from Homer to Plato, from Aristotle to Aquinas, from Hobbes to Locke and the American Founders. There are legitimate debates over what should be taught in college classrooms, but an argument on behalf of a classically-based core curriculum is not “fanatical,” as a number of commentators here suggest. In fact, most people I have met through I.S.I. are the very antithesis of fanatic: they are deep and abiding opponents of fanaticism in politics, whether manifested on the Left or the Right (for example, while most lean Republican, many I have met have been opponents of the President’s war in Iraq from the outset); many are critical of unbridled free market capitalism, particularly due to the corruption of culture that invariably accompanies free markets; and this past weekend, I.S.I. sponsored a conference in appreciation of the novelist, poet and essayist Wendell Berry who for many decades has commended conservation and a care for the earth, and who in his younger years was an ardent opponent of the Vietnam War.

Based on many of the gleeful responses here by people on the Left who automatically assume that the opposition are mindless or idiotic fanatics, I would suggest that they consider looking in the mirror, or, if they claim to be scholars, to strive to understand of what they speak before they speak or write. There might be many ways to understand this fight, but one very plausible way is to be found in the very texts commended by I.S.I. in a core curriculum (and perhaps not read by Jack Miller), namely, the permanence and insidiousness of human vanity and the dangers of limitless craving for glory.

Burkean Conservative, Associate Professor, at 5:45 pm EDT on October 22, 2007