1,972 words of the same old wrong “yada, yada”

Graduate English programs are well-known for (1) endless critiques (and re-critques) and (2) long-windedness. So it was in this column.

It would be easy to provide 1,972 words in support of efforts to reduce the 30-1 ratio in the English domain toward one of the two major political parties. That ratio is so lopsided, any reasonable person would ask, “what the heck is going on? Intellectual incest?”

And, please, not the same old silly, ridiculous canard about non-Democrats being dumber than Democrats. That’s just a simple GMAT study away. Ditto about the inane “all Republicans go into investment banking” — simple probability proves that wrong.

Also — we learned how to critically think decades ago — what do you this has been all about? We have read both sides of the argument, taken our position, and rejected the other side. Get used to it.

Anyone who has spent a year in academia knows of tenured faculty who keeps beating their dead horse of one-note political hectoring. Unfortunately, I’ve personally seen dozens.

This is wrong — wrong for students, taxpayers, everyone. We are going to fix this — insist on minimum standards of conduct and performance, re-assign personnel, cut budgets, whatever. We will succeed.

To those alleged academics already politically wedded to one political party and frightened about competing against at least 10 other qualified applicants for one position — you have a choice.

Either develop the intellectual rigor to calmly and rationally analyze (not just critique) multiple perspectives — or plan for a career outside academia. Your decision. Good luck.

R.A. Shaw, Regular guy at Regular small quality college, at 7:44 am EST on January 23, 2006

Too Dangerous

A liberal education is more than the mere passing of facts within a discipline to students while denying or ignoring the society (and it’s debates) with in which the classroom sits—the context within which professors teach and students learn. For example, contextualizing/historicizing a novel, it’s subject, its characters is an important exercise for a professor English to create and for students to confront in their academic journey. Just as importantly and to help students hone their skills at critical analysis, connections between what is being done in the classroom and the “real” world is vitally important to the progress of humankind and, yes, challenging to both the student and the professor. Commentary by professors on all the vagaries of life is what education is all about. I suspect that the claims of educational “political indoctrination” is not really the issue, it’s that its not the indoctrination of the “right” kind. What is raising the “dangerous idea” of paying students to report on professors are the seething resentments on the political right that sees the academy as the last bastion of independent thought autonomous of the currently “in vogue” political philosophy that has captured the presidency, the legislature, most of the courts and if Fox news is any indication, the media as well. If the academy is leftist, and I am not so sure it is, I say, “Thank God!” We need one of society’s structures to mirror a diverse political perspective if for nothing more than to reflect the reality of political America. We are as a people, as an electorate, after all, not all conservative Republicans—at least not yet.

michael vocino, professor of film media at university of rhode island, kingston, at 9:18 am EST on January 23, 2006

Professorial rants

While I agree that paying students to dime out left wing ranting professors is not a good idea, one has to examine how we got to this point.

As study after study has shown, there in very little diversity of political orientation among American faculty working in higher education. Over 92% of all faculty contributions to political parties went to the Democrat party in 2004. That is just ridiculous. This straijacketing of the thought process has lead to the sad situation we see at UCLA.

Don’t kill the messenger. Get more intellectually diverse faculty and this problem goes away.

feudi pandola, at 10:23 am EST on January 23, 2006

Get your $ from Kennedy Bank in Caymans

” .. the academy as the last bastion of independent thought autonomous of the currently “in vogue” political philosophy ..”

On a day when 25,000 workers lost their jobs — from a state represented in Congress by the Jack Abramhoff-funded scion of a self-appointed political royal family that keeps its inherited money hidden in off-shore tax havens while poor slobs pay full rate — we get to read that kind of patently absurd contention from a taxpayer-supported film critic?

Academic fields tilted 30-1 to one of the two major political parties have no legitimite claim to political independence, anti-Stalinism, or even-handedness. That would be like starting a Teddy Kennedy School of Bridge Driving, and not expecting people to laugh.

This is why taxpayers are so angry. They wonder if their young college graduates are going to have to hold up signs in Tokyo that state “will think for food.” I doubt if they will get many takers — the Japanese aren’t that stupid.

If you want to tear down the U.S. — please get your funds from the Kennedys, Geo. Soros, Progressive Insurance, Jane Fonda, Michael Moore, Air America, et al. The masses have revolted.

We’ve critically-thought about this (i.e., considered multiple perspectives), and we’re through with your ilk. Good luck with life off the public teat, and goodbye.

Art D., at 4:11 pm EST on January 23, 2006

Conservative Rights

The dearth of conservatives working in higher education is appalling. By golly, what we need is affirmative action for conservatives! It’s about time that we rescue this persecuted minority from the horrors they face: lynchings, slavery, institutionalized poverty, sexual objectification, and discrimination in the availability and quality of education, private and public sector hiring, media exposure, and congressional, executive, and judicial representation. Perhaps we should call for a constitutional amendment for conservative rights!

Conservative Avenger, at 6:45 pm EST on January 23, 2006

Brian Thill’s article

As a professor of the amorphous subject called “English” at a community college, which entails teaching writing courses, among other things (and as one with a Ph.D. in Communication and Rhetoric, for those who care to know), I found Brian Thill’s article to be intelligent, witty, and of an appropriate length for the development of his argument. (I often fear that we’re in an increasingly short-attention-span society.)

His argument was logical and thorough—and his use of “Ethos” in indicating that he himself seems to restrain himself from proselytizing (on the liberal side, quite likely) suggests that he is not writing out of self-interest. (By the way, where exactly did he claim “the freedom to spend class time to such matters as the Bush administration’s `restrictive immigration policies,’ `the corporate takeover of the university,’ and `so much more.’,” as KC Johnson alleges? Ethical argumentation requires careful use of quotes to avoid twisting the original intended meaning.)

On the contrary, his focus was on the needs and welfare of the students, in general and in the particular case of exploitation by the UCLA alumni group. While he certainly indicated a strong disagreement with the idea of outside groups trying to control academic speech, particularly solely for partisan purposes, his focus was on the students.

The critical thinking that R.A. Shaw claims to have been taught years ago also includes an ability to read past one’s emotions and knee-jerk responses to positions other than those one espouses. People who can read Mr. Thill’s piece carefully, with the emotions held in check, will find a well-constructed, logical, and ethical argument.

Bravo, Brian Thill!

CJO, at 6:45 pm EST on January 23, 2006

Important

This is one of the most important issue of our time. The distraction from the course is minor in comparison to the distraction from the material propagated from the professors themselves. The arguement as to the time is similar to the arguements made in the 1960s against marching — why bother when there is so little time?

I wonder if the same sort of defense would be held if a black cultural center offered to pay students who recorded white professors making anti-black comments? “Save your effort?” “Don’t bother, just concentrate around it?” Or “but you’re in a predominatly black area, you need the hardline white perspective?” Would we hear “but what about anti-white comments?”

No, rather we would see a very different response indeed — I am certain of it. This is emblamatic of the profound double standard on speech in universities today.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 6:45 pm EST on January 23, 2006

One talks about homosocial bonding in _Moby Dick_ because it’s there, but your average undergraduate is unlikely to see it without a little training in critical thinking, recognition of symbol patterns, etc. One can also discuss the white whale as a Christ symbol, and people do, but conservatives rarely complain about that. What would be truly debasing is to insist that it’s a novel about big fish and men with sharp sticks and nothing else.

People do need training in close reading, and they need examples for practice. And to take things one step further, examples that begin in a state of cognitive dissonance but overcome it are assuredly memorable.

Without training, you end up with people who see the words “restrictive immigration policies” and “the corporate takeover” in an article, couched in all sorts of caveats, and somehow manage to miss all the caveats and start complaining that the writer “claims the freedom to spend class time to [sic] such matters.”

If we’re serious about higher education, we do need reading and discussion careful enough to be distinguishable from misreading.

Thane Doss, at 5:15 am EST on January 24, 2006

So why aren’t academics richer?

” .. your average undergraduate is unlikely to see it without a little training in critical thinking .. “

My, my. From mean ol’ David Horowitz to how cognitively-deficit non-Democrats/Socialists/Communists are. As if groups of poor working-class schlubs don’t determine their own meanings from the world — y’know, like Cliff Geertz discovered in the South Pacific. Or that their college-educated parents (and TV!) didn’t provide that cultural foundation already. My, my.

One wonders why, if they are so much more intelligent, Dems/Soc’s/Comm’s aren’t more economically successful.

Oh, that’s right — they’re following in the lead of Churchill, Shortell, Crystall, Furr, Ayers, et al., and living off the taxpayers. They figured out an easy ride — until that mean ol’ Mr. Horowitz began shaking them up.

To paraphrase Dave Chapelle in “Oprah’s Having My Baby” — “Damn you, David Horowitz — if you break this up ..”

Bart J., at 6:00 am EST on January 24, 2006

Wingers destroy the experience

One of my biggest gripes as an undergraduate centered around the arrogance of the wingers — on both sides — who taught the various disciplines. As a self-described liberal attending college in a self-admitted liberal town, I should have had no complaints. But I did not pay to listen to “lectures” about someone’s glory days camping out while smoking weed; nor was I particularly enamored about listening to rants about how Jimmy Carter was a knee-jerk liberal or how Richard Nixon was a man of great decency and honesty.

Frankly, I am sick of the wingers — on both sides — constantly telling me how to think, what to think and who to listen to (bad English, yes, I know). Taping lectures is not a very clever way of suppressing speech and free thinking. And that is what this issue is all about. Period.

I never admired the liberals for their rants. But the conservatives are earning well their designation of “conservitards” with this stupid attempt at silencing those with whom they are at political odds. Last I looked, this was still America, not Amerika. Get rid of the brown shirted efforts in the classroom. If the conservitards want more professors of their stripe in the classroom, then encourage more brainwashed spankeess to enter the world of academia instead of wasting our bandwidth with the communist inanity.

If behavior controllists want classrooms free of uber-liberals, then get your neo-conservatives off our Court. Otherwise, learn to suck it up.

JPZinger, at 9:55 am EST on January 24, 2006

Brian Thill, you are a genius.

Jennifer Boukidis, Law Student at Chapman University School of Law, at 4:25 am EST on January 25, 2006

thought police active and well

I don’t recognize much of what Brian Thill argued in his persuasive column in the invective and venom that followed. This is surely the problem with commentary on the web; it invites the usual suspects, people who have taken it upon themselves to police the academy because obviously academics are out of control. I think the thought police (both those trolling the pages of IHE and those at UCLA) should have the courage of their convictions and follow through on their arguments. In short, argue for the cessation of all “tax-payer” funding of higher education. Be done with it since it is all ideological training anyway. That way only those institutions that are wealthy (both in endowments and FOR the wealthy) will survive. Most of the remainder of the intellectual citizenry people can return to their place among the proles. Want to know about English literature, just read some books and look on the web. Why pay good taxpayer dollars for someone else’s education?

Of course, when those uneducated and disenchanted masses no longer have the safe haven of a university classroom to vent their disagreements with the status quo, they might actually want to change the system. Heaven forbid. The classroom was much safer, and politically ineffectual I should add.

Curious, at 7:10 pm EST on January 25, 2006

Subsidization

Your arguement holds no water. There is sufficient economic interest in college educated employees that without any government funding loans and tuition could be obtained on the basis of the higher wages that follow the earning of a diploma.

Their is great concern, as Adam Smith pointed out in his great work Wealth of Nations, that universities funded by endowments or the taxpayers become utterly unresponsive to their customers or their needs. Indeed, some go as far as saying that students are only present to be trained in their ideology and not for career skills or such at all. This thinking would be impossible were the schools compelled to compete in a normal market economy for tuition money, rather than recieving enormous government handouts just to exist.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 8:30 pm EST on January 25, 2006

Critical Thinking — R.A. Shaw style.

“Also — we learned how to critically think decades ago — what do you this has been all about? We have read both sides of the argument, taken our position, and rejected the other side. Get used to it.”

Obviously Mr. Shaw needs more instruction in critical thinking. (Unless of course the “get used to it” argument is suddenly an accepted form of critical discourse).

More than any other comment on this subject, Mr. Shaw’s rant points to the root of the problem. Left, Right and Center, there is an increasing reluctance to engage with ideas in meaningful discourse. May I suggest a return to G.E. Lessing, Voltaire and Diderot — well argued and meaningful discussions that seek truth and not just the honor of being right.

To this end I thank Prof. Thill for his thoughtful response.

Timothy Scholl, at 11:40 am EST on January 27, 2006

Complexity Takes Time and Space

Mr. Bad English,

No need to be nasty and sarcastic.

I didn’t say conservatives are unintelligent. I said they’re less willing to engage with complexity, and that the answers they proffer are more simplistic. There’s a difference.

Re your demand for evidence of that claim, well, we’re posting brief comments on a message board. There’s not much space here for providing detailed, complex evidence that would support a particular position from the left? But here’s one example—poverty.

Conservatives tend to argue that poor people are poor because they’re lazy or inherently unable to get ahead. Solutions: tellng poor people to find some initiative on their own and get off their butts, and/or pointing to pathological local cultures (cultures labeled inner-city, or black, or white trash, etc.). Liberals, and especially leftists, point to and try to understand particular social forces and pressures that impinge on poor people. Solutions: better schools, more equitable sentencing by courts, less police harrassment, less pathologizing of the poor and the racially Other by the media, less social and institutional valorizing of white, middle-class mores and values, and so on. Nevermind what you think of any of those particular policies; I’m just saying that the more complex solutions offered by the left come from a more complex understanding of the causes of poverty.

And to get back to the overall point, I think this is one reason why there are more thinkers on the left than on the right in academia, a place that obviously encourages deeper thinking.

I don’t know what your point is in listing mainstream media outlets. My point stands—all of them give more space to conservative viewpoints, and the representatives of the left they do let speak tend to be less articulate and aggressive than those speaking from the right.

willie mink, Associate Professor at Midwestern Midlevel U, at 8:20 pm EST on January 27, 2006

Question

“I didn’t say conservatives are unintelligent. I said they’re less willing to engage with complexity, and that the answers they proffer are more simplistic. There’s a difference.”

So conservatives are unwilling to engage complexity (i.e., to learn or understand or deal with new or trying situations), and that has nothing to do with intelligence (basic lexical definition: “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations")? Given that your criticism here involves the very definition of intelligence, what point are you attempting to make if not that politically conservative people are less intelligent than leftists?

Bad English, at 10:00 am EST on January 28, 2006

Speaking truth to ignorance, Pt. II

” .. Obviously Mr. Shaw needs more instruction in critical thinking ..”

Sure — let’s deny the Holocaust. Then join Grover Furr and resurrect Mr. Stalin’s image as Mr. Nice Guy.

” .. May I suggest a return to G.E. Lessing .. well argued and meaningful discussions that seek truth ..”

Again — persons from academic departments tilted 40-1 to one major political party are hardly in a position to declare themselves “meaningful” — except to themselves and their robot-followers.

Go visit an unemployment line and see how long tripe lasts, buddy. Be sure you have medical insurance, prior to pontificating.

” .. To this end I thank Prof. Thill for his thoughtful response. ..”

WRONG! See tagline for correct, accurate title.

R.A.S., at 12:15 pm EST on January 28, 2006

40 to 1?! that’s cooked data

See Michael Berube’s recent take on this debate for a more accurate assessment of data on political affiliations within the academy—the ratio of liberal to conservative is more accurately assessed as less than 3 to 1:

http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/838/

Conservatives are still outnumbered, but they’re not the mightily beleagured minority some claim to be.

willie mink, Associate Professor at Midwestern Midlevel U, at 1:00 pm EST on January 28, 2006

To A.D.

Oh stop being so obtusely obstinate. No one’s denying that conservatives are outnumbered in academia. I disputed the absurd claims HOW outnumbered they are. Paraphrasing Berube, apparently less-than-three-to-one isn’t bad enough, so Horowitz and his ilk have to cook up all sorts of skewed data in order to make their ironic claims of victimhood seem more alarming.

willie mink, Associate Professor at Midwestern Midlevel U, at 11:35 am EST on January 29, 2006

Clarity, False Premises, and Simplistic

Earl: To clarify, you originally said that the subjects we teach “demand” that we discuss “socialist politics in Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” homosocial bonding in Melville’s “Moby Dick,” and the racial dynamics of “Huckleberry Finn....” I do not argue that one could not support such readings of these (or other) works. One could very well, I think. I argued only that the subject does not “demand” it. I would add that literary texts do not “demand” given readings at all, but do “allow” for (i.e., support) them. What “demands” such readings are postmodern theories—and the professors who are enmeshed in them. Not that I’m dismissing any of that – I’m just saying that my argument was with the word “demand.”

> And here you disprove your own argument that conservatives are somehow denied entry or voice in the academy.

This comment mischaracterizes my argument and puts an easy-to-pound, fictional “straw man” in its place. I never argued that conservatives are “denied entry or voice in the academy.” Obviously, as you pointed out, I was “in.” What I argued was that once conservatives are “in” as job candidates or as assistant professors, many find that they are met with the kinds of dismissive prejudices you, Willie Mink, and others have displayed on this forum—that conservatives (or perhaps more accurately, conservative attitudes, if there’s a difference) are intolerant, simplistic, etc. And that can be the difference in hiring and tenure decisions.

> If you and other conservatives wished to change the tone of academic discussion, then you’d be there doing the work, rather than complaining about it and supporting the propoganda of extremist groups like the UCLA Bruin Alumni.

Doesn’t this sound a lot like dealing with poverty by “tell[i]ng poor people to find some initiative on their own and get off their butts, and/or pointing to pathological local cultures,” as Willie Mink says of conservatives? Aren’t you telling conservative academics to “find some initiative on their own and get off their butts”?

As for your warnings not to claim I had to “keep my mouth shut,” etc., don’t worry – this is another example of your fallacious argumentation built not on evidence but on your cartoon idea of conservatives.

And speaking of cartoon ideas about conservatives —

Willie Mink: Your claim about conservatives being “simplistic” was already answered by Bad English, but let me add few points.

First is that while it appears you thought you were stating an undisputed fact (though perhaps you were being ironic), the characterization of conservative thinking as “simplistic” is pejorative from the outset. Of course you knew that, but the claim itself needs to be challenged because it highlights a severe but unnecessary gap between our respective “sides.” It may or may not be true that conservatives prefer simpler solutions to some problems, but that is not the same, necessarily, as being “simplistic.” The claim that conservatives are simplistic says more about your own prejudices than it does about conservatives.

Second, your premise that “Conservatives tend to argue that poor people are poor because they’re lazy or inherently unable to get ahead” is itself an over-simplified, caricatured idea of conservative thought—a caricature which is, admittedly, easy to reject and dismiss as simplistic. But as all caricatures are, this premise is simplistic. Many conservatives would (rightly) reject the idea that poor people are poor simply because they’re lazy.

Third, while I will leave aside the policy issues as you requested (see below), I want to revisit your conclusion/claim about liberals’ more complex (and thus, you assume, superior) “understanding of the causes of poverty”:

> Nevermind what you think of any of those particular policies; I’m just saying that the more complex solutions offered by the left come from a more complex understanding of the causes of poverty.

One problem with this self-congratulatory conclusion is that it is built on the faulty, circular premise that liberals’ and leftists’ thinking is more complex than conservatives’ because, as we all know, conservative thinking is simplistic.

Also problematic is the conclusion’s unannounced premise that “more complex understanding” is the same as “more accurate understanding,” a claim that is transparently false. It also assumes that “more complex solutions” are inherently better and that they reflect a more complex level of thinking. But neither of these claims is necessarily true, either.

Perhaps what is truly simplistic, then, is the idea that conservative thinking is inherently simplistic.

Let’s find some common ground in this intellectual diversity argument. Maybe the argument here is not a matter of which side’s thinking is simple and whose is complex. Maybe it’s a matter of clearing the way for more productive discussion of conflicting ideas by understanding accurately the other side’s premises (and our own). Doing so may help us all resist the temptation to simplify—and then vilify—each others’ arguments.

And THAT, I think, is what conservatives are really asking for in the classroom (sorry if that sounds too simplistic).

regular joe, at 1:20 pm EST on February 3, 2006