May 26, 2006

Churchill Fallout: There Are More Like Him

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s report “How Many Ward Churchills?” has caused an uproar in some corners of the Internet. Criticism has centered on two issues: method and message. The report’s principal critics, Swarthmore history professor Timothy Burke and The Myth of Political Correctness author John K. Wilson, have attacked it, respectively, as a “casual, lazy, cherrypicking survey of whatever materials the author(s) were able to access on the Web,” and as part of “a vast new right-wing witch hunt on college campuses.” Both critiques share confused and erroneous assumptions about the report’s message and about ACTA’s right to criticize academic culture.

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Burke complains that the report’s criticisms are ill-founded: They “see what they want to see,” they “ignore context or specificity,” and they “avoid REAL argument of the kind that scholars routinely engage in,” he grumbles. “The report talks about the need to guarantee that students have unrestrained rights to the free exchange of ideas in the classroom. Seriously, unless you bother to get off your ass and stop reading catalogues online, you have no idea what happens in classrooms.”

Setting aside Burke’s contemptuous tone, let’s examine the gaps in his reasoning. Burke’s initial objections are throw-away examples of faulty logic. The first, in which he accuses ACTA of post ergo propter hoc thinking, is itself an example of that logical fallacy: Burke sees ACTA seeing what ACTA wants to see because Burke wants to see ACTA that way. But the course descriptions ACTA cites are hardly unique or isolated. There are hundreds of similarly tendentious descriptions published by institutions across the country. They were chosen for their utter typicality, not their uniqueness.

Burke’s second objection is remarkably solipsistic — context and specificity are whatever he defines them to be. ACTA quotes course descriptions verbatim, working from exactly what students (and interested parents) read to select a class. The reason? Course descriptions are designed to stand alone — if they are all a prospective student needs to know about a class, then they are also all tuition-paying parents, taxpayers, and concerned citizens need in order to form a preliminary judgment.

This objection is part of Burke’s larger criticism of the report’s reliance on course descriptions. But his claim that these documents — the main resource students use to decide whether or not to register for a class — do not tell us anything about what happens in the classes in question is illogical at best, disingenuous at worst. If true, this charge would mean either that professors routinely engage in false advertising or that the process by which students choose courses is a charade that fools no one but students themselves.

In so arguing, Burke has chosen to stretch a point ACTA freely concedes — that course descriptions are neither courses nor perfect windows into the curriculum — in order to avoid ACTA’s more fundamental argument about why course descriptions matter. They matter because they are professors’ own public representations of what happens in their classrooms. That so many professors describe their pedagogical aims in ideologically loaded ways raises entirely legitimate questions about accountability and balance.

Of course, ACTA has never claimed to know exactly what is happening in classrooms, and does not assume authority to determine whether a class is pedagogically sound. All ACTA’s report does is to urge college and university presidents, deans, and faculty to examine the issue themselves. ACTA has already outlined ways campus leaders can review departments and programs while still being fair, respectful, and sensitive to academic freedom and academic autonomy. Our 2005 report, “Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action,” was praised for its sensitivity to academic freedom and self-governance. Burke’s hasty and intemperate critique studiously evades these points.

Burke’s other criticism, that ACTA avoids “REAL” argument because it does not argue in the same manner as scholars do, is self-servingly dismissive: ACTA’s argument need not be considered, Burke implies, because ACTA has not made its argument as Burke thinks arguments should be made. But the truth is that ACTA’s report is expressly not an academic paper. It is a report designed to initiate dialogue about the college curriculum by outlining some of the dominant terms and patterns displayed in course offerings across the country. To condemn it, as Burke has, for failing to maintain scholarly standards of data analysis is like damning an apple for not being an orange.

Burke thus badly misunderstands ACTA’s report. He both thinks ACTA isn’t qualified to judge the academic curriculum and complains that ACTA has not framed a satisfactory program of reform. But ACTA stresses that academics should address the problem of self-regulation, and that they should do so now — in the face of mounting legislative interest in controlling the curriculum. ACTA’s report is as friendly to institutional self-governance and academic freedom as it is possible for a watchdog organization to be.

Now for Mr. Wilson.

Writing at Inside Higher Ed, John K. Wilson treats ACTA’s report as Exhibit A in “a vast new right-wing witch hunt on college campuses”: “The far right is already pursuing leftist academics for expressing their views in the classroom,” Wilson writes. “ACTA threatens that academic freedom will be revoked from colleges unless they start censoring their professors and ban [courses that mention social justice, sex, or race].” But Wilson’s scaremongering misrepresents the report to an audience who, he seems to expect, will not check his sources.

Nowhere does ACTA advocate censoring professors or banning courses. The report urges academic officials to address — voluntarily, and in institutionally appropriate ways — professors’ obligation to respect students’ academic freedom to learn about controversial issues. The report recommends institutional self-study, hiring administrators committed to intellectual diversity, careful vetting of job candidates’ work, review of personnel practices, post-tenure review, and — most importantly — fostering robust debate on campus.

Here are the study’s concluding paragraphs, which follow directly from the sentence Wilson quoted to argue that ACTA is endorsing censorship:

Ultimately, greater accountability means more responsible decision-making on the part of academic administrators, more judicious hiring on the part of departments, and more balanced, genuinely tolerant teaching on the part of faculties. It also means acknowledging—openly and unapologetically—that education and advocacy are not one and the same, that the invaluable work of opening minds and honing critical thinking skills cannot be done when professors are more interested in seeing their own beliefs put into political practice.Finally, it means defending the academic freedom of even the most militantly radical academics. Our aim should not be to fire the Ward Churchills for their views, but to insist that they do their job—regardless of their ideological commitments. We must insist that, in their classrooms, they teach fairly, fostering an open and robust exchange of ideas and refusing to succumb to a proselytizing or otherwise biased pedagogy. Only then will their ideas be subject to debate; only then will they and their students learn to defend their positions in the marketplace of ideas. Only then will other views challenge, complicate, and even displace theirs. Only then can we hope to create a truly diverse academy.

Far from calling for censorship or the banning of classes, ACTA urges transparency about what professors teach; far from trying to silence politically engaged professors, ACTA defends academic freedom while at the same time noting that 1) academic freedom does not mean freedom from criticism or freedom from accountability; and 2) students have academic freedom too. Also worth noting: When the Ward Churchill scandal broke in 2005, ACTA defended Churchill from those who sought to fire him for his speech.

Wilson mistrusts definitions of research misconduct that include egregiously misleading citations — and no wonder. His own argument about ACTA depends on the willful manipulation of sources.

Neither Burke nor Wilson reads ACTA’s report objectively, choosing instead to see it as proof of that worn professorial complaint, that no one outside the ivory tower understands academics. But what neither grasps is that it is not the public’s job to intuit the special worth of professors. Insofar as Burke and Wilson represent an academic consensus that outsiders are not qualified to judge — or scrutinize, or question — higher education, they signal the depth of the complacent insularity ACTA’s report takes to task.

If ACTA’s report has a take-home message for academics, it is that they urgently need to justify to a skeptical public why their work deserves special protections. Only then, ironically, will they have a chance of preserving the independence they cherish. With transparency comes respect; with accountability comes autonomy. That’s the paradoxical point of “How Many Ward Churchills?” — that the more open one is about one’s practices, the more willing one is to allow one’s work to be scrutinized, the more responsive one is to legitimate criticisms, the more likely one is to be allowed to carry on without undue interference. What a pity that Burke and Wilson could not take off their ideological blinders long enough to see that.

Anne D. Neal is president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

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Comments

Interesting report

Thank you for your work, Dr. Neal. I regret that simply laying out facts about public documents has opened you to intense personal attack. Given what you are exposing, however, the attacks are far from surprising. If only academics knew how to make a reasoned, fact-based argument.

What has happened to our colleges and universities? I no longer even recognize my own profession, which now regularly brings deep shame on those dedicated to teaching and scholarship. Those of us on the inside know that Churchill is no anomaly.

JBM, at 6:35 am EDT on May 26, 2006

Hear, Hear

“If only academics knew how to make a reasoned, fact-based argument.”

Perhaps I am now officially an old fogey. It seems that more often than not, academics/grad students/undergraduates in many disciplines — not just the humanities — decide on a conclusion, then gather “facts” to support that conclusion rather than the reverse, coming to a conclusion after examining the evidence.

This can be more readily understood — if still not excused — in public advocacy groups, but not in the academy. Time to file my retirement papers?

RW, at 6:50 am EDT on May 26, 2006

While I generally agree with Dr. Fish regarding the need to justify things to the public (don’t do it, because they don’t listen): I am curious-Does ACTA has a percentage in mind when you say that there are more like him? 5? 10? 50?

Larry, at 7:40 am EDT on May 26, 2006

Criticisms are Accurate

Having read both the ACTA report and Timothy Burke’s criticism, I would conclude that the criticisms are reasonable. The ACTA report is a sloppy and overstated condemnation of the American educational system that should convince no unprejudicial reader.

This column, in defense of the ACTA report, is not a lot better (and I remark in passing that this site has been running an increasing number of these screeds recently).

Neal writes, “the course descriptions ACTA cites are hardly unique or isolated... They were chosen for their utter typicality, not their uniqueness.” Yet she offers no evidence that this is the case. Neither does ACTA. Burke provides evidence that the descriptions are not typical. This is in no way countered.

Neal writes, “his (Burke’s) claim that these documents (course descriptions) — the main resource students use to decide whether or not to register for a class — do not tell us anything about what happens in the classes in question is illogical at best, disingenuous at worst.” She argues, “ACTA has never claimed to know exactly what is happening in classrooms, and does not assume authority to determine whether a class is pedagogically sound.”

They say this, but not consistently, and the bulk of their criticism is directed exactly at what they purport is happening in classrooms. From the report: “Throughout American higher education, professors are using their classrooms to push political agendas in the name of teaching students to think critically. In course after course, department after department, and institution after institution, indoctrination is replacing education.” How is this criticism justified by a study of course descriptions? It is not, not even remotely, and yet this is the heart of ACTA’s argument.

Neal writes, “Burke implies, because ACTA has not made its argument as Burke thinks arguments should be made. But the truth is that ACTA’s report is expressly not an academic paper.” But the standards to which Burke appeals are not merely Burke’s opinion, as Neal disingenuously suggests. For example, he calls for “Careful collection of evidence” and urges that “Constraining claims or arguments to the evidence available.” How are these merely conditions Burke thinks are convenient? They are standards for argument generally.

It is worth noting that Neal does not touch one of Burke’s major arguments, that ACTA has a very one-sided and prejudicial definition of ‘political’. Burke asks, for example, “Why isn’t an economics course that supports mainstream neoclassical argument “political”? It has political implications, it excludes legitimate voices who make economic arguments.”

When I studied at university, I took numerous courses in religious studies. But never did I argue that the university was pushing a religious political agenda — even though, had I scanned the catalogues, I could have found course after course devoted to Bible studies, redactive criticism, and more. I could have found whole departments devoted to the field! Whole universities!

In fact, when I looked at the list of course descriptions offered by ACTA, I found myself puzzled at the sorts of things they found to be “political” and contentions. Here is their own description:

“Throughout the humanities and social sciences, the same issues surface over and over, regardless of discipline.... the focus is consistently on a set list of topics: race, class, gender, sexuality, and the social construction of identity; globalization, capitalism, and U.S. ‘hegemony’; the ubiquity of oppression and the destruction of the environment.”

One wonders what a university would be like were we to strike these topics from the curriculum. Are the reports authors seriously suggesting that these studies are in and of themselves ‘political’? That despite the courses in classical economics, military history, religion and more (not to mention physics, biology, management and ebgineering) these courses represent a systematic bias in the university curriculum?

The argument, to any dispassionate observer, is ridiculous. It is a conclusion that could be drawn only by a mangling of the evidence and a complete disregard for the principles of inference. It is the sort of presentation that characterizes naive, bald-faced propaganda.

Stephen Downes, at 8:10 am EDT on May 26, 2006

I Guess That’s the Best They Can Do

Ms. Neal’s response to Tim Burke not only fails to address his substantive criticisms, it also stands as further evidence of ACTA’s biased and non-scholarly approach to data “analysis".

The ACTA report remains a blatant exercise in cherry-picking course titles and descriptions that sound “leftist", and then disseminating them to a gullible public that has no idea about how a real sample is properly drawn and analyzed. Perhaps ACTA could answer the following fairly basic questions:

1. How was their “sample” chosen? Did they survey a certain percentage of college catalogs, randomly chosen? Did they develop a series of criteria for choosing to study some schools, courses, or departments rather than others? Or did they simply look around for “likely suspects” and then report only those course descriptions that were most consistent with the pre-ordained results of their “study"?

2. How representative are these courses of the curriculum in each department, college, or institution? After all, they were apparently chosen for their “utter typicality". I am sure that ACTA would argue that even one such course is one too many, but if they are trying to make the point that this sort of thing is common on American campuses, surely they can at least provide a working definition of “common". (50% of all courses? 20%? 5%? 1%? Less than one one-hundredth of one percent and OHMYGOD, LOOK, IT’S WARD CHURCHILL!)

3. When will ACTA get around to installing some telephones in their offices? Surely, any “researcher” who purports to measure, or even sample, the ideological bias of college courses in the U.S. might think it a good idea to call the professors in question to ask them what they’re up to. But I suppose that might get in the way of the propaganda value of spotlighting the most incendiary-sounding titles.

It is good to know that the quality of ACTA’s research is matched by the quality of their argumentation. Unable to refute Professor Burke’s carefully constructed essay, Ms. Neal resorts to insults and name calling. Professor Burke “grumbles", his critique is “hasty and intemperate", he is “self-servingly dismissive".

Despite what Ms. Neal says, the question, of course, is not whether anyone “outside the ivory tower understands academics". The standards that govern the analysis of data and the reporting of findings are universal and not at all unique to the academic world. They are grounded in reason, common sense, and intellectual honesty, and they are taught in any good high school logic course. Since it is unlikely that Ms. Neal is unaware of these standards, one can only conclude that ACTA simply chose to ignore them. It is not difficult to guess why.

In the end, I’m not sure why Ms. Neal even bothers addressing the readership of IHE, since she has to know that most of us are too well versed in basic logic and research skills to take either her study or her response to Professor Burke seriously. Better she should save her efforts for the right-wing bloggers and talk show hosts, as well as the ignorant anti-intellectuals out there, for whom the ACTA report was so obviously written.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 8:25 am EDT on May 26, 2006

Terrific piece. And it’s about time someone called out Timothy Burke’s indiscriminate blog rant for what it is. As Erin O’Connor writes on ACTA Online, Burke’s outburst is basically just “an extended expression of outrage.” (http://www.goactablog.org/blog/archives/2006/05/#a000178.) Burke is a paid-up member of the Angry Left that is destroying the civility of the Internet. We need fewer college professors like him and Ward Churchill, and more professors like O’Connor — people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do the dirty work of cleaning out their institutions.

Water Inspector, at 8:25 am EDT on May 26, 2006

Lots of Churchills-not Winstons!

As an advocate for Academic Freedom, I find the support of the Ward Churchills, and demonization of the David Horowitz’s bizarre. Churchill, who had tampered with his credientials, talks about the right in terms that are offensive, and condemns the free speech by conservatives. The loss of the full range of scholarly views on the college campus is a loss to the students and to our society. BOTH sides should have the opportunity to talk, debate, and share the podium. However, the tenor of most Professors, is to silence the right, provide an open forum for the left, and claim that they stand for free speech. The college campus today is the theater of the absurd.

Allyson Rowen Taylor, at 8:30 am EDT on May 26, 2006

What?

” .. The ACTA report remains a blatant exercise in cherry-picking course titles and descriptions that sound “leftist” ..”

Are you suggesting that Grover Furr is not a Stalin apologist? Are you suggesting that Angela Davis is just another, run-of-the-mill professor? Are you suggesting that Billy Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn sat out the Vietnam War?

What’s next? Trying to convince us, Larry Summers isn’t an economist who worked for Clinton?

Country-western music has it right — “Denial is not a river in Egypt.”

R.A.S., at 9:05 am EDT on May 26, 2006

The Course Catalogue

What Professor Burke is ignoring is that by putting ideology into the course descriptions, colleges are turning their course catalogues into leaflets. The purpose of the catalogue is to inform students about the contents of courses. If the ACTA report is to be criticized for assuming the course descriptions in catalogues have anything to do with the courses themselves, then the catalogues need to be criticized for false advertising.

Jonathan Cohen, Professor of Mathematics at DePaul University, at 9:05 am EDT on May 26, 2006

I agree that the course descriptions are indicative of the far-left mentality that infects American universities. If anything, Ms. Neal has understated her case in this essay. The report itself is far more damning:

“Penn State University offers ‘American Masculinities,’ which maps ‘how vexed ideas about maleness, manhood, and masculinity provided rough-riding presidents, High Modern novelists, Provincetown playwrights, queer regionalists, star-struck inverts, surly bohemians, and others with a means to negotiate– and gender– the cultural and political turmoil that constituted modern American life.’”

What is this nonsense doing in a college curriculum? This is simply outrageous. The close juxtaposition of “Provincetown playwrights” and “rough-riding presidents” is clearly meant to imply that Teddy Roosevelt was a homosexual, and the reference to “the cultural and political turmoil that constituted modern American life” is a blatantly ideological description of our country that ignores its strong traditions of freedom and individual liberty.

The ACTA report also discloses an even more disturbing trend:

“The University of Colorado offers ‘Animals and Society,’ a sociology course that ‘investigates the social construction of the human/animal boundary,’ ‘[c]hallenges ideas that animals are neither thinking nor feeling,’ ‘[c]onsiders the link between animal cruelty and other violence,’ and ‘[e]xplores the moral status of animals.’

Where will this madness stop? Why would anyone investigate the “social construction of the human/animal boundary” and try to prove that animals are thinking and feeling. . . unless they wanted to marry one? Shouldn’t parents and taxpayers (and trustees!) be outraged that our universities are filled with professors promoting this kind of agenda? College should not be a place for exploring the moral status of animals, or indeed for “exploring” animals in any way.

Concerned Observer, at 9:55 am EDT on May 26, 2006

Neal’s Insults Against Me and Accountability

Neal’s essay shows why I worry about right-wingers dramatically expanding the meaning of “research misconduct,” since she accuses me of research misconduct for my essay expressing concern about her group’s report.

In fact, my concerns about ACTA wanting a regime of censorship are quite correct. Consider these quotes: “far from trying to silence politically engaged professors, ACTA defends academic freedom while at the same time noting that 1) academic freedom does not mean freedom from criticism or freedom from accountability; and 2) students have academic freedom too.” “greater accountability means more responsible decision-making on the part of academic administrators”“We must insist that, in their classrooms, they teach fairly, fostering an open and robust exchange of ideas and refusing to succumb to a proselytizing or otherwise biased pedagogy.”

What, in practical terms, does ACTA want? If it means only criticism of professors, that’s perfectly fine (although I will continue to criticize ACTA’s criticism if it’s unfair). But ACTA explicitly separates “freedom from criticism” and “freedom from accountability.” So what does “accountability” mean? ACTA never defines it, although they demand that administrators do it.

Until ACTA and Neal explicitly define accountability and explain how their proposed system will work, I will have to continue to presume that accountability in fact means what it seems to mean: an administrative process for banning professors from teaching certain kinds of classes that seem too left-wing.

John K. Wilson, at 10:55 am EDT on May 26, 2006

My response to Anne Neal’s opinion piece is at http://www.shermandorn.com/mt/archives/000501.html.

Sherman Dorn, Associate Professor at University of South Florida, at 11:00 am EDT on May 26, 2006

I am impressed by the depth and sophistication of some of the views on campus free speech.

There is another possible view, and that is simply the viewpoint of non-academiclly employed taxpayers who wonder if America is getting its money’s worth from our trillion dollar annual spending on education at all levels.

Marvin McConoughey, at 11:55 am EDT on May 26, 2006

I Don’t Get It

Maybe I’m missing something... and I didn’t read the 54 pg. report too carefully, but I didn’t see an argument there. I saw a lot of citations of course descriptions; most of which were, given the context and the explicit aim of the course, perfectly interesting and educational, if a little “sexed up” for a generation of undergraduates who spend most of their time watching mainstream media.

The other thing I’m missing is some explication of research methods, some broad statistical analysis. Usually these are the kinds of things one finds in a “survey” of the sort that ACTA seems to be doing.

ndsmith, at 12:00 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Research Methods 101

I wonder why “researchers” like Horowitz and ACTA choose to undercut their own arguments by using shoddy research methods? The ACTA report obviously selects leftist-sounding course titles for their study. This doesn’t mean that these particular cases are any less problematic, but it does call into question *whether we can generalize from them to the whole field.*

The real puzzle in all of this is that shoddy research methods make any findings suspect, even if there really is a major problem (like politicization of the classroom) that would show up in a rigorous study.

In my own experience as a professor, I have known many colleagues who bring ideology into their classroom, a practice that I think hinders open exchange and taints their contribution to society. However, it would take more than a list of “can you believe this one?” syllabus summaries to convince me that my experience with these professors reflects more broadly on academe.

I hope that future research in this vein will accept the first rule of rigor: being willing to find evidence that proves you wrong. If they adopt appropriate research methods accepted in and outside of academe, scholars will begin to take their arguments more seriously.

QuakerProf, at 12:00 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

I have read with interest Mr. Dorn’s characterization of Anne Neal’s OpEd, and I strongly disagree with his implication that because the ACTA report is imperfect it is therefore useless.

Clawmute, at 12:30 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

More like Lay and Skilling too

I’m fed up with the right’s use of the Ward Churchill affair to push the line that academics are a bunch of overpaid bums who spend their time gassing about politically correct rubbish and call for investigation and whip-cracking. There are likely more Ward Churchills out there, as well as more Lays and Skillings, as well as cashiers who dip into the till and ditch-diggers who lean on their shovels.

Why do the misdeads of one crappy little professor—which IMHO constitute malfeasance and warrent dismissal—license a call for overhauling academy while the felonies of Lay, Skilling and their ilk, who made multimillions at the expense of stockholders and employees don’t seem to undermine American’s unshakable faith in business?

I get paid about 3 times what our departmental secretary gets. Top administrators get, I’d guess about 10 times. The average CEO of a major American firm (according to Business Week) gets 531 times the pay of the average hourly worker. If you think this is a function of their stellar productivity which separates affluent America from the banana republics, note that the figure for Germany and South Korea is 11 times and for Japan 10 times.

So where’s all the fat the right is trying to squeeze out? And where are all the politically correct fakers gassing about race, gender and hegemony and indoctrinating students in political correctness? Who has time when they’re teaching calculus or chemistry, getting kids to conjugate Spanish irregular verbs or indoctrinating them on the superiority of modus ponens to affirming the consequent?

LogicGuru, at 12:45 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

By analogy, it seems to me that what the ACTA report said was this:

“Hmmmm. We see a cloud, and we think we smell smoke. We better alert the owner of the building so he can determine whether or not there is a fire, and if so, put it out before it destroys his business.”

Mr. Burke and his fellow travelers seem to be saying::

“Any talk of fire is premature until the cloud is proven by scientific analysis to be smoke. And damn ACTA for having the temerity to call in a warning to the building’s owner rather than themselves conducting that analysis.”

Clawmute, at 1:00 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Moral Majority

Concerned Observer says: “The University of Colorado offers ‘Animals and Society,’ a sociology course that ‘investigates the social construction of the human/animal boundary,’ ‘[c]hallenges ideas that animals are neither thinking nor feeling,’ ‘[c]onsiders the link between animal cruelty and other violence,’ and ‘[e]xplores the moral status of animals.’

and then asks “when will this madness stop”

If Nobel Prize Winner (and white) J.M. Coetzee writes about the human/animal boundary does that make it a more legitimate subject for discussion? How about Gandhi’s thoughts on the matter?

I suppose you are just interested in having students read from the bible of Enron? Is that less political and less objectionable than thinking about our collective obligations to the planet?

Moral, at 1:50 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Clawmute,

Thanks for implying I’m a fellow traveler of Timothy Burke. Feel free to do that any time!

You miss the larger point of what the criticism is about. It’s not that the report is imperfect. The report is much worse than merely imperfect; its description of courses is so shoddy that it interferes with an honest discussion of what flaws do exist in undergraduate education. Ms. Neal may imagine that ACTA is the pit bull of higher-ed watchdogs, but if so, the “watchdog” is vigorously attacking the baseboards in the firm belief that there’s a burglar it’s gotten ahold of.

Sherman Dorn, Associate Professor at University of South Florida, at 2:00 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

course descriptions

The Course CatalogueProfessor Jonathan Cohen writes:

“What Professor Burke is ignoring is that by putting ideology into the course descriptions, colleges are turning their course catalogues into leaflets. The purpose of the catalogue is to inform students about the contents of courses. If the ACTA report is to be criticized for assuming the course descriptions in catalogues have anything to do with the courses themselves, then the catalogues need to be criticized for false advertising.”

EXACTLY RIGHT. If the course descriptions are accurate representations of what is going to go on in the classroom—and why should they not be?—then ACTA has a point. If the course descriptions have nothing to do with the courses themselves, and what goes on in the classroom—which is what Professor Burke seems to be arguing—then the course descriptions should be criticized for false advertizing. But is it actually likely that students who signed up for AAS/AFRO 4231, “The Color of Public Policy,” at the University of Minnesota, taught by a professor who defines herself as a"scholar-activist", will end up having conservative ideology poured down their throats? Obviously the first alternative is the real one: the course descriptions DO reflect the reality of the classroom. Mine certainly do. The course descriptions therefore constitute legitimate evidence of what is going on.

Arthur M. Eckstein Professor of HistoryUniversity of Maryland

art eckstein, at 2:10 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Moral says: If Nobel Prize Winner (and white) J.M. Coetzee writes about the human/animal boundary does that make it a more legitimate subject for discussion? How about Gandhi’s thoughts on the matter?I suppose you are just interested in having students read from the bible of Enron? Is that less political and less objectionable than thinking about our collective obligations to the planet?

Like Ward Churchill’s defenders and Timothy Burke’s fellow travelers, you are evading ACTA’s point. College courses on “masculinities” and “animals” are prima facie absurd, and Ms. Neal should not have to explain why. Furthermore, although Ms. Neal is wisely circumspect about what these course descriptions imply, it is safe to assume — given the title of ACTA’s report, and the title of this article — that most of the professors teaching courses on “masculinities” and “animals” are guilty of research fraud, and very probably “teach” by intimidating their students into a cowed silence. The more transparency we can bring to bear on this process, the better.

Concerned Observer, at 2:30 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Re:

“ACTA’s report is expressly not an academic paper. ... To condemn it, as Burke has, for failing to maintain scholarly standards of data analysis is like damning an apple for not being an orange.”

In this interesting passage the author *concedes* that ACTA’s report falls short of scholarly standards. Needless, to say, not being an academic paper does not release one from the obligations to reason carefully and use evidence well.

Tim was too polite to point out the level of hypocrisy here. The whole point of ACTA and this whole genre of document is to claim that specific people wall short of scholarly standards. But these people happily flout those same standards.

Colin Danby, at 2:35 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

ACTA did not write them

“report is much worse than merely imperfect; its description of courses is so shoddy that it interferes with an honest discussion of what flaws do exist in undergraduate education.”

ACTA did not write those course description; the instructors did.

JBM, at 2:35 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

ACTA’s “How Many Ward Churchills?", now that I have perused the first 12 pages or so, is simply awful. We begin with the title and introduction, which intends to conflate Ward Churchill’s apparently flawed scholarship and over-the-top pronouncements with any professor trying to open the eyes of students to other perspectives, whether they be historical, racial, gender, or economic. This is dishonest, plain and simple and tells me all I need to know about the motives of the writers. Their writing is pedestrian and slipshod. But let’s go on anyway.

Go ahead and read their purported examples of skewed syllabi. My response: So? What do you think you’re going to find at a good university? Courses that attempt to enlarge the perspectives of the students, that’s what, and sorry, but what’s wrong with that? Are we supposed to see all of American history as something like George Washington and the cherry tree, or the Lou Gehrig story, writ large? Is Bach and the Sistine chapel and Adam Smith all there is to European history? Come on! I see also courses that reflect current academic and scholarly thinking, and what’s wrong with that? Surely I don’t think everything, every academic movement, is all that worthwhile, but students ought to have an opportunity, especially if they are majors, to find out what’s going on in academic fields these days. And given that the course descriptions displayed are the handpicked examples of radicalism in academe, I think maybe we’re doing just fine. Imagine if students had only courses that reinforced accepted wisdom.

There may be legitimate questions to be raised about skewed and/or radical perspectives on the campus, but this sort of attempted hatchet job tells me more about the authors than it does about the professors it purports to expose.

Bob at State U., at 4:15 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Mr. Dorn doesn’t quite understand yet that as Mr. Burke’s defender, his job isn’t to point out what he believes to be countless methodological errors of the ACTA report, but to show that it is without positive value.

I submit that the report is valuable. I myself had no idea until I read it how bold some academics are in boasting of the political mission of their courses, and I must wonder if this is only the tip of the iceberg.

I suspect I’m not alone in having had my “consciousness raised.”

Clawmute, at 4:20 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Moral Majority

The more transparency we can bring to bear on this process, the better.

Did you read T. Burke’s blog entry? Have you read numerous previous entries that support the very notion of transparency. I do not know any university intellectual who writes more consistently about the need for transparency — posting syllabi, having sustained discussions about teaching, reviewing each other’s work.

Excuse me, but why exactly is teaching about the significance and meaning of animals prima facie an absurd topic for a college classroom? I would not allow this type of argument in a classroom because there is no reasoning involved. I suppose you are assuming a default understanding of the superiority of human beings and therefore the (to you) sheer absurdity and offensiveness of presuming an analogousness between humans and animals? Aren’t you approaching the slippery slope fallacy wherein you are arguing that the very mention that humans and animals exist together may threaten the very foundations of the world as we (you) know it? How fragile are the foundations of your worldview if the very mention of other possible ways of knowing provokes such anxiety. You do understand that there have been other philosophical systems that promote other ways of understanding our relationship to animals? You are the one who is promoting a very narrow idea of curriculum and teaching wherein the only legitimate place for animals is the science lab.

Moral, at 4:20 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

It’s a shame Neal didn’t choose to respond to any of Burke’s main points of contention, which are clearly outlined and well-documented in his post.

Everyone should read Burke’s post for themselves.

Susan, at 5:15 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Moral Majority

Thanks to Bob from State U. for a balanced, reasonable response to the report.

He asked the very question I carry around with me when I read these critiques of supposed radicals: What do these radical conservatives want? Do they want us to teach the Horatio Alger story and that is it? Would that be “apolitical” and “unbiased"?

God help us.

Moral, at 5:15 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Susan wrote: “It’s a shame Neal didn’t choose to respond to any of Burke’s main points of contention, which are clearly outlined and well-documented in his post.

“Everyone should read Burke’s post for themselves.”

Amen!

And then read this: http://tinyurl.com/fg92c

Clawmute, at 5:35 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

the report

Frankly, I don’t care how many of these people there are in academia, but the hunt should be on.

Skilling and Lay were prosecuted and are now going to prison. No one defends their actions — not in the business community, not in the op-eds, not in academia or the think tanks.

Churchill is still tenured — and many people are defending his actions.

Skilling and Lay were accountable to shareholder as well as the law. Churchill apparently is above reproach let alone punishment by the providers of his funding.

The business community was punished for a very, very small number of corrupt individuals with the massive S-O Act. Yet, there is nothing remotely close in the works in academia. When private funds are misapproriated, the parties go to prison. Simply being in charge of those people and failing to prevent there actions even if you were unaware of them can now land you a prison term.

By contrast, not only are those who abuse public funds not accountable, but those who enable them are not punished at all.

Those who exposed Lay and Skilling are lauded as American heros. Those who exposed Churchill are mocked as right wing maniacs.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 5:55 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

So now the right wants affirmative action for conservatives.

Greg, at 6:15 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

I’ve just finished reading the ACTA report, and like many of the above posters, am rather disturbed by it on several grounds. The methodology, if one can call it that, of the researchers appears to have been simply to troll university websites looking for suspicious content, without any concern for statistics (what percentage of course offerings do these represent?), defining terms (what makes a course political or problematic?), or consistency (would they consider more “traditional” courses as objective?). Entire areas of ground-breaking scholarship (for example, studies of whiteness or masculinity) are dismissed out of hand, without any semblance of serious analysis, and the suggestion that the instructors whose course blurbs are excerpted in the report are somehow “like” Ward Churchill (an exceptional case if ever there was one) is defamatory and potentially damaging to their careers. What I find most disturbing, I suppose, is the constant slippage between content and ideology that runs throughout the report. While many, if not most, of us would agree that it would be improper of an instructor to impose an ideological litmus test in grading student work (and absolutely no hard evidence is presented to suggest that this is the case, though there is a citation to an in-house study of the subjective perceptions of undergraduates), the report seems to suggest that the very fact of teaching about race, class, or gender is somehow inappropriately “political.” I wonder how they think one can understand American history, or American literature, or much of anything in the social sciences or humanities, without talking about race, class or gender?The report is not totally without merit—I happen to share its concerns about the breakdown of “general education” and the fragmentation of the curriculum, but the world and the academy have changed so much over the last half-century that it would be ludicrous to simply restore the core curriculum of circa 1950. Hopefully new, broadly inclusive and methodologically innovative survey courses can replace the old core and provide some structure to an educational landscape that is often all details and no “big picture.” But the ACTA report does not seem to be about seeking a new synthesis. Rather, it appears as yet another attempt to silence those voices with whom its authors disagree, in the name of an idealized past that never was quite what it “used to be.”

David Harvey, at 6:25 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

The ACTA report and the reaction

The reaction from defenders of Churchill and his ilk add to my determination that I will not pay for a college education in humanities or any non-hard science. Parents like me are watching. The party will soon be over. I’m not even sure that I am willing to pay for the first two undergraduate years anymore The value is just not there anymore. If she wants to major in business or nuclear physics, it’s another matter.

I have five children with only one left to educate. The age range is such that I have watched this phenomenon develop. My oldest graduated in the 80s and there was none of the present fecklessness that I could see. Now go to the UCI middle east studies chairman’s web site and read his meandering drivel about his rock band. Summers began his troubles at Harvard by trying to get a professor to do research instead of make rap music albums.

The universities have become unserious places and it is reenforced by the tendentious postings here that attack the report that is warning them about the future. When funding for nonsense dries up, you were warned.

Mike K, at 8:55 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Ouch!

ACTA’s Charles Mitchell provides us with some of the language (http://tinyurl.com/pcpl3) used in the UC report on Ward Churchill (which damning in the extreme) and then says this:

“So let’s get the academic establishment’s logic straight here: if you make stuff up (including rash accusations of wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. Army), write articles in others’ names and then quote them as support for your claims, deliberately avoid the facts of the situation, and get caught, which is what Churchill did, you’re a victim and you deserve to keep your job. Even though the whole point of your occupation is the search for, um, truth.

“But if you point out obvious problems in the academy and propose reasonable solutions entirely consistent with academic freedom, which is what ACTA’s report does, you get slammed as an enemy of all that is right and good.”

Indeed.

Clawmute, Ouch!, at 8:55 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

Susan,

I’ve reread Mr. Burke’s piece, and I failed to find a defense of his assumption that the only way an argument can be a useful contribution to a debate is if it follows strict academic criteria of the sort he so eloquently defined.

But why should the ACTA report be judged against the standards of a definitive academic report rather than, for example, the standards used to judge a “pilot and feasibility study,” or a “reasoned polemic"? (The term “reasoned polemic", and an early recognition that the ACTA report fit the criteria of one, came from here: http://tinyurl.com/jrqth).

I find no evidence in the ACTA report that it was intended to be in any way comprehensive, much less definitive: ACTA’s report is what it is, and to base criticisms on what it is not is merely to create a strawman.

Clawmute, at 8:55 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

What do these radical conservatives want? Do they want us to teach the Horatio Alger story and that is it? Would that be “apolitical” and “unbiased"?

Yep, Moral, that’s pretty much it.

Now, I’ve tried my best to parody the ACTA fans on this site, but I give up. It’s just beyond me, and these people are beyond help. Art Eckstein and Mike K and Clawmute and Kevin and company are clearly incapable of understanding how ACTA is transparently (cough, cough) trying to cash in on the Ward Churchill report by going after completely legitimate courses that have absolutely nothing to do with Churchill and his “scholarship,” and they’re not going to let a little thing like “reasoned argument” get in their way. I thought the intellectual vacuity of ACTA’s report would be pretty obvious to all concerned— except, of course, for the dedicated Horowitz minions who spend their days commenting on articles like this and threatening to defund entire areas of study that ask questions about “masculinities” and the moral status of animals instead of devoting themselves to Go USA Freedom Studies.

Concerned Observer, at 10:05 pm EDT on May 26, 2006

It was a nice effort, Concerned Observer. I admired the bit about Teddy Roosevelt. The problem you ran into is that the ACTA report is *already* a parody, and its defenders are so ingenious in their defense of unreason that nonsense no longer stands out.

Strictly speaking the ACTA/Horowitz genre is a parody of a parody (fn Judith Butler!) They start with a parody of what they oppose — that it subordinates reason and evidence to ideology — and then proceed happily to do the same thing, imagining themselves released from the obligation of rigor. See e.g. “reasoned polemic” above as a defense of bad argument.

The really funny part is watching people who start their argument posing as defenders of “standards” twisting and wriggling to define a standard sufficiently dumbed-down that their own output qualifies. Your own efforts at further parody were, sadly, unnecessary.

Colin Danby, at 5:40 am EDT on May 27, 2006

ACTA Report

Do the critics of the report honestly believe that there is no ideological bias in the courses described in the report? Do they think that courses in Gender studies are going to seriously consider the criticisms of contemporary feminism? Do they assign Christine Sommers “Who Stole feminism"? How many African American Studies courses seriously consider criticism of affirmative action? How many assign books by John McWhorter, Shelby Steele or Ward Connerly?

To be certain most professors will not suppress alternative view points made by students in class but can anyone actually believe that these classes are not aimed at promoting the instructors point of view.

I wonder if the professors who wrote in criticizing the ACTA report actually serve on university committees, attend faculty meetings and read program or internal grant proposals. The people who teach the type of courses described in the ACTA report talk like the course descriptions. And they continually demonstrate an intolerance for differing views even in casual conversation. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence from students in their classes also indicates that they use the class room to promote the political and social agendas implicit in the course descriptions.

The scariest part of the criticism of the ACTA report is that it indicates that a lot of professors simply don’t know the difference between education and indoctrination or between scholarship and propaganda.

Jonathan Cohen, at 12:15 pm EDT on May 27, 2006

contradictions

First, I wish to state that in my view the ACTA report lumps together some perfectly reasonable courses with other courses which do appear to be cases of overt leftist political indoctrination. That is its weakness.

Nevertheless, to anyone reading the above comments on this “comments-blog” there will appear to be two types of harsh critics of the ACTA report:

A. Those who, with enormous contempt, entirely deny the accuracy of the ACTA report, i.e., deny the existence of widespread and overt leftist politicalization of courses at universities, and that course syllabi are prima facie evidence that this is occurring;

and:

B. Those who defend and celebrate the widespread leftist politicalization of courses at universities which is occurring, and find the syllabi wonderful examples of it.

It should be obvious that the declarations and celebrations of the second group severely undermine the criticisms of the accuracy of the ACTA report leveled by the first group.

Art Eckstein

art eckstein, at 12:15 pm EDT on May 27, 2006

He says: courses in Gender studies are going to seriously consider the criticisms of contemporary feminism? Do they assign Christine Sommers “Who Stole feminism"? How many African American Studies courses seriously consider criticism of affirmative action?

Are you kidding me?Yes, Gender studies courses certainly take into account criticisms of feminism. This is ridiculous. No, they are probably not going to take into account arguments that say Women do not belong in the university. Or, they may raise the issue as articulated by a subculture in the US, but as there are going to be women in the classroom, it will be a rather ironic and hypocritical argument indeed. However, why not? Why not think about reverting back to when before women gained entry into the hallowed halls? That could take up some good intellectual energy and provoke debate. Anyway, yes, many good instructors will consider these types of arguments in the classroom and read well-written examples of them. And yes, plenty of classes debate aff-ac. It is certainly not a decided matter.

You show your anxiety and fear in your words. It’s sad.

Moral, at 3:20 pm EDT on May 27, 2006

To Concerned Observer

Ahhh.. ok. Now, I think I am beginning to understand. Best, Moral.

Moral, at 3:20 pm EDT on May 27, 2006

The Hunt should not be ‘on’

Kevin the Undergraduate wrote: “Frankly, I don’t care how many of these people there are in academia, but the hunt should be on.”

I am a layman and an outsider in this discussion in every way possible. I am a conservative and not a RINO, but this statement is completely and utterly wrong in my view.

We need to remember that despite the overwhelmingly left-wing composition of major portions of the professional academic community, the majority and probably the vast majority are honest and ethical people by their lights. Putting on a ‘hunt’ will snare the innocent (or relatively innocent) as well as the guilty, and this I cannot condone.

I think that professional academics need to fundamentally rethink certain parts of their modus operandii in light of the Churchill scandal. Why is it that Ward Churchill’s offenses went unnoticed (if not unremarked) and why was he repeatedly prromoted in the face of evidence of fabrication and plagarism. I think the academics should take a long look in the mirror and asky why their community is constituted the way it is and what could and should be done to change that and bring in a wider range of political views. They are in some danger of becoming a monoculture in certain respects and that is dangerous to any species in evolutionary terms.

But no hunts please. Just encourage and support honest scholarship and better teaching in future.

Don Stadler, at 3:25 pm EDT on May 27, 2006

A Little Intellectual Honesty Would Be Nice

One of the amusing aspects of Ms. Neal’s argument is the claim that ACTA wishes to be “fair, respectful, and sensitive to academic freedom and academic autonomy". By “academic freedom", ACTA apparently means that professors have the freedom to cover course material in any manner they wish as long as it satisfies Ms. Neal’s standards of objectivity. By “academic autonomy", ACTA evidently means that departments can hire anyone they want, so long as they meet the proper quota of conservatives and libertarians. The term “Orwellian” is overused these days, but I think it fits here.

Of course, ACTA would remind as that all they’re really trying to do is “urge college and university presidents, deans, and faculty to examine the issue themselves". It’s just a little constructive criticism, folks, nothing to worry about. ACTA is your friend.

This claim, however, begs us to ignore the fact that we, the professoriate, are not ACTA’s primary audience. Rather, the official charge of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni is to go over our heads to the governing boards of, and donors to, our institutions. In addition, they specialize in attracting the attention of the news media and sympathetic state legislators.

But of course they believe in academic freedom and academic autonomy. So never mind that their standard practice is to throw red meat to the carnivores of the media and the demagogues in the state capitol buildings who are decidedly uninterested in (if not opposed to) academic freedom. It reminds me a bit of Tom Lehrer’s song about Werner Von Braun, the German-turned-American rocket scientist:

Once rockets go up Who cares where they come down That’s not my departmentSays Werner Von Braun

(Quick note to the idiot trolls out there: No, I’m not accusing ACTA of being Nazis. I’m accusing them of willfully ignoring, or intentionally downplaying, the likely consequences of their actions.)

Unapologetically Tenured, at 9:30 am EDT on May 28, 2006

Unapologetically Tenured seems to be saying that those who point out problems in the academy, like ACTA and those of us who are critical of those who criticize ACTA’s report, should back off lest the politicians get involved in academic affairs, to the detriment of the academy. . .

I do not want politicians to interfere with the academy, and having read ACTA’s report, I’ve found nothing in it to suggest that ACTA wants politicians intervening, either.

Quite the contrary.

But neither will my fear of ham-handed government intervention cause me to hold my critical tongue and be held hostage against that possibility by a ham-handed appeal to emotion (fear).

Professor UT: if you and your academic fellow travelers can’t find a way to clean up your own house, don’t blame your critics or try to frighten them into silence by the prospects of government intervention.

Purely apart from UT’s clumsy attempts to shift responsibility for the pickle the academy’s in from its own academicians to those of us who criticize them, there is this:

“(Quick note to the idiot trolls out there: No, I’m not accusing ACTA of being Nazis. I’m accusing them of willfully ignoring, or intentionally downplaying, the likely consequences of their actions.)”

This is an ad hominem attack, pure and simple.

It is also an example of “poisoning the well,” though we’re left to wonder who UT has tagged as “Idiot Trolls.”

(UT has evidently divined the motives of those participating in this forum, and separated them by unknown criteria into at least two categories: “Idiot Trolls” who are dealing in bad faith, and “other,” who are acting in good faith.)

Perhaps we should avoid the ad hominem attacks. They serve no constructive purpose.

Clawmute, at 5:20 pm EDT on May 28, 2006

Oops...

I hope it’s clear in my post above that I meant “uninformed", rather than “uniformed” voters. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was taking a shot at the military...

Unapologetically Tenured, at 10:00 pm EDT on May 28, 2006

Failed Hyperbole and Selective Quotation

It’s nice to see that the good folks at ACTA are reading our messages here. In fact, my 9:30 a.m. post is the subject of some serious deconstruction over at their blog. Accusing me of not “get[ting] his facts straight before opining in paranoid terms about what’s wrong with ACTA’s work", the blog writer reassures us that ACTA has no intention of either trampling on academic freedom or agitating for a quota system for conservatives. (And not to be, uh, paranoid or anything, but how does ACTA know my gender?)

Well, let me say for the record that I am aware that ACTA has never publicly—or, for all I know, privately—supported a quota system. And they do claim to support academic freedom. Of course, so does Horowitz, so make of it what you will. In any event, the first paragraph of my post, which is all that is quoted on the ACTA blog, was meant to be hyperbole, something I once learned in a college English course during the week between “Post-Modern Neo-Marxism” and “Revolutionary Atheism” (that, by the way, is sarcasm, which I believe was covered the week after “Anti-Capitalist Studies"). Nevertheless, it was evidently a poor attempt at hyperbole, given that it was interpreted literally, so I’ll take the blame.

It is curious, though, that the ACTA blog ignored the remaining four paragraphs of my post, which spoke of the disingenuousness of claiming, on the one hand, to be pro-academic freedom, while, on the other hand, specializing in tossing red meat in the direction of power-brokers whose support for academic freedom is generally nonexistent. It’s all in my comments above, so I won’t repeat it here. (By the way, ACTA, I also wrote a pretty spiffy post on this same thread at 8:25 am, May 26, that I invite you to share with your readers as well.)

Unapologetically Tenured, at 10:00 pm EDT on May 28, 2006

Anonymity

Those champions of academic freedom at ACTA are at it again. Yesterday, on their blog, they trashed the first paragraph of one of my earlier posts on this thread (without acknowledging the more damning comments I made in the four subsequent paragraphs). This morning, they take a swipe at me for posting anonymously, referring to me as the “unapologetically anonymous Unapologetically Tenured".

As I said in response to an inquisitor elsewhere on this site, it’s none of anyone’s business why I choose anonymity. But let me say a few words about it anyhow.

Why would a tenured person, supposedly protected by the veil of academic freedom and a “job for life", worry about exposure? Gee, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I don’t want some group like ACTA to declare me “another Ward Churchill” and alert the trustees and alumni of my home institution. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be a part of the witch hunt when Horowitz runs out of ideas and decides to publish “The 501 Most Dangerous Professors".

Yes, I’m tenured, and that will probably allow me to keep my job as long as I don’t say anything too offensive (which is not my style, anyway). But maybe I’m an Associate Professor who wants to get promoted. Maybe I’m an administrator who knows that I am only tenured in my role as a professor. Maybe I live in a state where the legislature is considering adopting post-tenure review, or perhaps even reconsidering the whole idea of tenure. Maybe I want to move to another school and I don’t want my potential future employers to Google me and decide that I’m “trouble".

For all of its benefits, the internet is a tool with the potential to destroy (or at least hamper) careers. For example, when you Google “Professor Rudy” together with “Amherst College", the third listing you receive is titled “How Many Ward Churchills?” And what did Professor Rudy do to deserve this? Well, s/he taught a political science course on “Evil". Acknowledging the renewed use of the word in American political discourse, Professor Rudy’s course seeks to explore various explanations for “arguably ‘evil’ human behavior: war, structural violence, terrorism, genocide, imprisonment, capital punishment, child abuse, slavery, imperialism, occupation, and torture.”

Despite this rather inclusive list, ACTA complains that “[t]he list is suggestive, as much for what it omits as for what it includes". What does it omit? You got me. Serial killing? Cannibalism? Jane Fonda? The implication, of course, is that the list is heavily skewed to the left, as if the crimes attributed to Stalin, Castro, Mao, etc., are somehow not covered, which they obviously are.

And who knows, maybe the class is all about bashing George Bush and letting the Commies slide. But that’s not at all clear from the course description. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop ACTA from linking Professor Rudy and Ward Churchill in such a way that they are now joined at the hip in Google-land for who knows how many years to come.

Does anyone still want to know why I prefer anonymity?

Unapologetically Tenured, at 10:25 am EDT on May 29, 2006

ACTA’s report really is a mixed bag for me. I do think higher education is facing some serious problems in terms of producing demonstrably well-educated students, and in terms of clarifying its mission to the general public. Anyone who dips into the history of higher education in the US will realize that these problems are as old as the American university itself. But this report is largely unhelpful vis a vis these issues. Some specific objections:

1) Methodology does matter! This isn’t just a question of “academic standards.” In terms of evaluating the significance of these course descriptions, it would be really helpful to know what percentage of all courses in the university they represent. If a university offering hundreds or even thousands of courses is offering one course on gender in American history, why is this a problem? Does it support ACTA’s overarching contention that our universities are being subverted by leftist ideology?

2) The report seems to think it is self-evident that scholarship that takes notice of gender / class / race is somehow questionable. What’s wrong with these categories? And if these categories are problematic as they are used now, what can be done about it? In this regard, the report ads nothing new, and simply plays on existing stereotypes.

3) My last comment is related to the previous one. In terms of the overall presentation of the report, I sense that it is “red meat” intended to appeal to people who don’t really understand what a university does, and who are pretty much uninvested in the future of academia. (Do academics, trustees, and active alums really need a rehashing of all the negative stereotypes about universities that are readily available in the press? Not I, for one!) But this raises the question: does ACTA (comprised as it is of intellectuals and people who profess to be genuinely concerned about the future of academia) really think that constructive criticism and reform will result from their appeals to this group of people?

My suspicion is that they do not, and that they are happy to tear down without building back up. I only hope I’m wrong!

Grad Student Observer, at 4:40 pm EDT on May 29, 2006

Research Methodologies

Tim Burke wrote the following in a blog criticizing the ACTA report, “How Many Ward Churchills?”:

What’s the method of the report? It’s just as bad as I feared: a casual, lazy, cherrypicking survey of whatever materials the author(s) were able to access on the web. There’s almost nothing beyond that in terms of evidence,...

http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=201

Many people here do not seem to get what Tim means. I’ll give two examples of reports that may give nonacademic readers a feel for the level of rigor in academic work. First, let me say that I do not agree with many of Tim’s wording choices. I should also state that I do not work in either of the fields these two reports are in. Thus, I am not commenting on their veracity. I am merely suggesting that it might be interesting to study their methods and and then reread the ACTA report.

The first study was reported on in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “For Better Reading Skills Among Children, Teach Their Teachers Well, Report Says", Monday, May 22, 2006. See:http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/05/2006052205n.htm. (You may need a subscription.)

Here are two paragraphs from the article:

The report, issued by the National Council on Teacher Quality, looks at what aspiring elementary-school teachers learn about reading instruction during their undergraduate years by examining course syllabi and required texts from 72 randomly selected elementary-education programs. The sample represents all types of institutions and constitutes 5.6 percent of the institutions that offer elementary-teacher certification.

The report says most education schools do not teach the science of reading, an expression that refers to research-tested findings on how people learn to read. Only 15 percent of the sampled institutions taught all the components of the science of reading, and nearly one-third made no reference to reading science in any of their courses, the study found.

The second study is about political bias in news media: “A Measure of Media Bias,” by Tim Groseclose, Department of Political Science, UCLA, and Jeff Milyo, Department of Economics, University of Missouri, December 2004. See: http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm I found it on the web and do not know if it has been published. Here is the first paragraph:

In this paper we estimate ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) scores for major media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, Fox News’ Special Report, and all three network television news shows. Our estimates allow us to answer such questions as “Is the average article in the New York Times more liberal than the average speech by Tom Daschle?” or “Is the average story on Fox News more conservative than the average speech by Bill Frist?” To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks and other policy groups. We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. By comparing the citation patterns we construct an ADA score. As a simplified example, imagine that there were only two think tanks, one liberal and one conservative. Suppose that the New York Times cited the liberal think tank twice as often as the conservative one. Our method asks: What is the typical ADA score of members of Congress who exhibit the same frequency (2:1) in their speeches? This is the score that we would assign to the New York Times. Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center. Outlets such as the Washington Post, USA Today, NPR’s Morning Edition, NBC’s Nightly News and ABC’s World News Tonight were moderately left. The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by our measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC’s Good Morning America. Fox News’ Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks’ evening news broadcasts. All of our findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.

Their conclusions disappointed me. But, their method seems quite rigorous and so for now I will go with the preponderance of the evidence. Perhaps other researchers have found flaws in Groseclose and Milyo’s methods. This work is way outside my field so is hard for me to judge. But, I invite interested readers to review this paper and then think again about the methods used in the ACTA report.

Mike, Math Prof, at 4:40 pm EDT on May 29, 2006

ACTA Spins Away

If you’re in the mood for a little spin (and you don’t get dizzy too easily), check out the latest defense of ACTA’s ridiculous study over at their blog. It turns out that those of us who have been criticizing the study’s methodology simply don’t get it. You see, ACTA never intended to produce a quantitative analysis, notwithstanding Ms. Neal’s claim above that the spotlighted courses “were chosen for their utter typicality, not their uniqueness". So you see, it’s just unfair for all of us high-falutin’ “number-crunchers” to be gettin’ all mathematical and stuff with questions about sampling and representativeness.

(Of course, it was the ACTA study that first raised the latter issue, saying that “[w]hile the survey is not intended to be scientific, it nevertheless provides a REPRESENTATIVE sample of course offerings in the elite universities” [pg. 3, emphasis mine]. If this statement makes it sound like ACTA is trying to have it both ways, well, just take your beanie off, you math nerd, you.)

So if this study is not “scientific", then exactly what is it? The ACTA blog provides the answer: “ACTA’s approach…has far more in common with the humanist technique of assembling textual evidence in order to demonstrate the existence of telling linguistic patterns than it does with a number-crunching methodology.” It is, you see, “centered on identifying linguistic patterns, not on counting kinds of courses".

Now I’ll readily admit that I’m a “number-cruncher” rather than a humanist, but perhaps someone from that side of the academy could help me out here. Is it common practice for humanities scholars to begin with a pre-formed conclusion and then fish around for “textual evidence” to support that view? Is there no obligation on the part of humanists to place their “textual evidence” in any sort of context? When deeper investigation could easily help determine whether or not the “linguistic patterns” in question are being properly identified, is it normal for humanities scholars to eschew such an effort?

I assume that the answer to each of these questions is “no". But if I’m wrong, the academy has a lot bigger problems to face than how many Ward Churchills are out there.

Having exhausted the methodological defense, the blog then complains that in “dismissing the ACTA report for methodological reasons…, the report’s opponents cast their unwillingness to receive or respond to legitimate criticism as a lofty insistence on scholarly standards.” That’s a clever rhetorical gambit, but here’s the problem: without confidence in the study’s methodology, we simply don’t know how to receive or respond to its “findings". If ACTA simply wants us to agree with them that among the thousands and thousands of college course taught in a given year, some of them are really stupid, biased, and/or valueless, I’ll certainly go along with that.

But if they want to convince me that this is a systematic problem that demands my attention, they’ll have to do a little better. At the very least, they will have to demonstrate convincingly the “utter typicality” of their sample. They’ll also have to go beyond course descriptions and do that little bit of extra work to prove that the courses they cite are, indeed, evidence of the problem they claim, rather than evidence of the ability of ACTA researchers to search the web for keywords.

If they take the time to do it right, they’ll likely find that many of the courses they cite are innocent of the charges leveled against them. (But thanks anyway for ensuring that those innocent professors get linked to Ward Churchill in any subsequent Google search.) Or maybe they’ll find out that there really are 100, or 1,000, or 1,000,000 Ward Churchills out there. But if you’re going to ask me to act, at least put enough effort and intellectual honesty into the project to make it worthy of my attention.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 5:00 am EDT on May 30, 2006

ACTA

Unapologetically Tenured keeps suggesting that ACTA’s use of course descriptions from on-line sites is not using the information accurately. I think that cherry picking and lack of statistical data have been mentioned. So, a question for UT:

Can you show us the mis-quoting and mis-use of information by ACTA? It shouldn’t be hard to do if, as repeatedly stated, the ACTA folks have made the errors that are alleged. But, if you can’t or won’t show us the specific instances of ACTA’s mis-use of the course descriptions, don’t you think your case fails of its own lack of merit?

Look, this is much like the Churchill case. The majority of academics ignored the failings of Churchill’s work when careful scholars like LaVelle and Brown brought them to light. Unless you can show where ACTA has mis-used the course descriptions, UT, you and the other ACTA critics are making the claim and utterly failing to support it.

RGS

RGS, at 9:10 am EDT on May 30, 2006

Perhaps someone could explain what the scientific method is, and why ACTA’s report should not be taken as a first step in a scientific process, rather than as a definitive study.

And where is it written that one step of the scientific method cannot be undertaken unless all are?

Clawmute, at 10:00 am EDT on May 30, 2006

Quick Responses

RGS: Since I’m not the one making the allegations about how many Ward Churchills are out there, the burden of proof does not rest with me. In any event, it’s not my contention that ACTA misquoted or misused any of the course descriptions mentioned in their report. In many cases, however, it is very much open to interpretation whether or not these course descriptions provide clear evidence of “Churchillism". Had ACTA gone to the trouble of actually collecting syllabi or contacting the professors in question, they might have been able to provide more accurate and useful information. But they chose not to, presumably because such an effort would do nothing to further drive home the propaganda points they were trying to score.

In addition, even if ACTA’s interpretation of every one of those course descriptions is right on the money (a VERY big if), that proves very little. It would still be necessary to know just how representative (or, to rephrase Ms. Neal’s words, utterly typical) these courses are of the curriculum at each institution in question.

And, of course, this still begs the question of whether or not it is pedagogically appropriate to teach a course with a point of view (which is not the same thing as indoctrination, a point which seems obvious to everyone except ACTA and its supporters).

Clawmute: I am sure you can find any number of detailed descriptions of the scientific method online, so I won’t waste space here recounting how it works. But I guarantee you that every definition you find will insist that data collection must be conducted in an unbiased manner, with an emphasis on representative sampling rather than cherry picking. Since the proper collection of data is, indeed, Step 1 in the empirical process (after theorizing and hypothesis production, of course), it is essential to all scientifically valid research.

As to your question, “And where is it written that one step of the scientific method cannot be undertaken unless all are?", the answer is simple: in any good methodology text. Once the sample is tainted by intentional bias, the study cannot, by definition, be scientifically valid.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 11:55 am EDT on May 30, 2006

Wow, is this thread still going on? ACTA’s report should be taken as a first step in the Swiftboating of university curricula. First, we use Ward Churchill to smear every professor offering a course on race, gender, colonialism, etc. We employ a pseudo-scholarly front organization to produce a “report” backing up the smear. Hordes of bloodthirsty bloggers ("the hunt is on") are sent out to promulgate the smear and heap abuse on anyone defending academic principles. Rush Limbaugh and his “ilk” take up the cudgel, hammering it home to the faithful. It “seeps out” to the “mainstream media", first Hannity and the Other Guy, Joe Scarborough, then to Chris Matthews, ("Hey, what’s up with those courses anyway?") and the New York Times ("Furor erupts over ‘radical’ scholarship"). I’d suggest you guys take a break to get the facts right, but then “the hunt is on” so maybe I should just get out of your way instead.

Academic standards at universities is an important issue, about which I would like to say plenty, but treating this issue with the same smear tactics that have nearly brought us to ruin over the last six years will not advance the issue very far. And I’m afraid most of the country is now on to you.

Bob at State U., at 11:55 am EDT on May 30, 2006

ACTA report and responses

There is an often reported comment that I have heard attributed to such varied people as Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw.

“Anyone who is not a socialist at twenty has no heart and anyone who is still a socialist at forty has no head".

The criticism of conservatives is not that they are simplistic but that they are “heartless".

The reality is that social programs designed to help the less fortunate have both positive and negative effects. Aid to dependent children helps prevent children born to single teenage parents from going hungry. But it also results in more of them. Welfare alleviates suffering but also facilitates more suffering.

Taxes pay for the services and benefits that government provides for the public. But they also lead to the growth of self-serving bureaucracy.

The value of democracy is that it allows for a kind of equilibrium between conditions which create poverty and conditions that lead to excessive waste.

The stigmatizing of liberals as stupid or conservatives as heartless is part of this process of sorting out this tension between compassion and waste. Right now universities are so heavily weighted on the “compassion” or “headless” side that the natural balance is not coming from within the university. Since the schools refuse to hire or produce intellectual balance, the pressure for more conservative views will have to come from the trustees, the state legislatures and the general public.

Jonathan Cohen, Professor of Mathematics at DePaul University, at 7:15 am EDT on June 2, 2006

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Churchill Fallout: There Are More Like Him

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Comments

Interesting report

Hear, Hear

Criticisms are Accurate

I Guess That’s the Best They Can Do

Lots of Churchills-not Winstons!

What?

The Course Catalogue

Neal’s Insults Against Me and Accountability

I Don’t Get It

Research Methods 101

More like Lay and Skilling too

Moral Majority

course descriptions

ACTA did not write them

Moral Majority

Moral Majority

the report

The ACTA report and the reaction

ACTA Report

contradictions

To Concerned Observer

The Hunt should not be ‘on’

A Little Intellectual Honesty Would Be Nice

Oops...

Failed Hyperbole and Selective Quotation

Anonymity

Research Methodologies

ACTA Spins Away

ACTA

Quick Responses

ACTA report and responses

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