NAS Blog

Professor Brad Birzer, a man of unbounded energy, asked several of us to contribute a “top ten” list of books that make us human. Quite a challenge: limited to ten books, what would you (dear reader) choose and why?

See my list at The Imaginative Conservative web site. It starts with a book by this man:

Take the notion that every child deserves to attend college (egalitarian liberalism) and add crony capitalism (banks with the power to squeeze you despite bankruptcy (i.e., kind of like the IRS!). The result is the warning of several commentators recently of a coming student loan crisis. In last week’s Wall Street Journal, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus are quoted from an Atlantic.com story they wrote:

As this semester begins, college loans are nearing the $1 trillion mark, more than what all households owe on their credit cards. Fully two-thirds of our undergraduates have gone into debt, many from middle class families, who in the past paid for much of college from savings. . . .

If you want to get a name as an economic seer, try this one. The next subprime crisis will come from defaults on student debts, starting with for-profit colleges and rising to the Ivy League. . . .

Still, there’s a difference. With mortgage defaults, banks seize and resell the home. But if a degree can’t be sold, that doesn’t deter the banks. They essentially wrote the student loan law, in which the fine-print says they aren’t “dischargable.” So even if you file for bankruptcy, the payments continue due.

Hence these stern words from Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers. “You will be hounded for life,” he warns. “They will garnish your wages. They will intercept your tax refunds. You become ineligible for federal employment.” He adds that any professional license can be revoked and Social Security checks docked when you retire.

Read the full article because it is worth the read.

Cross-examine witnesses and accuser? That is so 20th century. The Office of Civil Rights (Department of Education) “discourages” it. Colleges have already thrown out old-fashioned notions of civil liberties, so they are all too happy to presume guilt. The Wall Street Journal has a followup on this topic, which I blogged about Friday.

The Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Education has retreated from its firm stance in favor of due process and put forth a new standard for enforcing campus sexual harassment codes based on “the preponderance of evidence” (rather than “clear and convincing” evidence). AAUP and FIRE are concerned that this lower bar deprives faculty, staff and students accused of the due process they need and deserve.

Keep in mind that “sexual harassment” codes extend to a wide range of behavior that is not sexual: namely, creating a “hostile environment.” The “hostile environment” category embraces speech and makes this an academic freedom concern, according to both AAUP and FIRE.

How low does this bar go? Pretty darn low. Consider a case from North Dakota where a male student (Caleb Warner) was suspended for three years after a female student accused him of rape. The police later found evidence that this woman had made a false accusation (they never happen, right?) and “lodged criminal charges [against her] . . . for filing a false police report.”

So the male student was let back on campus, right? No. Based on the “preponderance of evidence” letter just issued by OCR, North Dakota State still refused to re-consider the case. In the administration’s opinion, there was no “substantial new information” (bold for emphasis) and “Warner’s three-year suspension ‘was not a legal process but an educational one.’”

It’s a bad turn of events because in 2003 the same Office of Civil Rights was concerned with the “convict first and fast” attitude of harassment officers in areas of speech. In 2003, the Office of Civil Rights issued a statement clarifying that enforcement did not require campuses to abandon the First Amendment. Today’s OCR seems to think its lower standard is just fine, thank you. It will apply not only in cases of alleged rape but also “expressive activities” (speech).

This gutting of due process will leave administrations with the power to blur the difference between rape (a crime that must be proved, except on campuses) and innocent speech, however controversial. In either case, due process is there to prevent Star Chambers from walling themselves off from the rest of the world and declaring their authority Supreme on campus. So now places like North Dakota will stonewall and say: we don’t deal with legal processes, only educational ones.

AAUP and FIRE have fought so many of these cases that they have lost their shock value.  Indifference breeds the arrogance of power. Fortunately, faculty/staff/students can organize or speak out. In some cases, they can bring in the AAUP and FIREs of the world and “sue the bastards.” Perhaps that is the only thing that Power understands.

For more, read this FIRE FAQ on the new OCR mandates

HT: Adam Kissel

Over at The Beacon, I have a post on the latest requirement that Something Else must be taught in K-12 history textbooks. This time it is gay history but the real problem is the politicization of textbook content. Result: history is just “one damn thing after another.”

In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal quotes Mark Zuckerberg, the kid from Harvard who heads the CEO of a company-not-yet-public. (Goldman-Sachs VIP insiders only, please). What disturbed me about the article is not that another company is breaking into the so-called China market after the Google row over censorship. I’m more disturbed by the mealy-mouth rationalization of Zuckerberg, who seems to have breathed in the multicultural fumes of higher education.

Zuckerberg stated:

“I don’t want Facebook to be an American company [God forbid!],” he said. “I don’t want it to be this company that just spreads American values all across the world. …For example, we have this [culturally constructed American] notion of free speech that we really love and support at Facebook, and that’s one of the main things that we’re trying to push with openness. But different countries have their different standards around that. …My view on this is that you want to be really culturally sensitive….”

This is the moral and cultural nihilism that bristles at “American values” and must be “culturally sensitive” and protect the “right not to be offended” lest you face a “hostile environment” charge–or worse. My students spew this because it starts K-12 and many of my colleagues are fond of the “free speech for me but not for thee” quote (Stanley Fish). And, of course, we must “understand The Other” (non-Americans). Or, as Zuckerberg put it: “understand the way that people actually think.”

Now, there is nothing wrong with “understanding the way the people actually think” but there is something wrong when you privilege these “other ways of thinking” at the expense of what you profess to “really love and support at Facebook” (that odd notion of openness and American values).

God help Mr. Zuckerberg, et al. as Iran goes ahead with its foolish autarkic plans to build a new operating system to impose the Islamic ethical code on all computer users in Iran. If or when Zuckerberg sells his out in Iran (and China), he will move one step closer to losing his soul and costing the lives of Others in foreign lands who had hoped that U.S. companies and Americans (of all types) might stand with them as they embrace dissident “American values” (as if they were peculiar to America).

“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

Mark 8:36

When I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, the stereotypical bowdlerizers of speech–the people excising “offensive” lyrics and literature–were the uptight blue-nosed sort who feared that “someone, somewhere, was having fun.” (H.L. Mencken).

Now, the “progressive” Left has replaced the Puritanical Right as the great policer of speech. “Progressives” have always policed speech (“you are politically incorrect, comrade!”) so this is really nothing new. Both Left and Right have a long history of searching out words they feel are too sensitive to the ears of minors or thin-skinned individuals. (Apologies in advance for those who suffer from blue noses or thin skin).

Latest example: the Canadian “Standards Council” has banned the Dire Straits song for using the word “faggot” in the classic 1980s tune “Money for Nothing.” I learned this after listening to the song on the Dire Straits’ album “Brothers in Arms.” The song brought back memories of my youth so I searched out the video which was as good as I recalled (classic MTV video of the 1980s). Alas, the video has also been excised so that it is “good for all countries.” Now Canada can join the Religious Right in America and the Muslim bloc (in the United Nations) in bullying or outlawing “hate speech.” Perhaps the result will be some Universalist Code of Speech.

What makes this even more chilling is that they are attacking not only present speech but scouring the past for things that might offend someone if ever read or heard now. Shades of Fahrenheit 451.

The new rule of thumb: don’t say anything that might offend any one one hundred years from now. Looking at the evolving history of speech, good luck guessing what might be on the “hit list” in the year 2111!

Coda: the secondary definitions for “bluenosed: “Canadian.” Kind of appropriate, eh?

Over at the leading libertarian magazine, Reason, writer Shikha Dalmia attacks conservatives for using FOIA laws to invade the privacy of historian William Cronon. At the same time, Dalmia defends Open Records laws while noting that groups may abuse their rights by going after individuals. On that score, the Left comes in for a tongue lashing for politicizing the process (and so much else in academia).

Brian Taylor for the Chronicle

As the academic job market worsens (was it ever good?), graduate students are angry, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Don’t expect a protest march in the streets burning Ph.D. gowns, but the blinkered view of some tenured faculty about the job market must drive a grad student nuts.

I had a mentor who let me know I would have to walk on water, or at least not sink too much, to be considered for jobs. That was 1994 and half my applications (75 out of 150) were for community colleges. At the time, I considered that market second-class until I arrived at Southern Illinois University and found we had a Community College Teaching certificate. Together with a M.A. (or Ph.D.) many of our grads have gone on to satisfying careers as full-time community college instructors. Did they have to pay their dues (a year or two of adjuncting), yes, but so what?

This is a growth sector of the job market and I encourage grad students in all fields to consider it. It’s not just for Gen Ed instructors — one of my former grad students is teaching history and construction courses!

It’s tempting to curse the darkness but this is just one candle to light. If others have ideas for grad students in job-short fields, send them here.

For links on job advice for graduate students (with emphasis on history), see this post at my eHistory blog.

For the association representing schools with community college prep degrees in administration and teaching, click here.

In a recent post, Ashley Thorne discusses “Lessons of a Professional Paper-Writer”. Thorne cites a fascinating Chronicle of Higher Education column entitled “The Shadow Scholar: The man who writes your students’ papers tells his story.”

Obviously this is a class (inequality) issue: those with money can afford to buy entrance to careers, those without cannot advance in life unless they work hard–something not required of their affluent peers. Therefore I propose a federal program, “No Term Papers Left Behind” to close the writing gap by 2025. This means-tested program will fund ghost writing in high school and college. No child, no term paper ought to be left behind. Those who are more affluent but lack the proper skills may also be eligible if their standardized test scores fall below a certain level. Differences in intelligence and upbringing are no excuse for failing our children. We need to embrace those differences!

Statutory definition: “children” are eligible until 26 or until they complete their degree.

This vital federal program will “grow the economy” and give a hand up to the disadvantaged. With a degree in hand, they will earn (but not learn) more. With this increase in aggregate demand, they can stimulate the consumer durable sector of the economy and buy houses to soak up the inventory of unsold homes.

Privacy and confidentiality are ensured and will be protected to the utmost. The U.S. Department of Education will not tolerate revelations of plagiarism: it is nobody’s business but the student who does (or doesn’t do) the work. After all, if someone does the work, then American productivity continues to rise—to the benefit of rich and poor alike. So, those dirty rats who would undermine the American dream of college credentialism will be punished.

Meanwhile, practice safe cheating until bourgeois morality (work, thrift, excellence) fades with the introduction of these new teaching methods. It is in the interest of “social justice” and American competitiveness that we have more college graduates. Only then can we boast “We ‘r Numbyr Wun!”

Be patriotic! Cheat! Spend!