NAS Blog

The Associated Press reports that University of Alabama – Huntsville students had banded together to let university administrators know something “wasn’t quite right” about Professor Amy Bishop. “She taught by reading straight out of the textbook, never made eye contact and liked to remind people constantly that she went to Harvard.”  Here’s the link.

Of course this kind of incompetent, obnoxious behavior characterizes many professors — and to Alabama’s credit, it may help to explain why Bishop was denied tenure.  What is sad is that she lasted long enough to be eligible for tenure — why wasn’t she weeded out during her first year, if her teaching was as pathological as these students have claimed?

Of course it’s now widely known that Bishop had killed her teenage brother in Massachusetts, and had been a suspect in a pipe-bombing attempted murder at Harvard.  I’ve come to think that background checks are appropriate for every tenure-track hire.  I can see tort cases arising from “negligent hiring” of dangerous faculty.

I was pleased to read this posting in The Lawyerist, entitled Teaching Makes You a Better Lawyer.  This is so true, in my opinion, but it’s self-serving when coming from the academy.  Coming from the Bar it’s most welcome.  I think the disdain that so many lawprofs (typically on the left) have for the Bar is often the product of a psychological self-loathing by people who can neither teach nor do.

The American Thinker‘s Tom Lifson has a great new essay on Berkeley High School’s proposal to eliminate science labs because they are “mostly for white people.”  [Query:  are Asians white?  Just asking.]

Herewith a link to the most recent posting by the excellent legal journalist Stuart Taylor.  In a book co-authored with K.C. Johnson, Taylor had chronicled in detail the enormous travesty of justice at Duke when a black stripper falsely accused white male lacrosse players of rape — the denial of due process to the laxers was reminiscent of Jim Crow days, but with racial roles reversed.  [I discuss the case and the book in an Academic Questions article entitled "Durham's Disgrace" - subscription required].  Taylor’s recent posting details the continuing rise to glory of the Duke academics who had tried to “lynch” the laxers.  It makes for riveting and depressing reading.  Duke alums, if you haven’t yet suspended your donations, now’s the time.

Now that our leaders have taught us that opposing nationalized health care is supporting slavery, I think it’s pretty clear that high school students should be taught that denying global warming is supporting slavery.  Come to think of it, opposing affirmative action and partial birth abortion is clearly supporting slavery.

I might have difficulty persuading the Senate that rooting for the Yankees constitutes supporting slavery — though that seems more pleasing to me than any of the other innuendos.

Here’s a nice discussion of a proposal from the University of Minnesota’s College of Education that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of “the American Dream” in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching.   “The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the “overarching framework” for all teaching courses at the U. It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teaching based on their willingness to fall into ideological lockstep. The first step toward “cultural competence,” says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize — and confess — their own bigotry.”

No, this is NOT from The Onion.

David Harris of the American Jewish Committee provides some guidance to Norwegians who want to commit covert anti-Semitism. Here’s what they must do without: http://tinyurl.com/yavlgfm.