| Friday, June 20, 2008 |
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Software Recommendation: EndNote
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:27 AM   
Sometime early in graduate school, Paul recommended that I buy EndNote, a program for managing citations in writing. Since I've found it an invaluable time-saver, particularly for large projects like my prospectus and dissertation, I'm passing on the recommendation to other academics and writers.
The program allows you to maintain a database of citations, easily insert them into your papers, and then format them in whatever format you want, e.g. Chicago 15th A. In addition to standard formats, you can customize existing formats or create your own. It handles parenthetical citations, footnotes/endnotes, and bibliographies. In addition, it allows you to make notes on sources, include keywords and abstracts, etc. So for my dissertation, EndNote has served as a master database of sources. So I know that I've skimmed, read, and/or taken notes on a source; I know what sources I need to review or read as I write each chapter; I know whether a source will likely be helpful. For me, EndNote is software that I cannot write without.
The program is available for Mac and Windows. EndNote "X1" is a bit pricey: $110 for students and $220 for non-student educators from the Academic Superstore. However, I've found that it's well-worth the price. With every paper I write, the program has saved me enormous amounts of time in preparing citations and bibliographies.Labels: Academia, Recommendations
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| Friday, May 23, 2008 |
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Swallow My Postmodernist Propaganda Whole -- Or Else!
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:19 AM
This story of a Dartmoth English professor threatening to sue her students for challenging her postmodernist views is beyond mind-bloggling. I can't help but quote the whole article, as the insanity just never ends:
Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights.
Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional expos&e, which she promises will "name names."
The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.
Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.
Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways." Ms. Venkatesan, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that critics were motivated by racism, though it is unclear why.
After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on "ecofeminism," which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But "these weren't thoughtful statements," Ms. Venkatesan protests. "They were irrational." The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student's "diatribe," several of his classmates applauded.
Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was "fascist demagoguery." Then, after consulting a physician about "intellectual distress," she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.
Such conduct is hardly representative of the professoriate at Dartmouth, my alma mater. Faculty members tend to be professional. They also tend to be sane.
That said, even at -- or especially at -- putatively superior schools, students are spoiled for choice when it comes to professors who share ideologies like Ms. Venkatesan's. The main result is to make coursework pathetically easy. Like filling in a Mad Libs, just patch something together about "interrogating heteronormativity," or whatever, and wait for the returns to start rolling in.
I once wrote a term paper for a lit-crit course where I "deconstructed" the MTV program "Pimp My Ride." A typical passage: "Each episode is a text of inescapable complexity . . . Our received notions of what constitutes a ride are constantly subverted and undermined." It received an A.
Where the standards are always minimum, most kids simply float along with the academic drafts, avoid as much work as possible and accept the inflated grade. Why not? It's effortless, and there are better ways to spend time than thinking deeply about ecofeminism.
The remarkable thing about the Venkatesan affair, to me, is that her students cared enough to argue. Normally they would express their boredom with the material by answering emails on their laptops or falling asleep. But here they staged a rebellion, a French Counter-Revolution against Professor Defarge. Maybe, despite the professor's best efforts, there's life in American colleges yet. That's absolutely abominable behavior for a professor. It's good that students question what they're taught in college, rather than simply swallowing it, regurgitating it for the exams and papers, and then forgetting about it. Students have every right to be skeptical of some pet theory of a professor -- and to express objections to it in class. The professor should make the best arguments he can, then move on, accepting that students will make up their own minds about the material. Certainly, despite my strong views on various subjects, that's always what I strive to do in my own teaching.
In contrast, Priya Venkatesan thinks that she's entitled to agreement from her students. As an interview with her makes clear, she's so completely immersed in postmodernism that she cannot even grasp the meaning of any criticism thereof. Sadly, from what I know of English Departments, she was likely encouraged in that attitude -- and shielded from any non-postmodernist views or anti-postmodernist criticism -- in graduate school.
Thankfully, this kind of intellectual authoritarianism is pretty rare in philosophy departments today. Philosophers are generally willing to entertain a wide variety of views, so long as they're defended with arguments. In fact, at least some of the philosophy professors at Boulder are pretty thoroughly appalled by the dogmatic teaching of postmodernist crap in some other humanities departments.
(Notably, Christiana Hoff Sommers said as much about philosophy departments in a lecture on the problem of lefist bias at universities given at CU Boulder a few years ago. In fact, if memory serves, I asked her about philosophy departments, and she made some positive remarks on their willingness to consider a wide variety of views due to their focus on arguments.)
Of course, philosophy departments have their own slew of problems, some quite serious. Yet they also have many virtues, particularly relative to other humanities departments. So... two cheers for philosophy departments!Labels: Academia
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| Tuesday, October 23, 2007 |
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Conceptual Art on Global Warming
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:21 AM
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
TO: All CU-Boulder Students
FROM: Center for Energy & Environmental Security, University of Colorado Law School
SENDER: dorank@colorado.edu
DATE: 10/22/07
SUBJECT: Famous Artist Lectures on Climate Change
What: The Art of Climate Change
Where: Wittemyer Courtroom, Wolf Law
When: Oct. 25, 7:00 - 8:15 p.m., Free Event
Dear CU-Boulder Students:
Climate change is arguably the defining environmental and social issue of the 21st century. You are invited to attend a special lecture by Ms. Lucy Lippard on the use of art to impact climate change. Ms. Lippard is an internationally renowned writer, activist, curator, and acclaimed art critic.
This is not a lecture about the science of climate change; nor is it a lecture about laws and policies dealing with climate change.
Rather, this distinguished lecture is about the use of conceptual art to illuminate our understanding of the environmental, social and political dimensions of climate change; and perhaps more importantly, the ability of art to substantially influence our response to the challenges posed by climate change.
Ms. Lippard's lecture, entitled "Weather Report: Art and Climate Change," will present imaginative and inspiring collaborations between acclaimed artists and world-class scientists designed to address, in a variety of ways, the issue of climate change. In a New York Times article published on Sept. 23, 2007, Ms. Lippard commented on these collaborations: "The critics used to say that conceptual art brings in too much other stuff, too many ideas. I love the idea that art can become something that acts in the world."
Please join us in welcoming and learning from our distinguished guest, Ms. Lucy Lippard.
For more information on this event, please visit: http://www.colorado.edu/law/eesi/Weather_Report.htm. Oh, how I do love the auto-parody!Labels: Academia
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| Wednesday, July 25, 2007 |
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Ward Churchill, Begone!
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:33 AM
Thank goodness:
TO: CU-Boulder Students
FROM: Office of the President
SENDER: officeofthepresident@cu.edu
DATE: 07/24/07
SUBJECT: Communication from President Hank Brown on the Board of Regents Vote
Dear Students of the University of Colorado,
The Board of Regents today voted to accept my recommendation to dismiss Professor Ward Churchill from the faculty.
I made the recommendation for the good of the university. CU's success depends upon its reputation for academic integrity. A public research university such as ours requires public faith that each faculty member's professional activities and search for truth are conducted according to the high standards on which CU's reputation rests.
We are accountable to those who have a stake in the university: the people of Colorado who contribute $200 million annually in tax dollars, the federal entities that provide some $640 million annually in research funding, the donors who gave us more than $130 million this year to enhance academic quality, the alumni who want to maintain the value of their degrees, the faculty and staff who expect their colleagues to act with integrity, and the students who trust that faculty who teach them meet the high professional standards of the university and the profession.
Given the record of the case and findings of Professor Churchill's faculty peers, I determined that allowing him to remain on the faculty would cast a shadow on our reputation for academic integrity.
Throughout the case, we have adhered to shared governance procedures as determined by the CU Faculty Senate Constitution and Bylaws and adopted by the Board of Regents. During the course of two-plus years, Professor Churchill presented his position in writing, in person, with his attorney and with witnesses of his choosing. He was afforded full due process.
More than 20 tenured faculty members (from CU and other universities) on three separate panels conducted a thorough review of his work and found that the evidence shows Professor Churchill engaged in research misconduct, and that it required serious sanction. The record of the case shows a pattern of serious, repeated and deliberate research misconduct that falls below the minimum standard of professional integrity, including fabrication, falsification, improper citation and plagiarism. No university can abide such serious academic misconduct.
Professor Churchill fabricated historical events and sought to support his fabrications by manufacturing articles under other names. His publications show more than just sloppy citations or using the work of others without crediting them. The Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct found multiple instances of falsification, fabrication and plagiarism. Any student engaging in such a wide range of academic misconduct would be seriously sanctioned. We should hold our faculty to a high standard of professionalism
While Professor Churchill's peers on the faculty panels were unanimous in finding research misconduct, views on the appropriate sanction varied. Some faculty recommended dismissal while others suggested a less severe penalty. My obligation as president is to recommend to the Board of Regents an appropriate sanction that is for the good of the university.
Some on the Boulder campus and beyond claim Professor Churchill was singled out because of public condemnation of his writing about September 11, 2001. They see this case as a referendum on academic freedom. The university determined early in the process that his speech was not at issue, but that his research was. The prohibition against research misconduct extends to all faculty, regardless of their political views. We cannot abandon our professional standards and exempt faculty members from being accountable for the integrity of their research simply because their views are controversial.
Professor Churchill's activities not only run counter to the essence of academic freedom, but also threaten its foundation. Academic freedom is intended to protect the exploration and teaching of unpopular, even controversial ideas. But that pursuit must be accompanied by the standards of the profession. Academic freedom does not protect research misconduct. After his research misconduct was identified, Professor Churchill did not admit any errors or come forward to correct the record, as is expected in the profession.
CU's most important asset is its academic reputation. Professor Churchill's actions reflect poorly on the University of Colorado, but we will not let the research misconduct of one individual tarnish our reputation. Our faculty members take pride in their work and demonstrate their respect for the high standards of their profession and this university day in and day out. Professor Churchill's research misconduct is an affront to those who conduct themselves with integrity.
We will remain accountable to those who have high expectations of Colorado's flagship university. And our faculty will remain true to high professional standards to ensure our reputation for academic integrity remains intact.
Sincerely,
Hank Brown
President I think I'd like to throw a party!Labels: Academia
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| Monday, July 23, 2007 |
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OAcademics
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:06 PM
Now that OCON is past, I'm posting one final announcement about my new OAcademics list before opening it for business tomorrow:
The OAcademics mailing list is a private forum for Objectivist academics to discuss teaching, research, coursework, dissertations, job prospects, publication, and all other aspects of life in (or after) academia. The list is basically a means of sharing knowledge and experience as ever more Objectivists enter academia.
The list isn't limited to philosophers. All Objectivists in academia, whether professors or graduate students, are welcome. Future academics, i.e. those in the process of applying to graduate school, may also join.
No subscriber is obliged to participate in list discussions. However, I do make two requests:
(1) That subscribers post the syllabi from the courses they teach (including the list of readings) at the beginning of every semester so that others may consult them in the process of their own course development.
(2) That subscribers post any significant announcements about their work, e.g. the successful defense of a dissertation, an article accepted for publication, a fabulous new teaching job, leaving academia to hunt bears in Alaska.
These are strong recommendations but not ironclad obligations.
The list is not moderated. Posts should be polite, friendly, and reasonably relevant to life in academia.
Messages will be archived, but those archives will be available only to other list members. List members should not forward list messages to anyone else or post them to any other forum without permission from the author(s).
If you have any questions, please e-mail Diana Hsieh, the list's owner and administrator, at diana@dianahsieh.com. To subscribe, enter the relevant information on the web interface. Also, please feel free to forward this post (or a link thereto) to anyone you think might be interested in joining the list.Labels: Academia, Objectivism
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| Friday, July 13, 2007 |
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On Ashland University
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:22 AM
Ashland University's insanely unjust treatment of John Lewis was recently detailed in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education: Tenure Shrugged. FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has posted some further details (correcting some small inaccuracies in the CHE article, as far as I understand) here: Ashland University: No Objectivists Need Apply.
Notice that the source of Dr. Lewis's troubles were (1) neocons and (2) evangelical Christians. From what I understand, the run-of-the-mill liberal faculty were rightly shocked and outraged by his treatment by Ashland.
Also, I might as well mention that I was quoted in the Chronicle's introduction to its three articles on Objectivism in academia:
The articles in this special Chronicle report are about a different group of scholars: those who believe that Rand created a true and complete philosophical model, which must be widely spread or else civilization will perish. These scholars believe that the road to cultural renewal runs through the philosophy department: If the public adopts the correct metaphysical and epistemological beliefs, then peace, justice, and prosperity will naturally follow. (In this respect, the famously anti-religious Randians are oddly similar to Catholic philosophers in the Thomist tradition.)
"The serious study of Ayn Rand's work -- in and out of academia -- is only in its nascent stages," wrote Diana Mertz Hsieh, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, on her blog in 2005. "If stillborn, our culture is doomed. ... It's not just some academic game: It's literally life and death." In case you're wondering, I've not blogged because I've been at OCON in lovely Telluride. I've enjoyed myself well enough, although I'm eager to return to real work on my dissertation and to preparation for my fall "Intro Phil" class. I probably won't return to regular blogging for another week.Labels: Academia, History, Religion
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| Monday, June 18, 2007 |
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New List: OAcademics
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:32 AM
Along the same lines as my OBloggers mailing list, I've created a list for Objectivist in academia: OAcademics:
The OAcademics mailing list is a private forum for Objectivist academics to discuss teaching, research, coursework, dissertations, job prospects, publication, and all other aspects of life in (or after) academia. The list is basically a means of sharing knowledge and experience as ever more Objectivists enter academia.
The list isn't limited to philosophers: all Objectivists in academia, whether professors or graduate students, are welcome. (Those in the process of applying to graduate school are also welcome to subscribe.) If you're not an Objectivist in academia, please do not subscribe.
No subscriber is obliged to participate in list discussions. However, I do make two requests of subscribers:
(1) That you post the syllabi from the courses you teach (including the list of readings) at the beginning of every semester so that others may consult them in the process of their own course development.
(2) That you post any significant announcements about your work, e.g. the successful defense of your dissertation, an article accepted for publication, a fabulous new teaching job, or leaving academia to hunt bears in Alaska.
The list is not moderated. Please make sure that your posts are polite, friendly, and on-topic.
Messages will be archived, but those archives will only be available to other list members. Please do not forward list messages to anyone else or post them to any other forum without permission from the author.
If you have any questions, please e-mail Diana Hsieh at diana@dianahsieh.com. Objectivists in academia are welcome to subscribe themselves to the list. I'll also be contacting people privately, but since I don't have e-mail addresses for all the Objectivists in academia I know, please feel free to spread the word.
FYI: If some responsible person wants to manage an "OLawyers" or "ODoctors" or "OWhatevers" list, I might be willing to host that. Just drop me an e-mail. It's not that I want Objectivists to talk to each other in some cloister -- quite the contrary, in fact. The point is to foster success in the real world by sharing advice, experience, and expertise.Labels: Academia, Objectivism
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| Thursday, May 03, 2007 |
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Progress
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:45 PM
I'm beyond delighted to report that I've made significant progress on my Ph.D over the past year -- after suffering from far too much hideously painful demotivation, disorganization, and overwhelmedness for the prior two years. In essence, I've completed all the work that I need to do to advance to candidacy. So provided that the two papers awaiting grading from faculty pass muster, I should be declared an official "Ph.D candidate" in the fall. I'll be writing my dissertation prospectus this summer. Then my goal is to write my dissertation at breakneck speed so that I can graduate in May 2009.
Mostly, I have Debi Ghate to thank for that miracle. I couldn't have done it without her help; I was floundering too badly. As my OAC graduate mentor, she acted as an excellent manager by helping me focus on priorities, set deadlines, evaluate my progress, and the like. Most helpful were the "Weekly Reports" that I began writing her about two months ago. On Sunday night, I'd write her a brief e-mail of detailing what I'd done that week and what I planned to do the next week. That was enormously helpful, as I had to be totally explicit and objective in reporting to her. (She'd often write back with helpful questions, suggestions, and plain old encouragement.) For the other graduate students without perfect skills of organization, monitoring, and self-motivation, I'd strongly recommend writing such reports to someone who will gently hold your feet to the fire. (You can't have Debi though! She's mine!)
So over this past academic year, I managed to write and complete my "Fifth Semester Qualifying Paper," as well as three papers for incomplete classes. I helped organize and promote the new "Think!" lecture series for the Philosophy Department, with good success for the four lectures and particularly the two debates. I taught my own courses for the first time: three introductory ethics courses of about 30 students each.
I also wrote a review of Tara Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist for The Objective Standard. I took Eric Daniels' excellent year-long History of Capitalism course. I've also contributed a bit to FIRM's fight against the imposition of socialized medicine in Colorado.
And... I've stayed in excellent shape. I've learned to play bridge. I've taken my dog Abby to regular acupuncture appointments to help slow down the progress of her degenerative myelopathy. I wrote a long essay on the election of which I'm still very proud. I've blogged regularly. I've listened to the whole Bible, as well as tons of other fiction, philosophy, history, and more. I endured eight straight weeks of winter snow. I've been a reasonably well-behaved wife. I've not gone totally nuts.
So I'm pretty damn proud of myself.
My semester isn't entirely finished though. My students still have their final exam to take, so I'll have that plus revised papers to grade next week. (That's a piece of cake though!) After that, Paul and I will take our traditional "enjoy life by physically working yourself to near death in some fantastically beautiful location" May vacation. This time, we'll be mountain biking around the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
That'll be a really, really well-deserved vacation for me!Labels: Academia
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| Thursday, April 12, 2007 |
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Teaching Next Semester
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:08 PM
Much to my delight, on Tuesday I found out that I'll be teaching just one section of "Introduction to Philosophy" in the fall. It'll be from 12:30 to 1:45 pm with 25 or so students.
I've not taught that course before, so I'm definitely looking forward to constructing it. As with the three sections of Ethics that I've taught over the past year, it's wholly my own class. So once again, I'll probably create my own course packet. (I'm a GTPI -- a Graduate Part-Time Instructor -- no longer in the special limbo of teaching purgatory reserved for TAs.)
Happily, it's precisely the course that I wanted to teach. (My other alternative was to teach applied ethics (i.e. "Philosophy and Society"), but I'm pretty sick of teaching ethics. Even better, the class in the middle of the day, not at 8:00 am! I've taught at that abominably early hour both semesters this past year, meaning that I must drag myself out of bed to commute the hour to Boulder at 5 am. That's damn unnatural behavior for me. I swore that I'd teach German Phenomenology, a subject about which I know absolutely nothing, before teaching at 8 am again.
And best of all, until just recently, I thought GTPIs taught a four course load each year of 25 - 35 students each class. So I thought I only taught a single section last semester because it was my first semester teaching. However, as it turns out, we only have a three course load each year, so I'll always have one semester of teaching just one course. That's delightful news!
As an aside, we're supposed to get about a foot of snow over the next 24 hours. Seriously.Labels: Academia
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| Saturday, March 24, 2007 |
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Teaching Evaluations for Socrates
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:13 AM
If Socrates Had to Undergo Teaching Evaluations by His Students:
"He always keeps talking about these figures in a cave, like they really have anything to do with the real world. Give me a break! I spend serious money for my education and I need something I can use in the real world, not some b.s. about shadows and imaginary trolls who live in caves."
"Also, I believe this Republic that Prof. Socrates wants to design — as if anyone really wants to let this dreadful little man design an entire city — is nothing but a plan for a hegemonic, masculinist empire that will dominate all of Greece and enforce its own values and beliefs on the diverse communities of our multicultural society."
"My first thought about this class was: this guy is really ugly. Then I thought, well, he's just a little hard on the eyes. Finally, I came to see that he was kind of cute. Before I used to judge everyone based on first impressions, but I learned that their outward appearances can be seen in different ways through different lenses."
Heh.Labels: Academia, Funny
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| Sunday, December 31, 2006 |
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Religion in College
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:36 PM
While I haven't been teaching long enough to notice any difference in the religiosity of my students over the years, this professor's observations are consistent with my general knowledge on the topic. He writes:
More American college students seem to be practicing traditional forms of religion today than at any time in my 30 years of teaching.
At first glance, the flourishing of religion on campuses seems to reverse trends long criticized by conservatives under the rubric of "political correctness." But, in truth, something else is occurring. Once again, right and left have become mirror images of each other; religious correctness is simply the latest version of political correctness. Indeed, it seems the more religious students become, the less willing they are to engage in critical reflection about faith.
The chilling effect of these attitudes was brought home to me two years ago when an administrator at a university where I was then teaching called me into his office. A student had claimed that I had attacked his faith because I had urged him to consider whether Nietzsche's analysis of religion undermines belief in absolutes. The administrator insisted that I apologize to the student. (I refused.)
My experience was not unique. Today, professors invite harassment or worse by including "unacceptable" books on their syllabuses or by studying religious ideas and practices in ways deemed improper by religiously correct students.
Distinguished scholars at several major U.S. universities have been condemned, even subjected to death threats, for proposing psychological, sociological or anthropological interpretations of religious texts. In the most egregious cases, defenders of the faith insist that only true believers are qualified to teach their religious tradition.
At a time when universities are obsessed with public relations, faculty members can no longer be confident they will remain free to pose the questions that urgently need to be asked.
For years, I have begun my classes by telling students that if they are not more confused and uncertain at the end of the course than they were at the beginning, I will have failed. A growing number of religiously correct students consider this challenge a direct assault on their faith. Yet the task of thinking and teaching, especially in an age of emergent fundamentalisms, is to cultivate a faith in doubt that calls into question every certainty.
Any responsible curriculum for the study of religion must be guided by two basic principles: first, a clear distinction between the study and the practice of religion, and second, an expansive understanding of what religion is and of the manifold roles it plays in life. The aim of critical analysis is not to pass judgment on religious beliefs and practices -- though some secular dogmatists wrongly cross that line -- but to consider the many functions they serve.
It is also important to explore the similarities and differences between and among various religions. Religious traditions are not fixed and monolithic; they are networks of symbols, myths and rituals, which evolve over time by adapting to changing circumstances. If we fail to appreciate the complexity and diversity within, and among, religious traditions, we will overlook the fact that people from different traditions often share more with one another than they do with many members of their own tradition.
If chauvinistic believers develop deeper analyses of religion, they might begin to see in themselves what they criticize in others. In an era that thrives on both religious and political polarization, this is an important lesson to learn -- one that extends well beyond the academy.
Since religion is often most influential where it is least obvious, it is imperative to examine both its manifest and latent dimensions. As defenders of a faith become more reflective about their own beliefs, they begin to understand that religion can serve not only to provide answers that render life more secure but also to prepare them for life's unavoidable complexities and uncertainties.
Until recently, many influential analysts argued that religion, a vestige of an earlier stage of human development, would wither away as people became more sophisticated and rational. Obviously, things have not turned out that way. Indeed, the 21st century will be dominated by religion in ways that were inconceivable just a few years ago. Religious conflict will be less a matter of struggles between belief and unbelief than of clashes between believers who make room for doubt and those who do not.
The warning signs are clear: Unless we establish a genuine dialogue within and among all kinds of belief, ranging from religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism, the conflicts of the future will probably be even more deadly.
Mark C. Taylor, a religion and humanities professor at Williams College, is the author of "Mystic Bones." (This op-ed was also printed in the NY Times a few weeks ago.)
Many serious Christians are genuinely committed to replacing the political correctness of today's academia with their own Christian dogma. They are determined, they are numerous, and they are extremely well-funded. That's not good news: rule of academia by religious correctness would be no better -- and surely much worse -- than rule by political correctness. Sadly, my general impression is that the conservative criticisms of academia's closed doors will enshrine religious correctness, not merely overthrow political correctness. Too many in that movement aim to do just that.
Personally, I do worry that I'll face serious student complaints someday, probably sooner rather than later, for my teaching of Christian ethics. I'm not similarly concerned about the leftists.Labels: Academia, Religion
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| Tuesday, October 03, 2006 |
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Applying Utilitarianism
By Paul Hsieh @ 9:30 AM
I don't know if this is a true story or just an urban legend. But it's funny nonetheless:A famous decision theorist who once taught at Columbia got an offer from a rival university and was struggling with the question of whether to stay where he was or accept the new post. His friend, a philosopher, took him aside and said, "What's the problem? Just do what you write about and what you teach your students. Maximize your expected utility." The decision theorist, exasperated, responded, "Come on, get serious!" (From "Smart Heuristics" by Gerd Gigerenzer.)Labels: Academia, Ethics
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| Tuesday, October 04, 2005 |
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Philosophy as Integration in Academia -- Or Not
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:45 AM
Via Boing Boing, I found this list of the fifty most cited texts in the humanities from 1976-1983. Although those dates are pretty musty by now, the dominance of philosophy texts on the list is noteworthy -- even though so many of the philosophers are the postmodernist freaks beloved by fashionable academics outside philosophy. (Postmodernism, a.k.a. Continental Philosophy, is quite rare in American philosophy departments, as it's generally not regarded with much if any respect.) Here's the list:1. T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962
2. J. Joyce, Ulysses. 1922
3. N. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. 1957
4. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
5. N. Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. 1965
6. M. Foucault, The Order of Things. 1966
7. J. Derrida, Of Grammatology
8. R. Barthes, S/Z. 1970
9. M. Heidegger, Being and Time. 1927
10. E.R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. 1948
11. H-G Gardmer, Truth and Method. 1960
12. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice. 1971
13. J. Joyce, Finnegan's Wake. 1939
14. J.R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. 1969
15. J. Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. 1975
16. G. Genette, Figures. 1966
17. N. Chomsky & M. Halle, The Sound Pattern of English. 1968
18. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land. 1922
19. J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words. 1962
20. W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object. 1960
21. M. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past. 1914
22. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 1922
23. J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1916
24. W.C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction. 1961
25. C. Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology. 1958
26. S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams. 1900
27. V.Y. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale. 1928
28. F.D. Saussure, Course in General Linguistics. 1915
29. J-P, Sartre, Being and Nothingness. 1943
30. S.A. Kripke, "Naming and Necessity" 1972
31. E. Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics. 1966
32. K.R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. 1963
33. J. Lacan, Lacan Ecrits
34. J. Derrida, Writing and Difference. 1967
35. N. Chomsky, Chomsky Syntactic Structures. 1957
36. R. Jacobson, "Linguistics and Poetics" 1960
37. E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation. 1967
38. C. Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind. 1962
39. E. Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. 1925
40. P.L. Berger & T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. 1966
41. M.M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. 1965
42. M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. 1945
43. W. Iser, The Act of Reading. 1976
44. K.R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. 1972
45. U.A. Eco, Theory of Semiotics. 1976
46. E. Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. 1946
47. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. 1960
48. E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class. 1964
49. J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest. 1968
50. K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 1935 The dominance of even these mostly awful philosophical texts in the list reflects the unique position of philosophy as the fundamental integrator of all human knowledge, particularly in the humanities. At its best, philosophy identifies the basic principles to guide all specialized inquiries and check all further conclusions. So with Objectivism, the axioms preclude certain supposedly scientific theories, like behaviorism in psychology. The purpose of art establishes basic standards for the objective judgment of literature to be further developed and applied by scholars. The nature of concepts forbids the use of package-deals like "Stalinism" and "McCarthyism" in politics. The metaphysical value of sex suggests an important subject of psychological study. The historical study of Soviet Russia shows the particular ways in which collectivism in theory results in mass slaughter in practice. And so on. Obviously, other philosophies have other kinds of effects upon specialized fields of study, many of them deeply pernicious.
To be clear, my point here is not that all roads go to and from philosophy. Rather, philosophy is the central nexus point in a web of related domains of knowledge. So although psychology, history, and economics will be directly related to each other in various ways, the strongest ties between the major disciplines will all run through philosophy.
Of course, that's not really the current state of affairs. The fragmentation of the humanities over the last century or so is both widely-known and often-lamented. Professors and graduate students have almost no contact with people working outside their own discipline. At this point, productive conversation is almost impossible, as scholarly interests are too narrowly specialized in both content and method to be of much interest to anyone else, including those in the same discipline. In fact, a person could lead a totally normal life as a graduate student and professor of philosophy without ever conversing with anyone outside philosophy about any topic of intellectual substance. By current standards, that person would not even be remiss if he never read a book on any topic other than philosophy! I suspect the same is true of other disciplines, albeit perhaps to varying degrees.
The intellectual world wasn't always so fractured. During the Enlightenment, philosophers, historians, chemists, physicians, industrialists, economists, physicists, artists, and the like actively gathered together to discuss topics of mutual interest. (For a nice example, see Andy Bernstein's discussion of the Lunar Society in The Capitalist Manifesto, pages 88-92.) In light of that community, it's hardly surprising that so many accomplished intellectuals were accomplished in multiple fields. So although Hume is almost exclusively known today as a philosopher, he also wrote an excellent and popular history of England. Adam Smith is studied almost exclusively as an economist today, even though he wrote treatises on ethics. Voltaire was not merely a popular essayist on philosophical topics; he also wrote volumes of plays and poetry, not to mention highly influential popularizations of Newton's new physics. In those days, the boundaries between disciplines were simply not the impenetrable walls that they are today.
From what I've read on the ills of academia, few if any academics realize that philosophers are almost entirely to blame for the absurd compartmentalization of our universities. The analytic philosophy dominant in the twentieth century rejected the ideal of the systematic integration of knowledge, even within the domain of philosophy itself. The old goal of constructing a philosophical system was deemed naive and futile. Instead, philosophers were supposed to engage in detailed analyses of narrow slivers of topics totally isolated from any surrounding context or general principles. Unsurprisingly, philosophers have discovered that they cannot prove anything in that manner, so they now often resort to offering pathetic rationalizations for their prior beliefs under the guise of Rawls' "reflective equilibrium" or Nozick's rejection of "coercive philosophy."
As an aside, Tom Regan's arguments for animal rights are a perfect example of rationalization as philosophic method. When he openly admits (in "The Radical Egalitarian Case for Animal Rights") that "if it were possible to show that only human beings are included within [the] scope [of the rights view], then a person like myself, who believes in animal rights, would be obliged to look elsewhere," any self-respecting philosopher should refuse to seriously consider his views any further. Instead, philosophers treat them seriously, as if the reams of tangential technical discussion render his work rigorous. In particular, Regan steadfastly refuses to offer any substantive argument for his claim that subjects-of-a-life have that ever-so-mysterious property of equal inherent value. Consequently, it cannot be refuted. That's quite convenient for Regan, of course. The only proper response is to reject the whole enterprise as arbitrary.
Although analytic philosophy has lost much of its strength in recent years, its basic policy of disintegration is still very much in force in philosophy departments. (Certainly, my graduate papers are still supposed to analyze some narrow, out-of-context issue to death!)
The widespread opposition to the integration of knowledge in philosophy over the past century or so has substantially affected the standard practices of other disciplines. By routinely engaging in hyper-specialized nit-picking irrelevant to life, philosophers largely removed themselves from that central location in the nexus of human knowledge. Since they defended intellectual disintegration on philosophic grounds, they also encouraged scholars in other disciplines to engage in their own form of compartmentalization. That they did, apparently while also turning to the crazed continental philosophers for the required philosophic foundation to varying degrees. The current fractured state of academia is the end result of that process. It won't change until philosophers seriously commit themselves -- in both theory and practice -- to cognitive integration.
From what I've seen, today's only intellectual community seriously committed to integration across the various domains of knowledge is that of Objectivists -- as made possible largely by the Ayn Rand Institute and the Anthem Foundation. That community is still in a nascent form: some disciplines aren't adequately represented yet, if at all. (Personally, I'd much prefer to add more historians, psychologists, economists, and the like to the mix, rather than more philosophers, as I'll learn more that way!) Nonetheless, the lively discussions and thoughtful debates amongst well-grounded Objectivist intellectuals and scholars seem to be quite stimulative. I certainly experienced that for myself at ARI's fantastic Teaching Workshop, held after OCON this past summer. I've also seen/read the excellent fruit of others scholarly workshops, such as Tara Smith's fascinating talk on judicial activism at OCON.
That's perhaps the only good news for the future of academia, I think.Labels: Academia
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