What college administrators and faculty can learn from one philosophy department's story

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece this morning about how the Villanova University Philosophy Department has enhanced its relevance to the institution's students.  Courses such as "The Good Doctor" and "The Philosophy of Exchange" resonate with pre-med and business students.  Meanwhile, the chair and faculty have liaised with the admissions folks and others to communicate what sorts of careers the department's graduates have gone on to pursue.  The department also holds events to engage its majors and help them succeed academically.

This story is a microcosm of how endangered four-year institutions must ride the Fifth Wave of American higher education.  What many today are calling "The Value Proposition" is a combination of attributes which will entice students and parents to become our "customers."

First and foremost, they must see a worthwhile career at the end of the line.  Absent that pay-off, few will be willing to pay up.  A good place to start in making this case is with the basic or core skill sets that most employers say they want.  These include:

• Communication
• Adaptability
• Teamwork
• Goal orientation
• Positive attitude

All of these can come from four years of Philosophy, says one web site.

This same site says that the knowledge of logic and ethics that derive from the Philosophy major transfer into many roles in law, medicine, government, business and IT.

Second, we have to provide an experience that a pure on-line degree or even a community college can't.  For me, back in my day, this experience was provided by my fraternity (see yesterday's post).  Better ways of providing such an experience fall under the rubric of "engaged learning."  Some examples are:

• Student leadership roles
• Lab and other research experiences with faculty
• Community service
• Study abroad and short-term, faculty led study experiences
• Internships and co-ops

If the four-year institutions that form the core of American higher education are to ride out the Fifth Wave, we need to draw the larger lesson from the Villanova Philosophy Department story and apply it across our campuses.

Greek life poses a perennial dilemma for college administrators

Close on the heels of the former PSU President's conviction for child endangerment, Penn State's VP for Student Affairs, announced the closing of one fraternity, where a student fell down the stairs and died, and curtailment of alcohol use at all the others.

I'm not questioning the appropriateness of PSU's actions.  But I am wondering out loud if they would have been taken in the absence of the Spanier trial and its outcome.

What to do about those naughty Greeks has been a dilemma at least since I was in college some 50 years ago.

At my alma mater --- an all-male institution until 1969 --- with a student body of 1200,  supported nearly a dozen fraternities.  All but one were located off campus, a few of them quite distant from the college.  Consequently, oversight was virtually non-existent.

My fraternity was the college's animal house.  At one point, prior to my arrival at college, the frat enjoyed the triple crown: academic probation, disciplinary probation, and national-chapter probation.  To get out from under this functional equivalent of "double secret probation," we agreed to have a housemother.  We had a bedroom and bathroom built for her on the first floor.  And that's where she stayed with the door locked and the TV turned up high, when we had our weekend-long parties.

The only time in my four years at the college when I can recall the dean of students entering our house was the day after we conducted a pitched battle with "the cable guys."

The city was having a cable TV system strung throughout the city.  Burly workers came to town to do the job.  On a balmy April or early May afternoon, two of the older brothers were sitting on the front porch, imbibing (appropriately enough) May wine.  When a truck load of these cable workers rolled by, one of these brothers shouted out, "Alabama a**holes."  The truck came to an abrupt halt and the brewsers stormed the frat house.  They were met by a hail of empty bottles, as the two brothers beat their retreat indoors.

Heading home from class, and witnessing this phase of the melee, I slipped around back.  Everyone in the house at the time headed up to the flat roof, three stories above the street.  A popular sunbathing site, the roof was cluttered with cases of empty Coke and beer bottles, which we rained down on the cable crew.  They retreated to their truck and took off.

That night, our house became an armed fortress, while the cable guys called periodically with threats of returning after their shift ended the following day.  Naturally, word leaked out and on the next afternoon, several hundred students massed outside our frat house, along with the police, the local TV station and, yes, the dean of students.  Of course, the cable guys never showed up.

Their employer received fair warning from the city that they had better never show.  The cable project ended shortly after that, as did the semester, and the incident passed into the mists of legend.

Such was fraternity life in a time of harsh pledging practices --- I suffered a broken nose, a fellow pledge two broken arms from the rough housing.  The soda machine was stocked with beer at 25 cents a bottle.  The party started on Friday afternoon and ended Sunday night each weekend.  And, remarkably, nobody died.

Some years after I graduated, and women were admitted, the college rescinded recognition of the fraternities.  The result was they went underground.  What little control had existed became essentially no control.  A lot of alumni were angered by the move, while the attempted eradication of Greek life was an abysmal failure.  Recognition was eventually restored, and my old frat house --- which had been converted to the college art house --- was restored to its historic purpose.

My personal reminiscence represents the story of Greek life in microcosm.  It is a sort of damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't dilemma.  It will be interesting to follow the Penn State initiative to see how it plays out.

The printed word remains important in this new millennium... at least so far

As a writer, I have found the first quarter of 2017 very gratifying.  The three books that have produced royalties for me for nigh on 30 years continue to do well.  These are:

1.  The Employment Law Answer Book (Wolters Kluwer 9th edition)

2.  Employment and Labor Law (Cengage 9th edition)

3.  Termination of Employment (Thomson Reuters)

Equalling gratifying is news today from Inside Higher Ed that the University of Arizona, riding the fifth wave with it aggressive online programming, is investing $100 million in its --- are you ready? --- libraries!

According to the story, "The university later this year plans to close the Hayden Library on its Tempe campus for a two-year renovation.  At the same time, the university will continue to work on expanding the library resources and services available to its 26,000 degree-seeking online students and the hundreds of thousands more taking at least one course online from the university."

The story adds, "Many other universities are reorganizing their libraries as they see an increase in the use of electronic resources and demand for cafes, multimedia classrooms, maker spaces, writing centers and other spaces for teaching, learning and research."

But, wait, you say.  Doesn't this sound like fewer books, not more?  The Moore's Law of new media says that new media ofttimes spawn greater use of old media.  Sadly that doesn't seem to be true for daily newspapers, which have generally been unsuccessfull in adapting their product to the Internet.

Or isn't it?  The New York Times now Tweets its headlines to 9.5 million followers.  And dailies, across the totality of all their platforms, now have more readers than ever.  Small local weeklies also enjoy prosperity today.  For example, The New of Delaware County, my weekly paper, is the only outlet from which I can learn what's happening with my school district, my police department, my town council.

As for the book, it too is riding the fifth wave successfully.  In addition to hard and soft cover editions, there are electronic versions that can be downloaded and audio versions on CD and the Internet.  Self publishing is coming into its own as well.

My book #2, above, is a textbook.  I thought sales would decline, even evaporate, in the new century.  But my royalties are better than ever.

Here's one avid reader's answer to the question, "why do books still exist?"  I'll let her speak for herself.

Free speech and academic freedom: the same or different?

The Chronicle of Higher Education is running a very interesting article this morning, concerning free speech on the college campus.  The author, Stanley Fish, argues that the mission of the university is not to permit unfettered discourse.  That, he contends, is the role of the soap box in Hyde Park.  Rather, its mission is unfettered inquiry.  What gets disseminated, as journal articles, books, lectures, etc. is subject to many and often rigorous filters and gate keepers.  He makes a good point.

Academic freedom is indeed different from free speech.  Under the famous AAUP statement, academic freedom involves the right to present ones views in the classroom, provided they are relevant to the course being taught.  Many faculty in my experience wrongly believe that it gives them the right to bring the soapbox into the classroom.

Fish also talks about the major Supreme Court decisions on free speech.  In case he isn't crystal clear, note that the First and 14th Amendments --- the Constitutional fountains of free speech --- apply only to public universities.  They do not reach through the gates of non-profit or for-profit private colleges.

Recent SCOTUS opinions have delineated, as Fish explains, a distinction between public employees speaking in their capacities as citizens and speaking in their capacities as state workers.  In the leading case, a prosecutor was fired after he criticized his office's decision not to pursue a case.  The former public employee challenged his discharge under the US Constitution.  The Court sanctioned his firing on the ground that he was speaking in his capacity as a public employee who owed a duty of loyalty to his boss and the office.

Whether professors at public universities enjoy a broader range of discretion than the plaintiff in that case remains somewhat unsettled.

And what of guest speakers on our campuses?  An incident at Middlebury College, which has been prominent (at least in higher ed news sources), has put this question into the spotlight.  Charles Murray, author of THE BELL CURVE, was prevented from speaking by a group of vociferous protesters.

Fish's answer to what happened at Middlebury: "My advice to administrators: stop thinking of yourselves as in-house philosophers or free-speech champions or dispensers of moral wisdom, and accept your responsibility as managers of crowd control, an art with its own history and analytical tools, and one that you had better learn and learn quickly."

Go to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and you find a different perspective.  This organization, which has been getting its own fair share of press coverage lately, argues, "Freedom of speech is a fundamental American freedom and a human right, and there's no place that this right should be more valued and protected than America's colleges and universities."

Like so much of what we higher ed administrators are asked to do, this issue requires us to walk a tight rope.  Constitutional law itself is a high-wire act.  The SCOTUS and lower federal courts are constantly struggling to set the right balance between individual rights under the Constitution and the rights and responsibilities of "state actors" on the other side of the line.  The current controversy over President Trump's executive order on foreign travel is a perfect case on point.  His administration contends that the government has a national-security obligation to keep Americans safe from terrorists.  It's hard to dispute that.  But on the other side of the debate, advocates for civil liberties contend that Uncle Sam is seeking to violate the First Amendment by establishing a religion and discriminating against another faith.

Stanley Fish, if I read him right, contends that our role is to manage the dissemination of speech on our campuses... deciding what speech is worthy of our support... and then ensuring that this speech is disseminated to its intended audience.  As I say, he makes a good point.

How to Be a Dictator, Part One: Create and maintain a sense of constant crisis

Your first executive order banning Muslims is blocked by the courts?

Then issue a second executive order?

It's blocked as unconstitutional?

Ban electronic devices from flights originating in those same countries.

This morning, the TODAY SHOW interviewed a so-called "security expert," who stated with absolute confidence that U.S. intelligence agencies must have "very precise information" ... which, of course, they can't share for national-security reasons.

Well, perhaps.  Or perhaps we are seeing a classic gambit to gain power by creating a crisis where none exists.

According to FORBES Magazine (yes, FORBES, not MOTHER JONES), "Dictatorships are often unexpected.  They have arisen among prosperous, educated and cultured people, who seemed safe from a dictatorship...."

This article goes on to say, "Hitler's main talent seemed to be as a speech maker, so he began giving speeches that appealed to Germans embittered and disillusioned...."  Anything about that sentence reverberate in the national scene today?

Another good article I've found this morning asserts, "Psychologists and sociologists who study terrorism say dictators are able to spread fear among their people, and place themselves as their only salvation."

And then, of course, there is the dictator as magician.  Don't look at the hand that holds the red ball (Russiagate?).  Look over here at my other hand (exploding iPads and laptops?).  If "Obama tapped my phone" didn't get any traction, maybe this will.

And, if all else fails, create a constant state of war.

"Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One(formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation."  

A glimpse into our future?

How the mighty have fallen... and who may take their place

Graham Spanier goes on trial today in my home state of Pennsylvania.  To coin a cliche, it seems like only yesterday that Spanier was a national leader in higher education.  Penn State wasn't just a football power boasting perhaps the most popular coach since Knute Rockne.  It was the 800-pound gorilla in the Keystone State's higher ed living room.  In a state with dozens of small liberal arts colleges and a 14-university state system, PSU seemed to be in everybody's face.  It's two-year feeder campuses were rapidly being converted into four-year competitors to nearly every other college and university, no matter in which out-of-the-way corner of the Commonwealth.  And an online presence sought to make the whole human population into potential customers.

But there has always been a little something of the de classe about PSU.  It's hard to put one's finger on it.  But let me try an anecdote.  About ten years ago, Notre Dame was hosting Penn State football.  I took my mother-in-law, a die-hard Notre Dame subway alumna, to South Bend for the game.  We started our Saturday morning on campus with mass in the  famed golden-domed chapel.  After mass, I bought her a green rosary.  Then, before going to our bus's tailgate gathering, we took a walking tour of the campus.  We ran into a lot of Penn State students in town for the gridiron contest.  One of them, already inebriated at noon, advised us, "You Notre Dame fans don't know how to throw a party."

Penn State's party came at a high price.  It killed Papa Joe Paterno in two quick stages: first his reputation and then his life.  And, whatever the trial's outcome, it ended Spanier's illustrious career.  Quite a few lesser lights of PSU also went down with the Sandusky ship.  A couple of them will be appearing as witnesses against Spanier.

Was a time when college presidents were spokesmen (well, yes, they were all men) for national values.  One---Woodrow Wilson of Princeton --- became the actual U.S. President.  Today, we witness a former president of a major university system in the dock.  What a reversal of fortune for higher education.

But perhaps the women in higher ed's highest office will redeem us.  The University of Pennsylvania, under the leadership of President Amy Gutmann, has declared itself a sanctuary campus.  If Dr. Gutmann finds herself in the dock one day, it will be for all the right reasons... not for the sake of a macho football program.

Penn's official statement is one that co-founder Benjamin Franklin would be proud of, I think.  And Dr. Gutmann is proving herself to be a real class act.

What universities can do in this age of unreason and untruths

If you haven't yet read "Promoting Knowledge in an Age of Unreason" by Dr. Todd Gitlin, please do it now.  I've mentioned this article before and am directing your attention to it again.  He hits a very important nail right on the head.

"Public reason has plunged into a state of emergency.... When reason itself is so besieged, the university cannot be content to marinate in defensiveness and self-pity.  It is in a fight for its life.  It needs a forward strategy."

What strategy does Dr. Gitlin recommend?

1.  Sponsor ambitious journalism

2.  Stand up for science

3.  Put up billboards

I'm especially attracted to the first recommendation.  As I --- and Bill Maher (see a recent post where I linked his rant) and many others --- have pointed out, the likes of Matt Lauer have sold their "journalist" credentials for the big bucks of Infotainment.  Even the great newspapers are struggling.  With few exceptions, the networks are no longer committed to genuine investigative reporting; they no longer see it as a public obligation.  But, as Gitlin points out, America's universities are well able to fill the gap.

As the title of this Blog reflects, American higher education is struggling to cope with Fifth Wave's disruption.  Many private non-profit schools are struggling with an existential crisis.  Many public institutions are little better off, once state supported and now little more than state located, as a public-sector acquaintance of mine once said to me.  This existential struggle can be darned distracting, as I know from personal experience.

But three important questions occur to me... all being relevant to this post:

1.  If a university is tax exempt and/or state affiliated, doesn't it have an obligation to the state and its citizens to champion the principles of truth, justice, civil rights and civil liberties?

2.  And if it is failing to champion those democratic values, does it deserve to survive?

The most interesting question that occurs to me this morning is:

3.  Can being a champion of these democratic principles actually help save the university?

In future Blog posts, I want to explore this question, because I think it's crucial to our survival strategy in riding the disruption of the Fifth Wave.

Breakthrough or catastrophe?

The March 17 Chronicle of Higher Ed reports on page A24 that "An Immigrant Scholar Leads the Charge Against Computing's Biggest Roadblock."  I assume the news peg for this story is the scientist's immigrant background.  As a federal judge yesterday declared President Trump's second attempt at restricting immigration unconstitutional, this is a timely theme.

But to me the interesting aspect of the story is the potential "breakthrough" it portends.  The story starts by noting, "After decades of rapid acceleration, the speed of transistors --- computerization's fundamental building blocks --- is hitting a wall." In other words, Moore's Law --- that the speed of computing will double every couple of years, or something like that --- is running up against the simple fact that in the physical world you can only pack matter just so tightly together.  You can only make transistors just so small and then the atoms are cheek-to-jowl and you just can't pack 'em any tighter.

But --- joy of joys ---we have come to a "transition moment," when "neuromorphic computing" is using the human brain as its template for a whole new approach that promises to yet again maintain Moore's prophesy.  If you want to know more about neuromorphic computing, google the article and read it.  That's not the point of this post.

My concern is with the impact of ever more sophisticated artificial intelligence on the human race.  Mr. Trump has promised to bring back manufacturing to the U.S.  He's a very determined and ruthless fellow and he may succeed.  But what he won't be able to do is bring back manufacturing jobs at anything like the level they were 40 or 50 years ago.  His supporters, poor saps, who believe otherwise are doomed to disappointment.  These jobs will go to robots.

Equally or more disconcerting is the prospect of more and more service jobs also going to AI.  Admittedly, many of these jobs are far less lucrative than the manufacturing jobs they replaced.  A barista at Starbucks makes nothing like the wages and benefits of an auto or steel worker of yore.  Likewise a retail clerk.  But at least they have jobs.  Now even these positions are being co-opted by AI, especially via the internet, where we can purchase nearly anything we used to get in a store... and have the item in hand in 24 hours.  Note the closing of malls, if you doubt me. We still have to stand in line for a good cup of coffee, I guess, but for how long will that last?

Most disturbing of all --- especially to college graduates --- is the prospect, fast becoming a reality, that such jobs as reporter, paralegal, and even healthcare provider are being displaced in whole or in part by AI.

It may have taken 60+ years, but Vonnegut's Player Piano dystopia is finally just around the corner.  And now it seems that yet another "breakthrough" is about to make AI even more closely analogous to human thought.

A breakthrough?  Really?  I doubt that everyone would agree.

Gainful employment out the window?

Readers of this Blog won't be surprised to learn that last the US Department of Education quietly shelved the revised "gainful employment" regulations initiated by the Obama Administration.
This, I think, is just the first step in reversing the course of the DOE with regard to the for-profit sector of higher education.

You will recall that the Obama Administration eviscerated several key players in the for-profit arena.  Most notable was the demise of Corinthian Colleges, which left thousands of its students stranded with big student loans and no school to attend.  ITT was also put out of business with top execs under indictment.  And a petition by Apollo Group, parent of the University of Phoenix, to be privatized by a group of investment capitalists sat idle on the outgoing secretary's desk.

Requiring the for-profit schools to demonstrate that their students graduate and get good jobs is the price they are asked to pay in return for all the student-loan money that keeps these enterprises afloat.  Absent these regulations, these businesses can go right back to churning students through their programs and pocketing the federal loan dollars as tuition (aka profits).

While billionaire Betsy DeVos ascended to the DOE throne with virtually no track record regarding higher education, her vocal advocacy and financial support for charter schools in the K-12 arena led me (and of course others) to speculate that she will be a good friend to the for-profit sector in higher ed as well.

This shelving of the "gainful employment" regs appears to be the first indication that she will be meeting that expectation.

Something old, and something new

The Bible claims, "There is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1.9)

I'm no Bible scholar... not even a fan... but I was reminded of this proverb when I saw women my age at the Women's March in January in Washington with signs asking, "Why must I keep doing this?" And, indeed, there was that sense of deja vu all over again.  I recalled for my daughter and her friends my first march New York City, November 1969, during the Vietnam Moratorium.  I have also marched for the right to choose in Washington in decades past. That Roe v. Wade remains under threat more than four decades after the decision was handed down is disheartening, as is the steady state of war in this new millennium.

But, if history is repeating itself in some respects this year, much that is unique to this era also drives the   wedge dividing us... left v. right... Northern Hemisphere v. Southern... haves v. have-nots... white v. color... Judeo-Christians v. Muslims.

Three unique forces are easily identified.  (Thomas Friedman identifies them in his new book.)

1.  Technology: artificial intelligence, automation, cloud computing

Yes, technology is creating jobs and fortunes.  But it is eliminating far more more jobs than it's creating.  No revolution of the past --- not the agricultural or the industrial --- however disruptive, matched this 21st century phenomenon.  You think I am exaggerating?  Don't take my word.  Researchers at Oxford University predict that 47 percent of all jobs in the United States have a high probability of being taken by technology in the next 5-15 years.  The chief economist of the Bank of England chimed in with a guess that the U.S. will see a job loss in the area of about 80 million in that time frame.

Over the past 35 years, the U.S. has lost seven million manufacturing jobs.  Try as he might, Mr. Trump cannot bring back those jobs.  He may attempt to recapture them from Asia and Latin America. But he can't keep the robots from taking them, if ever they are brought back to America.

This is not... repeat, not... a rehashing of the Industrial Revolution, when wrenching disruption eventually led to unheard-of prosperity.  In the 1950s a unionized blue-collar worker, capable of doing one of the mind-numbing chores on an assembly line, could make a middle-class income, have good benefits, and expect a comfortable retirement.  Today, if your job doesn't involve "high-order thinking," expect it to be taken by AI.  This likely includes, according to the source I've linked above:

• accountants
• clerks
• construction workers
• customer service reps
• paralegals
• security guards
• telemarketers

and even many healthcare workers.  Look for "doc in a box."

2.  Climate change

Deny it all you wish.  But don't try telling the 2.6 billion agricultural people, who are experiencing desertification in the souther hemisphere, that Mother Nature isn't changing for the worse.  Don't try telling the United Nations organization nothing bad is happening south of the Sahara.  The U.N. says that arable-land degradation is happening at 30 times (no, that's not a typo) the historical rate.

And so, it's not just war, such as in Syria, that is driving masses of Southern Hemisphere folk to try to get into Europe. End the Middle Eastern conflict tomorrow and millions would still seek to escape to the north.

3.  Population

Even those who deny cataclysmic job loss and climate change must admit that human population has never been this large before now.  I sometimes am able to shock my students by telling them that, when I was their age, the world's population was half what it is today: 7.5 billion.  That's a doubling in less than half a human lifetime.  And it continues to climb, as this is written.

So, let's put this all together: unprecedented population... unprecedented desertification... unprecedented job loss.  Isn't this indeed something entirely new under the sun?

Did those who voted for Mr. Trump know all this and take it into consideration?  That's pretty darn doubtful.  But I suspect they know deep down in their mammalian DNA that, to borrow a phrase from a Jimmy Buffett tune, "I'm in danger of extinction too".

The animals that perished in each of the Ice Ages must have had the same sort of gut feeling at some point during the onset of those cataclysms.

Mr. Trump's triumph, a phenomenon difficult to imagine before this age of cloud computing and social media, is the product of a desperation spawned by this gut sense of despair.  And this is new.

The University as guardian and purveyor of truth... more important than ever before

So says this writer, and I wholeheartedly agree:

"Public reason has plunged into a state of emergency. Dishonesty, non sequiturs, and distortions of fact (the president prefers the term "truthful hyperbole") are the disorders of the day. As under the totalitarianisms of the 20th century, the key institutions of public enlightenment — higher education and journalism — are impugned as 'elitist,' 'enemies of the people' that transmit hoaxes and 'fake news.' Truth is condemned at the wave of a tweet.

"This virulent state of affairs calls for a revival of democratic life, but also a course correction on the part of higher education. The university cannot content itself with the sort of cultivation that takes place in walled gardens. It must also engage with the miserable state of public reason. When reason is itself so besieged, the university cannot be content to marinate in defensiveness and self-pity. It is in a fight for its life. It needs a forward strategy."

In 1852, Father John Henry Newman called the university "the high protecting power of all knowledge and science, of fact and principle, of inquiry and discovery, of experiment and speculation." 

Today, Harvard's Clay Christensen, guru of disruption theory, warns of the end of higher education as we know it.  He also suggests ways that we can adapt to the new era of disruption.

Presently, the private sector of higher education in particular is experiencing a "rationalization," as economists euphemistically refer to the phenomenon of weak competitors going out of business.  This disruption and restructuring come at a bad time in light of the challenges outlined above.  The temptation for many of us, whose institutions are in an existential struggle to stay solvent, will be to focus all our energies on recruitment, retention, fund raising and auxiliary enterprises.

The centrality of the full-time, tenured faculty is at best being sharply questioned, at worst being denigrated and denied.  To some extent, many faculty have brought this on themselves.  Too many tenured faculty in my experience are nowhere in evidence on our campuses when they aren't required to be in class or at a department meeting or office hours.  Four, three and even two-day workweeks on campus are all too common in my experience.  This phenomenon contributes to inflated costs of instruction and skepticism in the eyes of both higher ed's critics in government and business, and among more savvy students and parents.

In an earlier age of barbarity, the knights of the round table were said to gather annually to renew their vows.  Something like that renewal is required now.  

As we labor to improve student recruitment and retention, raise funds, and find creative ways to make our campuses profitable, we must remember that we are tax exempt because we are chartered to serve our society and its citizenry.  I use that word "citizenry" deliberately.  While employability is an essential attribute of a student's higher education, citizenship is of equal importance.  In focusing on the former, we mustn't lose site of or commitment to the latter.  They are not incompatible.  They are an essential combination for the future of our republic.

Faculty, too, must recommit.  The quest for ever-lighter teaching workloads, course releases, and online teaching assignments... all of which contribute to the phenomenon of the absentee prof... must be sacrificed to a philosophy of engaged learning.  

This advice presumes a population of students who still crave a multi-dimensional college experience as opposed to two years of community college commuting, supplemented by a menu of distance-learning experiences online.  And this in turn presumes we are still capable of providing the traditional college experience in an affordable context.

And all of this presumes that the search for truth is a collective enterprise, as is democracy itself. "The university cannot content itself with the sort of cultivation that takes place in walled gardens."  Nor can we content ourselves with cultivation exclusively in cyberspace.  We know now --- if there ever was doubt --- that social media facilitate shouts and echoes... but not meaningful dialogue... not meaningful discourse... in other words, not the quest for truth.  The campus as forum... the faculty as guides and mentors... all of us in higher ed as partners with our students in the engaged-learning enterprise... all of us as truth seekers and truth speakers... will justify our continued existence in this new era of disruption within and beyond our institutions.

What if Congressman Adam Schiff is right?

In the wake of the accusation --- via a tweet, of course --- that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, Congressman Schiff has asked an interesting question.

If he's correct, the psychiatrists and psychologists on our college campuses may be the most important assets we higher ed folks have in our fight for truth, justice and the American way.

This leads me this morning to speculate on the question: is there such a thing as an otherwise perfectly sane person, who simply cannot distinguish truth from fiction?

Rifling through my own memory bank, I can recall a guy who worked for me way back in the days when I was the public information officer for the Great Lakes (9th) Coast Guard District.  In case he's still alive out there, perhaps in some old-sailors' home, let me call him "Sam."

Sam was a photographer's mate --- an enlisted man whose rating was photographer.  He told me some amazing stories over the years.  For example, he claimed that just days after reenlisting for another four years in Charlie Gulf, he was offered a job with LIFE Magazine.  He had many other such tall tales, which he shared readily with anyone who would listen.  His mates and I finally concluded that he was sincere in his belief that every one of these stretches was God's own truth.  Since Sam was harmless, and seemed happy in his illusions, we never called him on it.

A little cursory research reveals that there are number of gradations of "big time" liars:

A sociopath is defined this way: "A sociopath is typically defined as someone who lies incessantly to get their way and does so with little concern for others. A sociopath is often goal-oriented (i.e., lying is focused—it is done to get one’s way). Sociopaths have little regard or respect for the rights and feelings of others. Sociopaths are often charming and charismatic, but they use their talented social skills in manipulative and self-centered ways."

A compulsive liar this way:  "A compulsive liar is defined as someone who lies out of habit. Lying is their normal and reflexive way of responding to questions. Compulsive liars bend the truth about everything, large and small. For a compulsive liar, telling the truth is very awkward and uncomfortable while lying feels right. Compulsive lying is usually thought to develop in early childhood, due to being placed in an environment where lying was necessary. For the most part, compulsive liars are not overly manipulative and cunning (unlike sociopaths), rather they simply lie out of habit—an automatic response which is hard to break and one that takes its toll on a relationship."

I think most of us, who do not swallow all his prevarications whole, have assumed that you-know-who is one or both of the above.

Representative Schiff has suggested that he may be something rather more than that.  It seems to be something like this: "Intentional dissimulation...is associated with a range of diagnoses, such as antisocial, borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. When it comes to compulsive liars, says Charles Ford, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama Birmingham, 'words seem to flow out of their mouths without them thinking about it.' Ford, the author of Lies! Lies!! Lies!!! The Psychology of Deceit, says that pathological liars may slide easily from the notion that something could have happened to the conviction that it did. When pressed, many will admit what they are saying isn't true."

His mates and I never pressed Sam.  We were too kind.  We can't be so kind now.

Professor Ford and others in his field certainly have a wonderful opportunity to expand their researches in the four years that 'lie' in front of us.  And as teachers, they should take very seriously their responsibility to educate the rest of us.  Understanding the pathology of the pathological liar and developing counter-strategies may be one of our most important collective tasks facing those of us who are in higher education.

Is it time to jettison remedial classes?

An article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education points up the value of peer tutoring in getting students through their remedial classes.  Referring to one such "peer mentor" (aka student tutor), the article states, "The paid peer-mentorship program in which she participates is part of a growing number of support services nationwide that are aimed at reducing the alarming dropout rates among students who start out in remedial courses."

But how about we take this idea a big step farther?  A recent study at CUNY strongly supports the growing belief that the problem lies in the remedial courses themselves.  Especially with regard to members of minority (underrepresented) student populations, the data indicates that simply labeling the courses "remedial" stigmatizes the students in their own minds and thus reduces the odds of their ever completing college.

Instead, as suggested by the CUNY experiment, at my own institution we are mainstreaming at-risk freshmen directly into core math and comp courses.  Each section of each course has an embedded peer tutor, who takes the class right along with the freshmen.  S/he then conducts a mandatory one-hour tutoring session each week for the at-risk population.  Others in the class are also welcome to attend.  And for those needing a bigger dose of support, one-on-one tutoring appointments can be made in the tutoring center.

You can access the published article about the CUNY study via this url.

How to bring back American manufacturing jobs... NOT!

This story appeared in yesterday's Huffington Post:

"After green lighting the continuation of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline in an executive order January 24th, President Trump declared as recently as last week that the pipeline had to use American made steel 'or we’re not building one.

"But on Friday, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that the directive would apply only to new pipelines or those currently undergoing repair. That sharp reversal now paves the way for the use of a stockpile of steel manufactured in Canada by a subsidiary of Evraz, a company in which Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich owns nearly a one/third stake."

Meanwhile, in the grand tradition of Harry Houdini, the President of the United States issued a series of presidential tweets (I can't believe I'm writing that) to the effect that the Obama Administration tapped his phone during the campaign.  Of course, as always, 140 characters per tweet leaves no room for any proof.  The director of the FBI has already repudiated the charge.  Even Fox News has questioned the veracity of the claim.

No matter... it serve POTUS's purpose: don't look over here, where I am hiding the red ball in my right hands.  Look over there at my left hand... see nothing up my sleeve.

What can higher education do about this perfidy?  A good start has been the series of seminars and workshops on fake news, such as this one:

Who Says So?

Fake News and Responsible Citizenship

This symposium will provide students with historical and political context for understanding fake, misleading and highly ideological news. Speakers will discuss the political conditions that lead to the proliferation of fake news and what the consequences are; they will also explain what distinguishes fake and misleading news from responsible and reliable news gathering. Library faculty will provide students with concrete tools to recognize fake news and fact check media sources.

 

Sponsored by the Political Science Department, the Communication and Journalism Department, and the Rider University Libraries.

We need to be doing more of the same all across America's college campuses.  And we need to keep right on doing it, so long as POTUS continues tweeting his phony stories... which, friends, may be a very long time.

The more things change...

In the 1970s, when I was the Director of University Communication at my alma matter, Case Western Reserve University, the students shouted down William Shockley, when he tried to speak on campus.

Credited as the father of the transistor, Shockley, like so many geniuses from Einstein to Gates, became convinced he knew a lot more than just his particular scientific expertise.  "Late in his life, Shockley became intensely interested in questions of race, human intelligence, and eugenics. He thought this work was important to the genetic future of the human species and came to describe it as the most important work of his career, even though expressing his views damaged his reputation. Shockley argued that a higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent was having a dysgenic effect, and that a drop in average intelligence would ultimately lead to a decline in civilization. On a debate with Afro-centrist Frances Welsing he responded to a question as to whether black people are intellectually inferior because of their racial heredity with the following statement:

My research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro's intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in the environment.

Shockley's published writings and lectures to scientific organizations on this topic were partly based on the writings of psychologist Cyril Burt and were funded by the Pioneer Fund. Shockley also proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization."

Well, the civil rights movement survived Shockley, who no doubt would have been shocked, had he lived to see Barack Obama serve two terms as our (highly competent) president.  Meanwhile, his being booed off the stage at CWRU is long forgotten.  But it should not be forgotten, because we seem to continue to make the same mistake.

I'm referring to a story in today's Inside Higher Ed about students at Middlebury College shouting Charles Murray off the stage.  "Murray had been invited by Middlebury's student group affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank at which Murray is a scholar. Many of his writings are controversial, but perhaps none more than The Bell Curve, a book that linked intelligence and race and that has been widely condemned by many social scientists (even as Murray has been supported by others)."

Murray was able to be heard via closed circuit TV after his exit stage left.  But his censorship is another small stain on higher education's record as a bastion of free speech, just like the Shockley incident way back in the seventies.

As I have repeatedly asserted in this space, we live in an age of fake news, flat out lies and infotainment.  Witness Bill Maher's comment last week about the media's abandonment of real news in favor of fluff stories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXWFYiBX9HM


Maher eloquently takes the press to task for reporting "bullshit."  And he hits that nail squarely on the head.

So who is left:  we are.  Higher Education... a vast, sprawling, diverse, and powerful force... we are thousands of islands of truth-seekers in the sea of "bullshit," to borrow Maher's word.

But to play that role effectively, we have to respect academic freedom and free speech for all, not just those with whom we agree.

And so, this morning I am sorry to see the Middlebury story in the news.  I am sorry to see that with respect to certain taboo topics, the more things change the more they remain the same on our campuses.

In the (maybe not so) new millennium, anthropologists find themselves on both sides of the political spectrum

Nine years ago I published this article about anthropologists working with American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today, Inside Higher Ed reports, "The American Anthropological Association has about 10,000 members, with one-fifth of them living outside the United States.
Many of the association’s members both in and outside the United States conduct research concerning immigrants and migrant populations, so they are unsurprisingly opposed to President Trump’s ban on travel -- since blocked by federal courts -- from seven majority-Muslim countries. And the organization's membership is unabashedly left-leaning over all.
The association’s leadership in Arlington, Va., is plotting how to channel the energy of members into constructive work under the Trump administration and a Republican Congress."

The article continues, "Last month, after the Idaho House education committee approved new science standards that deleted mentions of climate change and human impact on the environment, the association coordinated an op-ed by the anthropology department chairs at the state’s three largest universities that spoke out in favor of climate change education. The Senate education committee discussed the standards last week. And an AAA member, University of New Mexico anthropologist Valorie Aquino, is one of the organizers of the March for Science."

The discipline's principal association lists four main topics of concern:

1. Climate change
2. Health disparities
3. Social justice
4. Cultural heritage protection

Sounds like a pretty liberal agenda, all right.  Back when I wrote my article, called "My Kind of College Professors,"  the association and many of its members wrung their hands about colleagues being among the 'boots on the ground' in the two war zones.  This hand-wringing has persisted down to the present day.  Last year, American Anthropological Society members narrowly declined to boycott Israeli.  This suggests that anthropologists continue to straddle both sides of the political divide, as was the case in '08, when I published my piece.

And all this political-ethical-professional debate is much more than just academic "insider's baseball."  Anthropology remains in the 21st one of the most relevant of the liberal arts in a (very) real-world sense.