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I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened. But it certainly looks like UC police began beating unarmed and peaceful students in Berkeley this afternoon.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, in the unfortunately named Happy Valley, students apparently are rioting to protest the ouster of Joe Paterno.
Update:
By the way, this has been somewhat in the public record since April. Where was the media? ESPN? Hello?
Herman Cain, among his many insane ramblings over the past few days, apparently suggested that his face should be on Mt. Rushmore. Well, fair enough. (Though, having visited the monument last summer, I have to admit that I found it more affecting than I expected. I mean, it’s very big. And by the way, Lincoln but no FDR, amiright? No, seriously, there was something about the scale of the president’s faces, the setting in which they’re carved, and the history of dispossession surrounding the place that left me feeling a bit overwhelmed by the power of the state to shape the landscape of American memory.)
Anyway, Michelle Bachmann picked up the ball and ran with it. To her credit, she didn’t suggest that she should join Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt (Teddy — aka, “The Real Man’s Roosevelt”), and Lincoln. Her pick? James Garfield. Wait, what? Garfield? My colleague, Kathy Olmsted, replied to this news by asking, “Is that the only president she could think of?” Yes, apparently so. And while I don’t think this disqualifies Ms. Bachmann from the presidency, it should disqualify her from tenure in one of the better history departments near you. Which is to say, don’t worry, Newt! You’re still the only serious scholar in the Republican field!
UPDATE: post updated with more Ericness.
Forgive me for casting aside studied indifference and blog-standard irony. And forgive me also for seeing in tragedy a potential opportunity. But I think the horrifying situation at Penn State suggests that it’s time to acknowledge that big-time college football is a net loser for universities.
Forget that most programs hemorrhage money. Forget that the players are typically African-American, typically don’t graduate, and are typically put in harm’s way for the entertainment of wealthy donors who are typically white. Forget that academic standards are rejiggered or ignored so that these young men can be admitted to play football. Forget that the BCS isn’t a meritocracy that rewards excellence so much as an oligopoly that protects its most important members. Forget that college football has always oozed corruption. Forget that football coaches wield extraordinary, even frightening, power on campuses. Forget that it’s insane that universities provide — free of charge! — the NFL with a minor league system.
And just remember that at a time of real peril for higher education, with budgets being slashed and classrooms crumbling, we are told, again and again, that we must focus on the core mission of the university. Then ask, “Is big-time college football part of the core mission of the university? Should it be?”
Front to back: Sanger, sure; Carr; eh, okay; Letters, no; Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me, yes; Bruni, no, any of his restaurant reviews; Murphy, meh; McFadden, Tom Tomorrow is better; Seidel, no, “Fake semi-hipster sociology”; Shourd, yes, but also “Ohmigod, you mean bad things happen in the US, too? Who could have imagined? My stars”; Emanuel, no, “No one understands health care but me”; McGrath, no, having “Lindsay Lohan” tattooed on your forehead; Data Points, no, “Look! The ‘Fall of the Yuan Dynasty’ has critical and important implications for today’s world. Gee, we’re brainy”; Edsall, sure; Galston, no, reading other pieces advocating policies that will never, ever, ever, never get established in the US; Gessen, no, “Wow, those Russians are wacky. And the Chinese, too”; Editorials, Jesus Christ, no; Week Ahead, no, “Russians, Asians, and Ohioans are sure dangerous”; Kristof, sigh, no, reading John Dewey’s “The School and Social Progress“; Friedman, NOFUCKINGNO, Being held down while pages from The World is Flat are fed to you; Dowd, do I have really have to come up with a way to say no emphatically enough that your eyes water? Being stabbed in the brain with the stiletto heels of the Manolo Blahniks Dowd waxes on about as if they meant something and were not really the kind of consumerist name dropping porn that makes the Pulitzer Committee weep as they read and wonder about the process for revoking an award; Backhouse and Bateman, no, “Hey, we just noticed that economists have no idea what they’re saying”; Letters to the Public, no, “The Times is corrupt/compromised/besides the point/elitist”; Douthat, the kind of deep space NO that accelerates past light speed, confuses CERN scientists, and generally threatens the end of the universe, “Our elites are TOO smart, I’M NOT FUCKING KIDDING HE’S ACTUALLY SAYING THIS and that’s the root of all our problems, and those wise earthy Republican voters are seeking JESUS I THINK MY EYES ARE BLEEDING NOW instinctive humble leaders to take over, but oh sadness Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain,” Every single thing possible in all the universes.
Anthony Grafton on the crisis (“if there is a crisis,” as 1984-era Hal Riney would say) in higher education. One thing that’s sure: the effort to crack into the top athletic tier isn’t the right answer. At least, it’s not the answer if the question is, “how do you make colleges better?”
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? The system runs, in part, on its failures. Administrators count on the tuition paid, from borrowed money, by undergraduates who they know will drop out before they use up many services. To provide teaching they exploit instructors still in graduate school, many of whom they know will also drop out and not demand tenure-track jobs. Faculty, once they have found a berth, often become blind to the problems and deaf to the cries of their own indentured students. And even where the will to do better is present, the means are often used for very different ends.
In many universities, finally, the sideshows have taken over the big tent. Competitive sports consume vast amounts of energy and money, some of which could be used to improve conditions for students. It’s hard not to be miserable when watching what pursuit of football glory has done to Rutgers, which has many excellent departments and should be—given the wealth of New Jersey—an East Coast Berkeley or Michigan. The university spends $26.9 million a year subsidizing its athletic programs. Meanwhile faculty salaries have been capped and raises canceled across the board. Desk telephones were recently removed from the offices of the historians. Repairs have been postponed, and classroom buildings, in constant use from early morning until late at night, have become shabbier and shabbier.
When critics argued that it made no sense to support football at the expense of teaching, an official spokesman replied: “The university’s direct support to athletics represents only about 1 percent of the Rutgers budget.” Presumably he counted on readers not to know that in any large organization’s budget, the entire amount of money that is not committed years in advance is no more than 1 or 2 percent—or, to put it more specifically, that athletics has swallowed the money that could otherwise have been used to improve the university’s core activities. Christopher Newfield is not the only sober, informed observer who believes that political elites are deliberately attacking middle-class education.
Casting about last night for books that the older boy* might want to read, I began thinking about S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders as a possible candidate. Then, while looking around the web for reminders of its contents — too sexxxy? too violent? — I discovered that Ms. Hinton** was in her teens when she wrote the book. “That’s remarkable,” thought I. I then remembered the moment that I learned, shortly after reading Rumble Fish in fifth grade, that she was a she rather than the he that I had supposed. I share this anecdote not because it’s important but because the older boy only recently grilled me about why J.K. Rowling uses her initials rather than revealing her gender. “The patriarchy,” I explained with a sad nod. He understood.
Anyway, if you can think of books suitable for a somewhat precocious nine-year-old, that would be wonderful. Said books can even be written by women.
* He’s nine.
** House style.
Major George Fielding Eliot, in the New York Herald Tribune, 4/14/45, in an article titled as this post is:
Lincoln gave his life that the Union might be preserved; he died before he knew that, from the wreck of war, a stronger and more enduring Union would arise. Franklin Roosevelt gave his life that a greater Union—a Union of all peace-loving peoples to achieve peace and guard the hard-won heritage of freedom—might rise from the desolation of a more terrible war than Lincoln ever imagined. He, too, died before he saw the fulfillment of his vision. To us who remain behind, he left the heritage and the responsibility of that vision, that bright hope from which his purpose never turned aside.
Congressman Brent Spence of Kentucky on how to negotiate when approached with amendments to the Bretton Woods bill in 1945.
I wouldn’t agree to anything…. You see, if we accept something now it puts us just in the same position as if we hadn’t accepted it…. Every amendment we accept kind of weakens us. [W]e might say, ‘Well, we’ll accept them if that’s all the amendments.’ But if we are going to have to fight it out, we just as well fight it out on all of them.
Could someone explain this to the people in the White House, please?
(Emphasis added.)
The port of Oakland is occupied, and shipping operations have stopped. It was a “massive general strike” and “mostly peaceful” though two pedestrians were hit by a silver Mercedes “moving the crowd”. It’s said to be “the first general strike called in Oakland since 1946“. That one began when police helped nonunion workers break a picket line. It lasted two and a half days, and ended when the AFL reached an agreement with the city that the Oakland Police would “refrain from taking sides in any issue between labor and management.”1
1“Oakland General Strike, Costing Millions, Ends.” LAT 12/6/46, p. 1.
Stephen King’s rules for time travel, developed with the help of “heavyweight historians.”
Your family would like you to spend more time with them:
A new Suffolk University poll in Florida finds President Obama struggling in the low 40% range in head-to-head matchups with Mitt Romney and Herman Cain, he rockets to 50% when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is added to the Democratic ticket.
From here.
This advice on business writing, although pitched against academic writing, actually seems like pretty sound advice for academics, except maybe for the advice to use “I” and “you”. But: don’t assume a captive audience, get to the point, cut, especially cut fancy words, and it’s okay to begin sentences with conjunctions—all of that sounds pretty good.
The increase of university tuition will disproportionately impact the poor, and therefore violates your right to education without discrimination—so says a suit filed in Britain. Seems worth a try.
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