Feeling oh-so-oppressed as usual, student conservatives at Berkeley decry the 7-1 Dem-to-GOP ratio among Humanities and Social Science profs nationwide. Tsk, tsk…they say it like it’s such a bad thing. Well, if you’d prefer that we lefties work elsewhere than academia — say, in government — y’all know how to vote next time.
Category: Ivory Tower
That’s My President.
“He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that.” Harvard Business School professor Yoshi Tsurumi remembers young Dubya, and, yes, even back then he was a profile in character and courage. “[H]e was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got in. He said, ‘My dad has good friends.'”
After the Fall.
“When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he was struck by Americans’ conviction that ‘they are the only religious, enlightened, and free people,’ and ‘form a species apart from the rest of the human race.’ Yet American independence was proclaimed by men anxious to demonstrate ‘a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.’…[I]t is our task to insist that the study of [American] history should transcend boundaries rather than reinforcing or reproducing them.” Eric Foner, in a wide-ranging 2003 essay recently posted on HNN, contemplates the direction of American history after 9/11.
Agents of Empire.
“Democracy matters are frightening in our time precisely because the three dominant dogmas of free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and escalating authoritarianism are snuffing out the democratic impulses that are so vital for the deepening and spread of democracy in the world. In short, we are experiencing the sad American imperial devouring of American democracy.” By way of Rebecca’s Pocket and DangerousMeta, Princeton philosopher (and Matrix Elder) Cornel West weighs in on the dangers of Dubyaism.
Up From Theory.
“The problem of theory was never the philosophy it drew on but the absence of a public forum to criticize it, expand it for intelligent adults, and correct it. The return of the linking intellectuals — adept in philosophical thought but not beholden to the academy — could restore a heritage of speaking to the public about the professors, and, more importantly, could get the professors speaking honestly and intelligibly to us.” Mark Greif, an old college friend of mine, discusses the Death of Theory in The American Prospect. Compared to most other academic disciplines, American historians seem to have side-stepped the worst excesses of echo-chamber theorizing…but it can seem a different world not all that far away.
Blog Implosion.
Steve at Now This provides quality commentary on Dave Winer’s recent weblog meltdown, which I discovered while trying to access Tomb of Horrors. Since Winer has successfully parlayed his whole self-promoting Father of Weblogs schtick into a cushy Ivy League sinecure, you’d think he at least give all those blogs an early warning before he shut ’em down (or, perhaps, convince fair Harvard to pony up some server space.) Still, acting like a self-interested jerk has been Winer’s M.O. for years, so I guess something like this wasn’t unexpected. Update: Winer gets worse.
All Over You.
“You are able to take an idea and give it form: the idea that Harlem has hands, feet are flaming, lips are cracked and country, hail hammers and skies crack poems.” In a burst of NY Times Dylanania, Jonathan Lethem reviews Dylan’s Vision of Sin, the new tome of poetry criticism by acclaimed Oxford Professor Christopher Ricks, while Lucinda Williams pays her own respects to Robert Zimmerman. And, elsewhere in the music-themed Book Review this week, Time politico and Primary Colors author Joe Klein proclaims his fondness for Wilco.
Skull & Bones to Skill & Brains..
Via a friend and colleague in the program, Alan Brinkley examines the demise of the old-boy-network in Ivy League admissions for The New Republic.
No man can serve two masters
, but he can hang them on the wall. I finally got around to picking up and framing my M.Phil, the boon of the orals experience, yesterday. Unfortunately, it may take a PhD to figure out — or care about — the difference between a Master of Arts in History and a Master of Philosophy in History. But, hey, two pieces of paper with my name on them…that’s gotta mean something, right?
State of the Union.
By the way, for those of you who are interested, I’ve posted my and Rick Perlstein‘s lengthy responses on the Columbia union issue in the comments thread of last week’s post.