harmonicminer

The other kind of IED (intermittent explosive disorder)
Much more at the link.

The New York Times says that a faculty member at the University of Alabama killed 3 and wounded 6 others after being denied tenure at the biology department. Circumstantial evidence suggested that she was upset at what she believed was unfair treatment. The suspect apparently “had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure”, and the NYT quoted one source as saying “she began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair.”

I’ve been to some tense faculty meetings. Meetings with outcomes that had the potential to really change people’s lives who were involved, in one way or another.

So far I haven’t had to duck and cover because somebody started shooting.  But it is starting to seem that the only people who respect the “gun-free zones” on campus are the victims.

Maybe I should start ordering my hoodies to be Kevlar-lined.

Just in case a deranged post-modern prof who gives feminist readings to medieval French poetry happens to go postal.

The previous post in this series is here.

This post is less about the Left AT Christian Universities than it is about the pressures of the Left ON Christian Universities, although the latter is mostly made possible by the presence of the former.  That is, the Left outside of Christian Universities will only be able to pressure them into making concessions with the help of Leftists inside those institutions who encourage leaders to succumb to the pressure.

Blacklisting a Christian University Much more at the link.

According to the Langley Advance, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the Canadian version of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), has issued a report stating that Christian universities fail to provide faculty members with academic freedom. Specifically the report places Trinity Western University in British Columbia on its list of universities and colleges that have a faith or ideological test as a condition of employment.

There are also professional academic organizations in the USA that are considering taking the position that universities may not require any particular beliefs or lifestyle commitments on the part of employees or job applicants.   This is especially humorous since there are all kinds of “unofficial litmus tests” that virtually any faculty member must accept in order to be hired in the modern university.   Those tests are defended with positively religious fervor, though they are not religious in nature.  Far from it.

Try to get in a job in a university these days if you say in the job interview that you don’t think “diversity” should be a higher value for the university than simply getting the most competent faculty and best prepared students it can get.

It would be wise not to volunteer in the job interview that you think anthropogenic global warming is an enormous scam.

If you happen to think that the Iraq war was a proper use of American military power, it would be wise not to say so until you have tenure.

Do you think that God created human beings in a special act of creation (whether you are an “old earth” creationist, a “young earth” creationist, an “intelligent design” proponent, etc.)?  Just don’t bring it up, and sidestep any questions that may touch on it.

Do you think Sarah Palin would have been better for the USA than Barrack Obama?  Unless you desire to be laughed at as you exit your unsuccessful job interview, don’t let on.

Do you think economic growth and the spread of capitalism is a better aid program for the third world than permanent entitlements in the form of foreign aid?  Better not say so.

Do you think that God’s Word in scripture means pretty much what it says, and that historical understandings of its theological and moral content are correct?  Learn to beat the quasi-polygraph on this one, since, obviously, only bigots and haters believe this.

There are pieties to which all must make obeisance in the world of academia, and they are pretty much the exact reverse of the positions just stated.  Sadly, these same pieties may be defended by all too many in Christian universities as well, and defended more vigorously, at times, than the bedrock commitments one would have thought more central to their mission.

The only question remaining is if Christian universities are going to capitulate to the very real pressures that come along with seeking respectability in the eyes of the secular academic world.   When Christian universities do succumb, it isn’t really the pressures from outside that make it happen….  it’s the pressure from inside.

The scary thing is that those applying that pressure will be quoting scripture as they do it.

The next post in this series is here.

Here is a post that began as a facebook discussion with my friend Kirsten…  and since I can’t bear to type anything and only use it once, read on.  Warning:  in this discussion, the labels “liberal” and “conservative” must be understood historically.  Modern “conservatives” believe about the same things as 18th- and 19th-century “liberals.”  Modern “liberals” are often somewhere on the spectrum between late 19th-century “progressives” and 19th-century “socialists.”  In the 18th century, “conservatives” were those who wanted to maintain the governing status quo involving royalty, aristocratic privilege, and the like, bearing no resemblance to modern “conservatives.”  So watch your head, or you might bump on on a low hanging ideological pipe.

In a lengthy article that purports to report on sociological research into the indeological predispositions of university faculty and people’s reactions to them, we are reminded that Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left. (Much more at the link.)

The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals — and so few conservatives — want to be professors.

A pair of sociologists think they may have an answer: typecasting. Conjure up the classic image of a humanities or social sciences professor, the fields where the imbalance is greatest: tweed jacket, pipe, nerdy, longwinded, secular — and liberal. Even though that may be an outdated stereotype, it influences younger people’s ideas about what they want to be when they grow up.

At least it’s nice that the NYTimes acknowledges that academics are mostly leftists.  Now if only they admitted the same about the mainstream media, and themselves, we’d be in a more honest place.  In any case, the conjecture here only explains (to some extent) why academia remains leftist. It doesn’t explain how it got that way, except with a pretty thin reference to reaction to the New Deal.

As is often the case with attempts at sociological explanation, the central roles of ideas and values are shunted aside in favor of demographics. Ask yourself this: without a Marx or Nietsche in the history of ideas, would the academic establishment have trended left? What if the favorite ideas of the left had not developed in the 19th century? They didn’t HAVE to develop then. They just did.

What if Dewey had not influenced the public educational establishment as he did?  What if progressive politics had not found a home in activist universities? 

Ideas have consequences. The leftist academic establishment, all the while that it derides the notion of “progress” in society, still thinks its ideas are better than the old ones that were replaced… all the while denying that there is a universal standard by which they can be judged “better”…. but nevertheless being quite confident that there really aren’t such things as right and wrong, God and Satan, etc.  Except, of course, in the case of global warming deniers, who clearly are destined for the pit of Hell.

I think the nature of the ideas explains much more than demographic “typing.”  People have always been looking for two things: ways to get power over others, and ways to maximize personal freedom for themselves.  Very, very much of the liberal left is well-described by that.

The case of sociology is especially instructive, given that from the beginning it was a social/political agenda masquerading as an academic discipline.

Virginia Tech is strongly committed to diversity.   It is not “academics honoring diversity” precisely because VTech has place diversity on the very top rung of values, below which all other values must fall, whatever protestations of academic ambition may by made.

Virginia Tech Reasserts ‘Diversity’ Folly

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University—better known as Virginia Tech—is in the midst of an extraordinary campaign to impose a comprehensive regime focusedon “diversity.” Reading through Virginia Tech’s official documents since March is something like watching a colonial power laying out a plan to force its language, culture, laws, religion, and ideals on a subject people. The put-upon natives in this case are, first of all, the faculty of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. But the imperial power, of course, doesn’t mean to stop with subordinating the faculty chiefs to the Empire. The rule of Diversity must ultimately extend to every student and every employee.

Diversity? It must surely strike most readers that the ideological campaign for diversity on campus is by this point rather old-fashioned. Diversity as a rallying cry for the campus left took its initial impulse from Justice Lewis Powell’s opinion in the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1978 case, Bakke v. The Regents of the University of California. Powell’s remarks weren’t supported by any other justice and did not have the force of law, but they nonetheless suggested a rationale for using racial preferences in college admissions. A racially diverse college classroom, in Powell’s opinion, was bound to be a more pedagogically enriching one, since it stood to reason that people of different races would learn from each other.
……………………….

We draw attention to this university once again, however, not as a case study in vapid strategizing. Rather, it serves as a bookend to the whole diversity movement. Marx’s famous remark that great events and personalities in world history repeat themselves, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce,” seems apt. Virginia Tech, a large regional university known more for its football program and a series of horrific killings, has chosen to play out a spent ideology to its final dregs. That it is does so in the delusion that it is somehow on the cutting edge of academic innovation is what makes this farce.

Farces are not without their victims. Virginia Tech is an institution of modest academic standing that seems intent on winning a certain kind of race to the bottom. Faculty members there have privately reassured us that the administrators aren’t as crazy as they sound. They are just playing the cards that they think they need to. It’s an excuse I don’t buy. The administrators have wrapped themselves in such fervent diversity rhetoric that we have to take them at their word. They may have started off as cynical players, but they are now totally invested in this folly and are surrounded with minions who are clearly true believers.

So the Virginia Tech story does seem worth yet another look. A large state university is spiraling downward into an anti-intellectual orthodoxy, and as it plummets it is busy praising its ability to take flight.

This is the beginning and ending of an article that is well worth reading in its entirety, if you want to understand the origins of the modern diversity movement.

The previous post in this series is here.

There is very little here with which to disagree, so I present in its entirety this post at BLOG and MABLOG

Carl Henry once said, “If evangelicals lose the battle for the mind of contemporary man it will be in their own colleges.” That’s the kind of prophetic and semi-inscrutable statement that we could use a lot more of, and which unfortunately, we don’t hear a very much any more. Since Henry wrote those words, the tide of the battle to which he referred has generally gone against us, and it was grim in his time. There are some hopeful signs here and there, but by and large, the Christian establishment for higher education has presented to a disintegrating world mere echoes of that disintegration, instead of a robust alternative to it. The academic fads that tear through the secular halls of learning stroll through our halls of learning. The virulent forms of unbelief that plague the postmodern mind commend themselves (always in milder forms) to us. We have come to believe that Christian counterculture consists of driving down the road to perdition at a slower rate of speed. But slow damnation is not the biblical alternative. The higher education of evangelicalism resembles the unfortunate politician that Winston Churchill once compared to a seat cushion — he always bore the impress of the last person who sat on him.

Henry again. “My guess would be that on balance the secular universities more effectively communicate humanism than many of our religious colleges succeed in communicating biblical theism.” They catechize their own more effectively than we do. They train their next generation in the tenets of their faith more rigorously than we do.

When the secular great ones assemble in their magnificent banquets, and a faithful believer comes into their hall, his presence will generally take one of two forms. Either he will attend as John the Baptist did, with his head on a platter, or he will attend as Daniel did, in order to translate the words of judgment that were written on the walls by a celestial hand. But we show up with all the confidence of a leper in a rented tux two sizes too large.

This is all very general, so let me mention a few specific areas where Christian higher education has lost its bearings and consequently its way. Our institutions (generally) do not exhibit biblical faith and fidelity on matters of: human sexuality that reflects God’s image, male and female; the doctrine of biblical creation; the meaning of history and the glory of Christendom; the serious idolatry of Enlightenment categories; the risible idolatries of postmodern rejection of Enlightenment categories; and the foundational need for Christian colleges to be free of financial entanglements with the secular state. For starters.

In short, Christian higher education no longer believes that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world. Having begun with Carl Henry, let me conclude with another of his most trenchant observations.

“The intellectual decision most urgently facing humanity in our time is whether to acknowledge or disown Jesus Christ as the hope of the world and whether Christian values are to be the arbiter of human civilization in the present instead of only in the final judgment of men and nations.”

And so let me propose a little thought experiment. Suppose that glorious statement above were to be presented to the board of trustees of every Christian seminary, college and university in North America, as well as to every faculty senate, and suppose it were presented for a straight up or down vote. How would the vote go? How would the truth fare? Exactly, and therein lies our problem. And the only way out is repentance.

So, now I am prepared to answer the question posed in the title of this post, “Does the secular Left believe its faith more firmly than the Christian academy believes its own?”

The answer? It depends on what you mean by the notion of “the faith of the Christian academy.”

And therein lies the problem, since, it seems, no one is quite sure these days.  And sadly, with all of that, there seem to be all too many matters of essentially complete agreement between the Christian academy and the secular Left at secular institutions.  Those matters of agreement seem to be far more determinedly defended by Christian academics than the things that make them distinctively Christian.  We can talk about whether Jesus’ message and life were more about personal salvation or corporate lifestyle and social justice, but woe to anyone who questions the underpinnings of anyone’s secularly defined disciplinary methodology, or the theory of knowledge that underlays it.  After all, some things are just too important to trifle with.

Did Jesus rise from the dead?  It depends on what you mean by “rise from the dead.”    If Jesus rose from the dead, does that matter to us today?  It depends on what you mean by “matter.”  Or maybe “today.”  Or “us.”  Or even “Jesus.”

But in some quarters, “diversity” and multiculturalism are without doubt absolutely required perspectives, more or less without nuance, for all good Christians who are listening to the Holy Spirit.

Whatever the Holy Spirit may actually be, I mean.  And whatever you mean by “Christian.”

H/T:  Melody

The next post in this series is here.

Vicious Jew-Hatred Wins Center Stage at UC Irvine

To see a firsthand example of Islamic fundamentalist anti-Semitism, you need look no further than the University of California, Irvine.The campus’ Muslim Student Union is nationally infamous for their annual anti-Israel week (which they unsuccessfully christen “Palestine Awareness” week) and for the vitriolic anti-Semitic language of some of their speakers.

This comes as no surprise, of course. In most modern universities, disdain for Israel is more or less de rigueur. Israel is routinely compared to apartheid South Africa, deemed racist (with UN connivance, of course, at “human rights” conferences dominated by Islamist nations), and even compared to Nazi Germany.

When will anti-Semitism show up as a topic during “Justice Week” at a university near you? Probably not anytime soon, because injustices done to Jews or Israelis appear to be “stealthed,” and just don’t show up on the academic radar.

Some of have suggested that “conservative sociology” is an oxymoron.  Sociology at most universities, even ostensibly more conservative “Christian” universities, is essentially a free bully pulpit for faculty bent on “progressive” social change, meaning let’s all move Left in quick march, double-time.  That’s the norm, like it or not.  It seems that having Karl Marx as one of the founders of your discipline does have a certain effect.  Here are a few excerpts from a very interesting conversation between some “conservative sociologists” on the topic (conservative being a relative term, of course).  But compared to the run of the mill sociology prof, these folks do seem a bit more reasonable, and I recommend the whole thing for a fuller flavor:

Continue reading “Is there such a thing as conservative sociology?”

Victory for Freedom of Conscience at Grand Valley State University: Music Department Axes Political Litmus Test

Grand Valley State University (GVSU) has promised to remove “demonstrated commitment to the principles of diversity” from the stated job requirements for prospective faculty seeking appointment to GVSU’s Department of Music. The department will restate its requirements in terms of relevant experience, not vaguely worded personal commitments regarding a controversial political issue. The change, which came after FIRE asked GVSU to restore freedom of conscience on its campus, is a fresh reminder to public universities that they cannot require prospective faculty to demonstrate personal commitment to “the principles of diversity,” any more than they can require a commitment to “patriotism,” “objectivism,” or “communalism.”

This is exactly right, of course.

Yet, even with this result at GVSU, a great many college and universities insist on clauses like this in job announcements, contracts, evaluative mechanisms, syllabi, etc. Diversity is the new green mud. When all the other monkeys in the cage are rubbing themselves with green mud, you’d better start scooping it up yourself.  Monkeys caught not wearing green mud will be disciplined.

Since diversity is so thoroughly associated with the Left, such clauses amount to a demand that all viable candidates must be Leftists, or pretend to be.

The previous post in this series is here.

From the Cardinal Newman Society

A national Catholic higher education organization has identified 10 Catholic colleges and universities that are promoting student internships with organizations whose missions or activities are directly opposed to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church, including on fundamental issues such as abortion and marriage.

“This discovery validates the concerns of so many thousands of faithful Catholic parents and students, that public scandals at Catholic colleges are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. “Under what definition of ‘Catholic education’ do students receive academic credit to work for leading pro-abortion organizations?”

Last week, CNS wrote to the presidents of these colleges and universities to inform them of the problems with their internship programs. None have yet indicated that they will take steps to remedy the problems.

The internship programs—along with concerns about theological dissent, weakening academic standards and declining campus culture at many Catholic colleges and universities—help explain why most students and recent graduates of Catholic institutions believe that abortion and gay marriage should be legal, despite the Church’s clear teachings to the contrary. That was one of the disturbing findings of a November 2008 study published by the CNS Center for the Study of Catholic Higher Education and titled “Behaviors and Beliefs of Current and Recent Students at U.S. Catholic Colleges.”

This is not only a Catholic problem, of course.  Many evangelical colleges and universities bring speakers to their campuses who undermine the central missions of the institutions, as well as encouraging student participation in organizations that support pro-abortion and anti-family public policy.   Certainly, there will be times when a “professional internship” may require a student to participate in or with an organization whose ethos is questionable in these matters.  (Student teaching comes to mind.  The NEA is pro-abortion and anti-family through and through, and indirectly controls a great deal of American public education.)  But there seems to be an unfortunate pattern at some Christian colleges and universities of encouraging student participation in essentially leftist organizations promoting socialism, abortion-on-demand, leftist public and foreign policy, etc., such as CLUE, Progressive Christians Uniting, NAACP, Faith Voices for the Common Good, etc.  Such organizations may even be invited to campus to recruit students with week-long workshops.

Some of these organizations take moral stances at odds with Christian tradition, but may nevertheless do some good work.  Even Hamas hands out food and clothing in Gaza.  Not that these are “terrorist organizations” (although Progressive Christians Uniting seems quite fond of CAIR, which is a HAMAS supporter), but the point is that “doing good” is not a sufficient cause to place students with organizations that support evils like abortion and the destruction of the traditional family, or simply deafeningly bad ideas like socialism and pacifism, which generally lead to evil down the road.

At a minimum, if Christian universities/colleges are going to place students in internships with left-wing groups such as these, part of the “critical thinking and evaluation” exercises surrounding the intership should involve challenging the underlying assumptions and associations of the groups where students are placed.

Christianity is not distilled essence of leftism with scripture quotations.  The book of Luke is not a license for the government to play the role of Robin Hood, even if “red-letter-Christians” might wish otherwise.  And our failure as a society to protect the unborn remains the single biggest moral divide in our nation, much as slavery was 200 years ago, even if “enlightened evangelicals” are embarrassed to stand up against abortion-on-demand, when the cost is the good regard of the secular world with which they want to be friends.

If an organization passes out food to the hungry, and then supports politicians and policies that promote easy access to abortion, exactly what is that organization’s moral status?

Before we place our students with organizations whose values are divergent from Christian tradition (regardless of the religious clothing these organizations may wear), we’d better seriously consider what other options we have, and we’d better be certain we have prepared those students with sufficient intellectual and spiritual armor to resist the values-bending pressures they’ll have to endure.

There is a followup to this post here, about CLUE and the agenda they pursue.

H/T:  Christiansagainstleftistheresy

The next post in this series is here.

The previous post in this series is here.

At the Carnegie Foundation, we find an article regarding the issue of diversity at Christian universities and colleges:

…

Rallies sponsored by Promise Keepers, the parachurch movement that appeals to men to renounce their sins, are more racially integrated than faculty meetings at Stanford or MIT, and multiculturalism is as likely to be celebrated at a typical evangelical megachurch as it is at Wesleyan or UC–Santa Cruz. The reason is simple: contemporary American evangelicalism is extraordinarily diverse. African Americans are strongly attracted to Pentecostal and evangelical forms of worship; increasing numbers of Hispanics have left their Catholicism behind to be born again; and Asian immigrants, primarily from Korea and China, have fueled evangelical growth from California to Massachusetts.

Yet despite all this ferment, America’s evangelical colleges are not diverse institutions by any stretch of the imagination. Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, which trains more evangelical clergy than any other institution in the United States, is stunningly multicultural, but its success in this area has not been matched by undergraduate institutions. Only about 2 percent of Wheaton students are African American, for example, compared to 8 percent at Earlham and 7 percent at Oberlin, similar but non-evangelical Midwestern institutions. Among universities, Baylor has a relatively robust African-American percentage (6 percent), but it is still lower than at nearby public universities such as the University of Houston (15 percent) or the University of Tulsa (8 percent).

One reason why evangelical colleges lag behind secular ones in their ability to attract a racially diverse student body may be because of their relative lack of religious diversity.

Here the article spends several paragraphs singing the praises of “religious diversity” and praising the choice, where it has occurred, to sacrifice “communal understandings” for the sake of “diversity,” at institutions like Baylor, Boston College, and Brandeis.   And then:

…Does the lack of religious diversity at evangelical colleges contribute to the lack of racial diversity? In theory, it should not. Faith statements say nothing about race and in that sense should attract anyone who subscribes to the faith in question, irrespective of skin color. But in practice, faith statements reinforce a history of appealing to particular communities, particular high schools, and particular churches, which is not the way to bring to campus those who might offer fresh perspectives shaped by backgrounds and upbringings different from those of the Christian students typically attracted to these schools. Diversity, unlike tap water, cannot easily be turned on or have its temperature adjusted.

Boy, ain’t THAT the truth.  As I’ve pointed out in other posts, diversity seems always to come with a giant slice of Left-progressive cake, whether or not it’s iced with God talk and scripture quotations.

But this is what evangelical colleges and universities are trying to do. They want students from many racial backgrounds to attend so they learn to speak in the language of diversity, but they also want to preserve their particular religious identity so they also speak in the language of uniformity. Because evangelical Christianity is itself so multiracial, colleges that speak in its name ought to be more diverse than secular ones. But because they lack sufficient appreciation for diversity in all its aspects—religious and intellectual, as well as racial and ethnic—they fall behind secular institutions in their ability to bring together students from a wide variety of backgrounds.

The writer of this article is nibbling at some truth, but seems reluctant to bite into the gooey center. Yes, it’s true that once a Christian university begins to “diversify” in a certain way, it often brings with it some issues that challenge the mission of the university as it may have been previously understood.  The problem is simple:  Christian universities who want to be diverse have too often selected representatives for diversity who are from the Left.  After awhile, somebody notices this, identifies it as a problem, and is then at risk of being labeled “anti-diversity” or even “racist” when instead they are merely anti-Left and pro-traditional-Christian understandings about faith and values.  The faster a Christian university tries to “diversify,” the more likely it is to have these problems.

There’s really only one solution for Christian universities that want to “diversify” and still maintain their traditional Christian focus.  The solution is to go slow.  Don’t be stampeded by strident activism on the part of anyone, faculty, students, trustees, administration, or whoever.  Carefully consider each step, each new hire (not just minorities, but everyone), each new policy, each new position, from the standpoint that asks, “How will this affect our traditional understandings of ourselves, our Christian mission, and our institutional heritage?”  Be aware of the danger in bringing to campus as your “diversity representatives, speakers and role models” people whose orientations are not consistent with those of your institution.  That doesn’t mean you should never bring them.  It does mean there is danger in a steady diet of them, and they should be balanced, at a minimum, by speakers who support your institution’s traditional perspectives on major issues, but who also see value in gradual “diversification.”

Either there are plenty of “minority” people who basically agree with an institution’s heritage and traditional perspectives on Christianity, faith and values, or there aren’t such people.  If there are, the institution will be well advised to find them, instead of simply bringing as many “people of color” to campus as possible, from whatever perspective, and hoping that everything turns out well.  On the other hand, if there aren’t many “people of color” that can be identified who will support an institution’s traditions, a choice is required:  either diversify, or maintain the traditional identity.

What a Christian university or college must not do is to pretend that there is no issue here, and that diversity is an intrinsic good that transcends all other considerations.  In an upcoming post, I’ll discuss the issue of “white diversity activists” who frequently seem to be a greater danger to the traditional ethos of Christian institutions than the minority ones.  These white activists, in a spasm of white guilt, seem to believe that their commitment to diversity will only appear genuine if they full-throatedly embrace the agenda of the Left.  But whether from whites or minorities, it is the connection of diversity to the Left that is the problem.  “People of color” who see this problem are at risk of being labeled “Uncle Toms.”

Unstated by the author of the article quoted above is this:  all the institutions that have embraced diversity at the cost of theological community have moved farther Left in the last couple of decades, or were reasonably Left to start with.   It is an open question whether they will identify with any religious roots they may have had, over the next couple of decades.  Even now, a quick visit to their web portals does not reveal any immediate evidence of religious heritage or religious intent, unless a person really digs around a bit to find it.

Christian universities have a choice to make, in the end.  They can please the world, look good in US News and World Report (and on Carnegie websites), make their accrediting agencies smile and dance, and try to look respectable to secular, “progressively” oriented universities (which is to say, most of them), or they can understand that by their mere presence and identity, they ARE the diversity in higher education already, and do not need to make themselves “look like” other institutions for the sake of a soundbite, a photo op, or a bit of statistical data.

The next post in this series is here.

Probing The Black-White Achievement Gap

The Kellogg Foundation is funding a survey of four college campuses by Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute and the Educational Testing Service to examine how students of color’s experiences on college campuses impact the notorious black-white achievement gap.

Namely, it will examine how the students feel “welcome and unwelcome, respected and disrespected, supported and unsupported, and encouraged and discouraged.”

However, will the researchers be interested in evidence that the black-white achievement gap is connected to aspects of parenting and peer identification that begin long before college? That is, will there be room in their assessment for, as it is put these days, culture over structure?

In his detailed survey of Shaker Heights, Ohio, Black Students in an Affluent Suburb, the late Berkeley Anthropology Professor John Ogbu found that black parents often aren’t aware of how closely they need to attend to their children’s homework and are less likely to confer with their children’s teachers, and that black teens have a tendency to disidentify from school as “white.” Subsequent studies have shown that black students are likely to spend less time on homework than white or Asian students and are less likely to be popular if they achieve in school.

There is, to wit, a culture issue – and not just parenthetically. To mention these things is not “black bashing.” All of them are latter-day results of discrimination in the past, of the kind that Richard Thompson Ford of late described in his The Race Card. They are traits internalized unconsciously – if your parents didn’t help you with your homework because they had modest education and were working two jobs, why would you spontaneously attend to your own child’s, even if you went to college and work just one job?

However, dramatic conversations about “white privilege” and “legacies” leave these problems unresolved. Our attention must be focused on efforts such as that of the Minority Student Action Network mentoring middle-class black students long before college. Or on replicating as widely as possible the methods of the Knowledge is Power Program academies and other programs that distract black kids from thinking of braininess as racially inauthentic.

Or looking at how in the charter school run by the Harlem Children’s Zone, zeroing in on poverty block by block, study by heavyweights such as Harvard’s star Wunderkind economist Roland Fryer is showing that longer hours spent in school each day are leading to sterling achievement by students growing up in circumstances that we are told condemn all but superstars to failure. Even among eighth graders, considered the toughest nuts to crack intervention-wise.

I learned the latter attending a bookstore talk recently by Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson on his new book More Than Just Race. The talk, however, was Exhibit A of the kind of unconscious bias that could mar the Kellogg study – a bias that runs throughout academic address of race issues. Wilson’s book argues that culture is key in addressing inner city blacks’ concerns. But throughout the talk, Wilson stressed that structural factors – i.e. “institutional racism” – matter more. He couches the cultural point in gingerly hedging and hair-splitting, e.g. “Parents in segregated communities who have had experiences [with discrimination and disrespect] may transmit to children, through the process of socialization, a set of beliefs about what to expect from life and how one should respond to circumstances.”

Will the Kellogg study be mediated by a like take on the cultural argument, i.e. that it is immoral to address culture when black people are concerned (except parenthetically)? Will the researchers be able to face finding that the black-white achievement gap is not related in any significant way to what happens on campus?

Of course, there will be students attesting that they “experience racism” on campus. However, with protests every couple of years on how “racist” the campus is despite the diversity counseling and black dorms, departments and event budgets, group identification lends the typical student of color a sense of duty to stand up for the idea that racism is part of their experience, even if highly “subtle” (useful: a Stanford survey covered in David Sacks and Peter Thiel’s The Diversity Myth).

To pretend this isn’t true is to exempt people of color from yet another universal human trait, the tendency known to social psychologists as humans’ susceptibility to priming in surveys. Another term is people’s susceptibility to demand characteristics, referring to subjects’ anticipating what the surveyor is seeking and trying to give the “proper” answer. Asking a black undergrad “Have you experienced racism on campus?” in today’s typical campus atmosphere is like asking a white one whether he thinks black people are of lesser intelligence. A certain answer is to be expected.

The real issue: is the amount of racism such students have experienced – and most will attest to something or other – realistically of a kind that would interfere with their schoolwork? This question applies equally to Claude Steele’s famous “stereotype threat” thesis that black students are thrown by private worry that they are not thought of as intelligent. That is, do the students describe experiences that would reinforce this worry specifically?

After all, the notion that any shards of socially unpleasant experience unquestionably hold down black students’ GPAs is an infantilization – given that we assume that Asian students experience unpleasant experierences (and amply attest to such) and yet it does not impact their campus performance. Why are black students supposedly less resilient than Korean ones? And where is the benefit to society in pretending that they aren’t?

Of course, the Kellogg project might actually reveal racism as a serious culprit on campus. I am open to that result if it’s what the data truly reveal. However, the researchers, if their intentions are sincerely to help, face a challenge to be similarly open-minded.

After all, a conclusion that subtle aspects of racism are the deciding factor in our problems is inherently a dead end. It is the last result we should want to find, because no society in human history has ever been perfectly blind to differences of color or tribe. We can’t make America that perfect.

That’s why the Kellogg report will be such a disappointment if it ends up limning the classic portrait of brown-skinned college students going through variations – although “subtle,” of course – on what James Meredith endured in 1962 at Ole Miss. One wonders whether the researchers, however, would be at all disappointed to find this result. If they would instead feel accomplished, vindicated, enlightened to find it, then won’t it color the questions they ask and how they interpret the answers?

Culture matters, and not just parenthetically. Pretend otherwise and certain people feel good, while the ones we purport to be concerned about tread water.

Western Law Remedies Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman Among Muslim Immigrant Communities.

In 2001, the mother of an 11-year-old girl spirited her out of Gothenburg, in Sweden, and back to Somalia where she had her brutally genitally mutilated (and without anesthesia). The mother and two other women held her down while a man made sure that she would never experience sexual pleasure and would instead, experience a great deal of pain for the rest of her life.

It’s not hard to understand the silence of the American Left, the multi-cultural Left, and particularly the feminist Left, on the matter of Islamic violence against women, whether perpetrated by other women or by men.  Its existence calls into question all the assumptions at the core of the Left’s belief system, about moral equivalence, about who does violence to whom, about whether there is such a thing as an objective standard of right and wrong, etc.

Just as sex-selection abortion in Asia (and, increasingly, other places) highlights the cognitive dissonance for the Left in supporting easy access to abortion — at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason–, Islamic violence by women on women and men on women highlights the fact that some cultures ARE simply better than others, more free and more just, regardless of the putatively equivalent status of all cultures that lies at the root of multi-culturalism and diversity activism.

But the multi-cultural pieties of the Left, and the absence of a moral center based on absolutes of human dignity flowing from a conception of the imago dei, make it impossible for the Left to speak up consistently about this kind of injustice.  It’s far easier to blame white males and colonialism for everything under the sun than to deal with the hard work of challenging — and changing — cultures.

Read the entire article linked above, and thank God that you live where you do, assuming you live in a western-style liberal democracy of some kind.  And, while you’re at it, reconsider any belief you may hold in cultural equivalence and moral equivalence.

Here’s a book that can help you get started.   The author is not a Christian.  In fact, I think she’s an atheist…  understandably, given what was done to her in the name of religion, or at least under cover of it.  You may speculate about why she is not a constantly invited speaker to American feminist groups.  Maybe it’s because American feminism isn’t fundamentally about protecting women, but about pursuing Leftist agendas with feminism as cover.

I spend most of my occupational time teaching these days.  It is the most recent step in a career evolution that has spanned 33 years and counting.  I was fortunate enough to have figured out ways of making my passion my vocation and thus have enjoyed a professional career in the music virtually all my adult life. There was a brief detour for a couple years in real estate investing or what is now called “house-flipping”.  The one good thing I can say about that is…I survived (just barely).

The full-time teaching chapter of my story has so far occupied about ten years, though I have taught in some capacity pretty much since I got out of college.  I suppose that means I’ve been around long enough to have formed some opinions and perspectives on the subject of learning, particularly in the area of music.  I freely admit the following observations are purely anecdotal, based on nothing more than my own life experiences and would not stand the challenge of academic rigor.

To put it bluntly, many college students with whom I come in contact on a daily basis display a disturbing lack of passion, curiosity, self-motivation or determination. There are very few young people I encounter with any real fire in their belly! Continue reading “E for Effort?”

As previously observed, President Obama will receive an honorary doctorate from Notre Dame in a few days, and address a commencement exercise. And although there is a considerable amount of Outrage Over Obama Speaking at Notre Dame, the plain fact is that 53% of Catholics voted for him, in direct contravention of their bishops’ advice and admonition.

One graduating senior, Matt Degnan, is selling T-shirts he designed that say “Obama? Fine By Me.” When I asked him whether the shirts represented enthusiastic support of the president or merely tacit ambivalence, he simply responded, “I think that the shirts speak for themselves.”

But he told the paper that faculty members have been the most frequent buyers, which comes as no surprise to anyone who’s ever met a college professor.

Furthermore, Catholics themselves helped put Obama in office, after voting for him 53 percent. Obama secured the largest advantage among Catholics for a Democrat since Bill Clinton.

So although I’m empathetic toward the outrage — and a Catholic school honoring a pro-choice activist like Obama is nothing short of outrageous — the numbers tell a different picture. The state of Indiana, St. Joseph’s County, South Bend, and the University of Notre Dame all supported candidate Obama, with alacrity, as did Catholic America.

Right-to-life issues are important, but this supposed scandal is muddied by the inconvenient underlying facts: Obama has huge support here, and some of the groups that are railing against his visit are the very groups that helped put him in office, in a position to then be invited.

But voting him into office was apparently one thing, and allowing him to speak at a college commencement, another. Catholics should get their message straight if they want to regain the kind of influence that makes them a credible voice of reason, compassion, clarity, and morality. Right now they just seem tongue-tied.

Christians should not be tongue tied.   Ever.   They should be willing to speak out on straight-up moral issues, especially those involving life and death of the most innocent.  Shame on us.  And count me as one evangelical who feels more in common with the other 47% of Roman Catholics than with all too many protestants.

In the meantime, here’s a protestant to admire, for his conviction, and his willingness to tell simple, unobstructed, unconflicted truth:

Just because somebody has posted a sign reading ADAM SMITH at the entrance to the university parking lot, it doesn’t mean the place is automatically filled with enthusiastic capitalists.   It may just mean that people are being directed to other parking lots…   one near ADAMS dorm, and one  near SMITH dorm.  But you can dream.

The side of the stage the faculty sits on is determined by taking the average political position of the faculty, and reversing it.  So the graduate faculty sits on the right, and the undergraduate faculty sits on the left.  Or something like that.  Or maybe it’s reversed, and I’m overthinking it.  Proves I’m a faculty member.

People are given doctorates these days for proving (with voluminous research reported in hundreds of pages) that blind and deaf kids have a harder time in school than other kids.  Good to know.

There seems to be a disturbing trend in doctoral dissertations about people who make “the insanity defense” successfully.  This could be because you have to be insane to start a doctoral program.  Or it may be that these Ph.D. candidates are planning a grim fate for their dissertation committee chairs, and are preparing their defenses in advance.

Tortillas are aerodynamically stable in frisbee-style flight profile, until the forces caused by the spin rate exceed the tensile strength of the tortilla, at which point it lands on somebody’s face.  (Corollary:  students do not pick up the tortillas they have launched.  They’ve obviously been listening to their professors telling them it’s their civic duty to create jobs.)  (Related observation: rolls of TP are even less aerodynamically stable, but are more fun to watch.)

History and poli-sci faculty are likely to wear nice, shiny, dark shoes.  Music faculty seem to wear sandals, or paint-spotted running shoes.  Art faculty don’t wear shoes, unless they’re highly decorative.  Theology faculty, befitting their vows of poverty, don’t wear shoes either.  English faculty wear shoes, but remove them during the commencement address.  Global studies faculty wear shoes of woven hemp, which appear, somewhat mysteriously, to have disappeared in a cloud of smoke before the commencement exercises are over.  (I notice that people who sit near the global studies faculty seem to be in an unusually good mood, as well.)

It is now socially acceptable to be on the phone during commencement.  Since everyone is talking through everything anyway, why not?

Advice for people attending commencement:

1)  If somebody passes you a bag of cubed cheese, don’t take any.

2)  Any joke about the approaching end of a commencement address seems to be able to draw laughs.  But it is still a joke.

3)  All commencement addresses are too long.

4)  Come early, unless you really, really enjoy walking.

5)  Bring a pillow or cushion to sit on.  If you’re a capitalist, bring two, and sell one dearly.

6)  If it’s outdoors, bring a wide brim hat.  This can protect you from flying tortillas.

7)  To impress fellow faculty, tuck a copy of People magazine into the cover of the Journal of Applied Theoretical Exogamous Endo-Philosophical Meta-Studies.  Nod now and then as you read it, and make notes in the margins.