Midweek Rumble: The Ricky Martin Ho-Hum Thing

I am glad to see that I am not the only person on the planet who just assumed Ricky Martin was gay and stopped thinking about it. When someone used "Ricky Martin" and "gay" in the same sentence the other day, I missed it that this was a Historic Moment For We Homosexuals.

It was only when two or three other people said something like: "Ricky Martin word, word, word, word GAY!" that I came to understand that this was a news item. And it's not as if I am so jaded that I simply don't pay attention anymore. If anyone had said that Vladimir Putin or Colin Powell was gay, I would have snapped to.

Although Ricky himself feels "fortunate" and "blessed," and testifies that his "years in silence and reflection made me stronger" (and richer!) "and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within," not everyone is happy about this. New Media America reports: "Karen Rodriguez, a reporter and producer of 22 years, said, 'We will continue going to his concerts and playing his discs, but it hurts to have lost such a beautiful man.'" He's still a man last time I looked. Or maybe what you meant is that he is "lost" to women? To heterosexuality? Or socially dead to Latino music?



Karen's response seems to be the exception, although not so many celebrities have commented, perhaps for fear of being thought gay if they are supportive and homophobic if they are not. Oh what a tangled web we weave. But the fans are fine with it. Skimming blogs and the comments sections of the various media who reported this non-story, I am happy to say that for once I am in the mainstream by responding with a big "So What?" As "Energon" at the Guardian grumps, "Flamboyant singer of one of the most irritating songs of the last 20 years publicly announces he likes men's bottoms. Quite frankly, who gives a monkeys [arse]? I'm an unfortunate heterosexual man who had to listen to that dreadful song played repeatedly throughout the late 90s. What has Ricky Martin got to say about that?"

Second Grade Visits Bushy Hill Nature Center

Second graders met their Essex NUMBER Kid Buddies last week at Bushy Hill Nature Center. They learned how much time and effort goes into making real Maple Syrup. They measured trees, went in a real sugar shack, and experimented with pints, quarts, and gallons. It was an educational and fun day!

Donors Choose Macdonough School

Did you know that Macdonough School is a "Donors Choose" school? Many of our teachers have projects posted on the Donors Choose website.

Supporters of our school donate to the projects and when a project is fully donated, materials are sent to our school. It's a simple way to support the work of the Macdonough School staff.

In the past three years, 60 projects have been funded for the students of Macdonough School totaling more than $25,000 worth of supplies and materials.

Interested in more information? Check out the Donors Choose web site for great Macdonough School projects by clicking here!

What's Cookin' In Higher Ed? The Race To Become The Stupidest State In The Union

Do I smell a conservative advocacy group in Florida too?

A young friend of ours recently visited a public college which we at Tenured Radical have admired for years.  S/he reported conversations with undergraduates about the effects of the persistent defunding of higher ed in that state, and the ways in which defunding has diminished a quality liberal arts education that people with very little money still have access to.  A prominent problem, in the view of students there, was incessant faculty turnover due to low salaries, poorly maintained library collections and the erosion of benefits. In turn, the constant loss of faculty  made it difficult to establish mentoring relationships, get recommendations for graduate school, or do senior honors work with faculty who had helped them develop the research and had planned to advise it.

The notion that college teachers are as interchangeable as hamburger flippers at Wendy's follows, of course, on the neoliberal notion that secondary school teachers are also interchangeable.  Furthermore, on no evidence, free marketeers have sold the notion that college professors will continue to work cheerfully, and to a high standard, for as little salary and as few benefits as colleges and universities choose to pay us. The only teachers you really want at your school, the logic goes, have the personalities of 18th century Franciscan missionaries in the New World, willing to sign on to thankless, ill-paid labor purely out of love for those to whom they will minister. Although this theory goes unspoken in an increasingly adjunctified world of private higher education, attacks on educational employees in New Jersey, California and Wisconsin seem to be giving new energy to strategies for disempowering and intimidating teachers at all levels.  This is particularly heartbreaking in states that seem to want to break with a long history of providing quality, public higher education to ambitious students with little money.

One problem with free market theories for reorganizing education is that they lead to a free market in educators.  This, in turn tends not to be conducive to what administrators need to deliver a quality education to students:  faculties who commit to a particular school, and create a culture of excellence, over the long term.  Policy makers who believe that free market competition creates better education for the most people have, frankly, never been in a classroom beyond their three-year hitch at Teach for America. While I don't know anyone in teaching who wouldn't consider voluntarily sacrificing money and prestige to make and keep a desired life as a college professor, I also don't know a single college professor who, on balance, believes that year to year contracts, no job security, diminishing benefits and the lowest possible pay are the basis for building a career in education.

Tell that to the Florida legislature.  Florida, of course, has been a leader in defunding education, (recently ranking 36th nationally in per pupil spending, ahead of luminaries like Mississippi) and in pioneering a terrific policy that gives troubled  schools in poor districts even less money to work with (repackaged by the Obama administration as "Race to the Top.")  Now it appears that Florida Republicans now want to do for higher ed what they have accomplished at the secondary level.  Word out of Florida today is that a bill that would prohibit the granting of tenure at state and community colleges went through a legislative committee yesterday and is headed to the state senate.  Faculty would work on annual contracts but administrators would not; only new and untenured faculty would be affected by the law.  As Denise -Marie Balona of the Orlando Sentinel reports,

Opponents argue it would prevent colleges — already strapped by budget cuts and increasing enrollments — from attracting and retaining top-quality employees.

But state Rep. Erik Fresen, who presented the bill at Tuesday's committee meeting, said the legislation is designed to help college administrators.

If administrators had more flexibility with their personnel, Fresen said, they would be able to expand and cut programs to meet student demand, which can sometimes change quickly.

"Oftentimes, the colleges cannot respond in time because of these 'handcuff' situations," said Fresen, a Miami Republican who chairs the House's K-20 Competitiveness Subcommittee that voted 8-4 to approve the bill.

The bill also requires colleges, when facing layoffs, to let go of their poorest-performing employees first instead of basing decisions on seniority.

At least one community college president has already come out in opposition to the bill and, as Balona reports, Florida Gulf Coast University experimented with one year contracts but "had such trouble holding onto faculty" that it now offers multi-year contracts. But he greatest impact will be on community colleges and the students who attend them. According to Univsource.com, 66% of young people in Florida who continue their education beyond high school do so in-state.  Two-thirds of them, even those who plan to take the B.A., will matriculate at community colleges following high school graduation.

So it is no accident that community college presidents, who are protected under the proposed legislation, understand what a disaster this policy is.  It worth emphasizing that the right has produced a new strategy that is remarkably consistent:  going after "workers" in the name of "citizens" and "taxpayers" -- as if they were not all the same people.  In Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida right wing special interests and their political stalking horses have provoked college professors -- who are already educated, can leave the state and will -- with the hopes of caricaturing them as a bunch of overpaid, lazy babies who are sucking at the public t!t while students languish.  But the people who will suffer, as the little story I opened with argues, are students. Students will have a longer time to graduation, they will have access to less qualified faculty who can't get better jobs, and most of their professors will be stopping off on their way to somewhere else.  This, I am sure, will get lost in the debate as free marekteers replicate the success they have had in transforning the real estate market, higher finance and Iraq in the last decade.

In the coming weeks, we at Tenured Radical will have more to say about disinvestment in higher education in many kinds of schools, as well as its consequences for students as well as faculty.  The management actively solicits guest posts on these issues. Although we have consistently bucked for the reform of the tenure system, the elimination of tenure in a climate in which any protection for public employees, is under attack and any security for the creation and maintenance of stable, dedicated faculties that can guide students through a two or four year degree, is truly unthinkable. We withdraw that position, pending a change in the political atmosphere.

Tuesday Found Objects: What You Need To Subpoena From My Zenith Computer Today

I was hanging out this morning using my university computer to download BDSM pornography and order Angela Davis posters (paid for out of my research account, of course) when I decided to take a break and check up on what my other radical colleagues were doing.

They've been busy!  So without further ado:

• The Facts, Ma'am.  Jon Wiener, from his perch at The Nation, asks:  "What does it take to become the target of this kind of attack?"  Wiener points out that Cronon is "not Bill Ayers," but a self-avowed political centrist who published "a simple fact" that Republicans in Wisconsin did not want revealed:  their close ties to a group that drafts union-busting legislation and creates public relations strategies for passing that legislation. This fact, Wiener argues, "disrupts the Republicans’ explanation of what they are doing in Wisconsin. They say the new law there ending collective bargaining with public employee unions is an emergency response to this year’s fiscal crisis." However, "the goal is not to protect the little guy in Wisconsin but rather to help the big corporations that fund Republican operations."  Read the whole article here.  

• It's Being A Professor Who Thinks That Is The Problem.  One issue that we need to resurrect is the neo-liberal charge that tenure promotes the prolonged employment of "dead wood" professors.  Clearly, it is Cronon's failure to become dead wood that has made him notorious and, as it turns out, dead wood profs aren't the ch!cks and d00ds that some right-winger wants to light up after all.  No, no: some poor, defeated old sot, shuffling off to class with a tattered little set of notes after a nip too many turns out to be our ideal scholar.  Tony Grafton, that guy you saw flying by your office window in a red cape, and with a big "H" on his scholarly chest, nails it in the New Yorker blog when he reminds us that, unlike politicians, historians are responsible for researching and relating the truth, and the truth sometimes hurts.  As Grafton concludes, "the Republicans seem remarkably fragile. A professor writing a blog post gives them the shivers. It’s a good thing they chose politics, and not the kind of career where the going can really get rough. Professors, for example, teach their hearts out to surly adolescents who call them boring in course evaluations and write their hearts out for colleagues who trash their books in snarky reviews. These Wisconsin Republicans may never have survived ordeals like that. Happily, Cronon has been toughened by decades of academic life. He’ll be blogging—and teaching and writing—long after Wisconsin voters have sent these Republicans back to obscurity."  

(Which reminds me that I have students standing around my office door growling in a menacing way and shaking pitchforks at me as a reminder that I should be using my Zenith computer to get their grading done right now!)  OK, one more:

• Yes, Historians Actually Care About The Rights Of All Working People.  Eileen Boris is in the business section of the HuffPo this week, which you probably missed as you were clicking through to the ads for package tours to Cuba.  Boris asks us to celebrate Women's History Month and commemorate the Triangle Factory Fire by reminding ourselves that the vast majority of working class women, and men, are no longer employed in an industrial workplace.  While guaranteeing the basic employment rights of household workers are becoming the subject of new legislation, Boris points out, "one group of household laborers remains apart -- those paid by governments to care for needy elderly and disabled people. The California proposal explicitly excludes In Home Supportive Service workers, the type of worker whose omission from federal law the Supreme Court upheld in 2007 and the Obama administration has yet to rectify through new labor regulations. Meanwhile, Republican governors, as in Wisconsin, are eliminating collective bargaining for home care workers. An irony of current struggles might be that these public employees end up with fewer rights and poorer conditions than those who labor for individual housewives." 

As Women's History Month draws to a close, we at chez Radical admit that we have done little to celebrate it, so here's my proposal:  I would like to nominate Bill Cronon as an Honorary Woman.  This is one of the few awards available to historians that he has not received, and I think it is time.  Do we have a second?  Thank you, Historiann!  All in favor?

The aye's have it!  Sorry, Wisconsin GOP.  You lose again!

Rainbow Snacks!

First graders were treated to a healthy snack today.  Students ate their rainbow snack of red, orange, yellow and green bell pepper slices with cauliflower.  Thank you Miss Ripley for making these yummy snacks for us!

Building our Neighborhood

Fifth graders worked hard today on building their interpretation of what the neighborhood around Macdonough looks like. Students chose buildings they felt were important to our community. These 3-D buildings will be put on a big poster and then presented to our Equal This buddies from Colchester as a gift to remember us. After constructing and decorating their buildings, students found out the area and perimeter of each building. Stay tuned for a picture of our completed neighborhood and see if you can recognize any of the buildings students are constructing from the pictures below!

 

Eggs, Eggs and more eggs

Decorating eggs in Kindergarten!

Spirit Week

This week, students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade celebrated their success with the CMTS with Spirit Days.

Students collected tickets for trying their best on their CMTs last week. To participate in the Spirit Day, the students had to give two tickets for each day.

Last Friday was "Pajama Day", Monday was "Crazy Hair Day", Tuesday was "Mix and Match Day," and today was "Favorite Team Day."

Take a look at our week!

 

 

 

Easter in Kindergarten

The Easter Bunny came hopping into the kindergarten classrooms last night and left a bit of a mess.

Monday Found Objects: Or, What Wisconsin Republicans Would See If They FOIA'd My Email

Little things come in, and I sock them away.  But so that no one has to file any paperwork, or break my system passwords, here's what's lying around my email box today:

 How do I get these things?  Go here to buy a set of Prince William and Kate Middleton paper dolls, each with fifteen different outfits.  The dolls themselves are in their underwear, which I think is kind of interesting in the sense of what a future monarch and his queen might not have permitted even twenty years ago.   I would have understood if I had received an email soliciting me to purchase the "Past Presidents of the AHA Paper Doll Set," promising hours of fun as we cross-dressed Barbara Weinstein and Tony Grafton, but this one's a mystery, Governor Walker.  My guess is that they bought the American Studies Association mailing list.

 Do the AHA survey, save a tree.  Have you ever wondered -- as I do -- why there isn't an app for the American Historical Association?  Well go to this survey and let the AHA know how you feel about electronic publication.  I think you have probably read gripes on this blog about the high-quality journals that are partially read and have to be taken out for recycling with a back hoe.  What Americanist has time for even the most intriguing article about Byzantium?  What Byzantiumist has time for the labor movement in Victorian England?  And how about those pages and pages of painstakingly crafted reviews of books you will never actually hold in your hand?

From Comradde PhysioProffe (who has recently changed the spelling of his name): "Holy Fuckeoly!"  OK, this came into my non-university account, because CPP is propriety itself when it comes to the boundaries between professional and public.  But for those of you who are as yet unaware of the creative use this scientist makes of the English language, his take no prisoners attitude, and his minute attention to good food and drink, go check in at his house.

Triangle Fire Memories:  Last week, as I was gally-vanting around New England, other bloggers memorialized the anniversary of the lethal 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York's Greenwich Village, still the worst industrial accident on U.S. soil.  Now, from Vineyard Video Productions, we have "You May Call Her Madam Secretary," a documentary film about the career of a woman who was inspired by that tragedy to pursue a life in labor policy.  Frances Sternhagen presents the words of the first woman Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, in a film that gives us the history of a generation of liberals who would have eaten Scott Walker's lunch.  Got any budget left?  The video is a steal at $49.95.

The H-Net job listing.   That's a joke son -- there are no jobs!

Sunday Radical Roundup: Death, Taxes and Homocons

The Only One Missing Is The Mad Hatter: Today's front page story in the New York Times on Tea Party activists reveals what we already suspected: that many of its leading activists are comfortably unemployed. Many key players at the local level are older people of retirement age who are supporting themselves on Social Security and Medicare: one actually retired so that she could pursue her activism full-time. This is why they are able to dedicate themselves to running off at the drop of a hat to make signs or protest the extension of health care to younger people who have failed to exercise the responsibility to stay, or be, employed at the jobs that would give them access to affordable insurance. Because they have already paid into these big government entitlement programs, senior activists explain, "they are getting what they deserve." Hoo-hah!

But it's still big government, right? So some people deserve services from big government and others don't? How about the people who have paid into Medicare who are undocumented immigrants? Or the 11.5 million people who have paid into unemployment for their whole lives whose benefits and COBRA will run out on April 5 because Republicans, led by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla) are blocking an emergency spending bill (as the US spends $720 million per day on the war.)

Well yes, it's all big government. The maintenance of rest stops on the highway is also a function of big government, one that probably costs less than about a half day of war. In a bell weather move, the Arizona Department of Transportation -- starved of money by the good people of that state -- has had to close thirteen rest stops. This means that you can drive the width of the state on Highway 40 and have absolutely nowhere to go to the bathroom that is safe, private and clean. Arizonans, at last report, are incensed. So are people in the states where they are raising taxes on everything from haircuts to funerals because elected officials are too chicken to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

My advice to academics is that whatever you are teaching next year, find some way to talk about how and why governments raise revenues; and the misinformation that "small government," low income, corporate and property taxes, and de-regulation hold the promise of utopia for the little guy because it is just not true and never has been true. By trying to kill taxes, so-called populists and their spokespeople in both parties have produced a regressive system that actually is hardest on the little guy who needs to take a whizz or bury grandma. Poor people are actually paying taxes on behalf of the rich when state revenues are collected primarily at the cash register. Curricula should also include discussions of the infrastructure maintained by government that allows us all to actually go to work; the reasons why education should be a loss-leader, not a break-even endeavor; why feeding people and keeping them healthy is good for the economy; and other material connections between the health of large institutions like banks, hospitals, universities and public transportation systems and the well-being of the littlest hard-working guy or gal. Don't want the government to bail out the banks, but you do want to prevent your overpriced house from going into foreclosure? It's two sides of the same problem: you can't help the people without helping the banks, and vice versa.

Finally, United States history demonstrates quite graphically an unregulated economy is not a better economy: look at the nineteenth century, why don't you, which was just one big boom-and-bust cycle. In fact, while you are at it, volunteer to teach a history class at a senior center, since that is where it seems you could do a lot of good.

Speaking of Taxes, There Is Also Death: The book of the week, hands down, is Final Acts: Death, Dying and the Choices We Make, edited by Nan Bauer-Maglin and Donna Perry (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010). While I must add the disclaimer that I know one of the authors Very Well, it is a beautiful collection of reflections on death and dying, with a high emphasis on the choices that one's own death potentially entails. How to plan for death, how to receive death, how to struggle with the choices loved ones have made -- or not made -- about their own final decline, and how chronic illness and/or aging creates the possibility for thinking about one's time on earth are all reflected upon in this collection. The scholars and writers represented in the collection represent the social sciences, medicine, philosophy, psychology, literature and women's studies. Anthropologist Nancy Barnes writes about her strong-willed mother who had intended to end her life in the event of a long, fatal illness -- and then was unable to do so as her dementia eroded the rational mind that had made those plans. Historians may wish to take a special look at a personal essay by Sara Evans on the decline of her parents, Claude and Mackie. You can buy Final Acts by going to the above link, or you can click here.

Then There Is Social Death: One of the best pieces I have ever read, ever, about conservatives in the closet is Joanne Wypijewski's "Hey, Sailor" (The Nation, April 5 2010). In "Carnal Knowledge," a column that does not appear frequently enough, Wypijewski puts the Eric Massa Ticklegate scandal in a broader cultural perspective. Here's the thing: you might not be able to get it unless you subscribe, but so what? For only $18.00 you can get the online edition for a year, and you can actually get a free, four week trial subscription if spending $18.00 for a left wing pig in a polk is not your kind of thing. But actually? To get Katha Pollitt, Eric Alterman, Patricia Williams, Eric Foner, Richard Kim, Greg Grandin, Calvin Trillin's political satire in verse, and all the news you need to read mainstream sources critically? It's a bargain.

And you get access to fabulous cover art like the one featured at the top of this post.

Why I Hate Reality TV: And It's Not Just Because It Is (Oxy)Moronic

Even though close friends of the Radical know that every once in a while I lapse into an intense fascination with American Idol, I hate reality TV. Except for the classic foremother of the genre, An American Family (1973), I've never seen one series that even approached something "real" that was worth knowing. But until now I have never been able to say why I hate them so much beyond a deep feeling that it is simply improper to make an ever so brief living by allowing a camera crew to violate your privacy for months. I also find reality TV boring: who watches Tori and Dean for example? Women who fantasize about a life folding laundry and talking to unemployed gay men who wander in and out for no reason?

Clearly I have reasons for hating reality TV that I have not been able to articulate, and it isn't because it's bad TV. I watch shows like Gossip Girl, Army Wives and the ever-mawkish Brothers and Sisters as though they were a form of demented religion.

There are, of course, the little things I hate about reality TV. For example, I am puzzled by the idea that your average housewife or househusband solving daily problems is of deep cultural significance when we can't even have a logical conversation about delivering routine health care to the American working family. I hate Survivor because a group of Americans (who are mostly white, but I don't actually care what color they are) pretending that they have been reduced to "savagery" is a form of neo-imperial racist entertainment that I can't even wrap my head around. Admittedly, the show has contributed useful phrases to the academic enterprise: has anyone else been on a search committee where, dizzy with the effort of trying to exclude any number of excellent candidates from a finalist list, it has been reluctantly agreed to that So-and-so will be "voted off the island?" But I can't watch even a commercial for Survivor without wondering why the indigenous people of Samoa don't pull themselves together to sue CBS.

Then there are the lengths to which people are willing to go in the name of self-transformation and personal fulfillment that seem to be most closely related to the desperation of participants in dance marathons and six-day bicycle races during the 1920s. Last night, here in South Africa, I watched a reality show that combines so many aspects of other successful shows that it makes you dizzy ( my friend asked, "Why do they always have a judge with a British accent?" I answered without thinking, "Because of Simon." But I'm right, aren't I?) The show is called Dance Your Ass Off, and features very heavy people who are competing to lose weight and become professional dancers. In between performances we see them rehearsing, blubbering about how bad they feel about themselves, and dieting (looking at the website, my guess is that as the show progresses they feel better about themselves and gush about that.) After the dance performances (which are quite good, and make you wonder exactly why dancers are supposed to be thin) they are scored on the quality of the performance and how many pounds they have lost since last week. One performer had lost nine pounds in a week, and I thought: isn't that dangerous?

But I now know precisely what I hate about reality shows after reading a full account of Michele and Tareq Salahi gate crashing a White House state dinner. And yes, it is entirely the fault of the Secret Service that their tawdry little scheme worked. But why did the Salahis do it? Because they are competing to be chosen for a reality TV show!!! This follows on, of course, the Colorado couple who caused several hundred thousand dollars worth of emergency services to be scrambled because they claimed, falsely, that their child had launched himself in a home-made flying contraption.

What to do, what to do? One thing that strikes me is that scholars have to go through Institutional Research Boards when working with human or animal subjects. We have to demonstrate the importance of the research and, particularly when humans are involved, show that the research itself is not causing harm or exploiting vulnerable populations (when animals are involved, researchers are still allowed to do things that are more or less ghastly to some of us.) Why is there no version of this for commercial television?

Now you may say that these fools who volunteer for reality TV have free will, and the right to contract to make idiots of themselves. They do. But you look at cases like the Salahis, and the Survivor contestants, or Mr.and Mrs. Heene, the parents who put their son at the center of a media s**t storm and landed him in foster care to boot, and you have to ask the question: who else are they hurting through their narcissistic desire to be famous at any cost? Might the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stop worrying for a moment about who is jammed in whose crotch at the American Music Awards and deal with this? An independent body needs to be commissioned to ask these reality show people to present proposals that demonstrate, unequivocally, that however shameless their participants are, no one will be harmed by the show and no laws will be broken in filmng it.

Some equivalent of a television IRB would ask the producers of the as-yet uncast "Housewives of D.C." (the show the Salahis are trying to get on) to present a list of stunts that their prospective participants will perform at any phase of production. If "break into a White House State dinner" were on that list, the IRB would say no, you can't do that, it's illegal. Then if they did it anyway, the telly IRB would cancel the show.

I understand that there are plenty of problems with IRBs, and frustrations attached to having to work through them. One would have to take that into account when imagining a commission that theoretically would have the power to censor culture before it was even made. The most frequent complaint I hear is non-experts seeing harm where there is none, and restricting social science research in particular. On the other hand, regulation, however imperfect, feeds a lively conversation about research ethics. Conversely, a complete lack of regulation produced research projects like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which African-American men were told they were being treated but were actually doomed to a long, gruesome death from the disease.

But there are things that are less controversial about IRBs that the FCC might usefully think about in relation to reality shows. They watchdog the exploitation of vulnerable populations, and take into account that people can be fully informed and make decisions that they wouldn't make if they didn't have a lot of problems already. They prohibit the commission of crimes. They prohibit the exploitation of people who are captive in some way. And some even look closely at how publishing the research might lead to unintentional misrepresentation of the subjects.

Indeed, the television and film industry already has a code stating clearly that there is "a duty to consider the welfare of animals under their control and that this care should be separate from the interests of film production." It applies to all "vertebrates" except for "human beings and fish."

So let's get on it about the human beings. And the fish, if you like.

MARC and Macdonough

Andy Heuer, Director of Development & Fundraising of MARC Community Resources accepts a donation from Ms. Jukins on behalf of Macdonough School Dress Down Fund. Ms. Jukins worked at MARC as Recreation Director before she began her teaching career in Middletown and she is now on their Board of Directors.

We are excited to add MARC as another one of our community partners.

For more information about this wonderful agency please visit their website at www.marccommunityresources.org.

 

 

We're Here, Because We're Here, Because We're Here, Because We're Here! Or, Why Disciplines Rule The University Roost

If you are the chair of an interdisciplinary program and see any meetings with deans or provosts in the immediate future, make sure you read University of Pennsylvania sociologist Jerry A. Jacobs' Interdisciplinary Hype in the Chronicle of Higher Education (11/22/09). It will prepare you for every tired old argument you will have to answer about why your intellectual commitments are not worth supporting. Arguing that there is major pressure for breaking the boundaries of academic discipline (oh, would that this were the case!), particularly driven by federal money aimed at supporting interdisciplinary research in the sciences, Jacobs expresses his view that "efforts to reorganize academe based on interdisciplinary principles would have disastrous consequences in the short term—and would end up reproducing our disciplinary or departmental structure in the long term."

There's nothing I despise like a wishy-washy man with no opinions.

OK, I wondered, interdisciplinary intellectual that I am, "Though I detest these things he says, why does he say them?" And the more I tried to figure this out, the more my irritation grew. The article articulates little that is "disastrous" in the short term, nor is it persuasive that new interdisciplinary structures inevitably revert to disciplinary forms in the long term because of something inherent in the act of knowledge production that we all share. It does not persuade, as it tries to at the end, that interdisciplinarians are the barbarians clawing at the gates of disciplinary civilization. Ignoring the ways in which universities act to constrain interdisciplinary scholarship by how they structure appointments, Jacobs expresses the "disaster" of interdisciplinary scholarship as pure tautology. Furthermore, by not even mentioning the ways that interdisciplinary scholars are inevitably forced to conform to discipline during hiring, promotion and tenure processes, Jacobs reveals the real point of the article: it is a justification for the "necessity" of maintaining the stranglehold that disciplines have on funding streams of all kinds as we enter an era of increasingly diminished resources.

Why it's the culture wars all over again, except this time the scientists have been folded into the critique (which is probably a good thing for our team: has anyone else in the humanities or social sciences noticed lately that the more you play with the "hard" science people the more seriously your university takes you?)

One red flag raised early in the piece is that Jacobs never defines what interdisciplinarity is, or what make the task of the interdisciplinary scholar different and valuable. His belief that all scholars are more or less the same and that we all demonstrate similar tendencies and prejudices in relation to an intellectual "other" produces polarized logic like this: "Alongside the image of academic departments as barren silos is another image of interconnected knowledge—a web." To paraphrase Horton, a scholar's a scholar no matter how small: we who choose to be interdisciplinary do not embrace and explore multiple routes to knowledge. In fact, we are just as intellectually intolerant as the next disciplinary guy. So why give us centers and tenure-track lines? Why not just turn your endowment over to the Taliban now?

Furthermore, Jacobs argues, such webs of connection (which are multi-disciplinary, not interdisciplinary) already exist and don't need to be argued for or institutionalized. And when they are, look at the chaos:

A recent example from Pennsylvania State University is instructive. Penn State has promoted research on homeland security, but the pursuit of that worthy goal has resulted in the proliferation rather than the consolidation of specialized units: no fewer than 21 research centers on various aspects of homeland security. They include units on terrorism, computer security, crisis management, infectious diseases, and nonlethal defense technologies. Each of the centers may represent a noble undertaking, but their proliferation underscores the fact that there are many aspects of complex issues, and that interdisciplinary efforts can lead just as easily to the multiplication of academic units as to their consolidation.

Well I agree: 21 centers on Homeland Security is idiotic. But this doesn't strike me as a problem with interdisciplinarity (which has never made a claim to provide thrifty forms of academic consolidation), but a problem of the federal government slapping the label of academia on a political agenda and military agenda and the university signing off on it so that they can hire faculty on the federal nickel. Which is an old story, dating back to the Cold War.

Interestingly, Jacobs moves straight from that example of wasteful proliferation of resources to: American Studies! Jacobs notes the age of the field, and gives a woefully insufficient view of the field's complexity before delivering himself of this peculiar judgement:
Indeed, American studies has been far more ambitious in its intellectual scope and more dynamic and enduring than most interdisciplinary fields. Here again interdisciplinarity coexists with scholarly specialization. A look at American-studies dissertations makes clear that they are every bit as specialized as dissertations in English and American history. Furthermore, American-studies topics have proliferated. The 2008 program of the field's annual meeting reveals the remarkable scope and specialization of researchers: Papers were organized by period (early American, 19th century, 20th century); by ethnicity (African-American, Asian-American, Chicano, Native American, Pacific Islander studies); and by place (border studies, cultural geography, landscape and the built environment). The conference included a variety of approaches to gender issues (gender and sexuality, queer studies, transgender studies) and global perspectives (global, transnational, cross-cultural, postcolonial studies, studies of U.S. colonialism). The examination of culture included popular culture, print culture, material culture, food, music, film, television and media studies, performance studies, and visual-culture studies. There are undoubtedly many accomplished scholars in the field—including Drew Gilpin Faust, a Penn Ph.D. in American civilization who is president of Harvard University—and many valuable pieces of research, but that does not mean that the field has achieved a more unified vision of American culture than those of its closest neighbors, history and English. (American studies has never ventured too far into the social sciences.) Indeed, if a unified theory of American culture were to be advanced, the current generation of American-studies scholars would be the first to challenge it.

Aside from the incoherence of the critique, here are the main issues: that the success, or failure, of the field is in Jacob's view, knowable by whether it has achieved disciplinary unity. And yet, no one who actually works in the field of American Studies is cited but for the admittedly successful Drew Faust, who was appointed to a history department for her entire career prior to leaving for Harvard University, where she is now president. Furthermore, Faust's Ph.D. (and her initial monograph on the slave holding mind) dates from a time in which intellectual historians (what Faust was when she was a newbie) often did their work in American Studies programs because historians who worked with literary materials were often believed to be peculiar. Nor does Jacobs mention that the failure of universities to establish tenure-track lines either in American Studies or in many of the fields he cites as part of the American Studies crazy quilt, which leads to the evaluation of American Studies scholarship through the deep prejudice of disciplinary values, often prevents young scholars from doing the path-breaking interdisciplinary work that they want to do.

In Jacobs' mind, disciplines are the parents and interdisciplinary fields, the children:

Going too far down the interdisciplinary path by ending academic departments, as some have suggested, would be a disaster. Departments teach techniques needed to conduct high-quality research. Disciplines establish a hierarchy of problems. Interdisciplinarity cannot exist without disciplines and departments. What happens when that structure is broken? Will all problems be equally important? How will quality be judged, and how will the most important advances be communicated?

Lurking behind these peculiar statements and questions is Jacobs' apparent fear of the postmodern, where all values dissolve, any method is good enough, and their are no hierarchies of anything. Interdisciplinarity is the anarchy that departments prevent, right? Wrong. Interdisciplinary programs and departments do all the things that Jacobs claims are the exclusive purview of departments: where does he think those of us who teach in them came from anyway? Furthermore, our students have to know more, not less, to survive in a scholarly atmosphere that is incredibly competitive, not only because bright students go into it for the challenges it offers, but because they must be willing to fight for jobs and respect from people like Jacobs who are firmly convinced, for no good reason, that to be interdisciplinary is to be second rate.

Soro Bindi at Macdonough

Tuesday, students at Macdonough enjoyed a performace from Soro Bindhi. We learned about different types of instruments and dances from Ghana. Students participated in sing-a-longs, dances, and played instruments. He showed us that in Ghana they balance things on their heads. He even balanced a table on his head!

Thanks for coming

 

 

Middlesex Hospital's Fit for Kids Program

 

Macdonough School has been selected to host a special program presented by Middlesex Hospital called Fit for Kids!

The event will take place on Thursday, May 16th beginning at 6:00 p.m.

 

This family friendly event is sure to be fun for all ages!

On Political Violence: Vandalism And Mortal Threats In The Wake Of The Wake Of The Health Care Vote

If you actually go to Sarah Palin's Facebook page, rather than simply believe what you have heard in the media, you can evaluate for yourself whether the twenty Democratic congressional seats she is urging the Republicans to take back in November are, or are not, marked with rifle cross hairs. I'm voting for not, although I haven't looked through a rifle sight in decades, so I am no authority.

I think the notion that Palin is inviting political assassins to, as we now say in the political arena, "bring it on" (I guess if you are a Republican you say "let's roll") takes an act of imagination. In order to imagine that one was being summoned by Palin to harm a sitting Congressman as part of a rebellion against tyranny, one would have to disregard what the former Governor of Alaska (or the person who maintains the site for her) actually says in the note attached to the map. "We’re going to fire them and send them back to the private sector," she says; "which has been shrinking thanks to their destructive government-growing policies. Maybe when they join the millions of unemployed, they’ll understand why Americans wanted them to focus on job creation and an invigorated private sector." Appealing to millions of voters who are unemployed or underemployed, and asking them to blame Democratic rather than Republican policies for their immiseration, Palin is suggesting that Democratic politicians be fired -- not fired upon.

Hell, yeah. Why would you need health insurance if you are unemployed? I ask you. Fire the ignorant bastards!

And yet. And yet.

Let us consider acts of imagination that might turn those crosses into cross hairs. After all, history demonstrates that political violence becomes conceivable through acts of imagination. In the United States, those acts of imagination have often been given tacit (or not so tacit) approval by politicians themselves who imagine themselves leading "the people" in a rebellion against tyranny.

Palin's recent Twitter message to her followers -- "Don't Retreat, Instead -- RELOAD!" is an unambiguous use of a war metaphor in the political arena. This causes me to wonder why, if Palin truly wishes to distance herself from political violence, she hasn't retracted that Twitter or redrawn that map with little stars instead. That she should allow the misunderstanding that she is inciting her followers to dangerous attacks to stand strikes me as odd, particularly given the threats to and acts of violence against Democrats that followed the health care vote last week. In the most potentially lethal incident, Virginia Democratic Congressman Tom Periello's home address was listed on a Lynchburg VA Tea Party blog (except it was actually Periello's brother's address.) Subsequently, the gas line to that home was cut, which might have resulted in a lethal explosion and fire.

Although the Lynchburg Tea Party has said it does not condone the violence (while we're at it, we could change the name of that town), it hasn't taken down the address or sanctioned the blogger either. Bricks through windows, some with threatening notes attached, have been more the norm; as have threats delivered by mail. New York Congressman Anthony Weiner received an envelope containing "white powder," intended to mimic an anthrax attack, and pictures of nooses were sent to other Congresspeople who voted yes on the national health bill. As the New York Times reports, Tea Party leaders have "distanced themselves" from these acts, saying that they result from "frustration" but are "not acceptable."

Well, if violence is not acceptable, remove this garbage from your websites, public statements and protest posters. Any responsible political organization would do this if they were concerned about the possibility of violence.

Goading crowds of the disaffected to violent emotions while insisting that actual criminal acts are only perpetrated by fringe elements has a long history in this country: ask Pitchfork Ben Tillman ("It was the riots before the elections precipitated by [Negro voters'] own hot-headedness in attempting to hold the government, that brought on conflicts between the races and caused the shotgun to be used. That is what I meant by saying we used the shotgun.") Ask George Wallace ("Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done.... I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.")



Ask Strom Thurmond ("I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.") Or ask Jesse Helms: "You needed that job. You were the best qualified for this job. But they had to give it to a minority."



Better yet, ask any civil rights worker from the 1950s or 1960s about the ration of threats received to bricks or bombs through the window. As a former candidate for president, Sarah Palin knows exactly what her foolish fear mongering accomplishes among her followers, something that other Republican lawmakers also ought to be held accountable for as they pursue a rhetorical scorched earth policy that summons the Lost Cause, the Alamo, and every other intolerant moment in this country's history (the American Revolution had plenty of them too, as so-called patriots sacked Tories and Native Americans for fun and profit.) As The Telegraph in the UK reported in November 2008, the McCain-Palin campaign's pursuit of rhetoric that linked an Obama presidency to US vulnerability to terrorism not only provoked cries of "Terrorist!" and "K___ him!" against candidate Obama, but a dramatic uptick in threats made against the life of the candidate and his family.* That none of these threats have, to date, resulted in an assault on the President does not make them meaningless, and Palin must actively refrain from provoking them.

Huffington Post reports that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) have "condemned" the threats against Democrats, but they haven't, not really. As one quote on HuffPo reads,"'I do not condone violence,' Cantor said on Capitol Hill on Thursday. 'There are no leaders in the building, no rank and file members that condone violence, period.'But Cantor admonished Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) for 'dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon.'" The condemnation of Democratic fundraisers citing these incidents in fundraising requests (because why would Democrats be afraid of a Republican Party that harbors vandals and assassins?) begs the question of who lit the fire in the first place.

For a good example of who that might be, go to John Boehner's web page, where an article without authorship (it is posted by the "Press Office") trumpets a "states rebellion... in Ohio" in response to a "Washington Democrats’ massive job-killing government takeover of health care." Promising that "the fight is far from over," Boehner announces that "Across the country, nothing short of a rebellion is underway." Embedded in this sentence is a link that takes you to another announcement of politicians in three states -- Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina -- who are moving to oppose the plan.

Anyone recall how peaceful the last rebellion or three that started in those states was? My point exactly.

*My use of blanks for this word is in deference to the fact that it is a federal felony to imply a threat to the the President's life.

Cross posted at Cliopatria.

American Heart Association’s Jump Rope for Heart at Macdonough School

Thanks to Mrs. Oszurek, our physical education teacher for coordinating this year's Jump Rope for Heart event!

 

Macdonough students will participate in the American Heart Association’s Jump Rope for Heart Event during the first week in April. They'll learn about the importance of regular physical activity, good health & nutrition and volunteerism.

Because We Are All Bill Cronon: An Open Letter To Our Colleague In Madison

Where is this clause in the constitution?

Dear Bill:

Welcome to the blogosphere!  I like the design of Scholar as Citizen, and frankly, I'm also happy to have another age peer in the house.  Although I've never had a whole political party go after me (very impressive, dude!), I did suffer an attack from a fellow historian and his followers that had its hair-raising moments. 

I didn't get the death threats on my voice mail that an untenured colleague at a prestigious flagship received from the Sunshine Band.  However, I got plenty of hate mail, as well as copies of numerous emails sent to Zenith's president, members of the history department, and the board of trustees.  These various communications, and numerous letters, all called for my termination -- something that was, of course, impossible, since I already had tenure. It wasn't covered in the national media, but it was ugly all the same. On the other hand, you are more famous than I am, so it stands to reason that you would get a splashy, welcome Tea Party.

Here's my favorite line from Mark Jefferson, Executive Director of the Wisconsin GOP, who filed the FOIA on your email, quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

"I have never seen such a concerted effort to intimidate someone from lawfully seeking information about their government," Mr. Jefferson said in the statement. "Further," he added, "it is chilling to see that so many members of the media would take up the cause of a professor who seeks to quash a lawful open-records request. Taxpayers have a right to accountable government and a right to know if public officials are conducting themselves in an ethical manner. The left is far more aggressive in this state than the right in its use of open-records requests, yet these rights do extend beyond the liberal left and members of the media.

Chilling.  Just chilling.  I hate it when the big, bad histowy pwofessors go aftah the eeny-weenie iddle politicians.  Pick on someone your own size next time, ok?

What is fascinating to me is that your politicians in Wisconsin seem to be so affronted by the right to free speech.  I thought the Republican party was all about our "freedoms": isn't that why they decided to trash the future of public education by diverting the money to a ten year war in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why we want everyone to have the right to not have access to affordable health care?  Every yahoo conspiracy theorist to have all the weapons he can afford?  Je ne comprends pas -- whoops.  There I go being all socialist and academic again.

Another lesson of this little episode seems to be that when a college professor says something well-researched and true he is on particularly thin ice.  I'm glad we cleared this up, because when Ward Churchill was fired, and right wing gun nuts orchestrated a campaign to force Michael Bellesisles out of his tenured job, I thought that it was poor citation, pretending to be a Native American and having an abrasive way of discussing the global context for terrorist attacks that were the issue.

Anyway, what you have discovered is that for all the trolls that are out there, plenty of colleagues will stand up for you too.  Feels pretty good, even though it is a steep price to pay to have your life disrupted at the worst possible time of year.

Whatever happens next, this episode presents some possibilities for the rest of us that are highly un-funny.  They are the kind of things we tenured radicals know, but never think about.  So for all the bloggers out there, and for all the fans of Tenured Radical, I would like to inaugurate what I will now call the Walker Rules of Electronic Communication and Knowledge (WRECK):

• Your university email account belongs to the university.  While Bill Cronon is being persecuted by a bunch of right wing Republicans determined to reduce the American working class to pre-industrial conditions, technically your employer can enter your email account whenever it chooses.  This means that we should all be careful what we say when we write from, or to, an edu address.  In fact, it isn't such a terrible idea to add your gmail or yahoo account to the signature line of your university account requesting that all personal communication be sent there.
• People (including students) who work in IT can get access to your university email through the web server whenever they want to.  They shouldn't, and they probably don't, but they are capable of it.  Don't put anything in an email that you would not want circulated.  This includes personal matters (sex), conflict with colleagues, and correspondence about personnel cases that reveals any information that you, the department, the referees, or the candidate might consider private.
• The computer you are assigned by the university belongs to the university, and they can search it at any time.  They can also search your office without a warrant.  According to FindLaw, unless you are covered by a state law or a union contract that prohibits such searches, "Employers can usually search an employee's workspace, including their desk, office or lockers. The workspace technically belongs to the employer, and courts have found that employees do not have an expectation of privacy in these areas.  This is also the case for computers. Since the computers and networking equipment typically belong to the employer, the employer is generally entitled to monitor the use of the computer. This includes searching for files saved to the computer itself, as well as monitoring an employee's actions while using the computer (eg, while surfing the internet)."  Does this mean that we should all be thinking about buying a home computer for all activities we wish to ensure privacy for -- downloading pornography, getting divorced, blogging?  Maybe.  And technically, the university could prohibit you from blogging on the computer they provide, although arguably this would be an infringement of academic freedom.
• You can't be sure you have erased something from a computer or a server.  In fact, according to Daniel Engber of Slate, you can be pretty sure that you can't erase anything permanently, even if you use a utility like Evidence Eliminator.  And even if you could, those emails that you sent are now on someone else's computer, someone else's server, and so on.  They are retrievable.
• The Republican Party is owned and operated by vicious thugs who abuse their power to make us all into corporate servants and lackeys for capitalist special interests.  This has nothing to do with computers:  I thought I would just throw this in.  But we are reminded that there is a long  history for this sort of activity in the United States:  in the late 1830s, for example, the southern slaveocracy pushed for national legislation to censor abolitionist literature.  When they didn't get it, beginning with South Carolina, they passed state laws that allowed local officials to seize these materials and open the mail of private citizens.  The parallel is obvious, isn't?  Freedom to have absolute power over labor > constitutional right to free speech.  It's a good thing the Grimke sisters didn't have an email account.

My understanding is that  there is a campaign underway at the public unis to forward all sent mail to Governor Scott Walker (that's govgeneral@wisconsin.gov), Mark Jefferson (that's mjefferson@wisgop.org) and GOP State Party Chairman Brad Courtney (that's State.Chairman@Wisgop.info). Anybody who wants to dialogue with other stalking horses for international capitalism members of the state party leadership can go here for their addresses.  Some people might interpret this as an attempt to crash their servers, but you and I know that it is just an attempt to give them a little historical context.

Anyway, Bill, good luck with this.  I've always enjoyed your work, and while I know you never sought out this kind of notoriety, we couldn't be standing up for a better guy.

your friend,

Tenured Radical