Tuesday, June 02, 2015

ACADEMIC FREEDOM UP TO A POINT.

Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans are getting closer to eliminating tenure at the University of Wisconsin. Here's a column on the matter from David French, formerly an attorney for Christians who complained their colleges were violating their rights, now one of National Review's premier scolds:
As someone who has litigated many, many academic freedom cases, I have profoundly mixed feelings about this move. First, I know and understand that tenure is designed to guarantee freedom, to prevent political pressures from impacting scholarship. It’s designed to preserve academic independence. In fact, tenure has protected a number of outspoken conservative professors (including some of my clients), men and women who would have been fired long ago without tenure protections.
But...
At the same time, however, academic independence is a fiction. In the real world, leftist groupthink dominates academic departments, conservatives are easily weeded out before tenure – mostly through the hiring process itself – and even many (if not most) tenured dissenting professors live “in the closet” to avoid the social and professional consequences of public disagreement on key cultural or scientific issues. The result isn’t freedom but instead permanently entrenched ideological conformity.
Freedom not only isn't free, it isn't even real if it results in too many liberals. French then offers what may look to the casual observer like a defense of tenure...
Yet this same overwhelming conformity means that the immediate consequence of lifting tenure protections wouldn’t be greater diversity but even worse ideological persecution as the few conservative professors would face hostile departments stripped of the bulk of their legal protections. Ending tenure without simultaneously overhauling departments (including departments’ academic missions and hiring practices) simply won’t contribute to the cause of liberty. Yes, it might make it easier to make financially-motivated cuts, but it’s hard to see any short or medium-term increase in true academic freedom.
...but his GOP buddies are probably reading that and saying, "You know, he's right -- we ought to stuff the faculties with wingnuts, then make it easy to fire the ones we don't like!" Whether that was French's intention I leave to you, but read his closing before you decide:
Finally, there are downsides to tenure beyond its effect on liberty. Place any group of people outside of the normal boundaries of accountability, and they are likely to abuse that autonomy. Tenured professors are no exception, with their ranks including a host of colleagues who simply coast on their job security. They care little for teaching, behave horribly towards students and colleagues, and even slack off their research efforts. They occupy seats that could be taken by better, more conscientious teachers and scholars, and no one can move them until they retire or die. While preserving true academic freedom is worth tolerating a limited number of deadbeats, the deadbeats become much less tolerable if academic freedom is failing.
Jeez, why do we have this stupid old "tenure" in the first place? French is insufferable even when he's on the right side -- for example, you can believe Laura Kipnis got a raw deal from Northwestern and still want to sidle away when French says nuh-uh libtards, you're the real enemies of free speech; for many of us that may be a merely instinctual reaction, but French's post today shows why that instinct is absolutely correct.

235 comments:

  1. Paul MacDonald3:45 PM

    Let me get this straight:

    "At the same time, however, academic independence is a fiction. In the
    real world, leftist groupthink dominates academic departments,
    conservatives are easily weeded out before tenure – mostly through the
    hiring process itself – and even many (if not most) tenured dissenting
    professors live “in the closet” to avoid the social and professional
    consequences of public disagreement on key cultural or scientific
    issues. The result isn’t freedom but instead permanently entrenched
    ideological conformity."

    So the problem isn't tenure, as a convention or policy, but rather that affirmative action for conservatives in the hiring process ISN"T a convention or policy.

    Right, got it.

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  2. Downpup E3:53 PM

    The big battle in academia isn't about abstract academic freedom. It's about money & power.

    Yeah, shocking, right? Cutting the budget at the same time as gutting tenure & taking power away from the faculty is a pretty clear way of saying everything is going to the administrators & everybody else is peons.

    One of the few times Walker has been stopped was when - (WaPO)

    Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker submitted a budget proposal that included language that would have changed the century-old mission of the University of Wisconsin system — known as the Wisconsin Idea and embedded in the state code — by removing words that commanded the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and replacing them with “meet the state’s workforce needs.”

    So he at least still has to talk the talk, while giving total power to the administrators.

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  3. smut clyde4:00 PM

    leftist groupthink
    I remember when "groupthink" was a specific, closely-defined phenomenon with a list of criteria, rather than a lazy synonym for "conformity" when you want to sound pop-sciency or slightly Orwellian.

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  4. M. Krebs4:02 PM

    Meanwhile, the crackpots of the North Carolina legislature want to force all faculty in the university system to teach four courses every semester. Yeah, that'll do wonders for the state.

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  5. smut clyde4:03 PM

    the social and professional consequences of public disagreement on key cultural or scientific issues
    Biology departments refuse to hire creationists; climatology departments refuse to hire AQW-denialists; it's out-and-out persecution.

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  6. coozledad4:05 PM

    conservatives are easily weeded out before tenure – mostly through the hiring process itself

    Hiring processes that weed out dumbasses? That sucks. These guys need to apply for a job with the police.

    and even many (if not most) tenured dissenting professors live “in the closet”

    This is a truism.

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  7. Place any group of people outside of the normal boundaries of accountability, and they are likely to abuse that autonomy.Do you have tenure in a department of film and theater, by chance, David? Because yet again, I am in awe of your powers of projection.

    Tenured professors are no exception, with their ranks including a host of colleagues who simply coast on their job security.... says the guy writing for National Review.

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  8. He's right about academic freedom being a complete fiction. You never hear of conservatives landing lucrative jobs at think tanks, being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to "research" and then turn out "papers" that "prove" whatever the pet theory of the moment might be (or perhaps turn out one of the classics on how wonderful trickle-down economics will be if we ever fully implement it). And you never hear of prominent conservatives being hired at prestigious universities where they teach constitooshunal law--places like, say, Berkley or U of Tenn.

    No, conservatives are so shut out of the conversation that we just can't hear them over all the screaming about how they're shut out of the conversation.

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  9. Which, really, is Giant Part A of the "problem." Giant Part B, of course, is that reality has an intense liberal bias that tends to make anyone who actually looks at the world objectively reach conclusions that conservatives just don't like.

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  10. So what has Ann Althouse, tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin's law school, had to say about this?

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  11. It is indeed true--just not in the way he meant it.

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  12. What's the big deal? Teaching is nothing more than standing in front of the room talking, right? Maybe wheel in the 16mm projector once in a while, show one of those films about Africa or something.

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  13. Depends on how deep into the box of chardonnay she is.

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  14. AGoodQuestion4:59 PM

    What I get out of French's piece is that he's for "free speech for me but not for thee," provided that everyone is real clear on who the "me" and "thee" is. Am I missing something?

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  15. AGoodQuestion5:04 PM

    Oh come now. You're talking about the institution that provides a forum for Jonah Goldberg, Kevin Williamson, and Charles CW Cooke. These people are by no means coasting. They're beached.

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  16. No sir, you are not missing anything.

    "....for me, but not for thee...." Pretty much distils the conservative ethos down to its component parts...
    ...

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  17. While I am curious, I think I'll allow a more intrepid adventurer to take that trip up the mudhole.
    ...

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  18. coozledad5:10 PM

    Those driver's ed films are always a hit. 'Specially the gory ones.

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  19. coozledad5:11 PM

    Once again, depends on how deep into that box of chardonnay she is.

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  20. M. Krebs5:23 PM

    ... and even many (if not most) tenured dissenting professors live “in the closet” to avoid the social and professional consequences of public disagreement on key cultural or scientific issues.


    You know, I did hear a rumor once from a guy who knew a guy who knew Feynman. After a few martinis, Richard would open up and reveal that he thought quantum mechanics was a bunch of hooey.

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  21. susanoftexas5:30 PM

    Megan McArdle snippets from various sources:
    "It's not that the teachers don't want to teach kids; it's that they don't have to. And as anyone who's ever tried to write a novel in their spare time knows, anything onerous that you don't have to do generally runs afoul of other priorities.

    The only thing teachers have a financial incentive to do under this system is keep their butts in the teacher's chair, and acquire useless degrees from programs that mostly teach students how to sit through long and pointless classes.

    Unions also give teachers power to resist changes that make their jobs less fun. I think the teachers genuinely believe that these changes are bad; but I also think that they strenuously resist learning anything to the contrary. There is really good evidence for the benefits of direct instruction in teaching disadvantaged children.

    But in those urban areas, the teacher's unions are a big honking problem. This is not some crazy right wing opinion about unions in general; it is a specific problem with public employee unions. ... [It boils] down to getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to do no work. If the laziest ten percent of New York's teachers spent all day drinking coffee and doing "literature review", this would be a fiscal problem, but not a desperate one. The problem is, we stick the teacher's union's problems in our classrooms."
    Demonize teachers to privatize schools and grab control over academia. (McArdle is also convinced academia is actively blackballing conservatives.)
    I'm not sure what conservatives will do with academia once they get it. They seem to think it will provide them with a plethora of prestigious jobs that are just like their own: no demands, no responsibility, and no skills necessary, but all paid for by the taxpayer. Just like Glenn Reynolds!

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  22. Gromet5:35 PM

    Liberals are fascists, and recently the Bible-thumping con man Huckabee got tagged as a progressive, so our political opponents are pretty far past the point of believing words actually communicate.

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  23. satch5:37 PM

    Well, if conservatives only had a fair shot at tenure and being taken seriously in the faculty lounges, they wouldn't be forced... FORCED, I tells ya... into taking those multi hundred thousand dollar gigs at wingnut think tanks. And this is just precious:

    "... and even
    many (if not most) tenured dissenting professors live “in the closet” to
    avoid the social and professional consequences of public disagreement
    on key cultural or scientific issues."

    Social consequences? You mean like not being invited to those dinner parties where they routinely pummel liberals into submission with the force and geometric logic of their arguments?

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  24. Conservatives do just fine in law, business, medical, and engineering schools.

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  25. Yeah, yeah. Get off our lawn says Perfesser Spiderface.
    ~

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  26. satch5:40 PM

    Yeah... I remember seeing "Mechanized Death" and "Signal 30" at Cannes.

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  27. That move by Walker really gets at the core of what the Kochs and others are trying to do to academia. Are there out-of-touch, lazy professors who are just coasting? Sure. But universities, and in particular public universities, are not for the benefit of corporations. They're not there to turn out widgets. They're supposed to serve the students in particular and society in a broader sense.

    But gawd fabbid the corporations cut into the shareholder profits to do something as gauche as paying for worker training.

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  28. I like how he suddenly becomes a progressive when he defends an ultraconservative child-toucher.

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  29. There is a tiny kernel of truth in McMegan's ranting: Public school teachers are encouraged to obtain advanced degrees and to engage in continuing education. As for her contention that these courses and degrees are "useless" and "mostly teach students how to sit through long and pointless classes," well, as usual she's pulling this straight out of her ass. One of the things I do is edit PhD proposals and completed dissertations, and I've working on scores of dissertations by teachers working on a doctorate in education. The vast majority of these have been by people genuinely seeking the cutting edge in how to effectively engage students, and their research ranges across a whole lot of disciplines the uninitiated might never suspect as having a bearing on teaching.

    Meanwhile, we as a society have this thing were we want our kids being taught by hyper-qualified and motivated teachers, but we expect those teachers to be willing to work for less than what the cashier at Kroger's makes. Any wonder why recruiting and retaining teachers is becoming ever more difficult?

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  30. Gromet5:46 PM

    Just what do they imagine the conservative university will look like? The administration won't implement Title IX anymore? The students suddenly will march FOR the wars? History 101 will relegate FDR to a footnote? I really don't grasp what they want, here.

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  31. coozledad5:47 PM

    My dad was a driver's ed teacher/ football coach. He'd borrow the projector and the films and show them to us on weekends, when we were kids. Signal 30 was one.


    He was a weird dude.

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  32. edroso5:47 PM

    Power. Anywhere they think they lack it. Which is everywhere, but especially places where people don't like them.

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  33. Anybody who wants highly qualified teachers willing to work for low pay will have to build a time machine, to go back to when that was one of the few career paths open to women, and it was legal to pay women much less than men on the theory that the men needed it more.

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  34. Do they somehow imagine that a whole bunch of young adults on their own are going to be overwhelmingly conservative and not give them any trouble?

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  35. satch5:50 PM

    I think we all need to do a field trip to Regent, Liberty, or Bob Jones to study Conservative Academics in their natural environment

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  36. bourbaki5:52 PM

    She of course of has an MBA.

    Anecdote Time! My roommate my first year in grad school was doing an MBA and as far as I could tell his coursework consisted of watching golf on TV and learning how to have a firm handshake.

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  37. But universities, and in particular public universities, are not for the benefit of corporations.

    Depends on the university. When I was at Georgia Tech, the school did boatloads of work for industry. I was in aerospace engineering, and that department was working with Lockheed to do wind-tunnel work on a stretch version of the C-130 Hercules, working with Northrup on a remote-control extreme maneuver test aircraft, and working with NASA, General Dynamics, and Boeing on computer-controlled fly-by-wire systems. And those are just the programs I heard about in my own major. There were lots of others, and all the other departments also had lots of corporate contracts going.

    Walker and his overseers are, perhaps, too ignorant to understand the vast amounts of corporate profits that have come from universities working with industry. So perhaps in 20 years their successors will be standing in their cold dark mansions wondering why the fucking electricity no longer works and why their company hasn't had a new product in the last 10 years.

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  38. I think they believe that if they can just control the information young adults are exposed to, they'll be able to mold those young minds into right-thinking conservatives.

    Of course, when those young folk are exposed to reality and find it conflicts horribly with what they've been told . . .

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  39. Kobie5:55 PM

    Every single argument I read from a conservative these days portrays themselves as victims. White males (especially Christian ones) are the true victims of American society. Hollyweird is biased against them. The lame-stream media is biased against them. Academia is biased against them. Science is biased against them.


    Nice racket they got going on.

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  40. Don't get me started on MBAs.

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  41. satch5:57 PM

    Sure... imagine the expense to the mighty corporations if they were all forced to build and staff their own labs rather than farming out research to universities and flocks of starving grad students.

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  42. They can't even keep their own kids from fucking.

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  43. Social consequences? You mean like not being invited to those dinner parties where they routinely pummel liberals into submission with the force and geometric logic of their arguments?

    I think I just hurt myself laughing.

    I want to invite this comment over to dinner with a few close friends--at dinner at which we can discuss the myriad ways that eliminating the Estate Tax can help inner-city children obtain quality educations.

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  44. hellslittlestangel6:01 PM

    Does he think the dirty college professors should be put on trial after they've been purged? I mean, what's the point of letting them go free to spread their corruption elsewhere?

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  45. The thing about Christians is that they must always see themselves as persecuted, no matter the circumstances.

    After all, 2 Timothy 3:12 clearly states that "...all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution."

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  46. coozledad6:02 PM

    There's an educational model that follows this general track, but a few years down the road it can lead to blackmail.

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  47. coozledad6:05 PM

    Once they're in academia they can tell their students "Look it up. It's in the public record!"

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  48. Gromet6:07 PM

    How dare you. Remember what a bang-up job our First MBA President did with the economy?

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  49. J Neo Marvin6:07 PM

    So it's clear then. The most important question to ask when analyzing any institution is "Is it good or bad for conservatives?"

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  50. True, though that's long been the case for technical/scientific fields.

    What Walker and the Kochs especially want is for the liberal arts departments to come to heel. That's where they imagine the nest of commies is, and that's where they imagine they can do the most to exert control.

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  51. JESUS CHRIST THAT GUY. I WOULD FAIL HIM OUT OF MY CLASS SO HARD IF HE TURNED IN A PAPER WITH THAT KIND OF CITATION.

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  52. gurkle26:09 PM

    Doesn't this go back to Buckley's "God & Man at Yale," where he complained that students are being taught to question religion and conservative values, and argued that donors should put pressure on universities to make them stop?


    Conservatives' ideal university, at least on the humanities side, would be one that tells students which books are important, and encourages everyone to see himself as part of a "common culture" shaped by the wisdom of consensus. Different conservatives have different reasons for believing this - old-timey elitists want respect for conventional values and conventional interpretation of the great books; neoconservatives like to believe race problems would be solved if everyone would agree on loving Dante - but they all believe that if university is supposed to make young people question their values, it's by teaching them how shallow and wrong we are compared to the wise men of the past.


    I don't even mind this approach, it's just the ludicrous idea that this isn't a political or politicized approach and that only the other guys - the ones who want kids to question today's values in a left-wing direction - are being "political."

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  53. coozledad6:10 PM

    They can't even keep their own kids from fucking their own kids, or at least keep it on the down low.

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  54. Young people's bodies and minds are in a constant state of change. Growing, learning, adapting, perhaps even evolving... this process is the opposite of conservatism.

    I've heard that Catholics have a saying: "Give us the child for his first seven years, and we'll give you the man."

    I don't believe in that. I have more faith in the human mind and spirit to believe that's true. Besides, I've known some ex-Catholics, and they can be pretty bitter and contrary.

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  55. TGuerrant6:11 PM

    If only Popi hadn't gotten Dubya started on an MBA...

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  56. coozledad6:12 PM

    I've heard that Catholics have a saying: "Give us the child for his first seven years, and we'll show him what it's like to be an archbishop.

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  57. ColBatGuano6:12 PM

    Not only which books are important, but also how and why they are important. Can't have people having alternate interpretations of 'The Odyssey' now can we?

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  58. satch6:14 PM

    On the other hand, Rafael Cruz made sure that the mind of his baby boy was set in stone and impervious to evolving long before he ever got to that liberal cesspool up there in Cambridge...

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  59. A Jesuit education is highly effective in creating ex-Catholics.

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  60. M. Krebs6:18 PM

    Oh christ. But that makes me wonder whether those places have the usual bullshit accreditation that public universities waste substantial resources on. If so, how'd you like to be on one of those visits?

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  61. For a group of people who claim to be silenced, they sure as hell won't shut up about it.

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  62. No! Please forgive me, but I must disagree and disagree strongly with that.

    To accept that notion would be letting Ted off the hook. His young mind was not set in stone; no young mind is. His embrace of ignorance was an act of free will.

    Minds are not stone, in my humble opinion.

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  63. M. Krebs6:21 PM

    White males (especially Christian ones) who have the minds of little boys are the true victims of American society.

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  64. Seriously. I teach legal writing, in which the very kind of "public record" our friend tried to wave in the general direction of as proof for his position is often cited.

    Ask any law student or lawyer about the Bluebook, and you will get groans and rolled/glazed eyes, but if there's anything learning that goddamned thing does for you, it's that it teaches you that you cannot just point in the direction of a "public record" that comprises BILLIONS of pages of documents without providing a citation to WHICH SPECIFIC PART of that gifuckingnormous "public record" supports the specific part of your specific argument. You will INSTANTLY be bounced out of court if you don't cite.

    Which is why I think he's a high school student, at best.

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  65. whetstone6:22 PM

    groupthink... entrenched ideological conformity... overwhelming conformity... ideological persecution... slack off their research efforts... They occupy seats that could be taken by better, more conscientious teachers and scholars....

    So does that mean Jonah's getting fired or is this guy on about something else?

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  66. The laws of supply and demand don't apply to education or Hollywood.

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  67. M. Krebs6:23 PM

    Never mind all that folderol. SHAKESPEARE!

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  68. I hear that Denny Hastert was a secret liberal all these years. Have you heard that? If not, you will soon.

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  69. whetstone6:25 PM

    A couple of my friends are MBAs. You sir, are over the... no, wait, you're basically right. As they'd admit.

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  70. There is a dearth of misogynists in Woman's studies departments.

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  71. JennOfArk6:27 PM

    Instead of this incessant whining about how conservatives are unfairly excluded from academia, just once I'd like to see them just list all of the conservative professors - well, not professors, since the liberal-academia fascists won't let them get tenure - so let's just go with the larger group of conservatives in academia in any position - who have been drummed out of the ranks, unfairly passed over, etc. as a result of being insufficiently liberal-minded.


    I don't think these people exist.


    I say this because most who are drawn to academia are drawn by a love of learning, of challenging existing beliefs including their own, and conservatives already know everything there is to know. Including knowing that they're right in everything they believe, regardless of how they arrived at said belief.


    Academia doesn't need reforming by stripping away tenure, turning everyone into low-wage adjuncts. The profession will not be more open to conservatives if the tenure system is trashed, nor will it attract more conservatives, and most conservative wank-leaders know this. They just want professors to scrape and be subject to the same shitty "at-will" conditions as everyone else. The lure for their followers, of course, is the thrill of being able to taunt liberal elitist brainiacs with "if you're so smart then how come you're poor?"

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  72. I don't know, but I've seen some ads for librarians at some of these places, and there's a morals clause for those positions. I would imagine faculty contracts include the same.

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  73. Certainly since Hugo Schwyzer got bounced.

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  74. whetstone6:34 PM

    Liberty University. And it works pretty well, TBH. Lynchburg, Virginia is now basically a suburb of LU. They're good at turning out culture warriors, the kind who end up in anonymous but fairly important corners of things like the Bush Administration mashing all the buttons at once.

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  75. whetstone6:39 PM

    I see this point was made upthread. Good thing [puts feet on desk] I've got tenure here.

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  76. smut clyde6:42 PM

    From the NYTimes:
    the widespread belief in conservative circles that Mr. Hastert’s tenure had been marred by big spending [...]
    Mr.
    Hastert “was a hands-off guy,” he said. “He was picked because he
    didn’t do anything” as speaker to control Mr. Bush’s spending.
    BIG-SPENDING LIB.

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  77. TGuerrant6:46 PM

    Well, yeah. They're even restricted to the E string. Name one non-white, non-male, non-Christian bass player who has never been allowed to touch a G string. Go on, name one. ... [crickets] ... Uh-huh.

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  78. tigrismus6:49 PM

    Academia doesn't need reforming by stripping away tenure, turning everyone into low-wage adjuncts

    Yes, I also think university professors largely self-select, and I think a big part of that is salary... conservatives are less likely to forgo the bigger paychecks they can get outside of academia, so anything that would serve to drive down wages for positions that require higher degrees, and the large investment of time and money that entails, is only going to make the "problem" of lack of conservatives "worse."

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  79. coozledad6:52 PM

    Give him time. He'll make the kind of judge who tried this case:

    http://www.wral.com/person-commissioner-found-not-guilty-of-dwi/14678305/



    This is this character's second DWI and the Republican judge, J.M. Gentry, suspended the arrest. He usually throws black and poor white offenders in jail. This might be an interesting subject for a class.

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  80. TGuerrant6:53 PM

    Yeah, I think I'm maybe banned from a blog for saying I was surprised Jim Bob hadn't even taught Josh to give 'em candy afterwards. I meant it in a compassionate, supportive way, but sometimes that doesn't come across in pixels.

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  81. Lots of Christian conservatives touch G strings. It's just that those G strings are not on bass guitars and have nothing to do with music.

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  82. Can I get you to publish this in a peer-reviewed forum?

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  83. I heard Feynman confessed on his deathbed that electrons actually only spin to the right.

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  84. mortimer20007:01 PM

    If anyone wonders where all the former and present tenured conservative professors are, there's no shortage of them on the fucking Internet: Victor Seudronius Hanson, Glenn Reynolds & the Mrs., William Jacobson, Thomas Lifson (American Stinker), Donald Douglas, Mike Adams (successfully represented against UNC by none other than... David French!), Volokh, Althouse, etc. fucking etc. ad nauseum.

    Whiny outrage is all they've got.

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  85. coozledad7:01 PM

    He was picked because he was so goddamn filthy they knew they had him by the balls from the start. They knew about the child fucking, they knew he was fucking male hookers and congressional aides on K Street, and they knew he was taking money to intervene in tribal gambling disputes. They knew he had his head up Jack Abramoff's asshole. They knew he was an agent of the Turkish government.



    The New York Times Needs a Fucking Political Desk with a computer.

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  86. M. Krebs7:02 PM

    I'm going say something that some of you may not like. It relates to the Laura Kipnis brouhaha. I've been a college professor for 27 years, and with each passing year, the students I've seen (with many exceptions, of course) seem more and more sheltered, for lack of a better word, and, well, immature. (And universities have responded to pressure to keep up or increase enrollments by marketing to them -- promising an exciting social environment. FUN! Students have classes in which they are required to very little on their own -- most of what happens in class is "group work." )


    I worry about this generation of young "adults." I worry more about those of us who will have to rely on them to fly airplanes, build bridges, drive trains, be competent doctors and nurses. What is going on? Is it that so many of them have been on medication for most of their lives? Is it because of their parents, who never let them walk more that 100 feet from home? Is it their fucking mobile phones and 24-7 connectedness with all their friends?


    Jesus, maybe if I had had a kid of my own I'd see this differently.

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  87. TGuerrant7:02 PM

    I keep expecting Sibel Edmonds to pop up on CNN yelling, "Follow the money! Follow the money!"

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  88. Just because the mind isn't stone doesn't mean a person can't have rocks in their head.

    I went to high school with some Young Republicans, and lived on the same block as a guy who was in the Nixon White House (and another guy who was famous as a Nixon look-alike). For the Young Republicans, it wasn't so much that their minds were set in stone as that their attitudes were. They tended to be social outcasts who had none of the other redeeming qualities that other social outcasts had--they were not good academically, they were not talented in music or acting or art, and they tended to be quite juvenile long after everyone else had left the poop jokes behind. They wanted to be bullies, but lacked the physiques and courage.

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  89. smut clyde7:09 PM

    I made you a cookie a GIF:
    http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad292/smutclyde/satyr.gif

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  90. smut clyde7:10 PM

    Parity conservation failure!

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  91. Dunno. But I rather like that law schools have a tradition of anonymous grading. It really cuts down on the petitions for changes. I will work with anyone to improve their grade, but unless they can point out where I made an actual mistake, I neither can nor will change a grade. This often generates a little whining from those right out of college.

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  92. TGuerrant7:13 PM

    Fundamentally, they don't want the masses educated. At all. They want them unknowingly obedient. They don't even care that the students and workers of other nations out perform ours in science and technology. They just want a dumb underclass to serve them and a small tier of peers who think just like they do.

    Anything that runs counter to that - anything from funding to tenure to teachers unions - is inimical and loathsome.

    ReplyDelete
  93. tigrismus7:15 PM

    So she knows personally that education is all about ass-time in useless classes, eh? That's some good anecdata!

    ReplyDelete
  94. coozledad7:17 PM

    So they've always gone shirtless:

    http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/191280/ricksantorumsunbathing.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  95. M. Krebs7:20 PM

    YIKES. Dude, there may be epileptics in the audience.

    ReplyDelete
  96. You are not mistaken in your perception. I have two 20-year-old nieces. One loves to work and is a real go-getter, but has no clue about the world and a general ignorance that is as profound as it is disturbing. Emotionally, she's about where you'd expect a 14-year-old to be. She went to MA public schools.

    The other one went to private schools and is now spending time at a university in Washington, DC. Attending class is just too boring, so she spends all her time at protest rallies. Doesn't much matter the cause, she loves protesting. She has a good base of trivial knowledge, but also has no clue about the world. Emotionally, she's perhaps 13 years old.

    It's all anecdata, but the other kids I've had contact with over the last five years have all been like that. I don't have any idea what's behind it, though I suspect the intense helicopter parenting the last two generations received has a lot to do with it.

    ReplyDelete
  97. Need to slow that down a bit. It's breaking the space-time continuum.

    ReplyDelete
  98. coozledad7:30 PM

    From our tent in the canopy, drenched by the late summer rains, we could see the principal conservative academic slung from a tackle in what appeared to be a kind of diving costume. Subordinates were fanning the mosquitos off the portion of the suit left bare for the insertion of what apeared to be a 150mm howitzer shell casing made of rubber into his prolapsed fartbox....


    Jane Goodall, Primate Social Structures of Lynchburg and Surrounds

    ReplyDelete
  99. Eh, you say "build a time machine," I say "keep voting Republicans into power." Either way, the clock turns back.

    ReplyDelete
  100. Eh, weak comeback.

    ReplyDelete
  101. GeniusLemur7:49 PM

    "conservatives are easily weeded out before tenure – mostly through the hiring process itself"
    Those dirty liberal colleges, always refusing to hire deluded morons conservatives!"

    ReplyDelete
  102. GeniusLemur7:52 PM

    "Are there out-of-touch, lazy professors who are just coasting? Sure."
    I'm sure glad there's absolutely no one getting big "bonuses" as they run their company into the ground in good ol' private industry.

    ReplyDelete
  103. JennOfArk7:52 PM

    Seriously, you have students asking you to change grades? I think that was unheard of back when I went. Or at least very, very rare.

    ReplyDelete
  104. GeniusLemur7:52 PM

    That's also the only part of universities they acknowledge the existence of.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Some would say the same about becoming a Jesuit.

    ReplyDelete
  106. GeniusLemur7:54 PM

    Not a thing.

    ReplyDelete
  107. TGuerrant7:55 PM

    E string ghettoizing proof re-presented
    ..

    ReplyDelete
  108. That's the way I see it too.

    ReplyDelete
  109. M. Krebs8:12 PM

    I vaguely something I had to sign (state college in GA) when I was first employed. Not being a communist? I can't remember. But crazy shit like that is probably more common than we like to think.

    ReplyDelete
  110. M. Krebs8:15 PM

    I my case it's usually a case of a) "I'm graduating this semester! I have to pass!" or b) "I'm transferring to Georgia Tech! I have to make an A!" or c) "I have to make a B to keep my Hope Scholarship!"

    ReplyDelete
  111. Chris Anderson8:25 PM

    The U.S. conservative movement suffers from a crisis of faith, or confidence, or similar things. Maybe it was forged out of the common experience of such personal crises. These are people who, to varying degrees, are eerily well-described in Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism."


    So this apparently schizo America are strong (stronger than anyone!) but somehow so vulnerable that even the shadow of a rival is intolerable. Or, for example: 9/11 was bad, but based on our national response, it was worse than the Holocaust. In its wake, there was virtually no crime, no debasement of the national character that wasn't urged (and not just by marginal voices) -- urged by claimants to the mantle of the most moral people ever, models for the world and the ages.


    Conservative thinkers are supposedly in possession of a robust body of thought. They are Right About Things, but oddly, not so right as to seem confident that an open war of ideas can proceed to their favor. Somehow, networks of people who are not only wrong but definitionally unable to execute real-world tasks are endlessly capable of defeating their betters, the thinkers and doers of the Right. Add to these the "believers" who lack all fear of divine punishment and have never seen a problem that God and/or their stated principles could solve sans some admixture of ruthless cruelty, greed, bigotry, etc.


    I could go on, but you get the picture. They say but do not behave as if they believe the cornerstones of the edifice are solid ... moving toward the topic, I can't grasp why they're worried about academia. It is pretty fucked up, I'll grant (we might disagree just how). But if I was truly as confident in my ideas as U.S. conservatives claim to be, I'd be happy as a clam at the prospect of conquering the colleges 'n' shit. It could be done while handicapped this way or that. The conclusion simply follows from their other assertions, unless Satan has his clawed hand on the scales?

    ReplyDelete
  112. billcinsd8:38 PM

    How do you know what is in my refrigerator. Quit peeking

    ReplyDelete
  113. If she is finishing yesterdays box, there may be some overlap...Schroedinger's cat might be in play...
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  114. I have a few among the first-years, but once they figure out that I *can't* change the grade once I've submitted it to the Registrar, so they'll have to go make their case to the Dean of Students, they usually give up.

    I did have a pretty persistent student this year, though. However, she was mollified once I went through her paper with her and told her why she did not get the grade she thought she deserved, but instead got the grade I thought she deserved. The weird thing was that she was perfectly okay with going over this in detail -- and having me criticize her writing -- while the IT guy was in my office.

    ReplyDelete
  115. Chris Anderson8:53 PM

    I feel certain that their generation, considered nationally or even globally, includes people who have all the qualities your more troubling students lack, but who are scary in other ways. What does that mean for the future, I dunno. Maybe I'm fucked six ways to Sunday.

    ReplyDelete
  116. Also, I warn them that I am very, very blunt in my comments on their writing. It's funny, because they usually are horrified/terrified when they first get anything with comments back. Eventually, they start getting my jokes and understand that this is all meant to help them become better writers without having to learn it at 2 a.m. with a partner screaming at them.

    ReplyDelete
  117. bgnewhouse9:09 PM

    But what edition?

    ReplyDelete
  118. smut clyde9:13 PM

    While preserving true academic freedom is worth tolerating a limited
    number of deadbeats, the deadbeats become much less tolerable if
    academic freedom is failing.
    The distinction between "true academic freedom" (protecting conservatives) and "failing academic freedom" (protecting liberals) is worthy of Hegel.

    ReplyDelete
  119. billcinsd9:14 PM

    they want them to fuck up, but they too often fuck down

    ReplyDelete
  120. smut clyde9:16 PM

    give 'em candy afterwards
    That part of advice was left for the state trooper.

    ReplyDelete
  121. Chris Anderson9:24 PM

    It would have never occurred to me to ask. When I got a (relatively) bad grade, I did some soul-searching. It's the same with my wife: she must fully explore the possibility that she's done something wrong before considering elsewise. I doubt there's some generational insight here, but a different setting (I'm 44) sure didn't mitigate against these tendencies.

    ReplyDelete
  122. Chris Anderson9:31 PM

    As a humanities undergrad, I once suggested in class that a humanities degree was better than an MBA ... the professor (an art history or music PhD if I recall) felt the need to hmmm and so forth. Thing is, I was inspired in part by some of the departmental propaganda: a reprinted article saying employers need critical thinkers and writers, yadda yadda.

    ReplyDelete
  123. billcinsd9:32 PM

    or most any economic activity, as most items are priced on a cost-plus basis, not supply/demand

    ReplyDelete
  124. Chris Anderson9:40 PM

    In their defense, it's a bass, and the E string is the bassiest one. Not everybody who blithely ventures into the next octave (which happens to be where the guitar's range starts) makes a case for doing so. I mean if you can't go low for your next chord's root, fine - go up, but it's not as if these pols are aping jazz fusion.

    ReplyDelete
  125. John Wesley Hardin10:12 PM

    "In the real world, leftist groupthink dominates" AKA Everybody says I'm full of shit; it's a conspiracy.

    ReplyDelete
  126. montag210:22 PM

    If MeMeMeMeMeMeMeMeMegan is any indication, it seems that right-wing pundits have nudged teachers out of that old cliche. Now, it's "those who can teach, do, those who can't, go on wingnut welfare."

    ReplyDelete
  127. montag210:26 PM

    Well, they had to get him out of the Texas Air National Guard before the courts-martial process became inevitable.

    ReplyDelete
  128. LittlePig10:27 PM

    Douchebag, thy name is David French.

    ReplyDelete
  129. LittlePig10:29 PM

    They're beached

    Oh for Christ's sake, talk about your low hanging fruit in re Jonah.

    ReplyDelete
  130. TGuerrant10:30 PM

    My personal fav, Walter E. Block, still sits majestically upon the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola's Butt College of Business, blogging away on LewRockwell.com and barking madly on hate radio shows.

    He's the libertarian genius who sued the NY Times for accurately quoting him as having told a reporter that slavery "was not so bad -- you pick cotton and sing songs." In throwing the case out of court in April, the judge noted that Block admitted saying what the Times quoted him as saying and that the reputation for racial insensitivity Block decried was one Block had cultivated for years before his correctly quoted words appeared in the Times. Block is appealing the decision.

    He also threatened to sue Loyola, its president, and 18 of his peers for publishing statements in the student paper finding fault with his comments. He was seeking pro bono or at least contingency representation, having decided he would use "maybe just a little bit" of his own money to pursue justice - no sense dragging the free market into the librul hate machine, too.

    ReplyDelete
  131. LittlePig10:30 PM

    Thou art a wee bit evil, Smut.

    ReplyDelete
  132. LittlePig10:32 PM

    Seig! Heil!
    Seig! Heil!
    Seig! Heil!

    ReplyDelete
  133. montag210:33 PM

    Oh, pay him no mind--he's a poseur. He's got two tricks--contradiction and negation--and those are easy to learn. I put him in the category of knowing just enough to be dangerous to himself and others. Odds are good he'll be in the honorable mentions of the Darwin Awards some day soon.

    ReplyDelete
  134. TGuerrant10:35 PM

    Or a plane crash, I guess.

    ReplyDelete
  135. LittlePig10:37 PM

    don't have any idea what's behind it, though I suspect the intense
    helicopter parenting the last two generations received has a lot to do
    with it.


    Yep.

    (P.S. Grrrrr. My current job has me using a Mac at work. Because of key problems my current keyboard is a Mac keyboard. I keep hitting Command+C to copy my text, then am amazed that Command+V don't paste. As much as I despise Winders, this shit is pissing me off.)

    ReplyDelete
  136. LittlePig10:41 PM

    P.P.S. I grew up on the command line, as God intended. I still think this graphical interface horseshit is a passing fad.

    ReplyDelete
  137. montag210:45 PM

    There're persistent rumors that same happened. When Bush was running for governor, a Texas Monthly reporter confronted him with a question on the matter and Bush's smart-ass response was to hold his hands out and say, "so, where's the plane?"

    The F-102A was always kind of twitchy (part of the reason why it was decertified for combat in Vietnam in 1968 and most of the planes were transferred to air guards), and they tended to land pretty hot--they had a pretty high stall speed. It was not a plane to fly if you have tailfeathers where your asshole is supposed to be.

    ReplyDelete
  138. LittlePig10:46 PM

    P.P.P.S. Yeah I'm grumpy. I got my project totally redefined at 10:30 this morning, with production ready at 4 PM (which I found out at 2 PM). Boss says if I ever do that again I'm out the door. "You said it was ready Friday!". Yeah asshole, with the original project specs it was done on Friday. Christ I hate these Kobiashi Maru jobs.

    ReplyDelete
  139. M. Krebs10:53 PM

    Huh? ⌘-V is paste. There must be some foreign substance in there.

    ReplyDelete
  140. LittlePig10:54 PM

    Ew! Mac cooties, Mac cooties!

    ReplyDelete
  141. M. Krebs10:56 PM

    Sig Freud! Sig Freud!

    ReplyDelete
  142. Jesus... how many basses does this guy own?

    ReplyDelete
  143. montag211:07 PM

    This reminds me of an interview of Bloody Bill Kristol in Adam Curtis' "Power of Nightmares." Kristol, who seemed to be drooling glibness, said, with his usual smiling avuncular simulacrum of charm, "there were those of us who found that we weren't welcome in academia [said by the guy who got his academic job via cronyism and then apparently spent 100% of his time in the job jerking off], so we came to Washington. We just wanted to be of service."

    Given that those conservative academics, in and out of academia, have given us trickle-down economics, the Laffer Curve tax policy, the Cold War, several wars of choice, welfare deform, Ronald Reagan, a "free market" system that subsidizes profits and socializes losses, financial deform, wealth and income inequality of obscene proportions and the most massive economic contraction since the Great Depression, I'd say it's a good thing to keep conservatives as far away from impressionable minds as is humanly possible.

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  144. AGoodQuestion11:09 PM

    Touché.

    ReplyDelete
  145. montag211:09 PM

    These days, more like, "Sig Sauer!"

    ReplyDelete
  146. M. Krebs11:10 PM

    Palate cleanser.

    https://youtu.be/YF-w8HCoKrs

    ReplyDelete
  147. AGoodQuestion11:13 PM

    It is, as ever, a stinging irony that so many free market zealots can only find work in academia, government, and the NGOs that leech off those institutions. If Bill Kristol ever ran a pizza joint the booths would be strewn with pepperoni-covered corpses.

    ReplyDelete
  148. montag211:17 PM

    I guess George W. Bush's is the exception that proves the rule....

    ReplyDelete
  149. montag211:23 PM

    Well, sure--Bloody Bill's oeuvre is creating corpses.

    ReplyDelete
  150. Tehanu11:26 PM

    Oh right, like Megan has anything useful to say about learning. I feel 100% sure that the only thing she ever went to a professor's office hours to say was, "Do I have to read ALL the books on the reading list to get a B?"

    ReplyDelete
  151. montag211:26 PM

    How can you leave Patrick Henry College off that list? They're a study in aberrant academia all by their lonesome.

    ReplyDelete
  152. AGoodQuestion11:28 PM

    He's the libertarian genius who sued the NY Times for accurately quoting him as having told a reporter that slavery "was not so bad -- you pick cotton and sing songs."

    Psst, Walt. Randy was being satirical.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chaP4MCXp4w

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  153. AGoodQuestion11:36 PM

    Ted's embrace of ignorance has gotten him pretty far up till now. Hopefully no further.

    ReplyDelete
  154. mrstilton12:19 AM

    Tenured professors ... includ[e] a host of colleagues who simply coast on their job security. They care little for teaching, behave horribly towards students and colleagues, and even slack off their research efforts. They occupy seats that could be taken by better, more conscientious teachers and scholars, and no one can move them until they retire or die.DAVID FRENCH, WHY U HATE GLENN REYNOLDS???!!!

    ReplyDelete
  155. montag212:24 AM

    I think whining about grades has been built into the process--it's a lot easier to blame the instructor than one's self. Has it gotten worse in the last generation or so? Dunno, but grade inflation has, somewhat, and that doesn't help.

    But, in the old days, things like that never happened? Sure they did. Had a student once that was working full-time, second shift, and trying to go to school full-time after being out of high school for several years. About six weeks into the semester, she fell asleep at the wheel coming home from work, and went off the road into a farmer's field. Thank goodness, she was just banged up and not seriously injured.

    A couple of days later, her mother appeared in my office to inform me that I was responsible for her accident. "She spends all her time on your course alone. You drove her to this." (Umm, average out-of-class assignment per week: reading ~ 15 pages of the text, reading ~ 10 pages of representative essay amplifying the text, writing ~ 250 words using the principles illuminated in the text.)

    Was I the person who told her that working full-time and going to school full-time would be "easy?" Nope, that was an administrator. Did I tell her she probably would have benefitted from a remedial course before doing freshman-level work? Nope, because I couldn't--the school didn't offer any remedial courses because Pell grants didn't pay for remedial classes.

    The mother was saying, essentially, that i was an insensitive slave-driver and that, as with the student's other instructors, I should be giving her less homework (i.e., no homework) and better grades.

    That was, umm, thirty-five years ago. It was the first time it happened to me, but it wasn't the last.

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  156. montag212:53 AM

    There is a reason why conservatives spend all their time working the refs.

    ReplyDelete
  157. JennOfArk2:23 AM

    A lot, and all of them must SUCK, because he sounds like shit no matter which one he plays.

    ReplyDelete
  158. joel_hanes2:41 AM

    By all accounts I've seen, W was actually a credible pilot, when he bothered to show up.

    ReplyDelete
  159. smut clyde3:23 AM

    Chaotic evil.

    ReplyDelete
  160. smut clyde3:26 AM

    I think the last time I saw the ward "farthole" was in Dorothy Sayers' translation of "Inferno".

    ReplyDelete
  161. smut clyde3:33 AM

    Too much strangeness.

    ReplyDelete
  162. smut clyde3:37 AM

    you have students asking you to change grades?My smarter elder sister has some stories to tell about that.

    ReplyDelete
  163. I don't let him off the hook either.

    To stay "incurious" is a lifestyle choice.

    ReplyDelete
  164. The lure for their followers, of course, is the thrill of being able to taunt liberal elitist brainiacs with "if you're so smart then how come you're poor?"

    And don't forget the instant inverse: "You have money, therefore you're a hypocrite for being liberal."

    ReplyDelete
  165. So you're saying he needs to


    drop the bass?

    ReplyDelete
  166. You get close, here. Conservatives believe:
    That the American military is the greatest the world has ever known, and that it cannot be defeated. Yet, ISIS is readying their amphibious Toyota Tundra trucks and will conquer America in less time that it take to drive from the landing beaches of Cape Hatteras to Raleigh-Durham.

    Conservatives believe that America is the richest and most prosperous nation ever created. Yet, we cannot possibly afford to fix our road, or care for the poor and elderly.

    Conservatives believe that the Free Market rules everything with utter perfection, and government must be kept out of the economy. Yet, government must be allowed to funnel tax money to business unimpeded, and government must be made to clean up after financial or environmental catastrophes caused by business because otherwise the Free Market won't work.

    Conservatives believe that their God is all-powerful. Yet, their God runs like a scared rabbit if there's even one person who question its existence.

    ReplyDelete
  167. I saw an interview with Wally Schirra in which he spoke about test flying the F-102. He said it would have been an excellent airplane to fly if the control stick had been 30 feet long because it was way too sensitive to control inputs. He mentioned spending the first 5 minutes of the flight being two seconds behind the airplane as he chased it all over the sky trying to counter what the aircraft was doing in response to his previous control input.

    The production models calmed that down a bit, but it was still a real challenge to fly.

    Being a good pilot does not preclude you from being a complete dolt. GWBush is proof-positive of that, as is Rick Perry (who is by all accounts and outstanding C-130 pilot).

    ReplyDelete
  168. No employer wants a critical thinker--they want someone who buys the company line and is willing to devote their soul to the corporation. An MBA is proof that your soul has been extracted and encased in plastic for easy transfer to whatever company signs your check.

    ReplyDelete
  169. "Besides, my reading glasses have gastritis and they only read up to page number 99."

    ReplyDelete
  170. satch7:56 AM

    Still, that was pretty good for a first attempt. Now he knows where the boundaries are... at this moment... but as all smart cons know, goalposts are moveable and boundaries are flexible. All it takes is message discipline and perseverance, backed by money. After all, look at the progress they've made so far.

    ReplyDelete
  171. satch7:58 AM

    Cough*CarlyFiorina*cough...

    ReplyDelete
  172. redoubtagain8:02 AM

    Kochjugend

    ReplyDelete
  173. redoubtagain8:05 AM

    I'm thinking "Schroedinger's Cat" is a zinfandel, but that's just me.

    ReplyDelete
  174. smut clyde8:05 AM

    social outcasts who had none of the other redeeming qualities that other social outcasts had

    Republicans really did not like Jack & Jeanne Block's longitudinal study.
    http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/03/block.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  175. smut clyde8:06 AM

    "Schroedinger's Cat-pee" would be a Sauvignon blanc.

    ReplyDelete
  176. satch8:07 AM

    Now that I think about it, he probably "borrows" them form whatever band he's appearing with, though I'd be pretty damn emphatic telling him to get his mitts off mine. I wouldn't want to spend hours wiping possum grease off the neck and strings.

    ReplyDelete
  177. BigHank538:11 AM

    If you've ever looked at the economics of getting an English doctorate you probably felt dizzy. Here they are: you will get a tuition waiver in exchange for for being a teaching assistant. You'll be responsible for coming up with your own living expenses. And travel expenses if you want to do any research--and you'll have to travel to do research. After five years of this, you'll now be qualified to be an adjunct professor and live on $18,000 a year. There will be maybe thirty job openings a year for tenured English professors, and why should the hiring committee like you more than the candidates from Harvard and Chapel Hill and UC Berkley?

    Even a conservative can do that math.

    ReplyDelete
  178. satch8:14 AM

    How ELSE is he going to save money on pepperoni?

    ReplyDelete
  179. satch8:19 AM

    I knew that Patrick Henry University was a creation of Ayn Rand... imagine my shock to learn that there really WAS a Patrick Henry College.

    ReplyDelete
  180. BigHank538:22 AM

    Shoot, now you know why so many of them complain about their kids taking that Critical Thinking section.

    ReplyDelete
  181. redoubtagain8:27 AM

    Me either. (Having to deal with them in the Fed is a special level of hell.)

    ReplyDelete
  182. BigHank538:32 AM

    Don't worry; he'll make up the difference on volume.

    ReplyDelete
  183. Hey! Mr aimai was at georgia tech!

    ReplyDelete
  184. Is the glass half-empty or half-full?


    Engineer: "Half empty."

    Physicist: "The glass is completely empty due to the interstices between atoms."

    Business major: "There's room for improvement."

    Engineering consultant: "You have twice as much glass as you need."

    Quantum Physicist: "The glass is actually in all possible states of full and empty, existing and not existing."
    MBA: Picks up glass, drinks all the liquid. Puts empty glass in briefcase. "That's the downpayment on my consulting fee. My associates will send you a bill. Be sure to implement this business plan just as I showed you."

    ReplyDelete
  185. He knows the joy and the pain, then. Especially the joy and the pain from a V run (he knows what that means--every Tech student does)!

    ReplyDelete
  186. Downpup E9:39 AM

    This is the amazing thing : Walker's war against workers never ends.


    One week its killing collective bargaining, the next week pensions, the next week, who knows? He gets pushback like we've never seen anywhere else, is constantly dodging prosecution, but no matter what, knows that the money bags behind him will take care of things.

    ReplyDelete
  187. Halloween_Jack10:08 AM

    Scott Eric Kaufman (at LGM and elsewhere) has a story on his own blog about a shameless grade grubber--someone who tried to get SEK to change a grade or accept make-up work on the last day of the semester, well after he had turned in the grades--but I'm too lazy/busy to look it up right now.

    ReplyDelete
  188. you will get a tuition waiver in exchange for for being a teaching assistant.Wow, the physics TAs at ISU** didn't even get a full tuition waiver. Grad students in English: lucky duckies.



    **You want to know how adjunctification picked up steam? Enough people looked at the ISU physics department bringing in a large graduate class, putting them to work as TAs, then routinely failing over fifty percent of them at qualifying exam time. And they thought, "How can we apply this to faculty?"***

    ***Not intended to be an accurate historical statement about adjunctification.

    ReplyDelete
  189. Halloween_Jack10:15 AM

    Wingnut academic bloggers are a bit like credentialed scientists who deny anthropogenic climate change; it's not that there are that many of them, or that their arguments are convincing, but that there are any at all.

    ReplyDelete
  190. Halloween_Jack10:16 AM

    Possibly even


    drop it like it's hot

    ReplyDelete
  191. Halloween_Jack10:19 AM

    i have almost zero doubt that she'd believe that she'd keep her job on merit, or surf on over to a private school that would offer her tenure. It really wouldn't be worth getting rid of tenure at Madison just to see that tested, but it would still be fun.

    ReplyDelete
  192. susanoftexas10:20 AM

    McArdle extrapolates from personal experience.

    ReplyDelete
  193. susanoftexas10:22 AM

    Her college excuses must have been epic.

    ReplyDelete
  194. Helmut Monotreme10:24 AM

    I've got good news for you. You've got a bright future as an IBM midrange system maintenance programmer.

    ReplyDelete
  195. I've never thanked you for your efforts monitoring the never-ending parade of fail that is Megan. The you have not scooped your own eyes out with a melon baller is testament to your fortitude!

    ReplyDelete
  196. susanoftexas10:29 AM

    McArdle thinks that random people should administer computer programs to students in charter schools, paid for by the taxpayer and enriching Mr. Corporate-American, a heavenly eligible billionaire with a heart of gold and a kitchen of marble. Meanwhile the rich will continue to send their children to private schools, also subsidized by the taxpayer via vouchers, where their expensively cultivated skill set will ensure a high in the elite meritocracy.

    ReplyDelete
  197. dstatton10:30 AM

    They don't realize that their right to free speech includes our right not to pay attention. Attentions be paid!

    ReplyDelete
  198. tigrismus10:32 AM

    OMG, and then it's your fault because hey man, they got you the specs. Just this Monday the spoose got vital can't-be-finished without this info after 5 PM... for something due that day. What is with people?

    ReplyDelete
  199. StringOnAStick10:36 AM

    My ex-husband's dad was an aide in the Nixon WH. The depth of that guy's dickatude was remarkable, and all his kids avoided him like the plague; his wife left him as soon as she could make it work. He was the most committed bully I have ever met.

    ReplyDelete