To Catch a Cheat: More on the Pearson Problem as Our Problem
The Case for the Public Intellectual as Gadfly
Andrew Bacevich, political-science professor at Boston University, has posted a new essay, “Rationalizing Lunacy: The Intellectual as Servant of the State.” It’s a look back at the role of the public intellectual within the U.S. federal government since the time of the New Deal, focusing particularly on their impact on foreign policy, the Vietnam War in specific…
From Retraction Watch: Yes, We Are Seeing More Attacks on Academic Freedom
Alice Dreger has a new post on Retraction Watch. She writes What are we to do? Well, I believe we as university-based researchers should at least be quite concerned when academics have to worry about being “off-brand.” We should, I think, be pretty agitated when a university professor has to pay $50,000 to defend his academic…
Blurred Lines and Word Crimes
American copyright laws are absurd. Weird Al Yankovic, in “Word Crimes,” can parody Robin Thicke’s (with Pharrell) “Blurred Lines” but Thicke and Pharrell cannot base their own song on songs of the past without an explicit financial relationship. In other words, their creativity is controlled by money, as was affirmed by a jury yesterday: As…
Racism 101: Why We Need Courses on "Whiteness"
While The New York Times reports on action by the University of Oklahoma, kicking out Sigma Alpha Epsilon for a racist chant, a Daily Kos blogger argues that the chant has roots elsewhere, that there’s a pervasive though hidden racism throughout the fraternity and, by implication, elsewhere. No, not by implication. The blogger reproduces pictures of lynchings…
"Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!"
Badges? Certification? Can these replace college? Or is this a false binary? The problem, I think, is that we no longer know what “college” means and end up conflating differing entitites. Or, maybe we simply have conflicting ideas of “college.” One vision of “college” centers on a Deweyesque vision of education as concerning the person.…
Truth and Media
On June 24, 1968 (I know the date thanks to Wikipedia), I walked from the Capitol in Washington, DC to the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) headquarters at 14th and U with a bunch of SCLC activists. Only three of us on the small march were white and I was just a sixteen-year-old kid. By…
Are We All a Little Bit Bill O'Reilly?
Power and Education
Paul Krugman opens his column today in The New York Times by saying, “I sometimes mock ‘very serious people’ — politicians and pundits who solemnly repeat conventional wisdom that sounds tough-minded and realistic.” These are the people at the Lippmann end of the John Dewey/Walter Lippmann polarity, the elite who believe they have the knowledge and skills to present the…