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Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Meanwhile . . .

See:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/10/02/michigan-professor-strips-naked-class-shouts-there-no-f-king-god#ixzz289SI2v8h

Where would this go on the ARPA?

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mental illness has always been considered different than general medical illness - just take a look at how this is being reported and at the blog comments appearing all over the net. If the guy had had a stroke, an epileptic seizure, fallen and broken his leg... but no, he had some kind of manic episode, which is largely being trivialized and sensationalized and even politicized.

Anonymous said...

Exactly. Chances are he had been displaying other symptoms well before this episode. Where is the compassion and the help?

Anonymous said...

Everybody jumps to mental illness or disability. But maybe he actually had a religious experience, see William James on the subject, who correctly pointed out that the experiences of many religious people of olden times would today be regarded as insane.

Or maybe he was just trying to demonstrate some theorem. To a mathematician who believed that God, the Divine order, is represented in mathematics, the frustrations of teaching mathematics to modern students might result in a crises.

Anonymous said...

I think, this would fall under teaching on the ARPA, but only if the professor were to make a clear the mathematical connection between the verbal statement and undressing the class. Apparently, the teaching act did not go too far if the students ran out.

People tend to think that religion and science are mutually exclusive. There is no blasphemy in analyzing in mathematical terms what fanatics simply attribute mindlessly to a god or gods. Surely, it is much easier that following forceful logic.

Conversely, religious people are often viewed as insane, but this is relative. Each religion has a valid philosophical foundation with its symbolisms and utterances. Shamans were declared insane by Soviet Anthropology (and by many others), and in Colonial America, witches were excommunicated by the religious and the brainwashed. It may have to do with us versus them, but in mathematics, you cannot substitute either side with 0 and then force a solution on such terms. Each side has valid variables, so the variables must be solved with the other variables in view, not 0. Perhaps, it might be a good time to look at division by zero instead of treating it like taboo.

As for teaching modern students mathematics: math (like humanities, arts, and sciences) in the K-12 is not taught vigorously. Compared to European and Asian levels, the US is way behind. And colleges bear the burden of catching up? Good luck!

Anonymous said...

What a distractor. The strategy of encouraging academics to discuss any nonsense as a wait to divert attention appears to be working.

Anonymous said...

Academics discussing nonsense?

You must be looking for the Postmodern Academic Playhouse of Dr. Pee-Wee-Vious, PhD, and friends - the place where you never have to grow up and absolutely ANYTHING can happen.

The link below will take you directly to the imaginary world of the PoMo Playhouse, where Zelig channels his inner Pee-Wee and gets all his bright ideas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0bHUtpXI3o

Anonymous said...

El Lloydo barfed up another masterpiece onto Huffington Post. If you disagree with what he's saying over there, I suggest registering for an account and leaving comments.

Anonymous said...

Re Jacobs and Online Ed

When even NPR (which David Mammet incidentally refers to as “National Palestinian Radio”) is on board with online Ed – you can be pretty sure that horse has already left the barn.

Online education is now the inexorable wave of the future – whether you like it (or Jacobs or some of his flunkies like Dr. Previous) or not.

(Not surprisingly, the opportunistic Dr. Previous has now seen fit to largely abandon his former and now out-of-fashion Postmodern Ship of Fools in order to hitch his little career toy wagon to the online Ed juggernaut).

What was in 2005 only an increasingly audible approaching rumble (when the earlier mentioned “Free Harvard Classes for Everyone Online” opinion column was published locally) – has now become an all-out stampede and academic feeding frenzy among universities to get a piece of the online action.

Painful as it may be to accept things like Khan Academy and ICE (and even more excruciating to have to endure the involvement of the likes of Dr. Previous) Jacobs seems to be in fact be at least more or less on the right track here.

Here is a September 30, 2012 NPR report on the current gold rush in online university education:

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/30/162053927/online-education-grows-up-and-for-now-its-free

Anonymous said...

To 10:39am:

No, no and no. Dr. Jacobs is not on the right track. ICE is not on the right track. And Khan Academy provides interesting tutorials, but it is not the answer to the so-called educational bubble. The answer includes many different ways of educating our students, not one on-line way. Face-to-face teaching and learning,with a wide range of methodologies, along with on-line supplements is much more promising. I believe there is no substitute for a group of people who meet in a room to share, discuss, question, react, work, write, and imagine together. Working on-line is helpful, but it will never substitute for human presence.

Anonymous said...

THE ONLINE ED TRAIN IS COMING DOWN THE TRACKS – YOU CAN EITHER GET ON BOARD OR GET RUN OVER

And particularly in times like these it is worth recalling the sage words of Clint Eastwood in the film, The Outlaw Josey Wales:

“Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’, boy.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEClGMJ2r3g

Re Anon 10:39

Sorry, but no to your no, no and no.

The old education myths persist - largely because of entrenched interests and the tried and true "If Man were meant to fly God would have given him wings mentality."

Face to face education could be ideal with ideal students and ideal teachers (teachers with maximum knowledge and competency in the subject materials being taught, and superior pedagogy and superior inter-personal and motivational skills and superior personal integrity and dedication and ability to keep personal prejudices and politics and playing favorites etc. etc. out of the classroom - things virtually nobody has in optimum combination).

Face to face education could also be ideal with ideal content and ideal access and ideal resources.

But even in the best schools the realities have always fallen far, FAR short of the ideal. Any teacher or professor or student with ANY experience and honesty at all can confirm this.

FAR less than ideal schools and teachers and students and logistics and classroom distractions and costs and politics and funding and access and biased inferior teachers and texts and course content and classroom and class time restrictions and on and on and on.

Until technology (originally BBC Radio and Television distance learning - then Open University etc.) began offering viable quality alternatives over the past several decades, we were stuck with essentially the same teaching modalities as Socrates in ancient Greece.

Not any more. Online is now vastly more flexible, is able to mimic unlimited individualized face to face teaching in a way even one-on-one face-to-face teaching cannot do and offers far better access, quality, cost effectiveness and efficiency.

Online also mitigates most of the academic social and other negatives common to schools and universities and offers superior across the board education satisfaction and outcomes for all stakeholders.

It's a no brainer and really a travesty that this did not all happen 20 or more years ago.

I (Zorox, a.k.a. Johannes de Silentio - JdS) have been banging this drum here and elsewhere for many years now and getting mostly the same old predictable response from all sides - "Hey! It cannot be done and should not be done!"

Now, reality has finally come to campus and forced it to happen by default - as I knew it inevitably would and said it inevitably would on this blog and elsewhere.

Quality online Ed needs to do a much better job educating the public, teachers and students about the many advantages of online Ed (and policing itself to at least try keeping the inevitable opportunistic flim-flam artists and riff-raff out of the loop).

Locally that means Jacobs & Co. need to provide some hard concise data outlining exactly how and why online is better across the board and why it represents the inevitable and welcome wave of the future.

I personally think it is noble of UT to try to be something of a leader here – but in my opinion, in the extremely fast-paced, competitive and high stakes world of hi-tech and high finance, the really big players in the private sector will soon sweep UT and most everyone else off the playing field – leaving it to the equivalent of the Googles and Amazons and Facebooks.

At which point it will be like the UT Rockets trying in vain to compete in the NFL against teams like the 49ers, the Packers or the Steelers. It will be no contest.

Anonymous said...

Khan, Coursera and ICE also have very limited current or potential lecture and course offerings. For most degree programs it will require much more specialized content then MOOCs will have the capacity to offer. And where is the discussion of quality of education and assessment that is now so much of the focus of higher education (including here at UT) in regards to MOOCs? How does anyone know that the students are actually achieving learning objectives in courses and programs that we are now required to provide and assess? They have great potential as additional content and for some courses, but how can they provide at no-cost a complete degree? At some point the need to prepare complete courses including grading and assessment will require someone somewhere to be paid - that is only a matter of time. No one is going to develop, teach or "coach" these courses without getting paid for it.

Anonymous said...

I read an article about 15 years ago by a former University of Michigan president where he predicted that most universities would partially, or completely, shut down. Is this the future?

Anonymous said...

REPENT - FOR THE END IS NEAR

For the education of the masses (i.e. particularly professional and undergraduate education) it seems the end is undoubtedly very near for many if not most traditional brick and mortar universities – which will need to either radically re-invent themselves, or perish.

Academics and the education bureaucracy have had an air tight monopoly on knowledge, education and academic and professional certification for many decades now – and the HUGE amount of political and economic power and influence and perks and bennies and career security that goes with it.

They will not go gently or gladly into that good night.

However, for real students, real education, real teachers, real scholars and real scientists, as well as for the real advancement of real knowledge and expertise and academic lifestyle flexibility, quality, efficiency, access and affordability – these developments will probably all be mostly if not entirely to the positive side.

This process is likely to take place over the next decade with the stunning rapidity we saw in recent technological advances and social transformations involving computer technology, PC's, iPads, Kindle readers, Google search engines and Facebook social networking.

Those who do not adapt quickly to the paradigm shifts will go the way of Borders Books or Blockbuster Video - once on top - now gone forever.

It will probably still make sense in the near future for elite scholars and scientists to congregate at elite intellectual hubs like Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT, though these places may by then have little resemblance to their present traditional selves.

Highly technical education and research in science, engineering, medicine etc. will still require at least some on-site brick and mortar education and research lab facilities – at least until such time as virtual labs are as good or better than real life.

As for places like UT, BG, Lourdes, ITT Tech, Owens and even OSU and the University of Michigan - particularly with respect to the humanities and social sciences, Education, Law etc. (not to mention the countless pseudo-disciplines like Women's Studies, Law and Social Thought, Africana Studies etc.) - it is difficult to see how these colleges, universities or academic disciplines can survive in anything even remotely resembling what they are now - if at all.

Somebody somewhere has probably already undertaken some sort of apocalyptic worst case scenario Rand Corp-style strategic planning in the event of a “systematic all out extinction occurrence” (a "massive cultural asteroid impact" as it were) involving brick and mortar universities (probably all black-ops, hush-hush, top secret, Operation Blue Book military intelligence reports sort of thing, so as to not panic the peaceful inhabitants of the tranquil sanctuaries of academe).

We have planning for worst case scenario campus security – it would seem some sort of planning should be in place for worst case scenario campus extinction.

JdS

Anonymous said...

come on folks, you have lost your thread, misdirected by Lloyd & Co. anonymous voices. if you think you can outlast this administration by your mental mastXXXXXXXX you are underestimating your foes, and you do not deserve your doctorates.
Sadly, one of you - but more impatient.

Anonymous said...

The following is a letter to the editor that appeared in today's Blade:

"Sufficient safeguards should have been in place at the University of Toledo Medical Center to prevent the negligent tragedy that occurred (“Changes in place after botched surgery; Failed kidney transplant at UTMC prompts new safeguards,” Oct. 7).

Patients and their families are aware that mistakes can happen in medicine. But what happened at UTMC was far more than just a mistake and far more than “baffling,” as the hospital’s paid consultant, Dr. Marlon Levy, put it. It was not something that would have been anticipated by any donor or intended recipient.

It is insensitive of UT President Lloyd Jacobs to talk of any silver lining in the tragedy that UTMC bestowed upon the family. The university’s reputation has been irreparably damaged. New policies and dismissal of a nurse — and the resignation of another — aren’t sufficient to address this disgrace.

Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Jeffrey Gold, the UTMC chancellor and vice president for biosciences and health affairs, need to be relieved of their duties for what took place at an institution over which they exercise absolute control and thus have absolute accountability. I cannot in good faith ever again refer a patient to that medical center."

This letter was signed by Dr. Christopher Halasy of Perrysburg, formerly at UT's student health center, if I'm not mistaken.

Will the BOT take heed? Or do Jacobs, Gold and Scarborough get yet another pass?

some guy said...

I was an undergrad in the College of Arts and Sciences in the waning days of the Horton administration. Today I was looking over the minutes of the August 28 Faculty Senate meeting. I am proud that folks like Mike Dowd and Andy Jorgensen are keeping the aspirational spirit of a public urban university alive in these days of mismanagement by unqualified goons. I think the "UT spirit" will outlast the Jacobs administration, but perhaps I am being naive.

Anonymous said...

Regarding the letter to The Blade, it sounds very foolish. Is the Dr. saying that he would never send a patient to UTMC because of a botched kidney transplant? How much sense does that make?

BTW, a Journal of The American Medical Association (JAMA) article stated that there were approximately 225,000 deaths each year where doctors had some culpability whether from botched surgeries, wrong prescriptions etc... I'm no math wizard, but that would be about 225 in Toledo every year. I haven't seen any Blade stories about all of these DEATHS.

I'm not an apologist for Jacobs (I wish he would resign) or UTMC, but the Blade, and its weird owner, have had a vendetta against UT for decades.

Anonymous said...

The Blade has a vendetta against UT? really? The Blade always gives good press to MCO and since the merger has given good press to the administration of UT. Methinks it has something to do with the Block family and their membership on the Board. Can't criticize one without criticizing the other.

Anonymous said...

Here again we go with scam artists:

"New Interim vice provost for enrollment managemt nominated":
Dr. Cam Cruickshank oversaw dramatic enrollment increases as vice president for enrollment management at Tiffin University before founding Ivy Bridge College, an online college formed in partnership with Tiffin that in four years enrolled more than 3,500 students and 200 employees. In October 2011, Cruickshank founded Enrollment Builders, where he serves as principal consultant.



Here is a comment of a former employee of Ivy Bridge College.

Academic Advisor/Success Coach (Former Employee), Toledo, OH – April 3, 2012
Pros: alot of potlucks Cons: high turnover.

There is no typical day at work. No one knows what's going on. I learned how to play office politics. Management is inexperienced, and the hardest part of the job is holding your tongue, and just going along with things that you know will yeild zero results. The most enjoyable part of the day is communicating with co-workers. The majority of the positions here are geared towards entry-level employees, so for the most part, everyone is fresh out of college, and ignorant of corporate America. But after working here for a year of two.....they're not anymore :-)

Good that they want to bring this model here at UT... I am being sarcastic obviously.

Anonymous said...

He received his doctorate from UT - Not the strongest Education doctorate provider in town...even more in-breeding.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Clyde Crashcup Brings WABAC Machine to Campus

Re Anon 11:17

Dr. Cam Cruickshank?

Hmmm...

I wonder if he's any relation to Dr. Clyde Crashcup, who was once, as many of you may recall, a mentor and senior thesis advisor to our very own Dr. Previous – a.k.a. Leonardo.

Clyde Crashcup and ”Leonardo” pioneered early groundbreaking work developing what would later become an advanced Foucauldian version of Mr. Peabody's WABAC Machine (illustration below shows Mr. Peabody and his assistant, Sherman, entering the WABAC Machine).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3f/Waybackmachine3.png

The brief documentary clip below shows Dr. Crashcup and his then assistant Leonardo (Dr. Previous) working in the lab.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnheB_ETwfo

Dr. Previous has more recently been hard at work trying to integrate sophisticated postmodern theoretical Foucauldian WABAC, or [(f)WABAC] technology into UT’s cutting edge academic program development strategies – Code Name: “Let’s do the Time Warp again!”

So if your computer crashes or all the lights go out on campus – or if time suddenly starts going backwards, at least you’ll know why.

I wonder how many high-salary administrative Riff-Raffs like Dr. Previous it takes to just screw in a light bulb around here.




Anonymous said...

Dictionary of Academia - Nice choice for a front page book post, Bloggie. The cover photo and title say it all.

Here are a couple more recent must-reads (with some review clips) for those who have seen through (or who desire to see through) the Marxist Feminist PoMo PC smoke and mirrors on campus and everywhere else in contemporary society.

Critical reading much needed - now more than ever. Outstanding and previously recommended:

The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind
2012 By Bruce Bawer

“An eye-opening critique of the identity-based revolution that has transformed American campuses and its effect on politics and society today.
The 1960s and ’70s were a time of dramatic upheaval in American universities as a new generation of scholar-activists rejected traditional humanism in favor of a radical ideology that denied esthetic merit and objective truth. In The Victims’ Revolution, critic and scholar Bruce Bawer provides the first true history of this radical movement and a sweeping assessment of its intellectual and cultural fruits.
Once, Bawer argues, the purpose of higher education had been to introduce students to the legacy of Western civilization—“the best that has been thought and said.” The new generation of radical educators sought instead to unmask the West as the perpetrator of global injustice. Age-old values of goodness, truth, and beauty were disparaged as mere weapons in an ongoing struggle of the powerful against the powerless. Shifting the focus of the humanities to the purported victims of Western colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism, the new politicized approach to the humanities gave rise to a series of identity-based programs, including Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, and Chicano Studies. As a result, the serious and objective study of human civilization and culture was replaced by “theoretical” approaches emphasizing group identity, victimhood, and lockstep “progressive” politics.
What have the advocates of this new anti-Western ideology accomplished?
Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom warned against the corruption of the humanities in The Closing of the American Mind. Bawer’s book presents compelling evidence that Bloom and other conservative critics were right to be alarmed. The Victims’ Revolution describes how the new identity-based disciplines came into being, examines their major proponents and texts, and trenchantly critiques their underlying premises. Bawer concludes that the influence of these programs has impoverished our thought, confused our politics, and filled the minds of their impressionable students with politically correct mush. Bawer’s book is must-reading for all those concerned not only about the declining quality of American higher education, but also about the fate of our society at large.”

Amazon link

http://www.amazon.com/Victims-Revolution-Identity-Studies-Closing/dp/0061807370/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351353833&sr=1-1&keywords=POSTMODERN+JARGON

Another outstanding work from the inimitable David Horowitz:

Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion
2012 By David Horowitz

“From Karl Marx to Barack Obama, Horowitz shows how the idealistic impulse to make the world “a better place” gives birth to the twin cultural pathologies of cynicism and nihilism, and is the chief source of human suffering. A former liberal himself, Horowitz recounts his own brushes with radicalism and offers unparalleled insight into the disjointed ideology of liberal elites through case studies of well-known radial leftists, including Christopher Hitchens, feminist Bettina Aptheker , leftist academic Cornel West, and more.”

Amazon link

http://www.amazon.com/Radicals-Portraits-Destructive-David-Horowitz/dp/1596988126/ref=pd_sim_b_4

Anonymous said...

And...

One of the great taboo subjects in education intelligently deconstructed:

Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It (2012) By Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr.

“As a high-profile defender of affirmative action, I used to think the so-called ‘mismatch’ problem was a bit overblown. Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor have caused me to think again. How many bright and promising minority students, we must ask, have failed because they were steered—with the best intentions, of course—into elite schools for which they were less prepared academically than most of their classmates? What better ways can we devise to boost academic achievement and expand the pool of qualified students of all races? We don't do future generations of students any favors by trying to ignore this issue or pretend it doesn't exist. If common-sense moderates don't step up and engage this debate, we only allow extremists to take control of it.”—Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune


“This lucid, data-rich book is simply the best researched and most convincing analysis ever done of affirmative action in higher education, a work at once impeccably scholarly and entirely accessible to anyone interested in the social and legal ramifications of well-intentioned policies that, as the authors show, have a boomerang effect on the intended beneficiaries.”—Judge Richard A. Posner


“This book probably will make constitutional history. Written at the intersection of social science and law, its data conclusively demonstrate the damage that has been done to intended beneficiaries by courts’ decisions that have made racial preferences in college admissions an exception to the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws.”—George F. Will

“[Sander and Taylor] are intelligent critics who support the modest use of race in admissions but think very large preferences have harmful effects…. [T]his book is at its best when it skewers college and university officials – who feel morally superior for defending affirmative action – for in fact pursuing what Yale Law professor Stephen Carter has called ‘racial justice on the cheap.’”
—Richard Kahlenberg, The New Republic

“[A] powerful new book that explains the nefarious consequences of [undergraduate and graduate admissions programs] for the supposed beneficiaries of racial preferences. The dirty secret – not a dirty little secret, but a dirty huge secret – is how massive in size their racial preferences are.”
—Ed Whelan, National Review Online, Bench Memos

“The authors offer extensive data in support of their conclusions that the present system is not serving those students well…. This information will be argued over all the same, but the authors’ evenhanded suggestion that what might be a better strategy is to raise educational attainment by investing more in elementary and secondary education for lower-income students – ‘targeting economic need before racial identity,’ as they put it – seems unobjectionable on the face. The subject may be hard to talk about, but it must be, and this is a valuable contribution to opening that needed discussion.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Amazon link

http://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Affirmative-Students-Intended-Universities/dp/0465029965/ref=pd_sim_b_8

Anonymous said...

Lord spare us this crap. Is it any wonder why we are dismissed as off the wall?

Anonymous said...

I agree. This blabbering crackpot (a.k.a. "The Singing Bush") is effectively poisoning Bloggie's well of fresh critique. "Crap" is right! Somebody in charge please pull the chain and flush this turd before he (she) thoroughly stinks up the site.

Anonymous said...

Dear Blog
With all due respect (what little is left) the blabbering crackpot has pushed me over the edge. Dear Mike Dowd, as Chair of Faculty Senate, I respect you - - but they beat you're 'organization' 6 years ago. To Harvey Eisner, as AAUP President (for at least 9 years) go study what happens when union members are too satisfied with their contract, and then too frightened to protest their losses. To the rank and file faculty, you cannot outlast the dictators. You know that and for accepting this you deserve to move down to a certain point in Dante's Heck. To the few remaining blog readers, notice that there is a blog criticizing various aspects of comics (try Funky Winkerbean) and realize that you are like individuals engaging is physical self-pleasure to believe you are alive as the parade passes you by. Goodby my (former colleages), your students and any faculty you recruit are your losses. Signed: Anonymous (but not hard to guess) No Longer a Blog contributor or reviewer. Jack

Anonymous said...

Fare Thee Well, Jack! The Revolution will have to carry on without ya. Had you stuck it out a bit longer, you might be sharing the catbird seat with the rest of us. Rumor is still that Jacobs will apologize and step down before Christmas. If not this Christmas, then next.

"Hope Springs Eternal." ~ A Pope

Anonymous said...

Jacobs apologize? What a concept! That will probably happen on the same day that the BOT apologizes for the way they have constantly mismanaged this institution.

Anonymous said...

“One of my greatest regrets is succumbing to petty vindictiveness and abusing my powerful position as President of this university to destroy the Arts and Science College on its 100th Anniversary.

Granted I was egged on by a few of my hand-picked subordinates, I should have known better and now take full responsibility for an egregious error. I was obviously not 'improving the human condition' or ‘extremely student centered’ to have acted like a bully in a day-school sandbox.

Yesterday I looked into the mirror and the mirror chastised me with these words ‘Some Marine!’

Today I am reborn and filled with remorse. I am taking full responsibility for my past vindictiveness, arrogance and mismanagement of the Main Campus over seven years as President of this University. I am resigning.

Again. Apologies to all: to the students; to the faculty; to the staff; and to the alumni; and to the public at large. Most of all, apologies to Bloggie and those A&S brave hearts that had the good sense and perseverance to critique my misadventures online, time and time again. I can admit now that these informed and persistent bloggers were correct all along. God was on their side. I wish I had listened and acted on their advice instead of acting on the lame recommendations of those many sycophants that I mindlessly hired at great salaries to surround me and endorse my bad behavior. You all know who they are. I rewarded their greed and harmed many innocent others by doing so.

Anyway, I no longer believe in ‘creative destruction,’ and ‘acceptable losses’ and ‘collateral damages’ and throwing colleagues and principled employees under busses.’ Higher education is not a war between administrators and faculty. I was so wrong to assume that. Moreover, this University was never broken. I made that up. A public university is not a business and should not be perceived as such. If I implied or said so in my so-called “strategic planning” I can admit now that nearly everything I preached in the past was all feckless boilerplate.

It has been repeated since ancient times that "Behind every success story is a great crime." Today, as I am about to retreat to my farm with so many misgivings, I very much believe this saying to be wise and true: I was a Big Success, bigger even than Donald Trump, but my-vanity-leading-to-arrogance I can now, in retrospect, and see with utter clarity, was my ‘great crime.’

So it goes, and so go I. Goodbye."

-- President Jacobs' Overdue Resignation Speech, Doermann Theater, Wednesday, December 19, 2012.

Anonymous said...

lord how you delude yourself.

Anonymous said...

Only an academic could enjoy such mental masturba****! Is it any wonder that a physician and a lay board won so conclusively against such children?

Bloggie said...

Bloggie is saddened.

Anonymous said...

None is back!

Anonymous said...

Re Anon 1:33 “Children” – Academic Peter Pan Syndrome and More Sunshine and Fresh Air on Campus

All campus politics aside and in all seriousness – academia does not generally seem to be a very good place for young, often wild, irresponsible and unfocused students, or bookish, introverted, socially awkward, eccentric and often emotionally stunted grad students and professors to grow up and mature into fully functioning and emotionally healthy individuals.

Campus life tends to encourage and/or allow the formation and perpetuation of many negative and counterproductive habits and behaviors that often last a lifetime and inhibit optimal intellectual and personal growth and self-actualization:

…i.e. particularly among students but also faculty and staff – poor diet, exercise, sleep and grooming habits, alcohol and substance abuse, degenerate social relationships, behaviors and habits, lack of short and long term focus and discipline, poor study habits, endless procrastination, coming to class or work late or not at all, handing in assignments late, repeatedly dropping classes, pursuing pseudo-disciplines and pseudo-majors that offer little prospect for practical career choices, repeatedly changing majors, wasting countless unnecessary years on completing degrees and/or Masters or PhD thesis, dropping out entirely, etc.

…professors not handling basic class or departmental paperwork and administrative duties responsibly, phoning in their cut and paste teaching efforts year in and year out, wasting countless years and even entire careers on their dead end, redundant, meaningless and fruitless research programs…

…spending entire careers in the academic echo chamber and in small incestuous academic departments with the same handful of cranky colleagues, where perpetual petty rivalries, personality conflicts and turf wars reign supreme.

Far too many classrooms and offices are claustrophobic windowless, airless, concrete bomb-shelters.

Serious consideration should be given to finding innovative ways to throw open the windows of the Ivory Tower and let fresh cool air continuously blow through the classrooms, offices, dorms and academic departments.

The ideal of a vibrant Academy filled with people pursuing the ideal of the well-rounded “Renaissance Man” needs to be reignited.

It can otherwise often seem so very dark, cold, oppressive, depressing and hopeless for far too many campus stakeholders.

No wonder there is a systematic epidemic of student, faculty and staff depression and emotional distress in academia.

Bottom line: There are far too many really lost, confused, unhappy and unfulfilled people on American college campuses.

And unhealthy minds and bodies engender unhealthy behaviors and toxic ideologies – which in turn engender unhealthy minds and bodies which…

Anonymous said...

talk about your unhealthy minds

Anonymous said...

Welcome to The Promised Land

Indeed there is no other place known to humankind that even comes close to the college campus in resembling an unmitigated Earthly Paradise – a veritable utopian Whoville of collegiality.

Moreover, all inhabitants of the Sacred Groves of Academe are likewise epitomes of unparalleled cosmic wisdom and excellence – imbued with superlative holistic mental, spiritual, physical, emotional and material happiness, fulfillment, health and well-being.

Just look around you. Breathtaking examples of human perfection from one end of the quad to the other – all with heads held high, holding hands, smiling radiantly, filled with love, compassion and goodwill towards all – and singing ecstatic arias of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ in perfectly pitched unison.

Anyone who would dare to even question these undisputed facts must be mental.

Anonymous said...

Esteemed Colleague Bloggie,

Please accept this short missive as further evidence of our continued gratitude to you for allowing us to post assorted, perhaps at times “off topic” but nonetheless – and we do so sincerely hope – scintillatingly intelligent and highly entertaining commentary here on the ASC Blog (“us” being The Johannes de Silentio or ‘JdS’ Affiliated Group of Gentleman Scholars, Muckrakers and Gadflies – a.k.a. The Scarlet Pimpernel, a.k.a. The Associated Artists Formerly Known As Zorox).

The ASC Blog stands as a bastion of free speech in what remains, all obligatory protestations to the contrary aside, a largely censorious local media environment.

You have managed to prevail against the concerted censorship efforts of Dr. Previous & Co. et al. – and if for no other reason than your allowing us the opportunity (and indeed the exquisite pleasure) of continuing to bestow upon Dr. Previous, PhD, & Co. et al. the “recognition” they so richly deserve – in the form of a wide assortment of satirical skewerings – you yourself deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, or at the very least the Kierkegaardian Corsair (or “Leap of Faith”) Prize.

You do not owe us anything and we do not expect any special considerations or extraordinary efforts from you on our behalf.

Note: ASC readers should know that Bloggie has no direct affiliation whatsoever with JdS and indeed remains unaware of our actual identity (though both he and others may have their own theories and suspicions).

Though we, JdS, understand that you, Bloggie, may not necessarily endorse or approve of the content of some of our postings (perhaps most especially those postings from some of our more strident JdS contributors) we nevertheless very much appreciate your continued support of constitutional First Amendment free speech liberties.

Though you have chosen on some occasions to edit our contributions for various reasons known best to you (with your duly attached Editor’s Notes to that effect) – and have in addition also elected on various occasions to leave our contributions un-posted altogether, you nonetheless remain in our estimation an essentially very trustworthy arbiter of free and open discourse.

In this regard, please feel free to delete as you see fit any portions of our past or future contributions which you may deem, for whatever reason, unacceptable (with or without so noting – again, at your discretion).

We believe all parties will be best served if our contributions to the ASC Blog are, whenever you may deem necessary, partially edited or redacted by you as opposed to being censored entirely.

We remain &c. your humble servants,

JdS

Anonymous said...

Bloggie
This is your call, leave it all out there for such rambling bullshit (and your stroking by the bullshitters) or address the real issues of this lost cause. Jack

Anonymous said...

Let Freedom Ring

Yes, Bloggie - you can continue your noble path of protecting First Amendment free speech rights and providing a venue for some alternative, intelligent, relevant, provocative and utterly unique commentary here on the ASC Blog, or...

you can buckle to relentless, thinly and not so thinly veiled censorship pressures from the likes of “Jack”, Dr. Previous & Co. et al. (a.k.a. the REAL stroking bullshitters), who can only abide "free speech" within the confines of monophonic echo chambers that continually reverberate only their own biased one-sided agendas.

You remain essentially the last outlet locally where free-form academic and related commentary can appear. You hold in your hands the significant power to seal off one of the last remaining leaks in the local censorship bucket.

It's your call.

We, JdS, have NEVER requested that you censor anyone or anything because WE have nothing to fear from open discourse and the truth.

WE, JdS, are fully capable of deflating the bullshitters with ease and likewise easily defending our positions against all comers.

Those who DO fear the truth because it does not conform to their narrow ideologies HAVE consistently requested that certain voices (ours and yours included) be censored.

In our particular case the Grand Inquisitors of Censorship have been – aside from the ASC Blog – almost completely successful – at least locally.

Their fears and frustrations probably have much to do with the fact that we, JdS, have for several years now single-handedly taken up the gauntlet of fearless non-partisan truth and taken on and roundly trounced Dr. Previous and any and all other MoFo PoMo PC comers in every title bout we have been required to fight.

And as often as not there is no need for us to even put up our dukes because the bumbling Dr. Previous & Co. are more than capable of hoisting themselves by their own petards – and are usually most accommodating in that regard.

We simply sit by amused and watch them fire themselves over the horizon, propelled by the combustible gaseous emissions of their own fundament-alism.

Cont.

Anonymous said...

Freedom part 2

Notice that all the usual suspects from the ACLU and Banned Books Week etc. (Dr. Previous et al.) remain silent whenever the free speech rights of someone they don’t like are threatened.

They will sit by calmly as the mainstream and “alternative” media warps the truth and unjustly crucifies their adversaries.

Sure – they may make a great public show of defending things like appallingly mediocre, disgusting and offensive countercultural MoFo PoMo “art” or things that don’t really need to be defended – like the rights of total nut jobs like the KKK or Neo-Nazis, whom nobody can take seriously - or books which have faced no real censorship threats at all for many decades (except occasionally from the lunatic fanatic fringes – Islamic fundamentalists etc.).

But you can always tell whenever somebody (like JdS) is speaking the REAL and dangerous truth – because the Dr. Previous and “Jack” types go completely ballistic with frothing accusations of “hate speech” or “bigotry” or “sexism” or “racism” and other name calling, which are all actually nothing more than the PC versions of calls for censorship – and if that doesn’t work – they go subversive, trying any and all backhanded and underhanded means to bring about the censorship and suppression they so desperately desire.

Bloggie, we trust in your continued integrity and remain confident you will continue to do the right thing.

And we understand it is never easy to take a stand. You have no doubt (like JdS) suffered some significant personal and professional persecution for defending and allowing controversial free speech and maintaining the ASC Blog – but that’s what real heroes do. They take a stand.

Let free speech and reasoned rational civil discourse remain the tools civilized people use in a civilized society – otherwise we sink to the level of barbarism – where one-party mob rule and those who can scream the loudest and intimidate and oppress and malevolently manipulate others win the day. Then there will be no hope for the true and good to ever prevail.

Anonymous said...

Is anyone following the latest from the main campus? The admins have announced a 39 (or is it 36?) million main campus short-fall for the next fiscal year. In response, the union announced the results of an independent audit, which found UT on very sound financial ground. And, there have been suggestions that the 39 (36?) million in question more or less the same amount that was spent on a Medical Campus project. That's just what I've picked up. Maybe someone out there knows more?