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Friday, April 4, 2008

There is a very thin silver lining to President Jacob's Address.

In my last night's grad class on Persuasion and Propaganda (COMM 6230) we had just finished reading Orwell's 1984, its Newspeak appendix and also Orwell's wonderful "Politics and the English Language" essay. Many of these grad students work for the University and had attended the address. They said Jacob's address was the perfect example of what George Orwell was talking about, and they insisted we watch the streaming video of the address. It was just as they said, even more perhaps, and a wonderful discussion followed .
It worked so well as a discusion example that I just gave my online Persuasion class their final exam/paper: to watch the address on the President's website and analyze in terms of Orwell (they have been assigned the same readings). I think perhaps I should send the President a "thank you" letter. Is this what he means by "extreme student centeredness"--him getting personally involved and setting an example for students?
BAP
Watch out for the New Entity
It might bite

-----Original Message-----
From: Davis, David H.
Sent: Thu 4/3/2008 4:42 PM
To: Anderson, Lawrence S.; Caruso, Michael J.; Creutz, Charles; Davis, David H.; Lipman, Joel A.; Patrick, Brian; Purviance, Susan M.
Subject: Dr. Jacobs' imaginative address
To the Executive Committee:
Even if you attended the presentation, you should look at the written version in detail. To save time, start at page 13 which says the purpose of higher education is economic prosperity. Page 22 says that degrees will be customized rather than majoring in a discipline. We will organize all undergraduate courses into modules and algorithms (page 26). Professional advisors will be moved to the Provost's office. We will purchase some Computer Assisted and DL courses from outside UT (page 30). We will have a New Entity to do much of this (page 32). Degree programs from University College will be transferred to A&S (page 34). These ideas are "sweeping the business world" (page 35).
While I have many questions, one is Where is the connection to the strategic plan?
David
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1 comment:

HuJia said...

Orwellian, yes, and also a page torn directly from Gentile and Mussolini's play book, La Doctrina del Fascismo, who in the name of the "productivism" "consolidated" all citizens --now "producers"-- into 22 corporations in order to maximize efficiency and to manufacture consent, squash dissent, and shore up corporate hegemony. For who was "Il Duche" (the leader)without the backing of his corporate cronies ? No doubt the current A&S Dean, who seems incapable of finding any value in the arts and sciences except as means to fuel economic development, (see his piece in the Toledo Free Press: http://www.toledofreepress.com/?id=7462),
Small wonder then that a president who values "Extreme" (a favorite word of all fascists) Student Centeredness and "Mass Customization" (do note that Dell announced last May that it would lay off 8,000 workers, is largely abandoning mass customization to model itself more closely on HP! :
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18967391/)
would have 'tremendous confidence' in this Dean.

Here is Mussolini on Fascism (Excerpted from, What is Fascism?"

"... Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage...."


And now on a more promising and hopeful note here is your daily Aung San Suu Kyi:

Peace, stability and unity cannot be bought or coerced; they have to be nurtured by promoting a sensitivity to human needs and respect for the rights and opinions of others...

Keep on blogging!

April 4, 2008 at 5:43 PM

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