Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
DON'T BE A SHEEP
UT's Officially Disapproved Information Source and HISTORICAL ARCHIVE. The only source of truth, where Paradox Manifests: Hundreds of thousands of visits. Yet No One Admits to Reading It. Welcome to the "Grey Area" where "Unethical Utterances," i.e., criticisms of administrators, are commonplace. Make U.U. here where genuine civility still reigns, a.k.a., freedom......................... UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO'S EQUIVALENT TO RADIO FREE EUROPE
Search This Blog
NEW!!! Hard Eight by Professor Extreme
HARD EIGHT
Hard Eight: Auto-Ethnographic Essays on Academic Culture Featuring the End of the Arts & Sciences College, University of Toledo, 2010
Daily Koan
Should the newly discovered black hole be named in honor of UT BOT?
Swamp Bubble
Do you agree or disagree that University of Toledo suffers from administrative bloat?
How do you feel about the proposed UT Degree Guarantee program? (Reposted to allow more people to vote.)
How do you feel about the proposed UT Guarantee program?
How would you grade the overall performance of the Jacobs' administration on running the University of Toledo?
COMMENT OF THE WEEK
Bloggie applauds this perspicacious observer:
"The administration is in a panic mode to implement controversial and irreversible structural and curricular changes campus-wide by early February fiscal plan deadlines with only the vaguest notions of their impacts. The plan is, according to an interview with a top administrator published in the most recent Independent Collegian, to cast out many seeds and "see what grows." This experimental garden, as most senators articulated in many different ways, seems a costly recipe for disaster. Utter madness. Stay tuned."
Print Version of Dictionary of Academia Available on Amazon.com
The profound ruminations of the goaty Sage are now available in this 119 page satirical masterpiece. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1480292494/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B009RC0SJA&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1JV8N5BYAYY9WC9SJWD2
"Dictionary of Academia" Read it While it's Hot
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
Comment of the Week
"This is that old tension between the corporate way of doing things and the academic way of doing things. In the corporate world, you sweep everything under the rug to make your b.s. as shiny, pleasing to the nose, and profitable as possible. In the academic world, you operate with a higher moral standard. Veritas and all that."
Comment of the Week of August 13
Re UT academic posers and hypocrites:
Have their checks calculated in units of postmodern theoretical currency and issued in photocopied legal tender notes signed by Walter Benjamin with a photo of Karl Marx and a seal stamped “In Derrida We Trust”.
Comment of the Era
Wow! Ain't that something.
-Anonymous
Comment of the Week
Mention goes to the the anonymous commentator of Feb 7, who, regarding UT President Llloyd Jacob's "Investing in Faculty" letter, stated: "If we could use the same criteria for 'investing in administrators' we could cut most of those positions."
Comments to HLC
Make sure you address your comments to HLC to the email address listed below in the "Higher Learning Commission Wants to Know" post. This may be the only chance you have to be heard. Bloggie hears that UT administration has discussed giving faculty "training" so that faculty members know how to "properly" talk to the HLC folks. How's that for stacking the deck? Does everyone get a little script to read? Make sure you practice before a mirror at being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Comment of the Week!
Definitely, the Comment of the Week award goes to Anonymous 12:14 pm, Dec 3, under the "Higher Learning Commission Needs to Know" posting by Diogenes. Pithy and pointed!
--Love,
Bloggie
MESSAGE OF THE DAY:
DON'T BE A SHEEP
Independent Collegian Article on Dicey Administrative Spending
IC reporter Casey Cheap looks at bow ties, apartments and movie tickets purchased by UT administrators at university/public expense. See
TO CONTACT BLOGGIE . . .
Bloggie is always glad to consider submissions to this blog. If you have something that you wish posted please send it to:
ascbloggie@gmail.com
Letter and Petition from Foreign Languages Faculty Member
A couple weeks ago, at the beginning of summer break, we in the Department of Foreign Languages were informed that our secretary's position was being eliminated and that while she will not lose her job (she'll be transferred), that position is not to be filled. We apparently will be expected to do our own jobs plus what we can of the secretary's. That is clearly not acceptable, and so one of the steps we in FL are taking against it is an online petition now available for any who want to (including those who for whatever reason--not a registered Ohio voter, not a US citizen, etc.--cannot sign the petition against SB5), to read and sign.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Katherine Best
Wave of the Future or Merely Sometime Later This Week?
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a deeply fascinating article called, "When to Dissolve a Faculty Senate." Apparently this is any time that it becomes "adversarial" to administration.
The online comments to the article are priceless.
Nemeth on Mammon in IC
David Nemeth's most recent tour-de-force
Professor Nemeth has another fabulous and timely article in the new and increasingly wonderful Independent Collegian. See http://www.independentcollegian.com/forum/the-kraken-attacks-1.2340091
Nemeth Does it Again
See the forum article in The Independent Collegian at:
Nemeth's New Article in Collegian
The Independent Collegian has run another of Professor Nemeth's fine and provocative articles in its latest edition. This one discusses the double-talk by mouthpieces for the current UT administration concerning the effects of and reasons behind so-called strategic reorganization. Make sure you get the latest version of Newspeak 5.1 if you want to decode what UT administrators are really saying.
UT Ranks 13th Nationally on Administrative Bloat
See Appendix B of the Administrative Bloat report posted on 8/28 for evidence, but UT now has a higher proportion of administrators to students than all but 12 public universities in America. President Jacobs has finally put University of Toledo in the top tier. With Strategic Organization he may be aiming for number one.
This Blog is a free and independent information source. Contributions and comments are welcome. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com WARNING AND DISCLAIMER !!!! This blog is entirely non-official!! People may express opinion here, exercising freedom of speech and association.
Recent Letters from The Blade
Jacobs' arrogance is astonishing
Recently, President Lloyd Jacobs of the University of Toledo stated that bonuses were justified because his administrators "took all the risks."
As a professor at UT, I am outraged that President Jacobs claims that administrators take all of the risks. What risks do they take that the other faculty and staffs on campus do not?
Administrators are protected by state and federal employment laws and by their contracts.
When ex-President Vik Kapoor was terminated, he remained a professor with a salary near what he was paid as president.
As president emeritus, Dan Johnson retained a salary greater than his pay as president.
In the recent layoffs, exceptionally few administrators were terminated. It seems to me that low-level personnel at UT have far more risks because the greater proportion of the layoffs have come from their ranks. And they did not have continuing salaries.
President Jacobs' answer to questions on two occasions regarding relinquishing part of his bonus was to the effect that he earned his bonuses and what he did with them was his business.
Administrators do not risk their personal money in their duties: they use taxpayer money and funds collected through donations and grants to the university.
Administrators take home salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and then add bonuses for longevity and whatever else the president decides is fitting for their contracts.
However, the lower-level personnel have much lower salaries and no such bonuses. Where is the risk?
It seems to me that these bonuses are convoluted: The lower-level personnel are taking the greater risks with no bonuses while the administrators with very rewarding jobs with little risk receive large bonuses.
Am I missing something here?
WALTER W. OLSON,
Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing
Engineering,
University of Toledo
It's the same old, same old at UT
I could hardly believe the arrogance of Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, president of the University of Toledo, when a reporter asked if he would be willing to forgo his bonus in light of the layoffs, raise in tuition, etc.
His comment was that he worked for it. Is that to say that the ones being laid off did not work for their pay?
All I can say is, business as usual at UT. Some things never change.
SANDY FLICK
Rose Acres Drive
UT also has checks, balances
In response to letter titled "Professors must focus on teaching," I would like to point out that the University of Toledo operates on the basis of shared governance.
This means that faculty members participate in the administration of the university.
A focus on teaching requires faculty to address administrative issues such as policies, procedures, and yes, finances, because these all affect classroom outcomes. A university with solid and equitable finances benefits everyone, including and especially the students. Just as the U.S. government is constituted to have checks and balances, so is our university government.
The UT-AAUP is one of those checks against UT administrators who most recently have displayed more concern for their own profit rather than a concern for the common good.
LINDA M. ROUILLARD,
Associate Professor
of French,
University of Toledo
Quote of the Year (so far)
The following is excerpted from the recent UT AAUP newsletter concerning the official university response to news of the bonus scandal:
. . . . Either Jacobs is misleading the media or he has misled the Board of Trustees. President Jacobs objected to "the general tone" of the UT-AAUP Newsletter. Many persons on this campus object to the "general tone" of the Jacobs Administration. During his tenure as President, he has introduced an administrative culture of fear and intimidation. . . . A point of logic must be raised here, with all respect to UT AAUP, the conclusions that President Jacobs has (1) misled the media and (2) the Board of Trustees are not mutually exclusive. Both would seem likely given his considerable talent at spinning "visions." |
How to Contribute
The Blog is now under new management, a consortium of ASC faculty who pooled their longevity bonuses to purchase it from its original owners. Your comments are still welcome but look for some changes. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com. Your contributions might include new posts, images, comments to existing articles/posts, concerns about process and substance at UT's College of Arts & Sciences. This blog is entirely non-official, for which you can be thankful, unless you enjoy reading self-serving bureaucratic propaganda, and is intended as a discussion and commentary forum for UT A&S faculty and community.
Another Claim and Disclaimer
A blog is a blog is a blog. Information, comments and opinions found here don't represent official views, instead they represent truthful and sincere ones. If you want the official line on things go elsewhere. This is a discussion and comment page. You may even read things here that you disagree with, and then, maybe not.
ASCBloggie
Google News for "University of Toledo"
Google News for "Higher Education Ohio"
Blog Archive
Links
49 comments:
MacKinnon Hall won't be open to students this year. I guess there were not enough students to justify the cost of its operation which means enrollment is down (significantly?) which means more staffing and faculty and departmental cuts in the offing to make up for the tuition shortfall and I'm sure the decreased enrollment will be used as leverage in the contract negotiations. Regardless, we will see more admin positions created, admin contracts, i.e. "bonuses" will be honored, same old same old indeed. When enrollment went up the admins championed this as their great achievement. Now that it's down?
Every faculty member in the humanities should apply for position of Executive Director of UTMC if and when it is posted. A typical Engligh prof is about as qualified to run a hospital as a finance flunky is to be Provst.
Then again...People deserve whatever government (or in this case leadership) they are willing to put up with.
" When enrollment went up the admins championed this as their great achievement. Now that it's down?"
What did you expect: democracy? As you may have read elsewhere, UT is just a microcosm of what is going on nationally: micro-feudalist enclaves with their dictators and their a$$wipes dominate the corporate landscape, during good or bad times.
Just like in Medieval Europe: both king and church prospered while the poor folks suffered. The Jacobs regime represents the devolution of American society to medieval times in which there was no United States. Hey, we are finally catching up with Europe...all we need now, is Robin Hood! Maybe Paul Ryan...
"Then again...People deserve whatever government (or in this case leadership) they are willing to put up with."
Then again...there is no leadership in our leadership. It has devolved (read: rotted) to the level of dictatorship, and this regime enjoys the fruits of mass disaffection, lack of morale, lack of solidarity, and any civil society traits that might otherwise discourage thugs like Lloydie, Goldie, and the Scarry to thrive.
Big bonuses for thugs, a$$wipes, etc. Big media parade for STEMM researchers in UT News for bringing in the big money, and open doors for the useless humanities and social sciences folks values are aligned with truth and conscience, and not really translatable into dollar figures. They are the bottom feeders and outcasts along with our fellow faculty in the library.
I wonder how many external candidates were offered the provost position but didn't want to have anything to do with this place. Would you?
Are you crazy thinking external offers were made? That is delusional thinking which, if continued, denies the reality of the administrtaion's intention from the get-go. The intention is complete control as defined by the medical model. Figure it out, quit hiding from it.
Re Pryor and other academic hypocrites, imposters and posers from earlier post:
Have their checks calculated in units of postmodern theoretical currency and issued in photocopied legal tender notes signed by Walter Benjamin with a photo of Karl Marx and a seal stamped “In Derrida We Trust”.
Yes indeed.
Those bogus photocopied PoMo Bucks would "represent" about as much value as the bogus photocopied PoMo degrees the PoMo Profs have been passing off to their poor unwitting students for years.
And rather than being paid in "oppressive" "linear" "patriarchal" hard currency, the PoMo Profs could find comfort in knowing they were receiving appropriately deconstructed compensation for their postmodern pedagogy and profound "ideas".
According to my Dean, Ben Pryor (who the hellis he?) is requiring syllabi to be posted on the web. I own my syllabi and by contract, I have copyright to it. He can not tell me where and when to publish it! The syllabi is between me and my students.
More faculty need to object to these unreasonable demands or we lose more of our academic freedom.
FYI
MEMO
August 13, 2012
From: Ben Pryor
To: College Deans
Re: Syllabus Availability via Blackboard
Cc: Dr. William McMillen, Provost
------------------
Every course in our schedule has a Blackboard “shell”. Many faculty use this course
site to teach, but some do not. And of course, Blackboard is the default learning
management system for all courses in “UT Online.”
This summer, the Provost urged me to find a way to make all syllabuses for all UT
courses available online. Blackboard is our solution. By making a “space” in
Blackboard available to anyone, even prospective students without a UT I.D., we can
now publish course syllabuses.
Faculty can find information about how to use the “public space” in Blackboard on our
website and the LV “blog.” They can also contact us at their convenience for help with
uploading and making available a syllabus or any other document (copyright protections
in place, of course).
All classes at UT must have a syllabus publicly available by the beginning of classes
this fall. I would ask that chairs or associate deans report to me the classes that have
syllabuses available so I can report this information to the Provost. To report this
information:
1. Download an excel spreadsheet listing all courses and sections offered in the
department.
2. Determine whether each course has a syllabus available on Blackboard’s
public space (excluding independent studies and other similar courses).
3. If the answer is no, determine whether the issue is technical in nature. We will
help to resolve technical issues.
I will generate a report on Monday, August 20.
Please contact Learning Ventures or John Gaboury if you have any questions about
how to use the public space or how to upload a syllabus.
Save the World on Your Own Time
Even the PoMo Poster Boy himself, Stanley Fish, agrees there is no place for political bias or political or social activism in the college lecture hall.
Fish is a former Duke University English prof widely recognized as a leading 80’s deconstructionist and postmodern literary theorist.
He was at the center of the Sokal Hoax/Social Text fiasco some years back, which was largely responsible for revealing the fact that the PoMo King has no clothes – see “Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science”.
Fish has incidentally since then written a number of repentant works and has made great efforts in more recent decades to try to distance himself from the Anything Goes Academic Jazz Age of 1980’s and 1990’s Postmodern Theory and PoMo Mania.
Naturally, it has taken some twenty-plus years for the news that “The PoMo King is dead” to make it’s way by academic foot courier and sailing vessel to the distant and remote lands of the Ivory Towers of Academe, and thence through the dark impenetrable jungles of academic careerism and up the steep and narrow mountain passes of academic freedom and tenure and finally beyond the thick walls of humanities department castle keeps and through the iron gates of professorial ego and finally into the hands of the PoMo profs… who are still at liberty to simply refuse to open the communiqué if they so choose.
In his recent book “Save the World on Your Own Time” (2012) Fish rightly enjoins professors to “do your job” i.e. teach – not proselytize (overtly or covertly).
And claiming to be “unbiased” while having a course syllabus jammed only with all dogmatic Marxist feminist postmodern theory, topics, assignments and readings constitutes precisely the sort of propaganda promulgating Fish warns against.
“What should be the role of our institutions of higher education? To promote good moral character? To bring an end to racism, sexism, economic oppression, and other social ills? To foster diversity and democracy and produce responsible citizens?
In Save the World on Your Own Time, Stanley Fish argues that, however laudable these goals might be, there is but one proper role for the academe in society: to advance bodies of knowledge and to equip students for doing the same. When teachers offer themselves as moralists, political activists, or agents of social change rather than as credentialed experts in a particular subject and the methods used to analyze it, they abdicate their true purpose.
And yet professors now routinely bring their political views into the classroom and seek to influence the political views of their students. Those who do this will often invoke academic freedom, but Fish suggests that academic freedom, correctly understood, is the freedom to do the academic job, not the freedom to do any job that the professor so chooses. Fish insists that a professor's only obligation is "to present the material in the syllabus and introduce students to state-of-the-art methods of analysis. Not to practice politics, but to study it; not to proselytize for or against religious doctrines, but to describe them; not to affirm or condemn Intelligent Design, but to explain what it is and analyze its appeal.”
From Amazon review/synopsis here: http://www.amazon.com/Save-World-Your-Own-Time/dp/0199892970/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345123839&sr=1-1&keywords=save+the+world+on+your+own+time
"'Through me the way to the suffering city; Through me the everlasting pain; Through me the way that runs among the Lost. ...Abandon all hope - You Who Enter Here."
I think this is a good description of UT right now :)
Anonymous 7:34 a.m.,3:12 p.m., 10:49 a.m., ...
Your shrill lunatic rants against postmodernism are irrelevant to this blogsite and about as welcome to the intellectual intercourse here as bedbugs in a honeymoon suite. Please cease and desist so we can return to our meaningful conversation and get it on.
You Go, Stanley
Who could have predicted twenty years ago that of all people Stanley Fish would eventually end up sounding very much like Roger Kimball (Tenured Radicals) and David Horowitz (One Party Classroom).
Hats off to Fish for having the courage and integrity to embrace “change".
There are 18,000 undergraduate students at UT, over 200 majors, several hundred courses, and several hundred faculty. Only a few small number of these students, courses and faculty would be involved in any aspects of a postmodernism learning environment, and for the most part the students self select to take those few courses or majors.
So where does the poster arrive at this opinion at UT (and higher education in general) is somehow deeply indoctrinated in postmodernism? As far as I can determine the vast majority of students at UT and other institutions of higher learning in this country are never exposed to postmodernism, and the few that are do so voluntarily by their choices of majors and courses?
UT students are indoctrinated in little besides football, Natty Light, and cheezypoofs, as far as I can tell. Forget postmodernism.
Water? What water, asked the fish?
Where’s the postmodernism, you ask? Are you serious?
So called "multicultural" and "diversity" identity politics pervades the entire "liberal" "progressive" postmodern PC academy from top to bottom and from sea to shining sea - from discriminatory race and gender and sexual orientation programs privileging women and minorities and LGBT and any and all non-white non-Christian non-western non-Capitalist non-conservative non-American traditions, perspectives cultures and ideologies
– on the basis of sex (female/gay/transgender) and race (non-white) and ethnicity (non-European/western/Judeo-Christian) and religion (non-Christian) and politics (non-conservative) – all of which mandate arbitrary quotas in admissions and grades and graduation rates and job appointments in order to conform to misguided politicized notions of political correctness
– derived form politicized “research” and “studies” that point to the need to arbitrarily remedy things like “under-representation” and “inequality” – to countless other so called "social justice" initiatives, PC Thought Police speech and behavior imperatives at all levels and in all guises… the list goes on and on and on.
And that is all primarily only within the administrative and extra-curricular sphere.
Within the academic disciplines themselves, Marxist feminist postmodernism is the very ground faculty and students walk on and the air they breathe – the very content of the academic programs, courses, reading, writing, speaking and thinking.
Just because you are a fish who has never known any other environment does not mean you are not surrounded by the water of PoMo PC - in academia, popular culture, default mode liberal politics, etc. All studies show overwhelming left-liberal ideological dominance and bias in higher education.
The core curriculum and admissions and academic standards have been decimated and dumbed down and politicized and grades inflated to the default “everyone gets an A for effort” since the 1960's (Hey hey! Ho ho! Western Civ has got to go! Hey hey... etc. etc.) all to appease countless misguided radical leftist political agendas for decades.
The humanities and social sciences have been completely subverted to the Marxist feminist postmodernist agendas and perspectives.
Even the hard sciences have had to twist themselves into politically correct knots trying not to “discriminate” against women or “offend” anyone’s sense of self-esteem or personal or cultural identity.
Not just social and cultural relativism, but even epistemic relativism are demanded of the true PoMo PC believer. Reality itself is forbidden if it is not politically correct.
Just like fundamentalist religion, which demands human beings conform to arbitrary and often absurd and inhumane religious dogmas, prescriptions, behaviors, beliefs and prohibitions – postmodern Marxist feminist PC demands people conform rigidly in thought, speech action to often absurd and inhumane beliefs, behaviors and ideologies – or face being branded sexists, bigots, racists, elitists, fascists etc. etc.
If you want to see the natural culmination of Marxist feminist PoMo PC in action look no further than the pogroms and purges of Stalin, the Cultural Revolution of Mao, the Killing Fields of Pol Pot etc. etc.
You are either being completely disingenuous or astonishingly obtuse - neither of which is a very desirable attribute in an academic.
Where's the PoMo? continued
In case you actually care about the reality of these issues and are not simply acting out an assigned role as a liberal shill – like a defense attorney whose job it is to insist O. J. is innocent regardless of the obvious facts and evidence – try reading some of these for starters:
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science;
Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education;
One Party Classroom: How radical professors at America’s top colleges indoctrinate students and undermine out democracy;
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature;
The Death of the West: How dying populations and immigrant invasions imperil our country and civilization;
The True Believer: Thoughts on the nature of mass movements;
Intellectuals and Society;
Liberal Fascism: The secret history of the American left from Mussolini to the politics of meaning.
I hope you will take the time to read some of these books and then ponder these important issues further.
Enrollment down 9% across the entire university! Wonderful job Jacobs & Co.
Now look to cut down programs and courses to save money and get the bonuses you deserve!
Don't miss "Riding the MOOC wave" in today's Inside Higher Education:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/17/world-education-university-looks-ride-mooc-wave-despite-skeptics
The rapid advent of the MOOCs is a real challenge to UT strategic academic planning. Why? Because UT academic planning that is driven by the profit model CAN'T BEAT FREE. Providing a high quality and diverse educational opportunity for prospective students can make this university competitive again. The present administration should admit their errors and invest in redemption if they want to save this university. Or they can leave -- but with no golden parachutes. We can use that money to fix this place.
If enrollments are down 10%, and with tuition continuint to rise, and with MOOCs rising rapidly above the near horizon, the failure of this administration and its inappropriate business model for higher education is today embarassingly obvious.
Faculty, students, staff and alumni loyal to the venerable traditions of the UT main campus have to set about have to set about themselves to fix what this failed administration has broken.
The professional tenured faculty especially have an obligation to teach this administration or the next one how to manage a successful university. We have seen what fails. Now let's show the world what works!
We can begin by strongly requesting
at least two new main campus faculty seats as voting members of the Board of Trustees.
4:16:
You are quite right. The key is quality and UT can deliver that, but not with the administration we are currently saddled with.
Jacobs has hired yet another Medical College crony, and so the failed administrative philosophy of the Med College is even more firmly entrenched now at UT and more emboldened. Enrollment has taken a significant downturn if you do the math from last year and this year. There are contract negotiations underway, after faculty opted to go into hibernation last year and defer the new contract to this year, and these negotiations will be framed by what the admins will argue is a near financial emergency. More program cuts and layoffs and firings and increased loads and increased class sizes and health care contributions and STRS contributions are all going to be enacted or will be on the table. And across the state, university administrations are attacking tenure by arguing it is a way to cut costs and balance budgets. I don't see how any of the vitriol posted about postmodernism engages any of these very real issues facing UT faculty, staff and students. If anything, these clever and witty and narcissistic postings are themselves postmodern (which was itself clever, witty and narcissistic) as they are irrelevant, sophistic and fail to engage any of the real world issues we should all be debating.
Jacobs has hired yet another Medical College crony, and so the failed administrative philosophy of the Med College is even more firmly entrenched now at UT and more emboldened. Enrollment has taken a significant downturn if you do the math from last year and this year. There are contract negotiations underway, after faculty opted to go into hibernation last year and defer the new contract to this year, and these negotiations will be framed by what the admins will argue is a near financial emergency. More program cuts and layoffs and firings and increased loads and increased class sizes and health care contributions and STRS contributions are all going to be enacted or will be on the table. And across the state, university administrations are attacking tenure by arguing it is a way to cut costs and balance budgets. I don't see how any of the vitriol posted about postmodernism engages any of these very real issues facing UT faculty, staff and students. If anything, these clever and witty and narcissistic postings are themselves postmodern (which was itself clever, witty and narcissistic) as they are irrelevant, sophistic and fail to engage any of the real world issues we should all be debating.
They Know Not What They Do
Let it be stipulated that most liberals, whether academics or otherwise, do indeed mean well.
They have been sold a bill of misguided idealist, do-gooder philosophical and political notions from a very early age – psychologically manipulated by dutiful card-carrying 1950’s-style Commie parents and nurtured and cultivated by liberal peers, society, schools and universities, demagogues, popular culture etc. - in the very same way a used car salesman manipulates a car buyer, or Bernie Madoff manipulated and duped investors.
It is highly doubtful whether even the cream of the liberal crop truly appreciate the fuller implications of what they think they are trying to achieve – i.e. the likes of Obama or Hillary Clinton or even Noam Chomsky (who has astonishingly been guilty of delusional attempts to rationalize the atrocities of the likes of Stalin and Pol Pot).
Like tactical field generals, liberal idealists have little true understanding of the ultimate strategic objectives of their military and political masters.
Need-to-know hierarchical silo organizational structures, ruthless discipline, unquestioning obedience and fanatic loyalty are the only ways to march the masses lemming-like towards any utopian cliff.
Hitler could have never hoped to facilitate his Final Solution if he had openly announced his intentions at a Nuremberg Nazi rally.
The Jews would have resisted to the last man, woman and child, like they did at Masada, rather than be herded like good law abiding citizens bound for the slaughterhouse – and the German people and the German military would have revolted.
Likewise, if Obama and Clinton and Chomsky could be transported Dickens-like into the future by the Orwellian Ghost of Marxist Future Dreams, to witness the true nightmarish nature of the oppressive Marxist “utopia” they are fanatically fighting to engender, and to see the anguish of their demoralized and enslaved children and grandchildren, they would gasp in horror, saying:
“But… but… this is not what we wanted. We thought…
To which the Orwellian Ghost would reply: “It was never about what you wanted or what you thought. You were merely pragmatic utilitarian tools for the unseen Puppet Masters. Your usefulness to the State is done. Great Leader appreciates your efforts and you will be remembered as Heroes of The People.”
cont.
They Know Not What They Do
cont.
Anyone who truly wishes to educate themselves about the dynamics of any totalitarian ideological movement in general (whether right wing or left wing – religious or political) and to understand the dynamics of the contemporary liberal agenda specifically, need only read the following three books:
First read “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness” (2006) by Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D. – a University of Chicago board certified general and forensic psychiatrist.
Rossiter’s book is a serious work grounded in state-of-the art cutting-edge modern psychology and psychiatry and written by a serious academically trained psychiatrist.
Rossiter’s central thesis is simply that radical liberalism represents in essence a manifestation of narcissistic personality disorder, mental illness and mass cult-like delusion – all rationalized, politicized, idealized, intellectualized and writ large – writ very, VERY LARGE (Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein, et al. – and to a lesser extent the likes of Foucault, Derrida, Chomsky, Nader, etc.)
Understood within the perspective of Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism: The Hidden History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning” – radical liberalism can be seen as little more than the flip side of Nazi fascism and thus the likes of Hitler and Mussolini can readily be added to the list of narcissistic liberal demagogues, cult leaders and madmen.
If Rossiter’s book were entitled “The Conservative Mind” – it would quickly earn its place in the Borgesian Liberal Library’s Holy of Holies, alongside other primary liberal sacred texts like Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’ and assorted works of Rousseau, Hegel, Nietzsche, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Sartre, Foucault et al.).
Next, read the liberal revolutionary playbook: Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”.
Alinsky outlines the duplicitous political tactics used by countless leftist political leaders, operatives and organizations – everyone from Bill Ayers, Abbie Hoffmann, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Jesse Jackson, ACORN, NOW, Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Alinsky clearly illustrates in step-by-step fashion how to deploy Gandhi-like non-violence and idealist propaganda, media, activism, pseudo-intellectualism and Orwellian doublespeak to mobilize, manipulate and deceive liberal elites and the liberal masses to full effect.
The only real difference between Alinsky’s political tactics and the strong arm tactics used by the likes of Hitler is that Alinsky’s tactics are specifically designed for those who do not yet possess the force of state, police or military power and who must therefore deploy seemingly benign political wolf in sheep’s clothing stealth deception.
Think of it as Kung Fu for political operatives.
Finally, read Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believe: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.” Hoffer clearly, simply and concisely deconstructs fanatic, idealist Marxist and Fascist totalitarianism.
THEN you will be educated.
So what are the faculty going to do about it?
Who writes all this stuff???
The faculty are going to do what we always do: teach our students well, do our research well and PUSH BACK against an ignorant, selfish, arrogant administration.
Now that's talking!
9% drop in enrollment?
Fire Ben and the Gang of 12.
The author of the above and many other similar tracts is none other than the intrepid 21st century Scarlet Pimpernel himself, Johannes de Silentio.
At your service, Sir.
For those of you who use BB, and are following the most current Jacobs inspired controversy (which ranges on any given day from the macro to the micro) you should be aware that the settings on BB starting with the Fall 2012 term at UT allow guest access to your course information. And so, if you don't want to allow guest access you have to change the settings. In all previous semesters, the default was NOT to allow access (this is the default setting on BB). This setting was apparently globally changed sometime prior to the start of this semester and it allows "guests" access to your BB course site and not just the syllabus. To change it, you need to look in the left hand menu under Control Panel/Customization/Guests and Observer Access. You may also trace the history of guest access by checking out out previous semesters. If you look at all of your old courses on BB, you will see the default setting was no guest access.
Since Scarlet repeats the same arguments in almost every thread that appears on this blog, how about giving the 21st century Scarlet Pimpernel his own wunderkind thread. Divert his rants to that thread so that they don't interrupt or stymie discussions of the actual topic under discussion.
Thanks, 2:29. Very helpful information. I recommend we regularly watch these settings to make sure they don't get changed back to allow guests and observers.
De Silentio responds
First – kudos to Bloggie for continuing to allow some substantive discourse to appear here – even if it is “off topic”.
This blog may be the only local venue where the REAL truth is allowed to occasionally bubble up to the surface – not just petty local and academic politics and the different narrow left wing or right wing agendas, spin and predigested pabulum of mainstream media and academia.
Yes there are countless academic blogs – but most of these involve extremely narrow and specialized academic disciplinary minutia and hair-splitting. Consequently they are visited by only a very few specialists and nobody in the “real” world is likely to ever see them.
De Silentio prefers to stand back and try to get the big picture in focus and possibly get the word out and inspire one or two people who possess the necessary understanding to “get it” AND the wherewithal to “pay it forward” by wielding the influence necessary to facilitate some true positive change.
Re Anon 2:34
Indeed.
A university blog is hardly the place to discuss things like REAL critical thinking or the REAL deconstruction of the fundamental dynamics of political and philosophical delusion and deception.
We wouldn’t want anybody to REALLY think about any of this stuff, or educate themselves, or acquire any real understanding about how to live better, happier more productive lives and maybe REALLY make the world a better place by seeing through all the nearly impenetrable smoke and mirrors of leftist and rightist academic politics, philosophy, religion, political correctness, propaganda, “education”, “research”, pop culture etc.
We might accidentally REALLY solve some of the world’s problems as opposed to perpetually blowing theoretical academic smoke.
Far better to stick to the truly important matters at hand – like, um, calling Jacobs a poop head…
Academic courses, textbooks and reading lists are all carefully vetted by the predominantly leftist academic Commissars of the various disciplines and departments (nationally through academic associations etc. and locally by deans, department chairs and professors – who have themselves all been carefully groomed and vetted by their own long and arduous academic “training” – read indoctrination and brainwashing – which effectively culls any true independent thinking from the herd and endeavors to allow only USDA Grade-A Academic Conformists to pass through the Ph.D. corral chute and into the verdant pastures of tenure).
Academic journals are likewise vetted by “peer review” – and nobody reads them anyway.
True peer review would involve something like an academic Moot Court where every paper submitted, whether for reading at an academic conference or publication in an academic journal, was subjected to the most rigorous cross-examination by a knowledgeable and effective academic “prosecutor”, whose job and reputation depended on his or her ability to seek and find the cracks in the armor of the proposed paper, by any means necessary.
Only then, after all possible countervailing evidence had been duly presented to the “court” by the academic prosecutor would the merits of the paper or study be adjudicated by an unbiased jury of academic peers.
Instead, the most absurd academic “research” and “studies,” or “theories” – particularly in the humanities and social sciences – are routinely rubber-stamped by partisan academic “peer review” bureaucrats and thence fed into the mainstream politically correct machine of public consciousness as “truth”.
cont.
De Silentio responds (cont.)
Even traditionalist Great Books reading lists like Harold Bloom’s Western Canon or Mortimer Adler’s Great Books have been selected and edited by leftist academics.
For all his learning and erudition, Adler (the Encyclopedia Britannica editor and architect of the University of Chicago’s legendary Great Books program) was nonetheless a classic leftist true believer – as is Bloom.
The only other place you are likely to see anything resembling the unpoliticized unvarnished truth is in books that are either obscure, or have been vehemently vilified and pronounced effectively “banned” by frothing left-wing or right-wing ideologues who “can’t handle the truth”.
If by de Silentio’s “repeating the same argument” you mean saying in effect “hey, don’t be stupid – look at this carefully” while touching at one time or another, albeit of necessity briefly, on virtually every substantive topic in contemporary science and academic scholarship – then de Silentio must plead guilty.
Your humble servant,
JdS
Here's a link to the "official" rationale behind the BB syllabi issue:
http://utnews.utoledo.edu/index.php/08_21_2012/faculty-encouraged-to-post-syllabi-to-increase-understanding-of-curriculum
When this directive was deliverd to me the source was identified as Jacobs. In the UT News, however, it states that it is Pryor's innovative idea. Morover, the UT News article states Pryor is "asking" faculty to post syllabi and but when it was first delvied to me it was an order and Monday was the deadline.
Dear your humble servant,
No one is trying to silence you. I for one would like your conversation to take place within its own thread. This would allow you to have a conversation rather than merely interrupting a conversation. It is not about free speech. It is about respect. Please don't interrupt. Bloggie, could we start a thread for that particular line of conversation?
Recent sighting of Zelig as Sargeant Schultz?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ag4nkSh7Q
Regarding BB guest access:
my students can't see what I have put if they login as under their names (as students), yet they can see it if they login as GUEST.
Not to cause any alarm, but just walking through the main campus and eating at the student cafeteria, I have the impression that there are much less students around, compared to three/two years ago. Does anyone have the same impression? Perhaps the enrollment is down more than 9 %...
"Fire Ben and the Gang of 12."
I love the rich discourse on postmodernism and the undeserved association with this Ben+12.
True, postmodernism is associated with communication technologies (like Twitter) that are directly responsible for the devolution of narratives to 140 characters. This is not to say the everything about postmodernism and popular culture is anti-intellectual. But when the corporate dictionary filled with the kind of buzzwords you have read in these blogs much earlier this year, there is concern that the whole intellectual framework is also limited in minds like Pryor who was granted leadership of departments (e.g., library) whose domain he neither effing understands nor respects. I feel for all his servile subjects...
This morning (and months ago), NPR aired a report on Apple and Foxconn -- the company that disregards workers' human rights...kinda what the Jacobs dictatorship is doing with UT faculty and staff. We should boycott iPad and the corporate abuses it represents. Let Pryor know that he is investing in the kind of corporate abuses of Foxconn by converting his "empire" at UT into something that justifies or even blesses that kind of hubris. He should be promoted to CEO of Foxconn and be transported to some communist or socialist country for good! This will be his reward for evangelising iPad in a free market where every product should shine. Instead, he is leading a command economy (in a university with a business model that rewards useless administrators for failing: Ovwigho, Gold, Jacobs, Scottsborough, Pryor, etc.).
Garbage in, garbage out:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/22/university-toledo-appoint-former-finance-chief-provost
The "fair and balanced" liberal media continues its record of covert and overt bias and censorship.
The new Dinesh D'Souza documentary film "2016: Obama's America" is deliberately not listed on Yahoo's internet movie listings site.
Another example of Big Leftist Brother Yahoo et al. "editing" your intellectual and political decisions and choices for you:
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/08/22/showtimes-for-2016-obamas-america-unavailable-on-top-movie-listing-website/?intcmp=features
Re Anon 1:07
How interesting that Zelig a.k.a. Sgt. Schultz a.k.a. Professor Previous should cite Rate My Professor.
See the following post for a related scholarly article on Professor Previous, Ph.D. - with attached photo.
…Subsequently on Professor Previous, PhD: Dr. Sheldon Cooper and the Skittles Accelerator Permutation
Recent news from the alternative universe…
It is widely known that the mercurial and Peter Pan-like Professor Previous has been entertaining the kiddies for years with dazzling classroom displays of Cirque du PoMo smoke and mirrors special effects – all of which have made him quite popular with at least some students.
The following comment about Professor Previous from www.ratemyprofessor.com (duly verified by our elite team of in-house scholars and fact-checkers) came to our attention via fan mail from some flounder:
“This is the coolest man alive. He is hilarious and a genious (sic). I dropped a skittle in the middle of class it bounced around on the floor he stopped teaching turned around said... "was that a skittle?" then ran across the room grabbed it off the floor and ate it. Awsome class you do learn things.”
Well, isn’t that just special.
For all you grown-ups out there, Skittles are apparently (according to the Internet) a popular brand of sugary sweet, corpuscular, fruit-flavored, rainbow-colored hard candy.
As evidenced by the above-cited Rate My Professor review, Skittles also possess remarkable kinetic bouncing properties, which the youngsters (young and old alike) seem to find particularly mesmerizing.
Perhaps Skittles could serve as a useful heuristic for physics instructors trying to explain the properties of solids, liquids and gasses to first year students.
Skittles could even fuel quantum computers, or open wormholes to infinite parallel universes.
The possibilities are endless.
Skittles certainly seem to have helped the karma chameleon career of Dr. Previous, who has since been curiously catapulted to the vaunted position of Sub-Pooh-Bah and Vice-Something-Or-Other of What-Not.
All of which naturally leads us to speculate as to whether Skittles might indeed be the long-suspected secret weapon of The Powers That Be – the only inducement needed whenever they deem it necessary to dispatch the likes of the time-warp masked marauder, Dr, Previous, on another improbable quixotic adventure of academic and administrative derring-do.
So as we head into the critical final months of preparation leading up to this year’s Comic-Con, let these disturbing revelations serve as a formal grim warning to Dr. Sheldon Cooper (photo attached) – as well as Batman and the rest of the Marvel Comics Justice League – that they can all expect to face serious competition from the dreaded Skittles Accelerator Death Ray and Foucauldian Force Fields of their nemesis, Dr. Previous.
Link below to photo of Dr. Sheldon Cooper, Ph.D.: "The guy is one lab accident away from being a supervillain."
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://pollysshortattentionspan.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/dr-sheldon-cooper-the-guy-the-big-b.jpg&imgrefurl=http://pollysshortattentionspan.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/sheldon-cooper/&h=600&w=750&sz=50&tbnid=LDnloqOQfsQVzM:&tbnh=84&tbnw=105&zoom=1&usg=__Tt7ilZZauScKM1Px7fdkekBH2PU=&docid=SGkeqRKG-qy_6M&sa=X&ei=Suk0UITNFOTxygGEnoGIBw&ved=0CEcQ9QEwAg&dur=6825
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/22/university-toledo-appoint-former-finance-chief-provost
One of the comments made after the article is particularly interesting:
"Kevin, Thanks for this update. We might keep in mind that the University of Toledo has gone through two decades of unique restructuring. Many years ago one of its campus leaders called me about its presidential search. Though flattered, I passed, not really considering myself a viable candidate at that point in my career, nor a desire to leave Indiana Wesleyan Univ. Then without missing a beat, he asked, "Would you be interested in our Provost position?" Though more of a fit at that time, I declined. Then, "How about Dean of . . ." He proceeded to share about the tumultous situation Toledo was going through. It appears that a brilliant professor had been promoted through the ranks to the presidency, then he removed professional administators and replaced them with steller scholars/academics. Yes, like the Platonic model of philosopher kings I suppose (and curiously, Toledo thought it could reach R1 status?). In short, if my sources are correct, the whole thing imploded and they were replacing a host of administrators. In time, I believe they hired a wonderful president from Alaska. Next came the merger with the Medical school, which some think was brilliant and the salvation of the school (which had curiously thought it could reach R1 status?). The biggest challenge in the Scarborough appointment, if it happens, is indeed accrediting logistics, curricular vision, and respect from faculty--the key consituency here. But the real issue, at least from those of us in the humanities camp, is just that, who is the defender of the ultimate life questions? Of the liberal arts foundation already compromised (or at least diminished) in a medical school-ish major university? A. Kronman begged this question of the more traditional schools, which is all the more acute for quasi-professional curricula. Andrew Delbanco's new book is also germane here. I can only assume that President Jacobs, and perhaps the Board, finds Scaborough to be one of those rare renaissance professors with such humanities interests and capabilities that complements his strong organizational skills. I know of a few such individuals who are certainly in much demand in this new economy. Best wishes to Toledo, and another unique institution nearby (also w an important place in the region), Owens Community College. Jerry Pattengale."
Check out the other responses that follow the article.
Here is the Ohio taxpayer funded Jacobs flunky response. In other words, the response was written by a UT PR operative whose job involves writing pro Jacobs responses on sites that might receive national media attention.
"I commend the President for taking a bold step. There has been a long history of reserving some positions in higher education institutions that only faculty members are allowed to hold. It must change. The prevailing notion among faculty members that non-faculty members do not have the needed intelligence and innovation to accomplish institutional goals must be discarded. Top university positions are always given only to faculties. No matter how accomplished and successful a non-faculty administaror is, his/her rise in university ranks is limited. I belive it is long over due that non-teaching staff are considered for high level positions such as Provosts and Presidents."
Re the quotation cited by Anonymous 7:52 ~
Gag me with a Skittle!
Post a Comment