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Friday, December 20, 2013

New UT Educational Consultant Hired

UT Administration Seeking More Visionary Ideas.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...: Right now it will take someone on the Board of Trustees to develop the vision to see how much destruction Lloyd Jacobs has wrought on UT. Instead, Jacobs' bosses have let him run amok. Where's the vision?; December 21, 2013 at 1:16 PM
Anonymous said...: The Gift of the Magi – what we all really want for Christmas

We used to actually naively believe things like free speech and rational thought and reasoned argument were the tools used by civilized people wearing their big boy and big girl pants in a civilized society – people who generally adhered to Robert Frost’s dictum:

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

Having since learned the bitter truth the hard way, we now understand that in fact the adult world of everything from courtrooms, corporate boardrooms, politics and presidential elections, to the halls of academe actually far more often tend to operate by essentially the same irrational, emotional, adolescent, selfish and barbaric rules of high school mean girls (and boys).

It doesn’t matter who or what is actually right or true or good or honest or best or honorable or decent – because the only thing that really matters is who can convince more people to hate the other person – for whatever reason and by whatever means necessary.

The winner then gets to sit with all the other unhappy, messed-up, gossipy, backstabbing snots at the mean girls table in the high school cafeteria, talking about how un-cool everyone else is (or gets to be named Dean of the College of Whatever Studies or be elected President of the United States).

We have accepted these harsh realities and understand that by continuing to tell the truth plainly and provocatively, without concern for self-interest, politics, political correctness or making or maintaining friendships, we have effectively thrown ourselves under the proverbial bus…

– and that this means we will not only never be allowed to sit at the mean girls table, but also that the mean girl bullies will continue to do everything in their power to get even and get everyone else to hate us and single us out for especially mean, mean girl treatment.

So be it.

Our New Year’s resolution will be to move on to other climes, but in the meantime, here are a few more little nuggets of truth for the holidays.

Meditation 1: You can’t get right until you get real.

Ralphie and his Red Ryder BB Gun of Truth, Ol’ Blue, send Black Bart and his gang of relativist postmodern ruffians high tailin’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LgEvQuyDxE

There are two kinds of error – 1, honest error – and 2, the error of willful self-delusion as a means for idealist wishful thinking or for rationalizing self-interest, ignorance, greed, irresponsibility and degeneracy, or for coming up with hair-brained ideas, excuses and evasions which are all motivated by the simple fact that…

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

Meditation 2: Bullies come in all shapes and sizes.

“You know, for a group of guys who claim they spent most of their lives being bullied, you can be real jerks. Shame on all of you.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41kmUIUUIWI

Meditation 3: Sooner or later, bullies always meet their match.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRe_fK7pbw

continued; December 22, 2013 at 9:30 AM
Anonymous said...: Gift of the Magi continued

Meditation 4: All the intellectualism and ideology in the world will never change the fact that we all want and need the same basic things – which were more or less accurately sketched out by Maslow in his hierarchy of human needs.

Assuming the essential human needs of food, clothing, shelter, security, etc. are met – and setting aside any speculative pseudo-metaphysical discussions – everything ultimately boils down to the one single particular human need that makes life worth living (hint: Freud was right about this at least).

Life fundamentally involves either our boundless joy at finding and fulfilling this need, or, when we are unable to fulfill this essential need, our reactionary anger, resentment, compensation, frustration, sadness, depression, and lashing-out and acting-out.

And what is this single thing we all need and seek and desire and yearn for above all else?

Behold! The Holy Grail:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnQ7l7UhQTM

It works both ways, but speaking from a man’s perspective, in this touching scene from the film “The Last of the Mohicans”, Madeleine Stowe exemplifies the living embodiment of exquisite human feminine perfection.
Unfortunately, these days we tend to far more often see the following sort of angst-ridden “divine feminine”…

Presenting “Girly Show” writer and producer, Liz “Buzzkill” Lemon, belting out her plaintive rendition of the anthem and siren song that has beckoned so many to the cloistered life of the mind… Take it away, Liz!:

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

The life of the creative and/or contemplative mind/spirit can indeed be a beautiful and rewarding thing – but so many of us make ourselves and every one else crazy and miserable with what in many respects amounts to little more than our trying to just get even…

… trying to get even through our obsessive, neurotic, sublimation and repression – our pseudo-intellectualism or ideology or the endless pseudo-spiritual search for meaning or hyper-political-activism and “saving the world” or “making a difference” or feverishly running on the endless rat race career hamster wheel of “success” or “creativity” or “art” or countercultural “rebellion” (or hedonistic sex, drugs, rock and roll, shopping, gambling, television, sports, thrill-seeking, texting, gaming, etc.)

Rather than all that frantic, manic, perpetually never-in-the-moment guilt and anger and angsting and distraction and striving and stress and hating and blaming and resentment – maybe we should all consider letting ourselves off the hook for a change and (assuming we are not already so lucky) just going out and finding someone to really love and be loved by – someone to just cuddle with and be happy with and be at peace with instead.

Madeleine Stowe in “The Last of the Mohicans” rivals even my own personal all-time Madonna and Dantean Beatrice – epitome and incarnation of the truly divine feminine, Lara Antipova (Julie Christie) in Dr. Zhivago.

Lara… her face could launch a thousand ships, her eyes bore into the deepest depths of a man’s being, her smile fill a man’s heart with boundless joy, her reproachful look stop even the mighty Achilles himself dead in his tracks…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RGWE6zJKXk

Merry Christmas; December 22, 2013 at 9:31 AM
Anonymous said...: GOODBYE TO ALL THAT:

A 2013 FIN DE SIECLE AUBADE AND CURTAIN CALL FOR JDS – IN TWO ACTS

ACT 1

THE FIRST SHOT FIRED IN THE MODERN CULTURE WARS

ACT 2

HEIDEGGER SCHMEIDEGGER, OR FOUK “FOUCAULT SAYS”!:

ACT 1

The first shot fired in the modern culture wars: The Bohemians of Bloomsbury

“On or about December, 1910, human character changed.” – Virginia Woolf

Anyone at all interested in the etiology of the Two Cultures and the Culture (or Science) Wars, which rage today as ferociously as ever, at UT and everywhere else (though relatively few people actually understand the issues) should find this interesting.

For those in the know, the 1960’s are generally considered to be the watershed for when everything started to go straight to hell in a hand basket in academia, western culture and pretty much everywhere else (e. g. Vatican II was convened in October, 1962) – but the cultural train wreck actually started many decades before that.

Woolf’s mention of December, 1910 in the famous quote above, referred to the first Post-Impressionist Exhibition, organized by Woolf’s friend Roger Fry in collaboration with her brother-in-law the renowned art critic, Clive Bell.

Note: We have all been taught to unquestioningly worship, among many other dogmatic academic shibboleths, Virginia Woolf and every utterance and nuance of her life and work and her milieu.

Here’s a slightly different perspective: “The Rage of Virginia Woolf,” by Theodore Dalrymple:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_3_oh_to_be.html

The intellectual springboard for the 1910 art exhibition, however, was Oxford philosopher and professor G. E. Moore’s “Principia Ethica”, published in 1903.

Though exceedingly tame by today’s standards, Moore’s “Principia” was widely considered both revolutionary and definitive at the time.

Moore claimed to debunk, among other things, the metaphysical philosophical and Christian foundations of Victorian “bourgeois” ethics and morals as well as the “naturalistic” utilitarianism proposed by J. S. Mill, Jeremy Bentham, et al.

Moore’s “Principia” (poetically presaged by the likes of Coleridge, Whitman, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, et al.) would serve as the de facto manifesto of bohemian liberation for Virgina Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group specifically and for the nascent bohemian milieu and “anything goes” Jazz Age generally (Joyce, Hemingway, Miller and Nin) – forerunners of the nihilist existentialist “sex, drugs and rock and roll” Jazz, Blues and R&B, Hipsters, “Beats,” (Charlie Parker, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac) Rockers, Hippies (Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Rolling Stones, Hunter Thompson,) through the Sid and Nancy Heroine Chic Sex Pistols Punk milieu and general overall mid- to late 20th century Marxist-Feminist Postmodernist mayhem makers.

This train (wreck) of wooly-headed idealist, romantic thinking (whether Kantian idealist or Marxist/Hegelian dialectical materialist and historicist) which commonly serves as various rationalizations for an anything goes relativist, nihilist (“postmodern”) ethics, aesthetics and epistemology – if not for just plain unabashed ignorance, stupidity and degeneracy – can in turn be traced back through 19th century (largely German) romanticism, through Nietzsche, Kant, Rousseau, Novalis and Goethe’s “Young Werther” and ultimately back to perhaps the formative ideological schism for western civilization – the proverbial fork in the road between Platonic idealism and Aristotelian rationalism.

Those in academia who are not at least generally conversant in these Culture Wars/Two Cultures issues have little hope of understanding much of anything presently going on around them.

Cont.; December 31, 2013 at 9:54 AM
Anonymous said...: Culture Wars continued

Much more contemporaneously (and veering now into cutting edge naturalistic ethics and philosophy of mind) in his very penetrating and truly iconoclastic (for those not already well versed in these areas) “The Moral Landscape” (2012), Sam Harris picks up (and cuts) the thread of Moore’s “Principia Ethica” and Moore’s railings against what he (Moore) called the “naturalistic fallacy”.

http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/143917122X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387214645&sr=1-1&keywords=moral+landscape

Harris (also see his “Free Will”) has even managed to convince no less a luminary than Richard Dawkins that science can indeed make valid ethical and philosophical value judgments after all.

With respect to philosophy of mind, Harris is in many (but not all) respects in agreement with philosopher Daniel Dennett.

Dennett on his teacher and mentor, renowned philosopher Gilbert Ryle: Ryle Rydes Again!

http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/2002/Dennett.html

Ryle’s groundbreaking “The Concept of Mind” is a must read:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThe_Concept_of_Mind&ei=UvjCUp2PPMGSyQHD54CgDA&usg=AFQjCNGgITvmGdo72qx0itYZUOwD10RL_Q&bvm=bv.58187178,d.aWc

We happen to be in general agreement with the naturalistic, scientific and scholarly arguments and admittedly sobering descriptions of the human condition offered by Harris, Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens et al.,

BUT WE ARE FAR LESS CERTAIN ABOUT SOME OF THEIR PRESCRIBED DRAMATIC CULTURAL PARADIGM SHIFTS, IDEOLOGIES AND SOCIAL REMEDIES

– if for no other reason than we believe it is always prudent to rely on traditional conservative principles of circumspection, restraint and epistemic humility and that in all important matters involving human affairs, this measured approach is invariably preferable to impetuous hubris, rash revolutionary zeal or totalitarian ideologies of any kind.

Description is the easy part: “The patient has a headache.” But correct diagnosis (WHY does the patient have a headache?) and prescription (What is the best remedy for the headache?) and actual cure (Thank goodness, the headache is gone!) are the hard part.

Ideologues are often far too eager to make the leap of faith from more or less accurate description to speculative prescription – i.e. prescribing radical de-capit(aliz)ation as the only possible cure for the patient’s (western civilization’s) headache (Marx, et al.).

“Chop off his head! His headache is sure to disappear at once!”

The so-called “Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse” (Harris, Dennett, Dawkins and Hitchens) seem to have succumbed to this all-too-common temptation of hubris.

The “Four Horsemen” and their academic milieu (the dreaded Marxist-Feminist Postmodernists) seem quite certain that an immediate, systematic, preemptive, radical, revolutionary, all-out atheistic, secular humanist, socio-economic cultural nuclear strike against the entire planet is the only possible way to reach some ill-defined and amorphous postmodern cultural Utopia of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Hope and Change and Social Justice” for all

– at any cost, by any means necessary and no matter how many ignorant, unwashed, western, capitalist, Judeo-Christian “racist” and “sexist” unbelievers need to be brutally crushed and annihilated to get there.

We believe this sort of uncompromising, scorched earth totalitarian thinking is always extremely dangerous and ill-advised. We have already seen it far too many times in the past – Hitler, Stalin, Mao et al.

cont.; December 31, 2013 at 9:55 AM
Anonymous said...: ACT 2

HEIDEGGER SCHMEIDEGGER, OR FOUK “FOUCAULT SAYS”!:

Two Cultures Redux And The Willful Ignorance And Arrogance Of The Humanities “Learned Ignoramus”

We (JdS) know we have often been harsh with our take-no-prisoners discourse here, but it is precisely because we regard the issues in question and the work of authentic, serious scholars and teachers and scientists in academia (and the accompanying welfare of all people – men, women, minorities, the young, the disadvantaged etc.) to be so important that we have dispensed with any attempts at trying to pull punches, make friends or be diplomatic or politically correct in our efforts to speak the truth.

We care enough about these issues to incur the unremitting wrath, hatred and loathing of many people (most of whom cannot or will not recognize and accept the truth of what we have been saying).

Our aim has been to seek and speak the truth, despite the best efforts of those who would vilify and censor our efforts by any means necessary.

We have attempted to be enlightening, intelligent and entertaining, but our methods have often been necessarily provocative. We have no doubt outraged, insulted and disappointed many good and well-meaning people with our efforts here.

But though this may be regrettable and the consequences often very unpleasant for us, harboring regrets is strictly forbidden by our Gadfly Code of Honor – and we accordingly have no regrets.

Even those who share our views may find our methods at times off-putting.

But it is precisely because so few are willing to step into the fray and take a stand and confront the ugliness and unpleasantness of controversy that mob rule (what John Adams and Alexis de Tocqueville called “the tyranny of the majority”) is so often allowed to prevail against the rules of law and reason.

“The Tyranny of the Majority” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

In the spirit of National Review founder William F. Buckley, who said “A conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’” – we have thrown ourselves athwart (under) the bus, so to speak, in our efforts to alert those riding on the bus that they are headed for a cliff.

Whenever we have endeavored to speak out, those riding the bus have indeed stopped – but only long enough to back over us several times – to ridicule, shun, demonize, suppress and oppress – to tar and feather us, paint us with a Scarlet Letter and burn us at the stake – and then laughingly drive on.

And yet, Phoenix-like, we have repeatedly risen again from the ashes and soldiered on as best we can amid hostile forces and under the steady, relentless and uncaring onslaught of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

It may perhaps be best for all concerned that JdS move on from the ASC Blog, but for the moment, we present the following final amalgam for your consideration (note this is something of a patchwork of links and thoughts – not perfectly edited or formatted but we believe nonetheless worthy of your time and consideration):

cont.; December 31, 2013 at 9:56 AM
Anonymous said...: HEIDEGGER SCHMEIDEGGER, CONT. 2

“The specialist “knows” very well his own tiny corner of the universe; he is radically ignorant of all the rest. … He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his specialty; but neither is he ignorant, because he is a “scientist,” and “knows” very well his own tiny portion of the universe.

We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man [i.e., not ignorant in the way that the ordinary man can be seen as ignorant of this or that], but with all the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.
And such in fact is the behavior of the specialist. In politics, in art, in social usages, in the other sciences, he will adopt the attitude of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency, and will not admit of—and this is the paradox—specialists in those matters…. [T]his very inner feeling of dominance and worth will induce him to wish to predominate outside his specialty.” – José Ortega y Gasset – from “The Revolt of the Masses” (1929)
“Pomposity [in the humanities] can be amusing, but pomposity sitting like an oversized hat on top of fear is hilarious.” – quote from the ‘Edge’ essay linked below, by Daniel Dennett – (Analytic) Philosopher; Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Co-Director, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University.

MUCH OF WHAT WE (JdS) HAVE BEEN SAYING HERE ON THE ASC BLOG AND ELSEWHERE FOR QUITE SOME TIME NOW, IS EXPRESSED VERY COGENTLY AND ELOQUENTLY BY NOTED PHILOSOPHER, DANIEL DENNETT, IN HIS RECENT BRIEF ‘EDGE’ ESSAY LINKED BELOW.

NOTE THAT DENNETT’S HARSH CRITIQUE IS DIRECTED (IMPLICITLY IF NOT NECESSARILY EXPLICITLY) AT BOTH OLD SCHOOL ANTI-SCIENCE HUMANITIES TWO-CULTURE-WARRIOR TRADITIONALISTS OF THE F. R. LEAVIS STRIPE, AS WELL AS AGAINST THE MORE CONTEMPORANEOUS SO-CALLED POSTMODERNISTS IN THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES –

I.E. THE USUAL MARXIST-FEMINIST POSTMODERNIST SUSPECTS – FROM POSTMODERN LITERARY AND ART THEORY TO WOMEN’S (AND COUNTLESS OTHER) “STUDIES” TO POLITICAL “SCIENCE” AND ASSORTED SOCIAL “SCIENCES” TO THE WOOLY-HEADED SQUATTERS IN DENNETT’S OWN ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE OF PHILOSOPHY(NAMELY, PROFESSORS OF “CONTINENTAL” A.K.A. “WHATEVER” PHILOSOPHY, OR, THE “PHILOSOPHY” OF USING INCOHERENT OBSCURANTIST SMOKE AND MIRRORS SOPHISTRY AND GIBBER-JABBER JARGON TO OBSCURE TRUTH AND PROMOTE MARXIST-FEMINIST POSTMODERN AGENDAS, RELATIVISM, “TRANSGRESSIVE” WEIRDNESS, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND MEANINGLESSNESS BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

DENNETT’S PLEA FOR REASON, ACADEMIC INTEGRITY AND THE OPENING OF CHANNELS OF MEANINGFUL INTERDISCIPLINARY DISCOURSE BETWEEN THE HUMANITIES AND THE REAL WORLD OF SCIENCE ETC. IS LIKELY TO CONTINUE TO FALL – AS EVIDENCED BY “THE NEW REPUBLIC” ARTICLE HE DISCUSSES HERE – ON SMUGLY DEFENSIVE AND DEFIANTLY DEAF EARS:

http://www.edge.org/conversation/dennett-on-wieseltier-v-pinker-in-the-new-republic

cont.; December 31, 2013 at 9:57 AM
Anonymous said...: HEIDEGGER SCHMEIDEGGER, CONT. 3

“STILL CRAZY, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS… OHHH, STILL CRAZY, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS…” – PAUL SIMON

THE CLIP BELOW SHOWS HARVARD HUMANITIES HONCHO, HOMI BHABHA, AND HIS ASSORTED HOMIES OF PRETENTIOUS ACADEMIC POMPOSITY – STILL TRYING TO FIGURE IT ALL OUT AFTER ALL THESE YEARS…

HOMI AND HIS HOMIES PROVIDE US WITH A PRIME EXAMPLE OF HOW TO SAY AN AWFUL LOT ABOUT NOTHING (COLLEGE IS AFTER ALL WHERE LAWYERS AND POLITICIANS AND OTHER ASSORTED SOPHISTS AND BS-ERS HONE THEIR SKILLS) – AND HOW TO SAY NOTHING ABOUT AN AWFUL LOT –

NOT TO MENTION HOW TO NEVER ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING SUBSTANTIVE – WHILE OBSEQUIOUSLY AND COLLEGIALLY BOWING AND SCRAPING BEFORE EACH OTHER’S ESTEEMED PRIESTLY ACADEMIC EMINENCES AND OBLIGINGLY KISSING ONE ANOTHER’S… ER… AHHH… RINGS…

AND MAKING IT ALL SEEM SO VERY IMPORTANT AND PROFOUND AND, UM, WELL… LET’S JUST CALL IT MYSTICAL…

– BUT UNLESS YOU ARE A HARDENED VETERAN OF THESE SORTS OF LUGUBRIOUS MLA STYLE SYMPOSIA AND CONFERENCES (AND IF YOU ARE YOU HAVE ALREADY HEARD ALL THIS STUFF SLICED AND DICED AND REHASHED A THOUSAND TIMES BEFORE) YOU’LL NEED AN AWFUL LOT OF POPCORN TO MAKE IT TO THE END OF THIS HOMI BHABHA DOG AND PONY SHOW WITHOUT NODDING OFF OR HAVING YOUR BUNS FALL ASLEEP FROM LACK OF CIRCULATION – IT’S LONG AND A REAL SNOOZER ZZZZZZZ…

MAY WE HAVE THE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION PLEASE…

THE HUMANITIES AND THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q5kcFl27ic

WHILE ROME BURNS AND MOFO POMO BARBARIANS CONTINUE TO SYSTEMATICALLY RANSACK THE ACADEMY AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION – THE ABOVE SORT OF ACADEMIC BULLSHIT HAS BEEN GOING ON DAY IN AND DAY OUT FOR DECADES AT UNIVERSITIES ACROSS AMERICA AND AROUND THE GLOBE – WITH SMOKE BLOWING HUMANITIES (AND OTHER) PROFESSORS AND ACADEMIC ADMINISTRATORS AND BUREAUCRATS TRYING TO CONVINCE THEMSELVES, ONE ANOTHER AND THE REST OF US THAT THE HUMANITIES KING (AND IN MANY RESPECTS THE ACADEMY AS A WHOLE) IS NOT UTTERLY BESOTTED, DEBAUCHED AND BARE-ASS NAKED.

IF LEFT TO THEIR OWN DEVICES – IT WOULD BE SAFE TO SAY THIS SAME SORT OF BLOVIATING WOULD STILL BE GOING ON IN HUMANITIES DEPARTMENTS 500 YEARS FROM NOW.

BUT REALITY IS LIKELY TO STEP IN LONG BEFORE THAT, AS IT IS SO OFTEN WONT TO DO.

INDEED, WITHOUT A MAJOR, MAJOR OVERHAUL AND A BIG, BIG TIME REALITY CHECK (I.E. THROWING OUT THE MOFO POMO RASCALS ONCE AND FOR ALL AND OPENING UP LINES OF MEANINGFUL AND SUBSTANTIVE RATIONAL DISCOURSE BETWEEN THE HUMANITIES AND THE FOLKS IN THE HARD SCIENCES A.K.A. STEMM), IT IS UNLIKELY UNIVERSITY HUMANITIES DEPARTMENTS AS WE KNOW THEM CAN SURVIVE MORE THAN ANOTHER DECADE OR SO LONGER AT BEST.

cont.; December 31, 2013 at 9:58 AM
Anonymous said...: HEIDEGGER SCHMEIDEGGER, CONT. 4 - FINAL

Re Atheism vs Faith: The great debates (and friendship) between renowned British analytic philosopher and atheist, A. J. Ayer, and the great Jesuit historian of philosophy, Frederick Coplestone:

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/roundtable/an-atheist-meets-the-masters-of-the-universe.php

Re The culture wars between the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Hard Sciences:

“The Two Cultures Today” – by Roger Kimball in The New Criterion:

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/-The-Two-Cultures--today-4882

“The Perversions of M. Foucault” – by Roger Kimball in The New Criterion:

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-perversions-of-M--Foucault-4714

…THE LIGHTER SIDE

“…OHHHH! THE HUMANITIES!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tcbOJuB-pc

STEWIE SUGGESTS BRIAN MAY WANT TO TAKE A SABBATICAL TO WORK ON HIS NOVEL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D_cKZ_dhdo

IN THE ETERNAL QUEST FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE, JDS SELFLESSLY RALLIES THE SCIENTIFIC TROOPS AND MAKES THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE FOR THE GREATER GOOD:

“MARXIST-FEMINIST POSTMODERN THEORY IS ALL JUST A BUNCH OF PSEUDO-ACADEMIC HOOEY!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hld4Rp2ppMo

MARXIST-FEMINIST POSTMODERN THEORY: THE EARLY YEARS

“I WOULD NEVER WANT TO BELONG TO A CLUB THAT WOULD HAVE ME AS A MEMBER.” – GROUCHO MARX

MARX ELUCIDATES THE FINER POINTS OF HIS MAGNUM OPUS, DAS KAPITAL, AND EXPLAINS WHY HIS THEORY OF PERMANENT REVOLUTION MANDATES THAT WESTERN CIVILIZATION MUST FIRST BE BURNED TO THE GROUND IN ORDER TO MAKE WAY FOR THE UTOPIAN MARXIST NEW JERUSALEM:

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

THE ORIGINS OF FEMINISM:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c

SO YOU WANT TO BE A REVOLUTIONARY, EH?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE&list=RD02sFBOQzSk14c

DECONSTRUCTING DERRIDA’S SHOE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka9mfZbTFbk

ON THE SACRED QUEST FOR THE HOLY GRAIL OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH AND WISDOM, JDS CONFRONTS THE INTRANSIGENT UNREASONABLE BLACK KNIGHT OF MARXIST-FEMINIST POSTMODERNISM:

“NONE SHALL PASS!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

BUH-DEH BUH-DEH BUH-DEH – THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBzJGckMYO4

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

END; December 31, 2013 at 10:00 AM
Anonymous said...: Happy New Year! Now let's throw the bums out!; January 1, 2014 at 6:24 AM
Anonymous said...: What bullshit. Is it any wonder why you are at the bottom of the food cycle, professors..."; January 1, 2014 at 4:20 PM
Anonymous said...: The views of one poster (who may not even be a Professor) are not representative of the opinions and attitude of the vast majority of us; January 2, 2014 at 3:25 PM
Anonymous said...: You poor bastards.

http://www.utoledo.edu/policies/draft_policies/pdfs/Draft%203364-25-01%20Standards%20of%20conduct%20Dec%202013.pdf

Now, you will have to report on each other just like under the East Germany. You are losing your right to free speech on your campus. Times are a changing and not for the good. Notice how broad and vague the policy being made is... It covers everything and all of the power or interpret what is inappropriate is in the hands of the Adminstration. Furthermore, someone can make a false report and you have no recourse (except the legal system where you pay the costs while they are defended by the State.); January 2, 2014 at 4:32 PM
Anonymous said...: Respectfully, it seems like Jake and Larry won't be retiring until we are all wearing bow-ties and spats. Welcome to Willy Wonka U.; January 3, 2014 at 6:17 AM
Anonymous said...: In Jan. 8 Blade:Kent State University names new president
Trustees select Virginia Commonwealth University provost

According to the article, the outgoing president
Lester Lefton increased enrollment by 25% since 2006.

Where can we get a president who does this? Would he consider coming here?

Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/State/2014/01/08/Kent-State-University-names-new-president.html#obMKT9vr3Q23IhCy.99; January 9, 2014 at 12:59 AM
Anonymous said...: I understand (and please correct me if I am wrong) that Kent State was able to increase enrollment by addition or expansion of several regional campuses - by state law UT does not have that option. Essentially Kent State is able to fill the role that the numerous two year colleges in NW Ohio such as Owens provide in the UT marketplace. Having said that enrollment declines and inability to stem are a responsibility that the BOT should be hanging more on Jacobs then they have.; January 10, 2014 at 8:00 AM
Anonymous said...: get with it folks. else your lifestyle will die.; January 10, 2014 at 2:01 PM
Anonymous said...: Where's money Jacobs should be raising for UT? Isn't the president supposed to be the fund-raiser-in-chief? He should spend his time looking for resources for the university rather than micromanaging the classroom.; January 12, 2014 at 7:40 PM
Anonymous said...: "Isn't the president supposed to be the fund-raiser-in-chief?"

Not this president. He was hired mainly to rein in the tenured faculty, to eliminate shared governance and to pave the way for the privatization of our state public university.

When Faculty Senate is dissolved to eliminate its redundancy with University Council he will have completed his to-do list and go away.; January 14, 2014 at 7:11 AM
Anonymous said...: He sure is raising plenty of funds for construction companies and contractors friendly to the powers that be.; January 14, 2014 at 6:59 PM

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."

Comments to HLC

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:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/flsec11 /

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

Nemeth's New Article in Collegian

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

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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.

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Friday, December 20, 2013

New UT Educational Consultant Hired

20 comments:

NEW!!! Hard Eight by Professor Extreme

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

Print Version of Dictionary of Academia Available on Amazon.com

"Dictionary of Academia" Read it While it's Hot

Comment of the Week

Comment of the Week of August 13

Comment of the Era

Comment of the Week

Comments to HLC

Comment of the Week!

MESSAGE OF THE DAY:

Independent Collegian Article on Dicey Administrative Spending

TO CONTACT BLOGGIE . . .

Letter and Petition from Foreign Languages Faculty Member

Wave of the Future or Merely Sometime Later This Week?

Nemeth on Mammon in IC

David Nemeth's most recent tour-de-force

Nemeth Does it Again

Nemeth's New Article in Collegian

UT Ranks 13th Nationally on Administrative Bloat

Recent Letters from The Blade

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