“This is just like Pearl Harbor”

.....FROM this morning’s New York Times:
Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?:

.....A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”
.....Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”
.....Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall….
.....Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge….
.....But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.
.....Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.
.....She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.
.....Ms. Jacoby, dressed in a bright red turtleneck with lipstick to match, was sitting, appropriately, in that temple of knowledge, the New York Public Library’s majestic Beaux Arts building on Fifth Avenue. The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.
.....Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:
..... “This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
.....The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
..... “That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
.....At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”….

Ugly, ignorant bullies

.....I've been ill—only now emerging from a haze—so maybe that's why I missed this story in yesterday's OC Reg about the Cypress City Council:

.....[The City of Cypress]... will be the county's second to display the nation's “In God We Trust” motto inside the Council Chambers after a 2-1 decision by the City Council late Monday night.
.....Councilman Leroy Mills introduced the item. There was opposition from three of the five council members, but two abstained from voting, saying they did not feel it was their place to give their views on religious beliefs.
........Councilman Phil Luebben voted no and urged fellow council members to not abstain and to instead vote no.
.....“We're here to represent all the people,” Luebben said. “I would hate to see the one in five (who don't) believe in God come in front of the podium and see that ‘In God We Trust' motto in back of us.”
.....Mayor Todd Seymore and Mills voted yes.
.....“It is our nation's motto and is displayed on government buildings all over the country,” said Mills, who is retired from the U.S. Air Force.
........At least 28 California cities have now approved placing the motto in a government building; the campaign was started by a Bakersfield councilwoman....

.....As you know, prayers are routine at board meetings in the South Orange County Community College District. They have been for a long time. Individuals periodically come up before the board of trustees to complain. "Some of us don't believe in god, you know," they say. Sometimes groups get behind them. "Be fair, be considerate," they say.
.....But the trustees don't even listen to them.
.....I'm not a believer. I don't like the prayers. But if, when all is taken into account, there's no good solution, and the prayers remain, then I can live with that.
.....It's the not even listening that bothers me.

.....I put up another video last night—something from nearly two years ago. Check it out. Once again, faculty come before the board to complain (it doesn't matter what they're complaining about). They're articulate, passionate. They're obviously good people, and they're making good points. But the trustees—not all of them, you know the ones I mean—aren't even listening.
.....Look and see!
.....Ugly, ignorant bullies.
.....If Jesus were alive, surely he'd go in there and wack 'em good with a stick.

Wascally WASC: wegent woles & wesponsibilities!

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

The University of California is facing new criticism over governance—this time from its accreditor. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that while the Western Association of Schools and Colleges normally accredits individual UC campuses, it prepared a special report on system governance in the wake of several controversies over compensation for executives in the system. The report found confusion over the roles and responsibilities of regents, the system president and the chancellor, as well as a lack of a consistent system for evaluating top officials. University officials said that they are moving to address the issues. [My emphasis.]

Watch Ian Walton express despair and then go home

STARRING:

PJ Schramel: "Dave, your mike!"
Ana Maria Cobos: "members of this board manipulated the ALA institutional membership for personal purposes...."
Margot Lovett: "the Chancellor and board ... [attempt to] rewrite reality"!
Raghu Mathur: we must show "utmost respect and reverence" for the board!
Barbara Beno: "I'm seeing a lot of progress here"
Tom Fuentes: "an infusion of good cheer"
Ian Walton: "Why are we here?"

First prayer, then letters

Peter: "It was shortly after World War II. Do you remember World War II? Absolutely ghastly business. I was against the whole thing."

Dudley: "I think we all were."

Peter: "Yes, well, I wrote a letter."

—From an old Dudley Moore/Peter Cook comedy routine

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

Students at Ohio University played a key role Friday in preventing an employee from committing suicide. The Columbus Dispatch reported that about 15 students were gathered for a weekly prayer session when they heard about a threat by a man to jump from a fifth floor ledge in the student union. The students responded with prayer and were eventually joined by other students. One student proposed that they write letters to the man, encouraging him to live, and a crisis specialist read several of the letters to the man, who was persuaded not to kill himself.

And now, a McCain Video

Rebel Girl insisted that I view this, and now I see why. For those who've seen Yes we can, this will be hilarious.

They're making a list, they're checking it twice

• SH*T LIST. The big news around campus is our receipt of the action letter from the accreditors. It looks like the DOE climbed all over ACCJC/WASC and is forcing the latter to stick by the rules. That’s not so good for our colleges, since the rules are that colleges that remain “out of compliance” for two years get their ticket pulled. Guess what? Yup. Thanks to Raghu and his board pals, both colleges have been out of compliance for three years. Hence the letters (one per college). Luckily, we’ve been given some breathing room. Our next reports are to be filed in October. But can we bring about the cessation of trustee micromanagement, the overcoming of despair, the defining of the undefined and the stabilizing of the unstable in SEVEN MONTHS? The accreditation commission meets in January ('09). If we don’t satisfy them (with our October reports) at that time, they'll pull our ticket. See The Accreditation Letter Arrives.

• ENEMIES LIST. On Friday, the OC Reg (Judge sets trial date in CUSD 'enemies list' case) reported on a case concering the former chief of the Capistrano Unified School District:

A trial date has been set for a felony case against retired Capistrano Unified Superintendent James Fleming and former Assistant Superintendent Susan McGill.

…Fleming and McGill were indicted last May by a grand jury over the alleged creation of an "enemies list" of political opponents during an attempted recall effort of all seven members of the Capistrano Unified board of trustees.

Both Fleming and McGill have pleaded not guilty….

Perhaps you’ll recall that our own Raghu P. Mathur is fond of enemies lists. Check out Raghu’s enemies list.

• CONTRIBUTORS LIST. There’s an odd little piece in the OC Reg this morning about presidential campaign contributions by UCI and Chapman U professors: O.C. professors spread money among presidential candidates:

Political commentators say you’ll find a lot of liberal professors and executives at colleges and universities. It’s true. But you’ll also find moderates and conservatives at such schools as UC Irvine, Chapman University and Cal State Fullerton, as we learned by examining public online donor records maintained by the Federal Elections Commission.

The donors range from famed UCI economist-mathematician Duncan Luce, who gave $1,250 to Democrat Bill Richardson, to Chapman President and economist James Doti, who gave at least $6,600 to Republicans Rudy Guiliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

The article provides a list of professors and administrators and to whom they donated. Check it out.


• COMPLAINT LIST. This morning’s Inside Higher Ed reports on the most recent effort to draw attention to the “equity” issue re community colleges and higher ed (Call for Equity for Community Colleges):

American higher education “is not sustainable,” and risks a growing detachment from reality if it does not come to grips with the needs of community colleges and the way higher education and government consistently mistreat the sector.

That unsettling argument was put forth Sunday night in the introductory talk of the annual meeting of the American Council on Education, by Gail O. Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College, of the City University of New York. Mellow’s critique probably wouldn’t surprise most people who work in community colleges, but it was an unusually public rebuke for the rest of higher education at a meeting of the higher education umbrella group that represents two-year and four-year, public and private colleges.

Mellow argued that the way higher education is categorized, defined and financed have all worked to the detriment of community colleges, even as they educate nearly half of all undergraduates, and significant portions of those who will later graduate with bachelor’s degrees from four-year institutions.

“We must stop giving community colleges straw and expecting spun gold,” she said. “The fact is that what happens to community colleges affects all of higher education. As higher education leaders, we have allowed the baccalaureate and community college systems to develop separately and unequally, with tenuous points of integration and inadequate financial support.”

Added Mellow: “Higher education funding and quality assessment is still premised on what are now nostalgic memories of traditional-aged, upper-middle class college students. Unless we let go of this myth and realistically face the modern demographics of the U.S. college population — who goes and who should go to college — the relevance and status of American higher education in a competitive, global education market will erode.”….