John Williams' well-traveled low road

• SADDLEBACK'S NEW PRESIDENT. I keep running into folks who tell me that Saddleback College's new president, Todd Burnett, just doesn't listen to people. Nope (they say), he's got it all figured out.

As you know, the fellow, while impressive (if being Arnold's appointment secretary is impressive), has no experience as a college administrator (he's worked with policies a lot). So you'd think that he'd be WAY open to advice. Well, he is, but only if he gives it. (This reminds me of something we used to say in grad school: "He who enters with bombast exits with kicked ass.")

Perhaps some of you out there have more favorable stories to tell about the fellow? Do tell!

Prez Todd Burnett consults with small bird:


• Q: O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? A: ORLANDO. In my recent report on the August meeting of the SOCCCD Board of Trustees, I mentioned trustee Nancy Padberg's latest effort to reveal trustee excess. This usually means that she's zeroing in on John Williams' expensive junketeering, tie-clip hoarding, and the like. You'll recall that, in the past, Padberg has singled out Williams' trips to Orlando, Florida, on the district's dime—for conferences that, according to the Nance, are no more informative or educational than those available to Williams here in the Golden State.

But I forgot to mention that Williams has a brother in Orlando—you know, a brother he'd like to visit without having to bother with those pesky travel expenses. For a dozen years now, various sources close to Williams have told me that he's a perky kinda guy. Evidently, he's shamelessly perky.

These local "fiscal conservatives" are really something, aren't they?

• CHRISTENSEN V. WILLIAMS. Could someone please enlighten me about this Carl Christensen fellow who's running against Williams for the Mission Viejo board seat? I do believe that he is a Saddleback College professor who retired in 1999. Evidently, he was the president of the Faculty Association one or two hundred years ago.

For a guy running for SOCCCD trustee, Carl Christensen is stunningly clueless. A few months ago, he showed up at a board meeting carping about the dearth of post-WW II history classes offered at Saddleback College. That might be a real issue—I have no idea—but surely it is less pressing than forty or fifty others that even Walter Flosser could name.

On his blog, Christensen inveighs against the exploitation of part-timers and the unfortunate full-time/part-time ratio at the colleges. Well, that's great, but he seemed utterly unaware of the district's Spring hiring of 38 new full-time faculty—which must have done wonders for that ratio—until, that is, I advised him to get up to speed by reading DtB.

His blog does not mention our accreditation problem. Nor does it mention the endless expense of getting ATEP off the ground. It doesn't mention the board's imposing a universally despised Chancellor upon the district community. Until others clued him in, Christensen was unaware of the district's "50% Law" problem.

Why so clueless? Is Tom Fuentes his advisor?

Three weeks ago, he did report something interesting:

I received a telephone call from someone associated with the SOCCCD. In an effort to act as a mediator the person informed me that an incumbent on the Board ... had found my Sample Ballot Statement ... to be "inflammatory". Therefore the incumbent Board member would likely encumber me with the legal fees of a lawsuit unless I removed the Sample Ballot Statement before the deadline.... I told the mediator that I appreciated his efforts to resolve the issue.

I reread Christensen's "statement" and it is about as inflammatory as a cat turd. (I quote it in full at the end of this post, for those who enjoy turd-reading.)

The "incumbent" that Christensen is referring to would have to be John Williams. (Um, who else?) So, evidently, the mysterious "mediator" was telling Christensen that Williams would pursue an expensive-to-Christensen lawsuit over Christensen's "inflammatory" campaign statement that, in truth, is plainly uninflammatory ("flammatory," I guess).

Clueless Carl doesn't seem to know it, but the phone call was a dirty campaign trick.

Naturally, I don't know whether a Williams shill (or indeed anyone) made a call to Christensen about this supposed lawsuit. But it would be just like Williams to arrange something like that.

I first encountered Williams' Karl Rovian side back in 1996, even before he and three others used a misleading and homophobic flier to get elected. In the mid-90s, John and his pals wrote a series of highly truth-challenged letters about then-trustee Harriett Walther and her supposed board misconduct. Walther had a technical and inadvertent conflict-of-interest problem re a board vote granting a tiny contract to the ACCT. Williams and Co. jumped on that and blew it up into absurdly mammoth proportions. You'd swear she'd been receiving valuable cash prizes in manilla folders down in the basement of the Watergate Hotel. I recall being stunned by the bold dishonesty and ruthlessness of that effort. (See the CFPPC letter re Walther's violation at the end of this post.)

(And I won't even go into Williams' infamous attempted secret deal with two IVC administrators back in 1997. I mean, I won't even mention how this inspired a judge to refer to the board's "persistent and defiant misconduct.")

Carl, if you are reading this, there are two things you need to know about John Williams. First, he's stupid. Second, behind his boyish demeanor and his genuine "golly, I was a bailiff and I shur dew luv sports" blather is a guy who often and easily takes the low road. 

He's our crafty cretin, our devious dunderhead, our Napoleon of nincompoops.

Christensen's "inflammatory" campaign statement:

"Formerly a president of the SOCCCD Faculty Association, I retired as a full time Saddleback instructor after 28 years. I believe students should have the quality teaching of carefully selected full time staff. [FLAME!] I believe current emphasis on reducing costs by hiring part timers is detrimental to quality teaching.

Also, Saddleback College offers only one section of US History Since World War II as compared to offering 32 sections of American history dealing primarily or exclusively with American history before World War II. [IT'S A VERITABLE HOLOCAUST!] The argument for limiting classroom access to the recent past is that not enough time has elapsed since World War II for that era to have been analyzed. However, when that one section fills, many students are being denied classroom access to post-World War II events which are the most important events in creating the present world. What is common knowledge to their parents and grandparents essentially remains a mystery to Saddleback students.

I was a sergeant in the Korean War. [OH, THE HUMANITY!] I worked two fire seasons as a Forest Fire Truck Driver for the California Division of Forestry. Prior to Saddleback I taught full time for six years at Mount San Antonio College.

• • •

Re the Walther "violation":

The California Fair Political Practices Commission sent a "Case Closure Memorandum" to Trustee Harriett Walther concerning the charge that she had violated "conflict of interest" provisions. (5/3/95)

The memorandum ends with a paragraph that makes clear that Walther's violation was merely technical and insubstantial (see below).

The faculty union--on behalf of Frogue, Williams, Fortune and Davis--secured this document and quoted from it selectively and deceptively in fliers and ads during the 1996 trustees' campaign. Williams did the same in "letters to the editor."

What follows is the key section of the memo that the union conveniently failed to reveal in "exposing" the existence of the CFPPC document:

However, we have determined that prosecution for this violation is not warranted based on several mitigating factors which include: 1) the vote to approve the ACCT contract was unanimous and apparently would have been approved without Ms. Walther's vote; 2) it appears that Ms. Walther did not believe that she had a conflict of interest with regard to the ACCT contract, and had she known, it appears she would have abstained from the decision; 3) as a telephone research consultant, she did not stand to gain any commission or bonus as a result of the contract; 4) all other members of the SCCD involved in the ACCT contract were informed by Ms. Walther that she had been employed by ACCT, and 5) Ms. Walther has no prior enforcement history with the Commission.

The joy of bringing students to big issues, philosophy-style

Well, the first week of the semester is over, and it’s been pretty great. It’s nice to get back to teaching.

In class this week, I’ve explained the nature of philosophical issues, emphasizing philosophy’s focus on the highly fundamental and abstract—unavoidable issues for those with curiosity and a desire to get to the bottom of things.

Like many instructors, I employ “Blackboard,” software that allows us to anchor our courses in websites that contain announcement pages, readings, crucial course information (the syllabus, etc.), assignments, student grades, and just about anything you can think of.

It’s pretty freaking terrific.

And so, this morning, on my philosophy Blackboard sites, I “announced” an interesting book review that I found in yesterday’s New York Times. My announcement is as follows:

Philosophy can be about anything, and so it can be about “values.” We step back from the bigger world of nations and civilizations and inevitably puzzle at differences and tensions that continually arise there. And this brings us to the difficult question of whether and how there can be “absolute” or “objective” values.

Interestingly, two important 20th Century writers, one a leftist (socialist), the other a rightist (conservative), agreed on rejection of moral relativism. Or so says David Lebedoff, author of The Same Man. The book was reviewed in yesterday’s New York Times: Two of a Kind:

…[George] Orwell conjured up the nightmarish dystopia of “1984.” [Evelyn] Waugh’s best-known work, “Brideshead Revisited,” was a reverie about a vanished age of Oxford privilege, titled Catholic families, large country houses and fastidious conscience. Orwell was tall, gaunt and self-mortifying, a socialist with an affinity for mineworkers and tramps. Waugh was a short, plump, florid social climber and a proud reactionary.... Orwell fought on the loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War. Waugh announced, “If I were a Spaniard I should be fighting for General Franco.” … Orwell thought “good prose is like a window pane,” forceful and direct. Waugh was an elaborate stylist whose prose ranged from the dryly ironical to the richly ornamented and rhetorical. Orwell was solitary and fiercely earnest. Waugh was convivial and brutally funny. And, perhaps most important, Orwell was a secularist whose greatest fear was the emergence of Big Brother in this world. Waugh was a Roman Catholic convert whose greatest hope lay with God in the next.
…
Dissimilar though their causes may have been, Orwell and Waugh were both anchored by “a hatred of moral relativism”; that, Lebedoff claims, is what set the two men apart from their contemporaries. Yet in stressing this similarity, the author elides [omits] a deeper difference. Although Waugh despaired about the future, he saw the Catholic Church as an enduring bulwark against chaos. His moral order was backed by divine authority. Orwell too was a passionate believer in objective truth, including moral truth. But unlike Waugh, Orwell did not attribute transcendent power to the truth; indeed, he feared that it might ultimately prove impotent in history. Hence his terrifying vision in “1984” of a future of totalitarian sadism, of “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

...The two men admired each other—up to a point. Orwell thought Waugh was about as good as a novelist could be while holding “untenable” beliefs. “One cannot really be Catholic & grown up,” he wrote. Waugh thought Orwell was as good as a thinker could be while neglecting ­nine-tenths of reality: the supernatural part. He wrote to Orwell apropos of “1984” that “men who love a crucified God need never think of torture as all-powerful.”….

—I do hope students read these things. Some do, I’m sure. And what could be better than thinking about the likes of Waugh and Orwell viewing the world and its struggles essentially in the same way! How does our own thinking compare to theirs?

In class, I often note that those on both ends of the political spectrum do seem to approach the world as moral objectivists—people who suppose that there exists some set of values that apply equally to all of humanity. It is obvious that conservatives do: the more primitive among them often seem to view the beliefs and practices of foreign cultures essentially as 16th Century Europeans (or late 19th Century Americans) did.

Perhaps it is less obvious that leftists/liberals are often entrenched objectivists as well, for surely a willingness to wield “human rights” across cultures assumes that there is some objective standard of conduct and moral belief to which people around the world may appeal! (Hilary Clinton is big on "human rights.")

But I am a philosopher. And so I ask, “OK, what justifies that idea?” I mean, how is this supposed to work exactly? Is it that those nasty cultures that pursue female genital mutilation and the like are somehow blind to facts? Do they lack reason? Are their brains damaged? Did God neglect to send them a Moses?

These ideas are implausible.

OK, all you right-wingers out there. Know this. I routinely piss off leftists too.

• • •

One kind of “objectivist” are those who favor including creationism in the curriculum, which involves the assumption that the Bible is an objective (universally applicable) account of history/science. McCain's running mate Sarah Palin seems to be in this category: 'Creation science' enters the race

Hilary Clinton and the Human Rights Campaign

• • •

Don't get me wrong. I'm as horrified by female genital mutilation as anybody. But when we base our philosophies on assumptions, we need to identify them and ask whether we can defend them. Philosophy can be very harsh to what Orwell called our “smelly little orthodoxies."

It can be harsh on the fragrant ones too.

• • •

I offer a "version" of this post that quickly diverges into philosophy on OC Blue Philosopher.

Pesky critters

We seem to have our share of pesky critters here in Orange County. I like 'em.



Sea Lions sink boat in Newport Harbor

Tom Fuentes' tiny town

A Republican event?

According to the local GOP, the OC is “America’s most Republican County!”

Yeah, whatever. Occasionally, I visit the OC GOP website, ‘cause there’s no telling what you’ll find there. I mean, these people gather to listen to Rush Limbaugh! Yeah, and some of these same bozos wanted to name Irvine’s Great Park the "Richard M. Nixon" Park. Plus they wanted to name ATEP the “Ronald Reagan Technology and Jelly Bean Village.” I kid you not. (Well, OK, I made up the "village" part.)

At the website, under “events,” I found the usual meetings, fundraisers, parties, and whatnot. Every one of these events has some connection to, well, Republicans, which makes sense.

But what about this one?

9/11 Commemoration Ceremony
Keynote Speaker: Irvine Police Chief David L. Maggard, Jr.

Where: Irvine Valley College Performing Arts Center

Please join the IVC community in commemorating the seventh anniversary of 9/11 with keynote speaker, Irvine Police Chief David L. Maggard, Jr. and Master of Ceremonies Tom Fuentes, Chairman Emeritus, Republican Party of Orange County. During the ceremony, there will be a moment of silence in commemoration of the lives lost on this day. Let us never forget our loss.

Somebody explain this to me. Is this a “Republican” event? Is that the idea?

Gotta Clue?

Sometimes the first week of classes is a lot like the classic Parker Brothers board game, CLUE.

You know the one where players try to figure out whodunnit where and with what.

People drop by our office brandishing their latest theories: Miss Scarlet in the ballroom with a candlestick? they ask. Colonel Mustard in the hallway with a holepuncher? The biologist in the classroom with the cadaver? The consultant in the PAC with the report? The student in the parking lot with the iPod? Professor Plum at ATEP with the paper shredder?

Maybe it's just the back-to-school adrenaline kicking in. Maybe it's something more.

We don't really know, but someone out there must. Do tell.

Tonight's board meeting: a pleasant coma

Perhaps owing to Tom Fuentes’ absence, tonight’s meeting of the SOCCCD board of trustees was pleasant. Fuentes, we were told, was at the hospital “finishing up” the process related to his liver transplant. (The new student trustee was also absent—something about minor injuries sustained in an auto accident.)

As near as I could tell, nothing of interest was reported from the board’s closed session.

As you know, tonight, the board was slated to “reaffirm” its “commitment to holding invocations at Board meetings” (item 6.3). Inevitably, therefore, Saddleback College Math professor Carla Westphal arrived to object, which she did during her 3 minutes near the start of the meeting. The board did not respond to her points in any way.

Trustee reports were unremarkable. John Williams praised the Chancellor’s “opening session” (last Tuesday), and others joined him. Trustee Dave Lang made a point of praising various individuals for their efforts on behalf of Saddleback College’s accreditation. Lang also mentioned that he is running for reelection.

During his report, Chancellor Mathur highlighted the good news concerning enrollments, which, district-wide, are up about 10% (they’re way up at IVC). Mathur also reported that, according to recent calculations, for last year, instructional spending was at 51.36%, and thus it was above the 50% line mandated by state law. As you know, for years, Mathur had allowed the district to drift steadily downward in its proportion of instructional spending. Disaster was barely averted by various measures, including the hiring of 38 or so new full-time faculty last Spring.

Padberg later requested a report of this entire 50% FUBAR. Evidently, she was not satisfied with Mathur’s “gosh we made it” speech.

Williams, that staunch Republican, has evidently been bitten by the green bug, for he requested a report about the possibility of more solar panels and “wind farms” at the colleges. He made a point of noting that he got this clever idea before he saw last week’s presentation on “sustainability.”

John’s not bright.

Padberg, no doubt thinking of Williams, requested a report that details all trustee expenses. Voters should know, she said, how much trustees cost the taxpayer. This report, she added, should be ready in September, just before the election.

She smiled.

(You’ll recall that Williams was Padberg's boss until a couple of years ago. He fired her.)

Tonight’s “discussion topic” was “online degree and certificate programs.” The two VPIs and the new technology guy gave predictable rah-rah presentations about the explosive growth of online instruction. They noted that our colleges have been increasing online offerings at a high rate. They made a point of ignoring the fact that, nevertheless, compared to other districts, we are moving slowly.


In the middle of the presentation, Marcia’s purse suddenly emitted the sound of Ray Charles singing “Georgia.” This went on for maybe 30 seconds. As near as I could tell, Marcia was wrestling with her purse somewhere under her chair. When Ray was finally strangled, she emerged, smiling.

In the course of the "online" discussion, it was revealed that, sometimes, UCI calls up to ask about whether and how our courses are taught in an online configuration. According to Rajen, such calls generate anxiety among faculty concerning “articulation.”

I hate when people talk about us as though we were mental patients.

At one point, Mathur put out a call for “discussion topics” for the board. He made a point of including the “college community” in this request.

I cannot believe that he wasn’t forced to do that.

Let’s take him up on it! Maybe the academic senates can work on this?

Mathur and Padberg sniped at each other over the cost of a conference that some trustee indicated he wanted to attend. (Mathur doesn’t seem to understand that, if he hates a trustee, he should seek to disguise the fact.)

The final budget was adopted. Nancy Padberg expressed concern that “basic aid” money is being distributed to the two colleges equally despite Saddleback’s having twice as many students as IVC. Mathur, once again making his hatred of Padberg plain, flatly denied that the money is distributed in that fashion. Lang seemed to say that there is a process now in place for allocating basic aid money, and it is very collaborative and successful, etc.

We finally got to the item about naming the Health Sciences Building the “Ronald Reagan Board of Trustees Room.” Actually, the item was: should Mathur ask Nancy Reagan whether that would be OK?

There was no discussion. The item passed unanimously. I looked around the room. I do believe that everyone was in a coma.

Padberg and Milchiker actually managed to table the “invocation” item. There was no discussion.

Well, that was about it.