David "Dumbass" Horowitz at UCI

.....From the OC Weekly: DAVID HOROWITZ AT UCI LAST NIGHT:

.....David Horowitz descended on UCI last night as part of his nationwide tour condemning a national student group called Muslim Student Association – a group with more than 150 chapters in colleges all over the country.
.....Horowitz, a famous right wing nut jobber, is famous for taking out provocative full page ads in campus newspapers that say things like Black people don't deserve reparations for slavery, in advance of his speaking engagements during Black History Month, which would then cause all kinds of static to the school paper. In some cases protesters or school administrators would admonish the paper for printing the incendiary ad, which would prompt Horowitz to say it is an example of censorship on university campuses.
…..
.....Once in the lecture room at Rowland Hall, the first thing I noticed was it was sparsely populated, mostly with people 50 and over. There were about 40 audience members total, scattered in seats throughout the lecture room. The room was a minimalist theater style setting with white undecorated walls and ceiling, and puke inducing overhead fluorescent lighting. At the front of the room was a obviously photoshopped poster of a hijabed Muslim woman holding a sign that says "God Bless Hitler" in English?
.....Horowitz is droning on about something in a beige suit with red undershirt. His voice is raspy and he's got a bottle of Aquafina. If I didn't know better, I would say he looks either half drunk, or hung over.
.....He says Muslim student groups all over the United States are being trained to kill us in our own schools, "We're providing technology to people who's ideology is that we are the devil and they have to blow us up," he says.
…..
.....During the question and answer phase, one bright young student relayed a story of how he has also endured suffering.
....."I'm a history student and I've had the misfortune of having taken an Chicano studies course," he lamented. "The whole course was learning about these no name activists and these brown berets and whatever. The only reason I took it was because it was the only class that fit my schedule."
....."Thugs," Horowitz replies….

Professor fired by university for having standards

.....From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: Students Fail — and Professor Loses Job:

.....Who is to blame when students fail? If many students fail — a majority even — does that demonstrate faculty incompetence, or could it point to a problem with standards?
.....These are the questions at the center of a dispute that cost Steven D. Aird his job teaching biology at Norfolk State University. Today is his last day of work, but on his way out, he has started to tell his story — one that he suggests points to large educational problems at the university and in society. The university isn’t talking publicly about his case, but because Aird has released numerous documents prepared by the university about his performance — including the key negative tenure decisions by administrators — it is clear that he was denied tenure for one reason: failing too many students. The university documents portray Aird as unwilling to compromise to pass more students.
.....A subtext of the discussion is that Norfolk State is a historically black university with a mission that includes educating many students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The university suggests that Aird — who is white — has failed to embrace the mission of educating those who aren’t well prepared. But Aird — who had backing from his department and has some very loyal students as well — maintains that the university is hurting the very students it says it wants to help. Aird believes most of his students could succeed, but have no incentive to work as hard as they need to when the administration makes clear they can pass regardless.
.....“Show me how lowering the bar has ever helped anyone,” Aird said in an interview. Continuing the metaphor, he said that officials at Norfolk State have the attitude of “a track coach who tells the team ‘I really want to win this season but I really like you guys, so you can decide whether to come to practice and when.’ ” Such a team wouldn’t win, Aird said, and a university based on such a principle would not be helping its students.
…..
.....Aird points to a Catch-22 that he said hinders professors’ ability to help students. Because so many students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and never received a good high school education, they are already behind, he said, and attendance is essential. Norfolk State would appear to endorse this point of view, and official university policy states that a student who doesn’t attend at least 80 percent of class sessions may be failed.
.....The problem, Aird said, is that very few Norfolk State students meet even that standard. In the classes for which he was criticized by the dean for his grading — classes in which he awarded D’s or F’s to about 90 percent of students — Aird has attendance records indicating that the average student attended class only 66 percent of the time. Based on such a figure, he said, “the expected mean grade would have been an F,” and yet he was denied tenure for giving such grades.
.....Other professors at Norfolk State, generally requesting anonymity, confirmed that following the 80 percent attendance rule would result frequently in failing a substantial share — in many cases a majority — of their students. Professors said attendance rates are considerably lower than at many institutions — although most institutions serve students with better preparation.
.....One reason that this does not happen (outside Aird’s classes) is that many professors at Norfolk State say that there is a clear expectation from administrators — in particular from Dean Sandra J. DeLoatch, the dean whose recommendation turned the tide against Aird’s tenure bid — that 70 percent of students should pass.
.....Aird said that figure was repeatedly made clear to him and he resisted it. Others back his claim privately. For the record, Joseph C. Hall, a chemistry professor at president of the Faculty Senate, said that DeLoatch “encouraged” professors to pass at least 70 percent of students in each course, regardless of performance. Hall said that there is never a direct order given, but that one isn’t really needed.
…..
.....DeLoatch … rejected the relevance of 16 letters in Aird’s portfolio from students who praised him as a teacher. The students, some of whom are now in medical or graduate school or who have gone on to win research awards, talked about his extra efforts on their behalf, how he had been a mentor, and so forth. DeLoatch named each student in the review, and noted their high grade point averages and various successes. Some of the students writing on his behalf received grades as low as C, although others received higher grades.
…..
.....Aird stressed that he does not believe Norfolk State should try to become an elite college. He said he believes that only about 20 percent of the students who enroll truly can’t do the work. He believes another 20 percent are ready from the start. Of the middle 60 percent, he said that when the university tells them that substandard work and frequent class skipping are OK, these students are doomed to fail his courses (and not to learn what they need from other professors).
.....“I think most of the students have the intellectual capacity to succeed, but they have been so poorly trained, and given all the wrong messages by the university,” he said.
.....The problem at Norfolk State, he said, isn’t his low grades, but the way the university lowers expectations. He noted that in the dean’s negative review of his tenure bid, nowhere did she cite specific students who should have received higher grades, or subject matter that shouldn’t have been in his courses or on his tests. The emphasis is simply on passing students, he said.
.....“If everyone here would tell students that ‘you are either going to work or get out,’ they would work, and they would blossom,” he said. “We’ve got to present a united front — high academic standards in all classes across the institution. Some students will bail, and we can’t help those, but the ones who stay will realize that they aren’t going to be given a diploma for nothing, and that their diploma means something.”….

.....It seems to me that many of us in the community colleges, as instructors, face some version of Aird's dilemma. Many students do not attend classes regularly enough, and they don't do the work they should be doing for their courses. If we were to apply the standards that we in some sense ought to be applying, most of our students would receive Ds and Fs. Meanwhile, the colleges encourage (or they do absolutely nothing to discourage) the idea that students can hold jobs and have active social lives while taking perhaps 4 or 5 courses. There is indeed something wrong with the "system."
.....I try to encourage good attendance and homework by assigning semi-weekly written assignments. (Naturally, these take many hours to grade.) I tell students that they must complete the assignments (adequately) in order to receive a non-F grade in the course. (80% is where, supposedly, I draw the line.) I constantly remind them of this rule. I even give them chances to make up assignments they've missed.
.....I would estimate that the average rate at which students complete these assignments is below 50%.

Poor word choice: loutish Feds scare foreign students shitless

.    From the New York Times: Blunt Federal Letters Tell Students They’re Security Threats

.    A German graduate student in oceanography at M.I.T. applied to the Transportation Security Administration for a new ID card allowing him to work around ships and docks.
.    What the student, Wilken-Jon von Appen, received in return was a letter that not only turned him down but added an ominous warning from John M. Busch, a security administration official: “I have determined that you pose a security threat.”
.    Similar letters have gone to 5,000 applicants across the country who have at least initially been turned down for a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, an ID card meant to guard against acts of terrorism, agency officials said Monday.
.    The officials also said they were sorry about the language, which they may change in the future, but had no intention of withdrawing letters already sent.
.    “It’s an unfortunate choice of words in a bureaucratic letter,” said Ellen Howe, a security agency spokeswoman.
…..
.    Mr. von Appen, 23, one of at least four oceanography students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who received identical letters, said he was stunned by its language.
.    “I was pretty much speechless and quite intimidated,” said Mr. von Appen, whose research is supported by a $65,000-a-year grant from the National Science Foundation.
.    A British student at M.I.T. who was rejected, Sophie Clayton, 28, said that at first she was amused at what appeared to be a bureaucratic absurdity. But as she pondered the designation, Ms. Clayton said she grew worried. “The two words ‘security threat’ are now in the files next to my name, my photograph and my fingerprints,” she said….

U.C.I. 1st Amendment case concerns college governance

.....A friend sent me the following post (A faculty speech/1st Amendment case), by Rachel Levinson, AAUP Senior Counsel. It appeared late last month in the Higher Ed Law Prof Blog. (See also Not So Free Speech in College Governance [Inside Higher Ed, 3/24]):

.....Imagine that you are teaching at a public university that not only supports but encourages your participation in institutional governance. You speak up on several matters that you think undermine the faculty role or your students’ experience—and for your trouble, you are denied a raise, saddled with additional work, or even fired. Do the university’s actions violate the First Amendment?
.....The AAUP and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression recently filed an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief in such a case. The brief, which was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, supports the appeal of Dr. Juan Hong in his First Amendment lawsuit against the administration of the University of California, Irvine. The case could have significant implications for faculty members at all public colleges and universities—and, ironically, could have the strongest negative impact on faculty that are encouraged to participate in university governance.
.....Dr. Hong, a full professor at UCI, allegedly angered university administrators by opposing certain faculty hiring and promotion decisions and the university’s use of lecturers in place of professors. After Dr. Hong was denied a merit salary increase and given an increased workload, he filed suit, claiming that the university violated his First Amendment right to free speech.
.....A federal trial judge in California rejected Dr. Hong’s claim. The judge reviewed Garcetti v. Ceballos, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment did not protect public employees from discharge for statements made “pursuant to their official duties” but declined to decide whether its ruling extended to “speech related to scholarship or teaching.” The judge in Dr. Hong’s case concluded that Dr. Hong’s participation in faculty governance was “pursuant to his official duties,” and that the university’s retaliation therefore did not violate the First Amendment. The court failed to acknowledge, however, that the Garcetti decision explicitly set aside the question of protection for academic speech, and held that “UCI is entitled to unfettered discretion when it restricts statements an employee makes on the job and according to his professional responsibilities.”
.....The AAUP’s amicus brief focuses on the unique status granted to academic speech, and its relation to shared governance. The brief notes that faculty speech has been accorded special First Amendment protection by the Supreme Court since Sweezy v. State of New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957). The hallmark of such cases, the brief notes, is the recognition that academic freedom merits distinctive First Amendment protection against repressive action from within or outside the campus community. The AAUP brief argues that participation in faculty governance is part and parcel of professors’ First Amendment-protected right of academic freedom to speak without fear of retaliation. The brief also observes that the court failed to distinguish between faculty rights and responsibilities, and argues that the court’s decision will empower universities with strong policies in favor of shared governance to discipline faculty members who annoy administrators through their involvement in university governance.

Oakley Hall: OK Corral meets Arthurian joust

Oakley Hall, novelist and professor, died yesterday, Monday May 12 at his home in Nevada City, California. Rebel Girl studied with him way back when in the program he founded, the MFA fiction program at UC Irvine, and then came to work with him at the Community of Writers conference at Squaw Valley. He was dear to her in many ways.

His novel, Warlock, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 and was recently reissued by the New York Review of Books with a foreword by Robert Stone. It's a western, yes, but a western written by a man who fought in WWII and came home and saw the rise of McCarthyism and began to write this book. Oakley and Rebel Girl would often talk about which era was worse for America: McCarthy or Bush. Oakley would say that he couldn't imagine anything worse than McCarthy - but had to sadly concede that recent times under Bush had surpassed that. Here's an excerpt:

From Warlock, chapter 67: Journals of Henry Holmes Goodpasture:

It is four in the morning by my watch. Mine is the only light I can see, the scratching of my pen the only sound. Here astride the dull and rusty razor's edge between midnight and morning, I am sick to the bottom of my heart. Where is Buck Slavin's bright future of faith, hope and commerce? What is it even worth, after all? For if men have no worth, there is none anywhere. I feel very old and I have seen too many things in my years, which are not so many; no, not even in my years, but in a few months – in this day.

Outside there is only darkness, pitifully lit by the cold and disinterested stars, and there is silence through the town, in which some men sleep and clutch their bedclothes of hope and optimism to them for warmth. But those I love more do not sleep, and see no hope, and suffer for those brave ones who will fall in hopeless effort for us all, whose only gift to us will be that we will grieve for them a little while; those who see, as I have come to see, that life is only event and violence without reason or cause, and that there is no end but the corruption and the mock of courage and hope.

Is not the history of the world no more than a record of violence and death, cut in stone? It is a terrible, lonely, loveless thing to know it, and see – as I realize now the doctor saw before me – that the only justification is in the attempt, not in the achievement, for there is no achievement; to know that each day may dawn fair or fairer than the last, and end as horribly wretched or more. Can those things that drive men to their ends ever be stilled, or will they only thrive and grow and yet more hideously clash against the other so long as man himself is not stilled? Can I look out at these cold stars in this black sky and believe in my heart of hearts that it was this sky that hung over Bethlehem, and that a star such as these stars glittered there to raise men's hearts to false hopes forever?

This is the sky of Gethsemane, and that of Bethlehem has vanished with its star.

Thomas Pynchon on Warlock:

"Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880's is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the confrontation at the OK Corral takes on some of the dry purity of the Arthurian joust. Oakley Hall, in his very fine novel Warlock has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity...It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall."

Oh my

Watch Bill O'Reilly totally lose it in this "Inside Edition" outtake from maybe twenty years ago. You'll love it. (Bill drops lots of F bombs, has lots of hair.)

REALLY pissed off (Click on the blue words)
OR
Once Again

ALSO: some ancient history for you. For some reason, this is the fourth most popular "Dissent the Blog" video (out of 34). If you haven't seen it, check it out:

THE FAMOUS "GET THE GOO OUT" RALLY, 2005


REMINDER: It's the election, stupid:


Visit Save SOCCCD

IHE interviews new Cal community college chief

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: California’s New Community College Chief:

The California Community College system selected its leader last week: State Senator Jack Scott, a two-time community college president (at Pasadena City and Cypress Colleges) and lawmaker since 1997….

Senator Scott takes over as system chancellor January 1 after completing his term in Sacramento. He comes to a 109-college system facing challenges on multiple fronts. Funding-wise, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently estimated that the state’s budget deficit has climbed to $20 billion, as the San Jose Mercury News reports, and the governor has proposed $525 million in community college cuts….

While the California Community College system is widely praised for its low barriers to entry (quantified in its $20-per-credit tuition rates), it has also been under pressure to increase degree completion and transfer rates to four-year institutions.

In addition, the Accrediting Commission of Western Association of Schools and Colleges — for which Scott once served as chair — placed nine of the California community colleges on warning or probation at its January meeting. Six others were continued on either status.
…..
Q. Broadly speaking, what’s on your agenda?

A. One thing obviously is to increase the funding. Community colleges in California aren’t very well funded in the sense that there are 2.6 million students that in a year’s time attend a community college, so you can see the gigantic task that’s there....
…..
Q: I’m intrigued that you formerly chaired WASC. In January, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges placed nine California community colleges on warning or probation....Are there any academic or financial problems that you see that are somewhat systemic, that need to be confronted?

A: I haven’t read those reports. I served on the commission of course frankly in a past time. The last time I was on the commission as I recall was probably in the early 90s, so it’s been 15 years since I’ve been directly connected with the accrediting commissions. ¶ One of the problems that California community colleges frankly have is a lack of funding. There needs to be increased funding and that does mean that those community colleges, if they’re in economic trouble, perhaps they need to be managed more effectively, vis-a-vis the budget. If it’s academic trouble they have, that may be that there has been a movement nationwide to more outcomes-based accreditation.... ¶ I frankly haven’t read those reports. I’ve been immersed in legislative actions ever since January when we went into session. I chair two important committees and frankly I deal with a huge number of issues that aren’t related to community colleges, so I don’t know the individual situations within the certain community colleges.
…..
Q: California community colleges enjoy a lot of local control, strong local boards, sometimes to the detriment, as some have argued, to system-wide coordination. How do you envision the relationship between local and state control evolving in your tenure as chancellor?

One of the strengths of California community colleges is that they are local, that they do respond to the needs of the community and that there is a certain autonomy. Naturally when there needs to be coordination, sometimes it is not always easy to do that but I think we can work toward that....I think you can maintain a certain coordination at the system level and still have a great deal of local autonomy. I think that’s one of the geniuses of the community colleges.

Senator Jack Scott on proposed budget cuts: