Horowitz to speak at MLA meeting

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

The program for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association is out and there is a surprise speaker: David Horowitz. The long-time critic of the academic left and humanities professors will appear in San Francisco Dec. 29 on a panel on academic freedom, along with Mark Bauerlein of Emory University (himself sometimes a critic of the academic left, but one whose tone would not be confused with that of Horowitz), Norma E. Cantú of the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Cary Nelson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (who, as president of the American Association of University Professors has frequently criticized Horowitz).

Horowitz has repeatedly questioned why academic groups have not invited him to speak at their meetings. … In the past, Horowitz has been critical of the MLA, with a few swipes in his book on “dangerous professors,” and with articles his Web site publishes. Via e-mail, Horowitz praised the MLA for the invitation. “It’s about time academics behaved like academics and opened a discussion with its critics,” he said. He called Gerald Graff, president of the MLA and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, “one of the few academics with enough courage to write about the problem of classroom indoctrination.”….

Research has tended to dubunk Horowitz thesis concerning classroom indoctrination.

RON HOWARD becomes Opie  for OBAMA

What next?

From Paul Krugman’s latest: The Republican Rump:

...[T]he G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.

This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.

OK. Maybe so.

But what would this mean for us here in benighted Orange County?

The loutishness and substancelessness of Prop 8 proponents

Things sure do change. I seem to recall that, for many years—at least in my lifetime—Republicans embraced a particular paradigm of the responsible citizen and voter. It was the Rational and Prudent Conservative. Very staunch, very sensible. Think of George Will or, say, Peggy Noonan. Such people always seemed to have some importance among Republicans.

No longer. They now seem marginalized in the GOP. They're even irrelevant. (And bewildered.)

As you know, the new paradigm is the Smirking Jerk. Think of Sean Hannity—and now even John McCain, what with his, well, smirk and eye-rolling, and his 24-hour revolving wheel-o'-sophistry and pandering.

You see the new dominance of the Smirking Jerk at all levels.

"WE HATE FAGS." Consider the debate over California’s Proposition 8, which proposes to eliminate the right of marriage for same-sex couples in the CA Constitution. Here in Orange County, it’s a big deal. People feel strongly about it. They’re standing on corners, holding signs, stealing signs, shouting slurs, wielding Bibles.

I’ve been reading the latest letters to the OC Reg regarding Proposition 8. Most of the anti-8 letters are unremarkable. (See for yourself.) 

It's the pro-8 letters I wanna zero in on. They're special.

One letter-writer, Steve, opines: “Many people believe in the importance of both traditional marriage between a man and a woman and tolerance for all people. Opponents of Prop. 8 believe these two ideas are in conflict. They are not.”

As a logic guy, I've gotta say: Steve’s sentences make my brain hurt. Obviously, an opponent of Prop 8 need not find any conflict between these ideas. The conflict, obviously, arises when one conceives of marriage as excluding homosexual unions (when, that is, homosexuals desire such unions), for such exclusion fails to accord a right to some people that is accorded to other people. That is, thus conceiving and restricting marriage entails discrimination between types of persons and against a particular type of persons. 

Steve offers no argument that this discrimination is not also unjustified and unwarranted discrimination. None. 

How can this be? Can you imagine George Will failing to come through with an argument--to leave, as we say in the logic biz, a big fat logical lacuna? Not me. Nope.

Another letter-writer, Mark, asserts that anti-8 “activists” have agenda items, including to “Recruit children to believe homosexuality is a legitimate lifestyle.” The “Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network” is coordinating with the NEA, he says, “on guidelines for inculcating sex and homosexuality into school curriculum nationwide.”

Mark chooses to use the word “recruit,” for it suggests enlistment in some activity or project. —Such as “gayness,” perhaps? 

But his sentence is really about teaching students to be tolerant, i.e., to embrace an attitude or philosophy according to which homosexuality is a “legitimate lifestyle.”

Mark engages in sophistry here. Evidently, he has nothing of any consequence to offer.

How can that be? (I mean, I could do better than these guys arguing against same-sex marriage!)

And what’s this business about “inculcating sex and homosexually into…[curricula]”? First, one inculcates something (an idea or habit) in a person, not in curricula. Mark is having trouble stringing words together coherently.

So what is he trying to say? Is he suggesting that, unless 8 passes, an attempt will be made to teach school kids to be gay? 

C'mon. He's suggesting exactly that without literally saying it. That's sophistry. It's flimflammery.

But there is no reason to think that any such inculcation program is being contemplated by anyone (obviously, if we were to attempt it, it would likely fail). 

The idea is to inculcate tolerance, not gayness. So saith the voice of reason, which used to come in the color "conservative." But now? Not so much.

The pro-8 forces don’t have much to say for themselves at least among these OC Reg letters. That's clear.

READER COMMENTS:

Naturally, I also read further--into “reader comments,” a step that, in the case of the OC Reg, is always disconcerting, like walking into a neighborhood of thugs and louts and tattooed rednecks (pace other-necked tattoo fans). You've gotta keep your head down low.

One reader, Daegon, comments that “Meatpipe worshippers want to be considered legitimate. They are not.” 

Meatpipe? Hmmm. Deagon’s “point” reminds me of the erudite logical stylings of some of Dissent’s right-wing commenters. Daegon offers no argument. Just an assertion. Plus colorful and offensive terms. (I would forgive the "meatpipe" business if Daegon had anything going for him at all. "Meatpipe" is kinda funny. --A pipe of meat. Sure.)

Another reader, Starrynite, notes that, to understand what will happen if 8 does not pass, one need only look to the state of Massachusetts. “What is happening in Massachusetts CAN and WILL happen in California if Proposition 8 does not pass,” declares Starrynite.

But then the poor fellow fails to explain what is happening in Massachusetts. Nevertheless, to prove his point about the CA/MA analogy, he provides an example, not of an event in MA, but an event in CA, namely, a teacher passing out cards provided by the “Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network” to kindergartners. 

What did the cards say? Starrynite fails to tell us. 

What's the matter with these people? Were they born in a barn? I realize that we can't expect much from letters to the Reg, but shouldn't we at least encounter some cut-rate version of the Prudent and Rational Conservative? Where did that guy or gal go? I don't see him here, and I don't seem him in the streets. I don't meet 'im at my college. Nope.

Just louts and fools with no arguments.

HOME INVASION:

El Dia de los Muertos

Scenes from downtown Santa Ana: dancers and ofrendas.












Later, at home, we light our own candles.

Las ganas

“…If … it should … achieve nothing, and there should remain only the Good Will…, then, like a jewel, it would still shine by its own light as a thing which has its whole value in itself.”

..........—Kant

Even in our grim new world of collapsing economies, path-breaking right-wing demagoguery, and portentous other-shoe droppage, Good Things (GTs) can be found.

I expect that one really good thing will coalesce on Tuesday night. The Reign of the Stupid People will come to an end, at least for a time. Yes!

Another good thing—a really, really good thing—is the imminent going-into-effectitude of the new G.I. Bill of Rights—you know, the new law, ardently opposed by Senator “Maverick” McCain, that will provide returning post-9-11 veterans real assistance in getting a college education.

Yes, yes, yes!!

I do hope you got a chance to read the recent New York Times piece about the new world of opportunities and difficulties created by this happy legislation.

Community colleges, too, will be affected. Some excerpts:

Combat to College:

…When the bill goes into effect, in August 2009, a boom in post-9/11 veterans is expected at colleges and universities across the nation. And unlike the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when few colleges and universities welcomed military veterans, a growing number are taking steps to ease the difficult transition.

Still in its early stages at many institutions, the effort is led in large part by a generation of student veterans who came to view their own struggles to adapt to academic life as dispiriting and unnecessary.

“Some people are talking about it like it’s a movement,” says Derek Blumke, a University of Michigan senior and cofounder and president of Student Veterans of America, an advocacy group formed earlier this year. “A lot of people are returning now and realizing they want to go to college. They are coming back, getting together and wanting to make this happen. People are mobilizing.”

The legislation fueling the movement pays homage to the original G.I. Bill of Rights, which is considered one of the most successful and transformative government programs in history. It ultimately sent 2.2 million veterans to college after World War II and helped five million others acquire trade skills. Rather than come home to sell apples, as many neglected veterans did after World War I, these veterans helped broaden the middle class and democratize universities, which were primarily bastions of the wealthy and well connected.

Few would argue that the impact of the new G.I. Bill, formally the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, will rival that of its prototype, mostly because there are far fewer eligible veterans and the new law is less generous. The original bill paid for public, private and vocational education. This one covers public education for most veterans who served after 9/11 and eases the burden of private tuition. The law also extends many benefits to members of the National Guard and the Reserve, and offers stipends for housing and textbooks. But it does not pay for non-degree vocational training.

Still, the law is viewed both by veterans and colleges as an opportunity to do right by today’s combat-tested troops and mend a relationship that has badly frayed since the antiwar movement of the 1960s. The hope is that new veterans, buffeted by war and a troubled economy, can seize on college as a roadmap to a productive life beyond the military.

“This is the biggest step toward turning the page on what we did after Vietnam,” says Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “We saw the G.I. Bill as a way of attempting to deal with veterans’ reacclimation issues in a more comprehensive way. They are in a safe place there in school, moving forward with their life.”

Mr. Rieckhoff’s group spearheaded efforts to pass the bill, written by Senator Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat and Marine Corps veteran. The bill met strong resistance from John McCain, the senator from Arizona who is now the Republican candidate for president, and from President Bush, who argued that it would prompt service members to choose college over re-enlistment after just three years. But ultimately, it passed handily and was signed into law on June 30….
…
“Some [returning veterans] need more help than others because their academic beginnings were not as strong,” [Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Dr. Eugenio] Barrios says of veterans. “They bring a certain level of maturity and a certain appreciation of our system. Their desire is there. There is a word in Spanish for that: las ganas. They have that very strong will to want to succeed.”….

OTHER ARTICLES OF INTEREST:

Harsh attacks characterize the Prop. 8 debate. In today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

"Extremists." "Indoctrination." "Liars." "Destroy America." "Blackmail." Fiery words and harsh attacks are punctuating the campaigns surrounding Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage in California….

If Prop. 8 passes, what about those who wed? In today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

When Californians vote on Proposition 8, they'll decide whether same-sex partners' right to marry will still exist as of 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. What's less clear is the impact on as many as 16,000 gay and lesbian couples who have wed since June….

Billionaires put their agendas to a vote. In today’s LA Times.

California's ballot is often crowded with measures known as citizen initiatives. But many of the citizens whose causes will come before voters Tuesday are not everyday Californians. ¶ International financier George Soros wants to change drug laws. Computer technology titan Henry T. Nicholas III—who has been indicted on federal fraud and drug charges—is pushing two measures seeking tougher penalties for criminals and expanded rights for victims. ¶ Oilman turned alternative-fuels investor T. Boone Pickens is pushing subsidies for cars that run on substances other than oil. And Peter Sperling, one of the founders of the highly profitable Phoenix University system, is the financial force behind another green- energy pursuit. ¶ Never before has such a large assortment of the extremely wealthy placed their pet projects on the statewide ballot….

Stanford and other California universities brace for budget cuts. In Today’s Mercury News.

Amid a deepening financial crisis, Stanford University has announced plans to cut expenses by slowing some construction projects, controlling salaries and perhaps eliminating some jobs….

Four Days: "it is the duty of every citizen to think"

In October of 1860, the editor of the Atlantic, James Russell Lowell endorsed Abraham Lincoln for president. The Atlantic has taken this opportunity to reprint his endorsement.

Rebel Girl has pulled out some interesting passages below, but you can click "The Election in November" to read the rest—a facinating window in the the country we were then and the one we are now.

"...The true danger to popular forms of government begins when public opinion ceases because the people are incompetent or unwilling to think. In a democracy it is the duty of every citizen to think; but unless the thinking result in a definite opinion, and the opinion lead to considerate action, they are nothing.

...We are persuaded that the election of Mr. Lincoln will do more than anything else to appease the excitement of the country. He has proved both his ability and his integrity; he has had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician. That he has not had more will be no objection to him in the eyes of those who have seen the administration of the experienced public functionary whose term of office is just drawing to a close. He represents a party who know that true policy is gradual in its advances, that it is conditional and not absolute, that it must deal with fact and not with sentiments, but who know also that it is wiser to stamp out evil in the spark than to wait till there is no help but in fighting fire with fire. They are the only conservative party, because they are the only one based on an enduring principle, the only one that is not willing to pawn tomorrow for the means to gamble with today. They have no hostility to the South, but a determined one to doctrines of whose ruinous tendency every day more and more convinces them.

The encroachments of Slavery upon our national policy have been like those of a glacier in a Swiss valley. Inch by inch, the huge dragon with his glittering scales and crests of ice coils itself onward, an anachronism of summer, the relic of a bygone world where such monsters swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old, fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us that such enormous devastators once covered the face of the earth, but the benignant sunlight of heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leaving no trace but here and there the scratches of their talons, and the gnawed boulders scattered where they made their lair. We have entire faith in the benignant influence of Truth, the sunlight of the moral world, and believe that slavery, like other worn-out systems, will melt gradually before it. 'All the earth cries out upon Truth, and the heaven blesseth it; ill works shake and tremble at it, and with it is no unrighteous thing.'"

McCain & Palin's "assault on intellectual life"

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

Will Khalidi Displace Ayers as McCain’s Favorite Prof?:

For a while, it seemed as if no professor could get more attention from the McCain campaign than William Ayers, the Weather Underground leader who became an education scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago and whose brief associations with Sen. Barack Obama have been repeatedly discussed by Republicans this fall. But with the campaign winding down, it may be that Ayers has been replaced by Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.

Prior to joining Columbia’s faculty, Khalidi taught at the University of Chicago — at the same time Obama taught there. Their children attended the same school. Khalidi helped raise some funds for Obama’s early campaigns. The two faculty colleagues and their wives apparently dined out together, and Obama spoke at a farewell party for Khalidi.

While Khalidi has no role at all in the Obama campaign, he was the focus of attention Tuesday and Wednesday from both Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin. McCain demanded that the Los Angeles Times release a video it obtained of Khalidi’s farewell party at the University of Chicago. McCain accused the Los Angeles paper of “intentionally suppressing” the videotape, even though it was a Times article that revealed its existence. (The newspaper said it obtained the tape on the condition that it not be released, and the newspaper is honoring its agreement.)

Then Wednesday, Palin focused on Khalidi in a speech in Ohio. “It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years,” Palin said. “This is important because his associate, Rashid Khalidi ... in addition to being a political ally of Barack Obama, he’s a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization.” A CNN “Fact Check” on the Palin speech declared it “misleading,” noting that Khalidi has had minimal contact with Obama for years, that the two men disagree strongly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that Khalidi plans absolutely no role in the campaign, and there is considerable dispute over whether Khalidi ever worked for the PLO. (It is not disputed that Khalidi is a strong advocate for the Palestinian cause and a harsh critic of Israel.)
…
Some experts on academic freedom have been viewing the increasing use of professors by the GOP campaign with alarm. While anti-intellectualism is no stranger to American campaigns, the specific and repeated targeting of professors in such a prominent way is worrisome to them, and fallout is already taking place….
…
One irony of the attack on Khalidi is that McCain himself has ties to him. As The Huffington Post noted, McCain led a Republican institute that in the 1990s sent several grants to a Palestinian research center founded by Khalidi. “Of course, there’s seemingly nothing objectionable with McCain’s organization helping a Palestinian group conduct research in the West Bank or Gaza. But it does suggest that McCain could have some of his own explaining to do as he tries to make hay out of Khalidi’s ties to Obama,” the blog said.

Zachary Lockman, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University and a member of the Academic Freedom Committee of the Middle East Studies Association, also said he was troubled by the attacks. Khalidi is “a very distinguished scholar” who is both “passionate for the Palestinian cause” and “a moderate who talks to a wide range of people.” To imply that he is a terrorist, Lockman said, attacks and distorts his ideas.

“This reflects a certain kind of anti-intellectualism; rather than engaging with people and having a serious discussion, people are caricatured and reduced to labels and accused of being anti-American,” he said. “It’s dangerous. It’s an assault on scholarly life and intellectual life and rational discussion.”….