At the University of Michigan, a group of cowardly students forced the cancellation of a showing of the film American Sniper, claiming it “promotes anti-Muslim…rhetoric” and “create(s) an unsafe space that does not allow for positive dialogue.” Although I have not seen the movie, the various reviews I’ve seen make it clear that viewers are walking away from the film with different interpretations. Which is to say that it appears to be precisely the kind of movie that actively promotes critical thinking and creates an opportunity for students to engage in productive dialogue.

These efforts–too often successful–to preemptively foreclose debate because it might make some students uncomfortable seem to be growing in frequency. This is a disturbing trend. It’s different from the familiar habit of college administrators trying to squelch free speech because they want a nice, quiet, Stepford campus. This is college students demanding they not be exposed to ideas because they don’t want to be discomfited.

But that’s what education is about. We don’t learn unless we are made uncomfortable. The most well-educated person is the one who regularly reads those whose views are opposed to their own, who can make their intellectual opponents’ arguments as accurately–or even more so–than their opponents can, and who can accurately critique the weaknesses of their own perspective. There’s an old saying that a good research project is one in which you can believe the author’s mind could be changed.

This is the heart of the liberal arts ideal. By studying economics, my views on politics were challenged and changed. By studying anthropology and evolution, my understanding of human nature and the possibilities of human organization were shaped, which structured my views on politics. By studying psychology my perspective on the possibility of markets was refined.

If students refuse to be challenged, they will never become educated. If they run from debate by shutting it down, they will never hear challenges to their perspectives, will never learn the weaknesses of their ideas, will never learn to critically evaluate their beliefs, and will never learn to intellectually defend their understanding of the world around them.

In short, these students have rejected the ideal of the liberal arts education.

The liberal arts are a hard sell these days. People want to know how their course of study will lead to a job. All evidence is that a liberal arts education is a great basis for a broad range of careers, but perhaps too broad, because the direct connections may not exist. I can explain to students how a history major became an international shipping executive, or how an English Major ended up managing international supply chains, but the paths are so contingent, so unique and unrepeatable, that they provide little clear guidance. So students, or at least their parents, shy away from the liberal arts.

And of course careers matter, especially given the cost of college. But the reason the liberal arts are a good foundation for careers is because they train people to think and to learn, to incorporate disparate ideas from different fields and link them together to make sense of things. But not only do too few people see how that connects to careers, they no longer–assuming many people ever did–value critical thinking for itself, for its intrinsic value and the intangible value it adds to the individual’s life. They don’t value it for what it makes of a person.

This is the consequence: students who demand they not be challenged because it is uncomfortable, who demand intellectual safety over intellectual challenge, and who view their epistemic closure as right- thinking.

In the bigger picture this matters because a self-governing republic very well may require an educated populace: people who can think critically about different policy alternatives; citizens who can recognize that their own favored ideas are also imperfect; a public that can understand that vigorous public debate and open discussion of alternatives they dislike is not a threat to liberty but is the essence of liberty; a public that can accept electoral and policy losses without interpreting them as a sign of the system’s illegitimacy.

There is an irony for conservatives here. They have in many ways been at the forefront of the attack on the liberal arts, both because they don’t see enough monetary value in, for example, a theater degree, and because they object to the ways in which liberal academics have challenged their world view and made them uncomfortable. And now there are an increasing number of liberal students taking up that cause and making the same demands, but about conservative views.

And there is also an irony for liberals. In the 1960s liberal students fought for the right to freely discuss and learn about challenging ideas–they fought for intellectual openness. Today liberal students fight against free discussion and teaching of challenging ideas–they fight for intellectual closure.

The American academy is deeply imperiled by a host of factors, including rising costs, a public that doesn’t appreciate what education really does for a person, professors who don’t think it’s their job to teach the public that value (while sneering at them for not understanding it), anti-intellectual administrators, and accrediting agencies that impose ever more inflexible standards that undermine creativity and experimentation in teaching. If the idea of education is assaulted by the students as well, our last best hope for an educated public may disappear.

Over There, I posted about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s college career, and whether or not it should be considered in his run for the presidency:

There are a lot of professional positions that do not require a college degree. Ultimately, most don’t, because if they did, they would go unfilled. There is also an argument to be made that a lot of jobs that do require college degrees probably shouldn’t, though no doubt Okeem would disagree with that.

To be sure, there are jobs where college degrees matter a great deal. If I’m going under a scalpel, I probably want the scalpel-wielder to have either an MD or a DO or its equivalent. Engineers should demonstrate formal training in engineering. With rare except, teachers and professors should have their appropriate degrees. There is nothing elitist or snobbish about saying so.

It is perhaps ironic that executive positions are not always among that. He mentions, but dismisses the Bill Gates example. But after becoming an entrepreneur, Bill Gates did represent a gargantuan enterprise. Nobody thought that Microsoft’s Board ought to have replaced him so that their company could be represented by someone with a degree. And if Bill Gates were to want to get back into the business world, he would be (and should be) judged entirely on what he accomplished in business. As far as hiring goes, the importance of a college degree is that it gives employers a greater degree of confidence that you can achieve. If you have already achieved, then it’s beside the point.

I’m honestly a little bit (but only a little bit) surprised by the number of people who really stick to “it matters” and believe that a college degree confers something in accord with experience.

I think it can matter as a brick in the wall of a larger argument, that he is intellectually dim, lacks knowledge really important to the presidency, or doesn’t follow through. To date, I don’t find any such arguments convincing. In large part because of what he has accomplished since college. That’s not an endorsement. You can look at what he’s accomplished and say “There is no way I am ever voting for the guy!” but he’s not a mayor of Wasilla and a governor who has barely gotten their feet wet. There’s a record to look at that, in my view, has to be far more illuminating than the decisions he made twenty years ago with regard to his college education.

There also seem to be people who really believe that Obama’s life and experience equipped him to be president more than Walker, including the part about Obama’s BA and JD but also because the Senate is a better launching pad to the presidency. We’ve had a strong bias towards governors for quite some time, and I think it’s quite possible that the pendulum has swung. I think the argument is actually quite solid that we’ve put too much stock in governorships. But I think four years as governor of a mid-size state is always going to trump two years as a senator, and there is little else in their background to strongly distinguish between the two.

Though this is not an endorsement of Hillary Clinton, I do think we overloop cabinet appointees too often, particularly Secretaries of State and Defense, and maybe Attorney General. I’d add Treasury, but it would probably do a disservice to the position for it to be considered a launching pad to the presidency.

Anyway, lots of comments over there. Feel free to leave your thoughts here.

So what universities should call themselves is something I have strong opinions about. So when a conversation broke out on the subject last week, I knew that I would have to write a very long post on the subject. Now, I fear that universities will not actually take my advice here. Often, there’s a fair amount of history behind the name. In some cases, though (like UNLV and UN-Omaha) one proposed name or another (Nevada State or University of Omaha) has historical ties.

Franchise universities (University of State at City or SSU-City)

I’m not a big fan of the concept of franchising universities. University systems are fine, but the constant refrain of University of State at City gets to be pretty obnoxious when the only thing that the Universities of State often have in common is the name and a chancellor. Other than that, different location, different professors, different admission standards, and different reputations. I know that faculty at the franchise schools often like the association, but the benefits seem largely illusory to me. I’m not sure anybody confuses Colorado State University at Pueblo with the real Colorado State. The cost of which is that the sidekick school lacks identity. The University of Southern Colorado may be a regional state school, but it’s at least a school and not an appendage. For the flagship university, it dilutes the brand. Once the University of Texas becomes the University of Texas at Austin it is no longer the University of Texas. It is the best of many, but only one of many.

It gets even worse in states that have no flagship University of or even University of of note.. Seriously, Alaska? You have like three universities and all of them have to be University of Alaska? Alaska State University is available! University of Anchorage would be an improvement! I understand why Louisiana has more than one University of Louisiana with neither being a flagship, but that represents petty politics and a failure of the imagination more than anything. Other states of interest are Nevada and Nebraska.

There are exceptions to this, one of which was hit on in the post: California. The University of California system is what it is, and a school would be nuts to not want to be associated with that (assisted in great part by the willingness of UCLA to be a franchise school, albeit a premier one). The other exception is if you have a strong academic institution without much desire to be its own brand. Having a University of Texas at Dallas doesn’t particularly interfere with UT or UTD, because the latter can really succeed as an academically impressive satellite school and the former isn’t particularly diminished by having a satellite school of UTD’s caliber. The shorthand for this is that if a school doesn’t want its own mascot and its own sports teams, then maybe it doesn’t actually need its own name. Or put another way, being a franchise school is something you should grow out of – if you choose to – rather than something you grow into.

Bidirectionalism (DirectionDirection(ern) State University)

If there’s one thing that’s worse than the sidekickdom of being a franchise school, it’s being a bidirectional school. Then you don’t even have a name suggesting that you may represent up to half of the state, you’ve got a corner of it. The names are also invariably long and clunky.

And there are almost always better names available. Such things are subjective, of course, but if I’m wanting to tell people where I graduated from, all other things being equal I’d prefer a vast number of alternatives to University of State at City, and especially DirectionDirectionern State University.

Modifiers (State Modifier University)

Modifiers run the gamut from good to bad, though I generally place them above franchise and bidirectional, and often but not always below directional or city-based names. I list it first because it contains some of the best alternatives, even if they’re often not available, and some of the worst alternatives, which themselves need alternatives.

Ever since Pennsylvania had to figure out what to call it’s public university (with University of Pennsylvania being taken and all), State has become the default modifier. Mostly used for land grant schools (Oregon, Montana, North Carolina), sometimes used for HBCUs (South Carolina, Delaware, Alabama), and occasionally a regional university gets promoted to the name (ID, TX, MO). It’s a staple of university namage, which means that few are available (the exceptions being states with nigh-universal franchising). State is available for one of the Alaska schools. Also for UNLV, which could have changed its name from Nevada Southern to Nevada State without so much as changing its NSU initials. It’s a bit more complicated now, though, that there is a Nevada State College. And lastly, Nebraska State University is a more impressive sounding name to me than the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

It might have been preferable had more of the land grants either stayed A&M’s (like Texas A&M did) or gone with Tech, as they did in Virginia, leaving State open for other schools. Given the mission of land grants, it would make sense. Tech has also been used for mining schools (Montana, New Mexico), and some general purpose technical schools (Arkansas, Louisiana) or former technical schools (Texas). Some land grants, of course, still use the A&M name for their land grants (or, more commonly, their HBCU land grants). For those that have university missions that correspond with A&M or Tech, but need another name, the school known as University of Missouri-Rolla became Missouri S&T (Missouri University of Science and Technology), which is a good one.

As an exception to the California exception, though, I think UC-Davis – the state’s designated “ag school” could benefit from being called California A&M. That school is impressive enough that it could carry its own brand.

Nobody has done more modifier names than Florida. This is due in part to Florida being the largest state without any franchising whatsoever. It’s also a state with an unusually low number of (very large) universities. It has stretched the ability to use modifiers, thus leading to names like Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University, both of which we should consider alternatives for because their names make them sound like for-profit strip-mall schools. Okay, that’s going a little far, but for major schools – as those two seek to be and both of which have over 25,000 students – they should aim for something different.

So let’s explore the alternatives!

Directionalism (University of Direction(ern) State)

The bigger a state, the more appropriate directions in school names are. The existence of a Southern Connecticut State is kind of weird to me, and is not much more notable to me than West Rock University would be. On the other hand, Southern California! South Florida! North Texas! Northern Illinois! All of those make sense to me as representing a significant chunk of land, people, or both. This is particularly true in states that have natural divisions, which the larger states tend to.

The word “bigger” here is more direction at geographical size than population, though is some degree a reference to both. It was good of Idaho (geographically large, but not population large) to avoid regional markers even though the state does split into directions pretty cleanly. With few enough universities, though, you don’t need to go that route. Montana has a larger number of schools, and some of them servicing areas with little population, so throwing in Western and Northern is less of an issue and preferable to the franchising they ultimately did.

I tend to prefer hard directions over positional directions. South Florida being better than Southern Florida. Except in cases like California, where SoCal is referred to Southern California as a region and not just as a university. (The same can be said for Middle Tennessee, which I will mention shortly.)

Directionalism can often work for the bidirectional schools. It’s easier for Louisiana than it is for Missouri. Northwestern is mostly Western, Southeastern is mostly eastern, Northeastern is mostly Northern, and Southwestern is mostly Southern. And since Southwestern and Northeastern are UL-Lafayette and UL-Monroe, you could just go with South(ern) and North(ern) if you were so inclined (Louisiana Tech might object to Northern, though, as they consider themselves the college of NorLa, but it would allow Northwestern State U to at least keep their logo and LaTech might not be as threatened by Northwestern State as they sometimes act with regards to ULM. Two of Missouri’s four bidirectionals have also taken on new names (Missouri State and Truman State), so theoretically you have some versatility unifying the directions on those. Or you can use city designations. Oklahoma has multiple bidirectionals, most of which could be tacked with a unidirectional name (Southeast to South, Northeast to East, Panhandle State to West or something incorporating the Panhandle but not the State)

In the case of the Florida schools, there is one unused direction, so a consideration for Florida Atlantic would be East Florida University or the University of East Florida.

Exceptions, we have some. The University of Central Florida, for example, would probably do well to move down the list to a city designation (University of Orlando). Notably, UCF is one of those schools that asks to be referred to by its initials instead of its full name. That’s a sign of changing to something else is in order. Middle Tennessee State has allegedly been trying to change its name to the University of Middle Tennessee for years, without much success. University of Direction State is almost always better than Direction State State University, even if its a non-direction like middle. But it would be better if there were either a good modifier or a city designation for it to use. Unfortunately, it’s in a town called Murfreesboro, and that won’t do. The only possibility is to skip to the People Names section.

On the other hand, the non-directional name would still be an improvement for bidirectional states. Northwestern State in Louisiana, for example, is technically in Central Louisiana and UCL would be an improvement (albeit one that might jinx them for sports injuries).

City Designation (University of City, City/County University, City/County State University)

The larger the urban area, the better University of City works. If the city itself is less remarkable, City University also works. Sometimes that’s not available, though, City State University is a possibility (though not always the best one). (Where applicable, you can insert County instead of city.) No matter what you’re looking at, though, the more noteworthy the city, the more you want to identify with it. University of City is the tightest identification, followed by City University, followed by City State University. So if it’s Charlotte, you go with University of Charlotte. If it’s Greensboro, you go with Greensboro University. The only reason you would go with City State is if the lack of state is already taken (like San Diego) or if you’re bound and determined to try to keep some sort of association with State State University (see exception below).

Relatedly, I’m rather dumbfounded that Boise State University is still named Boise State University. Even if I’m glad they aren’t the University of Idaho at Boise.

University of City designations would work for Central Florida (U of Orlando), UNC-Charlotte (U of Charlotte). On the other hand, if you want to go with Boca Raton for FAU, Boca Raton University is probably better than the reverse, and Greensboro University is probably better than the University of Greensboro. For the same reason that Auburn University is better than the University of Auburn would be (though Alabama Tech would have been better than both). Miami State University is the solution to the FIU problem, in my opinion. The University of Miami is taken, as is Miami University. But Miami State University is available.

For the Missouri bidirectionals, Cape Girardeau University has a nice liberal arts university sound to it, though Maryville University is taken (by a university in Saint Louis, interestingly enough).

In the case of Nebraska-Omaha, I should point out that the university was originally called the Municipal University of Omaha, University of Omaha is the original name minus the word Municipal).

Exceptions, we have some. Fresno State may benefit from an association with San Diego State more than it would be helped by being Fresno University or the University of Fresno. Just as California is an exception for University of franchising, Going uniformly with City State University might be advantageous in that particular case. That would be Sacramento State University, though, and not CSU-Sacramento. (Likewise, Texas schools in the Texas A&M system might benefit from being Corpus Christi A&M instead of the University of Corpus Christi… maybe.) There is also a general exception if the city name doesn’t work. Murfreesboro is an example. Hattiesburg is probably another one.

People Names

Northeastern Missouri State changed its name to Truman State, and that was definitely an upgrade. James Madison University is a better name than any I can think of that’s left in the state of Virginia. Ditto George Mason. If you have a good president’s name to use, that might be something to consider. Tennessee has former presidents of significance in the form of Andrew Jackson and James Polk, so those would be possibilities. Both would be controversial, though, and neither are probably as good as even the mediocre Middle Tennessee name (if they could get the University of Middle Tennessee name, at any rate). It wouldn’t have to be presidential, so theoretically a school in Mississippi could use MLK if they were so inclined.

Other

It is my considered opinion that the University of Southwestern Louisiana should have given up its dream of being the University of Louisiana a long time ago, and accepted the University of Acadiana as its name. Acadiana is the name of the region that it’s in (in Trumanverse, it’s the name of an entire state). I can’t think of any other example, though.

Business Insider has a list of the most underrated colleges in America. It’s essentially a comparison of graduate wages beside USNWR ratings and looking at the outliers. It’s a crude methodology, but illuminating all of the same.

The most obvious thing is the frequent appearance of technical schools. The New Jersey Institute of Technology is #1, Missour S&T is #5, Louisiana Tech is #8, Illinois Institute of Technology is #12, and Michigan Tech is #15 (with privates Clarkston and Stephens also up there). This is unsurprising, given the givens. I’m a little surprised not to see South Dakota School of Mines on the list, given that not long ago their graduates were outearning Harvard’s. Colorado School of Mines is there, though.

Land Grant universities are also represented from Arizona, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Utah, and Idaho. Notably, there are no state flagship universities on the list, excluding those that are also the land grants.

The University of Alabama at Huntsville is #10. UAH comes up when we talk about athletics programs. They’re a notably good one that doesn’t have any football program to speak of. Maybe they wouldn’t be so unrecognized if they fielded a football team.

Some, like UAH, Texas Tech, and Houston are aided by their proximity to economically hot areas, but that doesn’t seem to help the Dakota schools. And Michigan Tech is on the list, so there are limits to that theory.

So Will admits he tried to bait me into writing about this prof at Marquette U. who’s been blogging about the school, which has now announced they’re revoking his tenure and firing him, which has him claiming they’re violating his academic freedom. Here‘s the prof’s side of the story. In a nutshell, an undergraduate student complained about a graduate student instructor, this prof (from a different department) blogged about it, and the solid waste struck the spinning blades. Will asked my thoughts, a subtle hint that went right over my head as I replied to him via email. Here’s what I wrote.
_____________

Well, he’s a political science prof, so I say fire him.

More seriously, this looks like a case of everyone behaving badly.

1. The graduate student instructor didn’t handle the discussion well. Although despite her being a feminist vegan philosopher, which means I’d probably have extensive disagreements with her, I’m sympathetic because it takes time to learn how to manage students well–after about 14 years I still feel like I’m learning that.

2. The undergrad student is badly mistaken if he thinks he has a right to class discussion on his pet issue.

3. I think the blogger prof is incorrect to call his blog an issue of academic freedom. Not everything we say comes under academic freedom just because we’re academics. For some people that becomes a nice coverall for everything they want to do, without restraint. That doesn’t mean I think there’s necessarily anything wrong with the prof blogging about these things.

4. The Arts & Sciences Dean is probably violating the University’s own policy, as seen in point c here:

“When he/she speaks or writes as a citizen, he/she should be free from institutional censorship or discipline.”

But if the prof is not speaking as a citizen, but as a member of the University, then academic freedom probably does apply.

Marquette is of course private, so it has greater freedom of action here than a public university might, and I don’t find that it has a faculty union (although it might, and I just can’t find a note of it), which would mean the blogger prof has less of a leg to stand on.

For my part, I find it unwise to blog too openly about what happens in my place of work. Some faculty get pretty arrogant and think they’re untouchable and any repercussions for what they say about their place of employment are totally illegitimate. I can’t really speak to the issue of legitimacy of repercussions, but I know from observation that legitimate or not, repercussions do happen, and people who act like they’re immune are idiotic, or, to put it more nicely, un-strategic.
___________________

To add just a bit more, academic freedom is intended to allow people the freedom to research controversial issues, and argue for controversial findings/interpretations of those issues, without repercussions, so we don’t stunt the search for knowledge. Its purpose is not to allow us to criticize our employers (although of course protection for that is nice as well, just for a different set of reasons).

Nor, I think, is academic freedom intended to protect people for any particular political stances they want to yammer about publicly. The University of Illinois, for example, did not, in my opinion, violate the academic freedom of Steven Salaita. But being a public university, bound by the First Amendment, they arguably violated his free speech rights.

And yet I have a hard time imagining the same uproar had Illinois rescinded the hiring of an academic who tweeted that gangbangers were responsible for white racism, as Salaita tweeted that Zionists were responsible for anti-semitism. Defenses of speech and academic freedom are sometimes selective. My graduate program once counted political activity towards tenure, until someone asked what they’d do if they had a politically active white supremacist in the department. That crystallized the reality that it wasn’t really political activism they approved of, but the correct type of political activism, even if those bounds were rather wide.

There’s often a fine line between political activism and academic activity. As an academic I’m persuaded that its foolish for governments to grant rents to firms, but if I stand up at a city council meeting and oppose a tax credit to lure a business to town, is that academic or political? What about if a geologist talks publicly for/against fracking? Perhaps the obscurity of the line is what leads academics to think that any pronouncement they make is covered by academic freedom. And in the Marquette prof’s case, I’m not seeing that journalism, as the professor (correctly) notes he’s doing, about the university itself, counts as academic freedom for a political scientist.*

Whatever the cause, I think we ought to be more humble about how we extend the concept of academic freedom. The step from research findings to applications is so fraught with problems, and with such a history of failure (in all disciplines), that I think we ought to view application, or at least public argument for application, as something distinct from the freedom to research something. Those arguments ought nevertheless be covered by freedom of speech, for those faculty who work at public universities. And private universities would probably be well-served to privately extend a guarantee of freedom of speech as well. But they don’t have to.

__________
*Our faculty union contract with our private college explicitly states that we have academic freedom concerning things in our area of specialty. The Art Historian who makes pronouncements about global warming? That’s not necessarily covered, and I’m not sure it should be. If academic freedom is designed to allow us to learn more about controversial issues, it doesn’t seem intended to protect us in talking out of our asses about things we haven’t actually studied at all.

Let me state upfront. Civility should never be a standard for freedom of speech. The state should not punish people for engaging in “uncivil” speech and those who engage in “uncivil” speech deserve the protection of the law. If there are any exceptions I can’t think of them right now.

Let me also state upfront. It was wrong for the U of I system to “non-hire” Steven Salaita for the incivility of his tweets, etc. It was wrong on procedural grounds. An excellent case is to be made that when the department invited him “pending approval of the Board of Trustees,” that approval was intended to be pro forma. It was also wrong because the U of I system is a public institution, and a public institution ought to have a darn good reason when it discriminates against a prospective employee’s speech without a showing that that prospect’s speech would negatively affect his or her job performance. And the Board of Trustees, as far as I know, made no finding that Mr. Salaita’s incivility would affect his teaching. If I am wrong, please provide me evidence and if the evidence is compelling, I’ll revise my objection as to the Board’s finding but probably not to the procedural grounds.

But with that out of the way, when it comes to academic speech civility can be a legitimate restriction.

Most university professors play three roles. They teach. They participate in shared governance, such as committee work. And they perform scholarship through publishing, giving public lectures, participating at conferences, authoring blogs, making themselves available for interviews on documentaries, and doing other things.

In that last role, when they speak they are speaking ex academia. When they speak ex academia, they speak from within the bounds set by their institution, by members of their department, and by members of their discipline, such as those who edit and referee the journals, create conferences, and comment on public statements made in the general area of their discipline.

Those “bounds” or standards are many and they evolve over time. A historian today who states that antebellum slaves in the United States were basically happy and loved and were well-served by their masters is transgressing a pretty solid boundary. If that historian makes such an argument and hasn’t the evidence to back it up or doesn’t at least make the necessary qualifications about the nature of slavery or the difficulties of the type of evidence that is available, he or she will be shunned out of what is considered acceptable for the profession.

If that person is an emeritus/a, they* might be smiled at as a crank or curmudgeon. If that person is a tenured professor, they might find themselves invited to or accepted by fewer journals or conferences. If that person is a tenure-track scholar and their argument about slavery is pretty much the sum total of all they’re about when they speak ex academia, they may very well be denied tenure unless they’re a superstar (or at least hardworking and willing) teacher or the “committee martyr” type that seems to exist in medium- to large-sized academic departments. If that person is a junior scholar, he or she will have a pretty hard time getting hired. The departments will take that speech into account, especially if speaking ex academia is a big part of the job.

That particular “standard” is not a civility standard. It’s also not a firm standard. But it is a standard nonetheless. The literature on the essential violence that was chattel slavery in the U.S. is so broadly accepted that at the very least anyone who claims there were some benefits for the slaves (such as Fogel and Engerman, whose book I have not read but about which there is a Wikipedia article here) must acknowledge it and either (unlikely) refute it or (more likely) find certain benefits that coexisted with the violence.

That example risks violating an American version of Godwin’s Law. And to be clear, I think an outright denial of the essential violence of slavery is akin to the outright denial of the scale of mass-murder executed by any mid-twentieth century despot. And to be further clear, I also realize that such a case is a marginal one. But my goal is only (or mostly) to demonstrate that a standard exists and legitimately so. And I don’t think many will disagree in the abstract. And if they do, I’d concede that disagreeing in the abstract about even such propositions often falls in within the bounds set by any given discipline.

But enough meta. What does this have to do with civility? This: It’s possible that enough members of a discipline can decide on certain standards of argumentation deemed acceptable for speaking ex academia that invoke something like treating interlocutors with respect and evincing a respectful attitude toward, say, humans as humans. It’s possible that departments or even entire institutions can make such a standard applicable to judging one’s statements when made ex academia.

Would an academic journal be acting legitimately within its discipline if it declined to publish anything that relied mostly on ad hominem attacks against other scholars? I believe it could. Would an academic department be acting legitimately within its discipline if it declined to hire a controversial person because that person, in the judgment of those who ran the department, engages in uncivil speech? I believe it could. Would a university, in judging the scholarship of a professor applying for tenure, be acting legitimately by considering that professor’s argumentation against the norms of the discipline in which he/she works? I believe it could.

(For the record, I have read at least a smattering of journal articles that seem to be based on ad hominem argumentation. And one way to conceive of the whole “postmodern” approach to academic discussions is as an argument that ad hominems are valid.  Maybe ad hominems are not per se “uncivil,” but attacking the background and good faith of one’s discussant at least edges toward the border of civility.)

I should state that as a practical matter, judgments of civility and incivility should err on the side of speech. It’s better to leave such determinations to the departments that have to work with whomever they hire. (Again, that’s as a practical matter. I don’t concede that academic departments are necessarily any fairer than a board of trustees would be. But a less centralized approach will probably bring about better outcomes.)

I wish to limit my discussion to instances when a scholar speaks ex academia. When the scholar is speaking as a colleague or teacher, a different, probably higher, standard of civility should apply. When speaking ex civitate (as a citizen), a lower standard should apply.

I live in the real world and realize that when someone who is introduced as a “Professor of X” at a political rally, whether that person is speaking ex academia or ex civitate is probably an open question, and his or her employing institution is well-advised to err on the side of more speech. If that institution is a state-run institution, then well-advised approaches something like “categorically should be required to.”  I don’t want to insist that “when it’s public, it changes everything,” but if it is the state doing the censuring, it’s almost a freedom of speech issue.

Disciplines have standards about what is discussable and about how what is discussable is to be discussed. Academic speech—properly limited to those situations when the scholar is speaking ex academia and not, say, as a citizen, as a teacher, or as a colleague—can be legitimately restricted based on those standards. And civility can be one of them.

*Yes, I realize I am shifting back and forth between the “he or she” and “they” formulations.  I have no excuse.  It just seems, to me, to flow better sometimes one way, sometimes another.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has proposed that adjuncts should get paid $15,000 per course.

[O]rganizers argue that if you’re teaching a full load of three courses per semester, that comes out to $90,000 in total compensation per year — just the kind of upper-middle-class salary they think people with advanced degrees should be able to expect.

I also teach 3 classes per term, but after 12 years in the business I still don’t get paid $90,000 year. And I have advising, committeework, recruitment, and research expectations on top of the teaching load.

These are folks who think that an advanced degree creates an entitlement, an obligation on others. It doesn’t. And it misunderstands the issue of value.

“It’s not a path to competitiveness to pay knowledge workers bottom-level wages,” says Gary Rhoades, head of the Department of Educational and Policy Studies at the University of Arizona, who has assisted in various adjunct organizing efforts, including the SEIU’s.

This is word salad. Over 20 years ago Paul Krugman pointed out that “Most people who use the term “competitiveness” do so without a second thought.” In Rhoades’ claim, who is in competition with whom, and how does paying adjuncts more than necessary to get qualified ones enhance that competitiveness?

Here’s the ugly truth about adjuncts: there are far too many people willing to be adjuncts for far too many years–their problem is not stingy colleges and universities but the number of other would-be adjuncts competing for the same positions.

What will happen to that number if the pay were to go from around $2500 per class to $15,000 per class? The pool of adjuncts would increase again. People get burned out and quit on adjuncting in part because of the low pay, making room for others to get adjuncting gigs. But if someone can make $60,000/year for teaching 4 classes, instead of $15,000/year for 6 classes (which is not uncommon), they’re not going to clear the field so quickly, and there’s going to be more competition for jobs.

Employing institutions are also going to increase their standards for whom they hire. That guy with the MA and no publications who’s been teaching American Government for us for years? Sorry, we want a PhD with a publication as our adjunct.

And then there’s the question of who pays for this; ultimately it’s going to be the students and/or taxpayers, and they’re not going to get more value for their money. The SEIU doesn’t care about that, though. It’s not their job to care where the money comes from. It’s only their job to gain more dues payers by feeding frustrated academics’ sense of entitlement.

[New guy here, by the grace of Will. I teach political science and political economy at a small private college.]

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has proposed budget cuts for the University of Wisconsin system and suggested that faculty could help balance the budget by teaching an extra class.

In the future, by not having limitations of things like shared governance, they might be able to make savings just by asking faculty and staff to consider teaching one more class a semester.

There are multiple problems with this statement. First, I wonder if Walker is confusing shared governance with unionism, thinking that the elimination of public sector unions in Wisconsin eliminates shared governance at the university? But unionism is about working conditions, whereas shared governance is about the overall organization, operation, procedures and focus of the organization (e.g., the process for proposing new courses or changes to degree requirements). The boundaries between the two are undeniably blurry–at my own school we often have to pause and reflect upon whether the particular issue we want to address is most appropriately dealt with in the Faculty meeting (shared governance) or in the Union meeting (unionism). It’s a bit amusing, since the two bodies almost wholly overlap, but nonetheless the forum matters. And from my non-expert but not wholly ignorant perspective, teaching load is purely a working conditions issue, not a shared governance issue at all.

Second, Walker makes the basic error of assuming people are just reactive, instead of active: that they will just do as the rule tells them to do, instead of finding ways around the rule. (One of my standing rules of policymaking is to make policy for the people you have, not the people you wish you had.) The top researchers especially will be able to avoid this rule, because they are in demand and will be welcomed at other institutions. In 2009 UW-Madison ranked 9th in the country for federal research funds – receiving almost $600 million – and ranked 3rd in the country for most research and development expenditures, at over $1 billion. Damage UW-Madison’s research program by forcing those professor to spend more time teaching, and you’ll damage the reputation of the state’s flagship institution.

And teaching does take time, not just the hours in the classroom. Even for my most well-prepped class, American Government, I normally put in about 1/2 hour of prep for every hour in class. I know the material, but without review I may not remember all the elements of it that I want to address, or my presentation may not be as orderly and coherent. Imagine memorizing a speech, then giving it twice a year–if you could do it well each time without reviewing it again, my hat’s off to you. New courses, or courses I teach only occasionally, require more than 1 hour of prep per hour in class. That greatly cuts into the time available for research, which is one of the primary reasons faculty at teaching-oriented colleges and universities produce less research than those at research-focused universities.

Then there’s the time spent just thinking. On any given day at any given time someone peering into my office might assume I’m just browsing the internet for cat videos, reading for pleasure, or just staring blankly at the walls. But keeping up with developments in my areas of focus takes time. I not only have to read about them, I have to think about them. I’m familiar with faculty (and administrators) who have skimmed a book or research paper, pulled out an idea couched in memorable phrasing, and then proceeded to misapply it because they didn’t really take the time to think about it. (In one memorable case, as a graduate student I pointed out that a professor had misapplied an important idea from a notable economist, to which he replied, “I guess I ought to read that paper.”)

Thinking takes up just as much time when trying to write a research paper, or any document really. My department completed our program review document last week. On Tuesday I spent most of the day just writing the one page executive summary. (Have you ever tried summarizing a 100 page document in one page, while emphasizing your own tremendous awesomeness and how any imperfections could be solved easily if somebody outside your department would do the right thing while not offending that person who could do that right thing by making it sound like it’s their fault?) On Friday I spent 5 hours reviewing and editing the final draft. And today, Sunday, I am working on a new assignment for my American Government class that will require them to work with real data, which requires long pauses in writing while I think about how to make the directions clear to non-data oriented students.

Teach another class? I’ve actually done a fair amount of that lately, kinda sorta. That is, I’ve taught some overloads lately, but they involve 1/2 courses where I co-teach with someone else, so in a sense I’m only developing 1/4 of a course. It still takes time, though.

This is not to say “pity us poor college profs.” It’s not a bad gig. I worked a lot harder, at much greater personal risk, and for much less pay as a bike messenger. One of my own profs had previously worked at a nitroglycerine factory, until the old guys there–who all had occupational-induced emphysema–told him to get out and go to college so he didn’t end up like them. It’s just to say that the job takes time; that classroom-hours are not synonymous with workload; and that Walker can only get what he wants by damaging the impressive reputation of UW-Madison and thereby diminishing the reputation of the state as a whole.

[Disclosure: I do not teach in Wisconsin or at a public college/university.]

With applications and enrollment in law schools plummeting, law schools are having to lower their admissions standards:

Low scores on the Law School Admission Test have dipped at most schools in recent years, a new report shows. A paper released last month by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the nonprofit that creates part of the bar exam, shows that since 2010, 95 percent of the 196 U.S. law schools at least partially accredited by the American Bar Association for which the NCBE had data lowered their standards for students near the bottom of the pack. The NCBE compiled data from the American Bar Association and the Law School Admission Council, the group that administers the LSAT, to illustrate the decline in LSAT scores for students at the 25th percentile—meaning, the students who were at the very top of the bottom quartile of students.

Standards aren’t just falling at lower-tier schools—Emory University, ranked among the top 20 U.S. law schools by U.S. News and World Report, had the single largest drop in LSAT scores for this group, enrolling bottom-tier students who’d scored nine points worse than three years earlier—a 5 percent drop. In fact, 20 of the 22 U.S. News top-20 schools—there was a three-way tie for 20th place—were enrolling students with lower test scores. Across all schools, LSAT scores for the 25th percentile dropped an average of three points.

It’s not news that tough times have fallen on law schools and law degrees. Jobs in law are getting harder and harder to find, and the best and brightest are adapting to the new reality. But what having gone to law school has retained, thus far, is that the people who graduate from it are generally considered to be smart. If admissions criteria lower, will that change?

There have always been some questionable law schools out there. Not just some of the tent-pole schools that have only recently cropped up, but public schools as well (particularly HBCUs). Graduating from high school used to mean something, but at some point it became regarded by many as more a certificate of attendance than anything. College degrees, at least within some disciplines within some schools (particularly, but not exclusively, for-profit business park colleges) has similarly been devalued. A law degree from Harvard will always mean something, but will “a law degree” on its own fail to impress without knowing more (like “which school?”). Could be.

Law schools generally have something that other schools don’t, however: the bar exam. Unless they significantly dumb that down, the result of lower admission standards in law schools won’t be dumber lawyers, but law school graduates who can’t pass the bar. That is an extremely valuable tool. Schools that lower their standards too much should have an immediately apparent and transparent metric by which that will be made clear. Law schools can game and have gamed employment numbers. It seems harder for me to game bar passage rates. And since the tests are administered by states rather than by schools, it seems less likely that they will be lowered to make law schools look better.

Not that any of this will do a whole lot of good for New Yorkers who got law degrees from Arizona State and can’t put them to use, of course.e

Anna North thinks it’s time to ban middle school:

But separating middle schoolers out may actually be counterproductive. Mr. West said his research couldn’t pinpoint the exact reasons for the cliff, but the most likely explanation was that “there’s something about concentrating early adolescents in the same environment without the presence of students of different ages that creates challenges for education.” Essentially, throwing a bunch of 12- to 14-year-olds together with nobody else to mitigate their 12-to-14-ness might be a bad idea.

“It seems that there are benefits to students in early adolescence of the presence of much younger students,” he explained. “Perhaps that provides opportunities to be a leader, to be involved in mentoring relationships that are beneficial to students as they make the transition into adolescence.”

Middle schools may have some benefits for districts, Mr. West noted, like creating a diverse environment by drawing from multiple elementary schools. And until we know why middle school is bad for kids’ achievement, we can’t necessarily be sure getting rid of it will fix the problem. But, said Mr. West, “our research and that of others makes a strong case that districts should seriously consider alternatives to stand-alone middle schools.”

The logic makes sense to me. To me, one of the nuts I have yet to crack is a need for school, combined with the dangers of social norms being developed by youngers in large part due to their interactions with other youngsters. Having those awkward 12-14 year olds all together could exacerbate it.

Middle school is as close to hell as some people will ever see. This is known.

One of the big surprises, when I was doing the substitute teaching thing, was how much I liked middle school. It was probably my favorite assignment. If you’d have told me that before I started, I would have laughed.

The grade school kids are fun, no doubt, and it’s always an adventure. The high schoolers are more developed, and you can communicate with them in more of an adult fashion. But it’s a bit hard to connect with grade schoolers, and by the time they get to high school, the light in their eyes has dimmed. Grade schoolers have an enthusiasm for school and often for learning. By the time they get to high school, they’re in the holding tank. Middle school is that happy middle ground between the two. Happy for me, though probably as unhappy for them as it was for me when I was their age.

I don’t have strong opinions on whether or not middle school is something that should be done away with. My experience is that middle school was a very different environment from grade school because of the whole “switching classes” thing and the measure of independence that came with it. Independence which I consider to be a good thing.

My own middle school was grades 6-8. In arapaho, it was 7 and 8. I know in some places it is 7-9. Sixth graders were, in my view, too old to be in grade school, and too old to have the structure that goes with it. I actually think the same is true of fifth graders. If you were to collapse K-8, I’d prefer to see it done in a way that mitigates that. The problem is that having a bunch of students wandering the halls in between classes requires a degree of segregation that I am not sure doesn’t negate the alleged benefits presented for doing away with middle schools.

On the other hand, the data says what it says, and maybe delaying the autonomy is outweighed by other benefits?