Friday, March 18, 2005 On David Horowitz David Horowitz has waged a campaign for an academic bill of rights (see a critique here).
Ok, first the background. There has been a story going around the net about how a student was required to write an essay about George Bush was a war criminal; The student instead wrote about how Saddam Hussein was a war criminal, and was given an F. However, here is what a report on InsiderHighered.com said:
Because while a Northern Colorado spokeswoman acknowledged Monday that a complaint had been filed, she also said that the test question was not the one described by Horowitz, the grade was not an F, and therewere clearly non-political reasons for whatever grade was given. And the professor who has been held up as an example of out-of-control liberal academics? In an interview last night, he said that he’s a registered Republican.
In addition, the university was able to directly refute other statements made by Horowitz supporters. For instance, Students for Academic Freedom, a group that backs Horowitz, on Monday posted an articleon its Web site (which was then widely posted by conservatives on other Web sites) with the headline “University of Northern Colorado Story Confirmed.” The article, among other things, said that the professor in the course had been unable to produce any copies of the test questions. But the university has had the test the entire time — and the question isn’t the way it has been described by Horowitz ....
[College Spokesperson] Reynolds added that the student did not receive an F, and that although the instructions on the test said that answers were supposed to be at least three pages long, the student submitted only two pages on this question. In addition, Reynolds said that the student never had to answer this question. The test, she said, had four questions: two required questions and two others (including the disputed one) from which a student needed to select one.
So Horowitz got it wrong and backed down right? Well, sort of. Horowitz does admit he got crucial facts wrong. Actually, he says this a certain set of facts are wrong, but he does not think the set of corrected facts above is crucial to his complaint. You can read his explanation of ">why we-got-it wrong,-but-it-does-not-really-matter here. (One thing Horowitz does is go all 'postmodern' and says it was like a failing grade to that kid. --I'm sorry, I tell my students that if they do not turn in the minimum page count, the highest grade they can expect to get is a C, and that is assuming their paper is great (which is obviously unlikely).)
But let's get to the interesting stuff. Horowitz basically focuses on the bias in the question itself. As InsideHigherEd.com reports, the actual question has been provided by a university spokesperson:
The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government has “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated, “we may never find such weapons.” Cohen’s research on deviance discussed this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in-depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal?
Posted by Timothy,
10:15 PM
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Thursday, March 17, 2005 Helpless Conservatives in Academia Liberal activist Todd Gitlin (and frequent critic of the 'cultural left') writes:
Since when is higher education supposed to make you feel comfortable, anyway? In a largely unexamined triumph of marketplace values, college has come to be seen as a consumable product. Parents invest through the nose hoping for practical payoff. What follows is grade inflation, epidemic cheating, scorn for a common curriculum, and an all-around supermarket attitude. Consumer choice—embrace whatever turns you on, avoid what- ever turns you off—is elevated to a matter of high principle. But weren’t conservatives supposed to be fixing our minds on higher values?
Here’s the contradiction inherent in this right-wing crusade. In their sudden sensitivity to the comfort of minorities—ideological ones, in this case—the advocates of legislative intervention on campus speech discard one of the virtues that conservatives have long embraced: the insistence on standing strong. They tend to cast students as frail, helpless victims of “abuse” who need institutional muscle to defend them against forces of evil they dare not confront on their own.
Posted by Timothy,
1:38 AM
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Confusing the conservative talking points on 'Terrorist' and 'Insurgent' Right-wingers often complain when media outlets refer to "insurgents" in Iraq, rather than calling them "terrorists". This supposedly indicates the liberal media lack of moral clarity.
[conservative blogger] Big Trunk calls Robinson and Zywicki "insurgents" ("insurgent candidacies" was the exact term he used). Can we please stop using this term? The petition candidates are not terrorists, and I'm hugely surprised that conservatives, who are usually the first to point out bad examples of moral equivalence, are implicitly making such comparisons.
Meanwhile, Nick Desai of dartlog, the Dartmouth Review's weblog says: "Prof. Susan Ackerman asserts that the 'insurgent candidates' (Chien Wen Kung liquidates that term)"
First conservatives nationally complain that 'terrorist' and 'insurgent' are not equivilant, and say 'shame' on the liberal media for lacking moral clarity in using the term 'insurgent;. Now comes campus conservatives criticizing a liberal professor for using the term 'insurgent', which they now claim is morally equivilent to 'terrorist'. Make up your mind folks.
Posted by Timothy,
1:11 AM
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Wednesday, March 16, 2005 Helpless Conservatives in Academia Liberal activist Todd Gitlin (and frequent critic of the 'cultural left') writes:
Since when is higher education supposed to make you feel comfortable, anyway? In a largely unexamined triumph of marketplace values, college has come to be seen as a consumable product. Parents invest through the nose hoping for practical payoff. What follows is grade inflation, epidemic cheating, scorn for a common curriculum, and an all-around supermarket attitude. Consumer choice—embrace whatever turns you on, avoid what- ever turns you off—is elevated to a matter of high principle. But weren’t conservatives supposed to be fixing our minds on higher values?
Here’s the contradiction inherent in this right-wing crusade. In their sudden sensitivity to the comfort of minorities—ideological ones, in this case—the advocates of legislative intervention on campus speech discard one of the virtues that conservatives have long embraced: the insistence on standing strong. They tend to cast students as frail, helpless victims of “abuse” who need institutional muscle to defend them against forces of evil they dare not confront on their own.
Posted by Timothy,
10:47 PM
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Another in the Scalia Hall of Shame
JUSTICE SCALIA: And when somebody goes by that monument, I don't think they're studying each one of the commandments. It's a symbol of the fact that government comes — derives its authority from God. And that is, it seems to me, an appropriate symbol to be on State grounds. (link)
Posted by Timothy,
2:53 AM
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Monday, March 14, 2005 Odd I just got a message from the Association of Alumni with Todd Zywicki's first candidate email. I had already received it. Inside it said: "Our apologies if you receive this email twice. There was an error in the original distribution." The same just happened with Peter Robinson. It's a conspiracy!
Posted by Timothy,
9:17 PM
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Did Trustee Candidate Todd Zywicki know about the 1987 'Zete Sex Papers'? As many of you know, Zeta Psi fraternity was derecognized by the college in 2001 following the surfacing of 'The Zetemouth' (or Zete 'sex papers' as dubbed in original article in The Dartmouth). In the trustee election, I believe that supporters of the petitioner candidates have used the Zete derecognition as an example where Dartmouth does not respect free speech (I'm not sure if not the petitioner candidates themselves have used the example of Zete, but they certainly talk about the importance of free speech).
Anyway, I see from this post on the Dartmouth Review's weblog, that petitioner candidate Todd Zywicki '88 was a member of Zeta Psi. Reading that on google today, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what Todd Zywicki thought of the 'Zete sex papers'. And no, I do not mean the incident that caused the permanent derecognition of Zete in 2001. I mean the 'sex papers' that caused the temporary derecognition of Zeta in 1987, while Zywicki was at Dartmouth College (and presumably was probably by that time also a member of Zeta Psi, since he was an '88). During my senior year, The Dartmouth ran a story:
Zete sex papers not a new tradition. House was derecognized in 1987 for similar offenses, but tradition reemerged.
On a warm, bright day in April, 1987, Dartmouth awoke to news that one of the College's fraternities was in trouble. Already on social probation for alcohol violations, Zeta Psi fraternity, The Dartmouth reported, was under investigation for a newsletter distributed at meetings that depicted the alleged sexual exploits of a house member.
The publication showed a personified hog asking to be sexually abused by a member of the fraternity. "The newsletter shows a woman being raped and acting as if she wanted to be raped," a woman who had seen the publication told The Dartmouth.
A College investigation was launched, top administrators made statements deploring the newsletter, opinions raged in the opinion pages of The Dartmouth and the fraternity's porch was littered one night with tampons covered with mock blood.
Less than a week after the initial revelations, the College announced that Zeta Psi would face a year of derecognition.
I'm wondering a few things here. it seems possible and even likely to me that the 'Zete sex papers' (for lack of a better term) were circulated while Mr. Zywicki was a member of Zeta Psi. If he never actually saw the papers, he must have known about them, if only after they were publicized. So I'm wondering what Mr. Zywicki thought of the newletter described above put out by his fraternity during the time when he was at Dartmouth. Was he at the meetings where such newsletters were passed out? Did he speak out or do anything about it? (Does he think he should or should not have done anything?) With the D-Plan, it is possible that Mr. Zywicki was gone from campus during the period we are talking about. But how long did this tradition go on? If nothing else, I'd like more illumination than this D article about that time, if anyone has any info about this.
What I'm also interested in, and what I think has great relevence, is what Mr. Zywicki thought of Zete's punishment in 1987. But did he think it was a violation of freedom of speech? (Do you?) I doubt we'll find him talking about what he knew about Zete then. If you read the D article, it says that Zete's 'derecognition' lasted a year and meant that the fraternity could not hold social events. But the fraternity was clearly penalized, in part, because of the newsletter. So let me ask all of you who talk about 'free speech' as the reason you are voting for the petitioner candidates: should Zete have not been punished the first time around for its newsletter?
I'm toggling between internet windows as I write this, and I've now found Zywicki's response to the derecognition of Zete in 2001 in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Todd Zywicki, a former Zeta Psi member who graduated in 1988, says many of the college's Greek alumni are outraged over what he describes as the administration's decades-long campaign against the Greek system.
"The sex newsletters were clearly disgusting, but the college's response was completely disproportionate," says Mr. Zywicki, who is now a law professor at George Mason University and one of many Dartmouth graduates to have criticized the administration in the college's alumni magazine recently. "To permanently de-recognize an entire fraternity on the basis of speech is an inappropriate and irrational punishment that can only be a pretense for a larger goal."
Even if you think that the permanent derecognition of Zete in 2001 was excessive and disproportionate, what do you think about *any* punishment for fraternity newsletters like the 'Zete Sex Papers'? Does *any* punishment by the College violate 'free speech' that should be protected? What would (or has) Zywicki said about these matters? What do the petitioner supporters? The interesting thing is that Zete members were among the most contrite fraternity members on campus following the surfacing of the 'Zetemouth'. What I mean is that the loudest voices for 'free speech' did not come from Zete then (at least that term). This is because they were under threat of punishment, obviously. But many members of Zete (at least the ones I knew and based on what they said to me at least) thought the derecognition was unfair, and said right after the sentence was handed down that Zete should have been given a punishment, but not so severe a one.
Given that Zywicki thought that 2001 Zete Sex Papers were disgusting, did he think the same of Zete Sex Papers published by his fraternity during the time he was at Dartmouth? I suppose I'm also interested in this because I'm wondering what made nice Zete guys just allow this to continue at both times. Assuming that Zywicki was a member of Zete when this was going on, what did he think about the college's punishment? Does he think that colleges should never punish such newsletters? Does he think that Zete in his time in 1987 and in my time in 2001 should have received any punishment at all?
I've heard a plausible case made (by a Democrat) that the 2001 Zete derecognition involved violations of due process. And then you have Zywicki's case that the 2001 derecognition was disproportionate.
But there is another viewpoint: that the newletters were protected free speech, pure and simple. This I'll call the Dartmouth Review fraternity case (incidently, the Review editorial took a slightly different take on it, but no matter). The argument is that the newsletters were privately distributed, and obvious satire in places, I believe. Is this the essence of free speech? Well, if you believe this, then *is any punishment* justified? So, does Zywicki believe this now? What did he think in 1987 when he presumably actually faced this issue (as a college student of course, though)?
