[These fields are] intellectually corrupt. You know what I’m talking about. Any fool idea passes muster, no matter how preposterous, as long as it conforms to prevailing theoretical trends and preferred ideological positions. Nobody wants to make waves: to speak up at a conference, to undermine a colleague or colleague’s student, to invite examination of their own research. Data is massaged; texts are squeezed or bound and gagged. Jargon helps to paper over cracks in logic; countervailing evidence is tucked under the cushions. Standards are ignored to the point where no one can even recall what they are anymore. It’s no wonder that the social sciences are suffering a replication crisis. In the humanities, there is no crisis, because there is no replication to begin with, no factual claims to reproduce, only “readings,” “interventions,” “Theory.”
For years, many of this blog’s posts were variations on this observation; and now, with the withering results of the election, we can go further than Deresiewicz and note the historical irony of a ridiculously, coercively, hyper-politicized academy (“ideological positions” trump, as it were, everything, including the aesthetic values that are, after all, the distinguishing characteristic of what we call literature) getting slapped upside the head by none other than the actual politics of this country.
Hence Deresiewicz’s stress on the unreality from which many professors continue to suffer: They just don’t get it that most people have rather conservative and traditional dispositions, and that this reality does not make people shitty reactionaries. The university is supposed to be the place where people’s traditional, inherited perceptions and beliefs are put into question (college is where you read Blake and Nietzsche); but as Todd Gitlin, a man of the left, pointed out in a defense of Allan Bloom, the academy went apeshit radical rather than humanely subversive.
They can agree to have seemingly unbiased articles about – I dunno – the safety of OxyContin go out under their name, even though Sackler-funded ghostwriters would have written the articles.
For doing nothing but agreeing to Purdue’s use of their name, these professors could earn (before the whole Oxy thing collapsed) tens of thousands of dollars, and thereby make their own small contribution to millions of addictions and deaths.
There are plenty of examples like this. An economist earns big bucks by letting a corporation use her name on an article touting … let’s see … the superiority of coal over other forms of energy. The safety of dangerous anti-depressants. This or that hormone.
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There are other ways for professors to trade their reputations for money, and a prof at GW may have availed himself of one of these. Nothing’s been proven, but two affiliated scholars at the Program on Extremism he runs have already resigned in protest against Lorenzo Vidino having reportedly received thousands of dollars for designating certain people terrorists, or terrorist-connected. The money came from rich oil states engaged in convoluted reputational battles with other such states.
Vidino, a dual citizen of Italy and the U.S., argues that even the most moderate Islamist organizations in the West can tilt Muslims toward separatism and violence. [M]any Muslims [think] that he simply dresse[s] up bigotry in academic language. Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, which studies Islamophobia, has described Vidino as someone who “promotes conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood” and “is connected to numerous anti-Muslim think tanks.” In 2020, the Austrian Interior Ministry cited a report by Vidino as a basis for carrying out raids on dozens of citizens or organizations suspected of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood. No one targeted in the raids has been arrested, much less convicted of any wrongdoing. An Austrian appellate court ruled the raids unlawful.
UD would love to know if he’s declaring this money on his end of year GW Academic Review form.
I still remember how he proposed and facilitated my first event as a Resident Advisor: a trip to the Library of Congress, where he gave a personal tour of the institution’s collections and architecture (and pointed out the best study spots within the facility). He was also just as detailed in planning for the after-tour meal, finding the group, with a day’s notice, a Capitol Hill establishment that met all of our attendees’ numerous dietary and allergen needs.
Daniel was also instrumental in facilitating my final event as a Resident Advisor: a Friday night baseball game at Nationals Park. It was no secret that I was a huge fan of baseball, and accordingly, I deliberately selected a baseball game with a rather nice giveaway (bobbleheads). The proposed budget for the game exceeded my allotted funds, but Daniel, without hesitation, sponsored the event, even calling the box office personally to select our seats. When I arrived at his office to pitch the event, he handed me an envelope with the tickets and explained, with a mischevous smirk, that he was happy to fund a game against his hometown Colorado Rockies (along with any other activity I proposed). For the remainder of the hour, we instead discussed my studies, with Daniel probing about domestic elections theory, how the Senate works, and a wide range of other topics.
I share these two memories because to me, they epitomize Daniel at his best. He was always a scholar, passionate about sharing his experiences and studies with the world. But he was also a kind soul: he always placed others first, he did his best to make academia seem less intimidating, he always thought about the finer points and worked tirelessly to alleviate any issues, and he had a genuine sense of wit and generosity …
… Daniel DeWispelare, whose untimely death has been a terrible shock to the department. I knew him only a little bit, but was always struck by his sweetness. He was apparently a spectacular teacher and scholar.
On [South Korea’s] Jeju [Island], it’s not unusual to see signs at camping grounds or guest houses stipulating both lower and upper age limits for would-be guests. There are “no-teenager zones” and “no-senior zones”, for example, and even plenty of zones targeting those somewhere in between.
So numerous have the “no-middle-aged zones” become that they have collectively been dubbed “no-ajae zones,” in reference to a slang term for “uncle.”
One restaurant in Seoul rose to notoriety after “politely declining” people over 49 (on the basis men of that age might harass female staff), while in 2021, a camping ground in Jeju sparked heated debate with a notice saying it did not accept reservations from people aged 40 or above. Citing a desire to keep noise and alcohol use to a minimum, it stated a preference for women in their 20s and 30s.
Other zones are even more niche.
Among those to have caused a stir on social media are a cafe in Seoul that in 2018 declared itself a “no-rapper zone,” a “no-YouTuber zone” and even a “no-professor zone”.
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I assume that last one is because professors order one tea and then sit at a table all day, reading a book.
It took a judge ruling Matthew Harris too insane to go on trial to stop the upward trajectory of this man’s academic career.
A trail of red flags about his behavior toward women followed him throughout his academic journey to UCLA. In online class reviews, interviews and emails obtained last year by The Associated Press, current and former students at all three universities alleged negligence by the schools for letting Harris slide, despite his concerning conduct.
Here are my posts about him. An extremely obvious crazy person, sending out vile threats to female students, leaps from one great academic job to another. How ’bout that. UD thinks a class action suit might help all of these schools focus productively on their negligence; she also thinks the enthusiastic dissertation chair in the case should be handed a punitive year away without pay, during which he must take a basic criminology/psychology course in the characteristics of psychopathology. The bit where the model student/psychopath whips out his gun and blows away all the women in his class didn’t have a chance to happen in this case, but there may well be other dangerous madmen, and the dissertation chair needs help before getting enthusiastic and passing those along too.
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The lad was found with ammunition, but
[Harris] attempted to buy a “bodyguard revolver” at the Silver Bullet Shooting Range in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
The purchase was denied.
So the gun was still a work in progress. But you and I know that, if the law hadn’t come sniffing around, he would have gotten one somehow.
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As for the larger academic village that made the world safe for this madman… oy.UD is currently tossing her hands up in the air. A whole lot needs to change for professors and administrators to acquire the balls to identify and dismiss politically trendy psychopaths.
Enter, peons, and creatively write! First, though, sign this contract acknowledging my Singular Creative Writing Greatness and your willingness to flunk my course if you deviate AT ALL from my commandments, to which you sign your name! I and I alone will tell you how to creatively write, for there is only one way, and that is the way of The Great And Powerful Salesses!
Manifold are the ways universities fuck with statistics so they can get higher US News rankings, and it’s just Columbia’s bad luck that it hired its own petard… I mean, someone at the school actually hired the math prof who figured out Columbia had to be cheating AND PUBLICIZED THE FACT ON HIS FACULTY WEBSITE. Now, months later, the school admits yeah we did that thing and we promise to stop.
UD‘s heart skips a beat when she realizes that this hugely intriguing figure was for years just across campus from her GWU office! A bona fide lecturer/researcher in the university’s medical school despite allegedly having lied about a number of his degrees, this man held on to his GW position while telling his boss Trump – or those close to him – that Fauci had to be fired, and that hydroxychloroquine was the solution to coronavirus. (Also involved in Trump administration hydroxychloroquine pushing: The Pride of New Jersey, Mehmet Oz.) He seems at the moment rather close to being in contempt of Congress, though I’m trying to update this information. He appears to be a “big lie” co-conspirator. He also seems to have used his personal GW email account for official WH communications.
Dr. Hatfill exchanged more than 1,000 messages using his George Washington University email account with senior officials in the Trump White House, federal agencies, private companies related to procurement and supply chain issues, and others about the federal government’s pandemic response. In one email to an unidentified White House employee, Dr. Hatfill misleadingly stated: “States favorable to Trump have a lower COVID Case Fatality Rate than the Fucktard states that do not.”
SH doesn’t seem to be at GW anymore; but the question I’ve got is why such a person was ever there in the first place. Surely GW is as we speak asking itself that question.
And then there was [Colin Blakemore’s] rapier-sharp wit. We recall when a visiting professor, one of the many world-class neuroscientists to visit his laboratory, was having a birthday. At the time, one project in Colin’s laboratory involved studying how a subpopulation of callosal projecting layer 5 neocortical pyramidal neurons retract their dendritic tufts that reached to the pial surface during the first week of postnatal development in the mouse. Colin’s memorable message on the birthday card was “May your tuft never retract”!
