The unionized faculty has placed an ad in the student newspaper advising students to begin looking at other universities for their summer courses.
“The UNH Faculty Union will boycott the 2010 summer session if a contract settlement with the UNH Administration is not reached prior to the final scheduling of courses,” reads an AAUP advertisement run in today’s edition of The New Hampshire. “We strongly recommend that students investigate summer course offerings at other institutions well in advance.”
… “I need to take summer classes in order to have enough credits to graduate by next May,” said junior Arielle Romano. “This is a university. We’re paying astronomically high tuition prices. I understand professors have to make a living, but they are here to teach us; it’s an honorable profession. It seems selfish of them to strike a semester of classes for an extra 0.2 percent increase in salary.”…
Students are indeed very angry, and, as this editorial makes clear, their anger is directed against the faculty union.
There’s a good deal of language, in comment threads to various campus articles about the crisis, about lazy professors.
UD‘s only comment at this point? Universities with unionized faculties have a responsibility to inform incoming students about the union. UNH students would not be angry if, when they accepted UNH’s offer of admission, they knew that the school operates on the collective bargaining / strike model. This isn’t the sort of information students and their parents should be expected to pick up in some casual way. UNH needs to be very, very clear about the ways in which this arrangement makes campus life precarious.
… who is now an engineering professor there, has been arrested at Heathrow Airport for war crimes.
The provisional extradition warrant relates to an attack on Yugoslav forces in Sarajevo at the beginning of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
Serbia claims more than 40 soldiers were killed in the so-called Dobrovoljacka Street attack, after Bosnia had declared independence from the Serb-led former Yugoslavia.
The soldiers were allegedly withdrawing from Sarajevo in a convoy at the time.
Ejup Ganic’s university has a close working relationship with Buckingham University.
… wrote UD‘s colleague, Lee Sigelman, to her in an email in January 2008. Lee, who died last December, was an eminent political scientist. With various colleagues, he had his own blog, The Monkey Cage.
From The Monkey Cage, some memories of Lee.
i had professor sigelman for one class, intro to US politics. you rarely find heads of poli sci departments teaching intro classes to masses of freshmen but i think he enjoyed teaching it (i cant come up with any other reason why he would).
he started the class by asking everyone to fill out notecards with our contact info and one interesting thing about us. I put that my [only] real skill was the ability to draw homer simpson, and then i drew him. this made it onto the projector at the start of the next class.
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He was a wonderful mentor. And, if he’s out there reading this in the great beyond, I promise I’ll never use the word impact as a verb again!
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Lee was a remarkable person—funny, witty, engaging, and, despite all the heights he reached, exceedingly modest. It was humbling and inspirational to see how he lived his life and comported himself in the face of enormous adversity over the past two plus years.
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[One evening, at a fancy restaurant, Lee and I] were greeted with much enthusiasm and escorted to a semi-private room where a waiter and several assistants helped us into our chairs, grabbed the neatly folded napkins off the plates, and snapped them onto our laps.
Our waiter, a young, officious and somewhat pretentious fellow, introduced his staff, told us at length about the wonderful specials available to us, and, at the end of what had been a five minute peroration asked if Lee had any questions. Without skipping a beat, Lee replied, “What’s the capital of Albania?”
The waiter looked stunned, but managed to stutter out, “I don’t know, but we’ll find out before you leave.”
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Lee and I were friends and riding buddies who came from completely different professional backgrounds. He was the academician and I spent a career in business. The common ground we shared was our love of riding our bicycles.
One summer afternoon, a group of us had ridden out MacArthur Boulevard from the District into Maryland where we rode River Road. Lee particularly liked riding River Road; it was hilly and he loved to climb. He was a great climber and no matter how hard I tried I could never catch him on the long climbs.
We had finished our ride and the group was heading back down MacArthur into the District. Normally I jump off and take the Chain Bridge home, but [I] decided to stay with the group and venture home over the Key Bridge. Riding MacArthur into the District is relaxing, especially after a tough workout, because it’s flat and when it’s not, it’s downhill. We rode to where MacArthur meets Canal Road and the road narrows. From that point, past Georgetown University, to M Street at the start of Georgetown, the road becomes very bicycle unfriendly. Over the next quarter mile, cars, buses and trucks all jockey to either take M Street, the Key Bridge or the Whitehurst Freeway. Bicyclists and motorized vehicles always have an uneasy truce, and the truce is often stretched to its limits on this very short roadway where there are no shoulders.
Unusual as it was, I happened to be at the front of the group and Lee was behind me when a small passenger bus pulled up alongside us at the red light at the beginning of the run to M Street. The door opened next to where Lee was patiently sitting waiting for the light to change and I heard the driver say: “Why don’t you take the bike path?” Without missing a beat, Lee answered: “Why don’t you take 495 (The Capital Beltway).”
From a nicely written profile of Mitchell Harris, a young English professor at Augustana College. It’s in the Augustana newspaper.
With the build of a linebacker and a hairless head perfectly formed to fit under any helmet, he appears out of place as he strolls down the English department hallway at Augustana.
His green sweater bears the Green Bay Packers logo, and with his arm bent across his large chest, at a quick glance he looks like he’s ready to burst through a defensive line with the football tucked safely away.
… Harris smiles when recalling the events surrounding his Augustana interview.
“Foolish thing I did,” Harris says. “I looked for dates of convenience and decided to interview on Friday so I could drive down Thursday.”
At the time Harris was filling a visiting position at his alma mater, Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minn., and he figured Friday would be the best day to work with his schedule. But he had forgotten the NFL had added Thursday night games that season, and this particular Thursday was the much-anticipated Dallas Cowboys versus Green Bay Packers game.
“I was kicking myself all the way to the interview,” Harris says. “I wanted to watch the game that night, but also prepare for the interview.”
Harris decided to go to a Buffalo Wild Wings to catch part of the game before heading back to his hotel to prepare for the next day’s important meeting. But when he got to the restaurant, the place was packed, so he asked a table of guys if he could join them. The three men obliged, and Harris soon discovered that they were Augustana football players.
The next day at his interview, Harris mentioned that he had met a few of the college’s football players at Buffalo Wild Wings the previous night, and [Jeffrey Miller, department chair] was impressed at how Harris was already able to bond with Augustana’s students, especially ones that didn’t frequent the Humanities building often. [Drop often. Redundant.]
… “Well, he’s motivated me to start doing more push ups to make myself not seem so insignificant when I stand next to his aura of testosterone,” English major Rob Green jokes.
“He makes Uncle Sam look like a communist. What a man.”
Fellow senior male English major Per Nestingen agrees. “Mitch Harris could walk onto any NFL team’s practice and instantly be given a starting job as an o-lineman, tight end, quarterback, or heck, even wide receiver,” he said.
… Already Miller and professor Patrick Hicks, the only other male English professor at Augustana, note Harris’ uniqueness.
“Mitch is definitely different,” Miller says. “Hicks and I like to sit around and drink tea.”
Students also echo Miller’s sentiments.
“From a male and female perspective, his presence is reassuring,” Nestingen says. “He provides a way for us to see how a bear trapped in a man’s body interprets the different gods of English. Who knows, maybe his allure and hip male perspective will help even out the ratio of men to women.” …
… to “true humanism” and a “compassionate, insatiable mind.”
It’s just gossip. But it features one of the most important professors in the world, plus amazing quotations, like the one in my title. So why not.
Niall Ferguson, whose comments about Scotland have appeared on this blog, has left his wife for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali human rights campaigner, currently under a fatwa.
From the Bowdoin College obituary for professor of mathematics Steve Fisk, who died at the age of 63:
Fisk’s love for mathematics… continued to the very end of his life.
“He was a person who loved mathematics more than anybody I know,” said [a colleague]. “And I know a lot of mathematicians.”
When [this colleague] visited Fisk at the Gosnell Memorial Hospice House in Scarborough, Maine on Friday afternoon, Fisk asked [him] for a particular math book called “Roots to Research.”
“I came back and I tried to get a copy—I didn’t have one myself, and couldn’t find any copy anywhere. Amazon could send it, but it wouldn’t arrive until Monday, and I sensed that was too late.” …
Instead, [he] called Visiting Lecturer in Mathematics Leon Harkleroad, who drove two hours from Brunswick to deliver the book early Saturday morning.
“Steve did read from it that day,” [he said]. “His wife told me later that he actually had left it bookmarked on the fourth or fifth page, where the authors describe the concept of length of game.”
Fisk’s obituary, written by his family, considers the concept of length of game symbolically.
“While Steve’s length of game may have been shorter than most of us would wish, the numbers he chose along the way gave him—and all of us—great joy,” it reads.
… at Portland State.
It’s early in the story, but apparently an economics professor there, in class a few days ago, suddenly launched a long and elaborate verbal attack on one of his students.
… John Hall, who has taught at PSU for 24 years, began the class with a lecture relevant to the course material but about halfway through the two-hour long class, he began to describe his experiences with law enforcement in places including Eastern Europe, according to a student who wished to remain anonymous.
Hall claimed to have been surveilled at times throughout his life and then told the class that an FBI informant and agent provocateur was in their midst. Hall said this person served as a sniper in the Israeli army and called him a killer with access to a personal arsenal.
He then pointed at Bucharest and identified him as the informant in question, according to the unnamed student.
Bucharest, a student at PSU since the fall of 2006 … sat silently throughout the ordeal, according to students in the class.
… Hall accused Bucharest of trying to organize students to participate in violent acts against the university, according to the unnamed student.
Hall also said he believed that Bucharest is at times armed while on campus. He then put a letter on the document projector that he wrote to the FBI’s Portland Field Office. In the letter, Hall claims to know Bucharest’s identity as an agent. He then handed Bucharest a copy of the letter and told him to give it to his superiors.
After a time of silence, Bucharest got up and said that some of Hall’s claims about his military background were true, but that other claims the professor made were not. Bucharest left the classroom after being told by Hall to leave and not to come back to PSU, according to students…
Let’s pause there for a moment.
One of many strange aspects of the story is that this account, published in the PSU newspaper, is no longer available. I got it from a blogger who reproduced it on his site. Why did the paper take it down? Is the student on whom the reporter relied for the account in fact not reliable? Bucharest apparently has a lawyer – does the paper fear legal action? Has it been asked by the university’s administration to take the piece down?
Anyway. Here’s something we can say with some confidence, assuming we’re getting something reasonably close to what went on. Whatever the background of this student, the professor’s behavior is paranoid and outrageous.
Hall, who has been removed from the classroom — indeed, from the campus — while PSU investigates, has issued a comment to the newspaper (again, I’m assuming the comment indeed came from him, etc.) which does nothing to weaken suspicion that he’s paranoid:
“I decided to take a stand. I observed the situation becoming extremely dangerous, not only for me but for about eight of my very finest students…. I felt that what I had to do should not have been my responsibility. …I understand the students’ privacy is to be respected, as defined by the codes governing PSU… I felt the level of danger had grown to such an acute level that I felt it fully in order to engage in an ‘emergency exemption’ of student privacy.”
This is nuts. The student might be malsain, might talk violence, might even carry a concealed weapon, but you respond to all of that, if it scares you, by going to the administration. Worst case scenario, you go to the police. You don’t stage a tribunal in front of the class.
… and has had to cancel this semester’s classes. 79 years old, Bloom has attempted to teach for the last few semesters, but illness and injury had him canceling most of them as well.
A stubborn old coot who has written angrily about the betrayal of literary values by people who think beauty reactionary, Bloom would have been a great blogger. And no, he doesn’t revile the internet.
If, in fact, you have an impulse to become and maintain yourself as a deep reader, then the internet is very good for you. It gives you an endless resource. But if, in fact, you don’t have standards and you don’t know how to read, then the internet is a disaster for you because it’s a great gray ocean of text in which you simply drown.
I’ve been reading a lot of Camus today (the fiftieth anniversary of his death happened a few days ago), and what Camus says about discovering literature is very Bloomian. Here’s Camus, reading Jean Grenier’s Les Iles as a very young man:
A garden of incomparable wealth was opening up to me; I had just discovered art. Something, someone was stirring dimly within me, longing to speak. Reading one book, hearing one conversation, can provoke this rebirth in a young person. One sentence stands out from the open book, one word still vibrates in the room, and suddenly, around the right word, the exact note, contradictions resolve themselves and disorder ceases. Already, at the same moment, in response to this perfect language, a timid, clumsier song rises from the darkness of our being.
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Bloom said this in an interview about ten years ago:
I have told the president of Yale, Rick Levin, who is a very splendid man, that I intend to be carried out of my very last Yale class in a large body bag, still talking, many years down the road. I–I will not retire. I don’t think they will wish me to retire. I don’t think they can or will make me retire. Obviously, if my health goes completely at some point and I cannot get myself into the classroom, if my mind goes and I can no longer think and articulate clearly, if I’m not capable of teaching well, then I will stop teaching. But otherwise–otherwise, I would hope to teach until I die. It’s–it’s what I do. It’s what I’ve done for 46 years. And I think I would go mad and feel worse than useless without it.
… hard-charging leftist historian, as famous for his running battles with Boston University president John Silber as for his People’s History of the United States, has died.
… Les UDs will be able to spend three weeks in their little house in the New York mountains. UD‘s excited about this, because the setting is peaceful and beautiful during the day, and breathtaking at night, with the massive summer canopy overhead.
There are long country walks, operas at Glimmerglass, visits to Woodstock, and UD‘s traditional birthday dinner at the Bear Cafe…
It’s all very exciting. But if you live there year-round, I suspect life can get dull.
Perhaps this explains the propensity of professors in that region to have marijuana businesses. Not only does getting high alleviate boredom (I’ve heard), but running the enterprise is probably fun and interesting.
Just a couple of days ago a SUNY Cobleskill professor was arrested; and today, it’s a guy who teaches marketing at SUNY Albany.
Have you been following that study featured in the New York Times which argues that professors are almost all from the political left because of job “typecasting”?
The academic profession “has acquired such a strong reputation for liberalism and secularism that over the last 35 years few politically or religiously conservative students, but many liberal and secular ones, have formed the aspiration to become professors,” [the study’s authors] write in the paper, “Why Are Professors Liberal?” That is especially true of their own field, sociology, which has become associated with “the study of race, class and gender inequality — a set of concerns especially important to liberals.”
For sure these SUNY guys are doing their bit to tighten our typecasting. Think of it this way: If you can’t imagine starting a marijuana growing business at home, you’re probably not cut out to be a professor.
A SUNY Cobleskill professor was arrested Wednesday for allegedly growing marijuana at his home.
Police executed a search warrant at 59-year-old Peter H. Van Deusen’s Sharon Springs home on State Route 10. There, they found an indoor growing operation and seized extensive growing equipment and a small amount of marijuana.
Van Deusen was not home at the time of the search, but turned himself in to troopers in Cobleskill Wednesday. He was issued an appearance ticket for the Town of Sharon Court Thursday.
He was charged with unlawful growing of marijuana, an unclassified misdemeanor.
Police say Van Deusen was a professor in the Agriculture and Engineering Division at SUNY Cobleskill.
Was? He’s a professor at SUNY at the beginning of the article, and has gone emeritus by the end? Wow.
And isn’t this like the four hundredth story UD‘s covered about a professor growing marijuana? Once pot’s legalized, expect a mass exodus from the universities…
… in Central Michigan Life newspaper:
PROFESSOR DAVID CURRENT’S DEATH
WILL NOT CHANGE CLASS SCHEDULES
Here’s a list – Ten Warning Signs of a Bad Professor – that does a pretty good job of covering the main characteristics of poor or indifferent instructors.
I can think of a few other things, like uses too much technology.
Speaking of which… UD‘s blogpal Veblen sends her this account of PowerPoint use in the American military.