Busy, important people, like Germany’s defense minister and Muammar Gaddafi’s son, often have their dissertations written for them. We know this. Perfectly respectable universities, like the London School of Economics, sign off on these things because they hope to get money from the dissertation writer. Perfectly respectable professors, like David Held and Benjamin Barber, approve and promote the scholarship of people like Saif al-Islam Qaddafi because these professors like the image of themselves as kingmakers. It is hard to read Barber’s recent keening over the fact that “Oxford University Press, which contracted to publish the two extraordinary books Saif wrote on civil society and democratic reform in the developing world, will presumably now cancel publication” without laughing.
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From Mother Jones:
On his [dissertation’s] acknowledgments page, Saif noted that his thesis was made possible, in part, due to the assistance of a “number of experts…especially Professor Joseph Nye” of Harvard. One of the godfathers of the international relations theories of neoliberalism and soft power, Nye read portions of the paper and provided “advice and direction.” Probably not coincidentally, Nye twice visited Libya in 2007 and 2008 as a paid consultant for the Monitor Group, a Boston-based consulting firm then working for the Qaddafi government. He tells Mother Jones that he read one chapter of the dissertation and “found it intelligent.” After the 2007 trip, Nye wrote an essay for The New Republic, extolling Qaddafi’s efforts to clean up his image.
… In The New Republic piece, Nye noted that he had visited Libya “at the invitation of the Monitor Group.” He did not disclose that he had been there as a paid consultant for this firm — a relationship he acknowledged in an email to Mother Jones. That means The New Republic published an article sympathetic to Qaddafi written by a notable academic on the payroll of a company hired by Qaddafi to boost his standing in the United States.
… [The Monitor Group] helped [Saif] conduct research for his dissertation — raising the possibility that this thesis was another component of the Monitor Group’s makeover campaign for the Qaddafi regime. The consulting firm pocketed $3 million a year for its pro-Qaddafi endeavors.
Extraordinary.
… really calls it on Libya:
… Written off not long ago as an implacable despot, Gaddafi is a complex and adaptive thinker as well as an efficient, if laid-back, autocrat. Unlike almost any other Arab ruler, he has exhibited an extraordinary capacity to rethink his country’s role in a changed and changing world.
… Surprisingly flexible and pragmatic, Gaddafi was once an ardent socialist who now acknowledges private property and capital as sometimes appropriate elements in developing societies. Once an opponent of representative central government, he is wrestling with the need to delegate substantial authority to competent public officials if Libya is to join the global system.
Libya under Gaddafi has embarked on a journey that could make it the first Arab state to transition peacefully and without overt Western intervention to a stable, non-autocratic government and, in time, to an indigenous mixed constitution favoring direct democracy locally and efficient government centrally.
Benjamin Barber, Washington Post, August 2007.
Some commentary at the time. (The writer quotes Marc Lynch, a colleague of UD‘s at George Washington University.)
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In October 2008, Barber called Gaddafi “a poet of democracy.”
…and staying, or so they say, at The Clarence Hotel.
In a couple of weeks, UD and her Morrissey-mad sister will be at the same hotel for a few nights, on their way to Galway to see La Kid.
The hotel’s right on the Liffey, where, a few days ago, the city’s Anna Livia statue was floated down that river on its way to Croppy Acre park.
“We floated her down the Liffey. We could have brought her in a truck but given all the circumstances the sculptor made the suggestion in a slightly offhand manner,” said [the Dublin parks superintendent.] This small idea turned into a reality when the organisers got in touch with Ringsend Boat Club, who were more than happy to bring Anna Livia to her new home. “We brought her down the river at lunchtime, so that people were able to see her. We thought it was appropriate that on her last journey she would float down the middle of the city. It gave it a sense of occasion.”
Here’s what UD might have seen (enlarge the picture) from the balcony of The Clarence if she’d been staying there this week. Lord, that would’ve been lovely.
… talks about the athletic fee.
…Non-negotiable student fees subsidize over 23 percent of the athletic department’s budget.
Each semester, all U of M students registered for six or more hours must pay $225, the full-time cost of the Student Athletic Fee, on top of sundry general access fees, the student activity fee, the debt service fee and the facility fee.
Combined, these program service fees total $606 per semester, so the athletic fee comprises more than 37 percent of the sum.
I can think of hundreds of better ways I could spend the athletic fees I’ve paid over the years, not to mention what some of The University’s other departments could do with the $7.4 million students contribute to the athletics budget…
…generates scathing responses from readers.
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And speaking of scathing: The author links to a recent study of online education. Excerpts:
Students in the online courses were significantly better prepared at the outset … [H]owever, students in the online course performed more poorly than those in the face to face course…. Students who took developmental math and English courses online were much less likely to subsequently succeed in college level math and English. … [C]olleges that are focused on improving student success should proceed cautiously in expanding online course offerings.
The study’s author, Shanna Smith Jaggars, notes the pathetic lost-in-cyberspace nature of the online experience. One student says: “I didn’t feel like there was an instructor presence… I didn’t feel like there was anything I was learning from the instructor. The instructor was simply there as a Web administrator or as a grader.”
(Longtime readers know that UD calls online professors air traffic controllers.) Other student comments: “[I was] sort of on this island, all by myself.” “Alone and adrift.” “I know nothing about these people!”
Online would be a great way to study Samuel Beckett’s plays. It allows you to feel his theme.
Oh, and:
Online communication can be easily misinterpreted, due in part to the lack of visual and facial cues. Online teachers are encouraged to provide timely and detailed feedback. However … they often do not have any information about how the student responds to this feedback. In fact, students may misinterpret a high level of feedback as negative feedback when in reality a teacher is merely posing questions to stimulate student thinking.
Yeah funny thing about that. Online interaction ain’t really interaction, is it? Interaction means back and forth, doesn’t it?
Since a number of studies show these results, one researcher concludes that, for instance, “[t]eaching economics courses online in community colleges is probably not good policy.”
Here’s what the NYT columnist should have said in defense of online education, for-profit or not for profit. It’s really cheap.
… [T]he last few years have [been] so deplorable that [the University of Tennessee] is laughingly called “The University of Thugs” on call-in radio shows across the country.
A local columnist calls for the firing of UT basketball coach Bruce Pearl and his staff.
Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.
John Dorfman, Bloomberg:
For-profit colleges …depend on the federal government to guarantee the student loans that pay for their students to attend. Without loans, most students couldn’t go, and without federal guarantees few lenders would issue student loans.
Particularly risky is Corinthian Colleges Inc. of Santa Ana, California, which gets 90 percent of its revenue from the federal government, according to Barclays Capital. In November, I explained some reasons why I would stay away from Corinthian Colleges shares, such as the fact that many of its students are struggling to pay back their loans.
Newt Gingrich’s speech at the University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday quickly took a turn for the dramatic when the first student to question him brought up his admitted extramarital affair and accused him of being “hypocritical” for espousing moral values.
“You adamantly oppose gay rights … but you’ve also been married three times and admitted to having an affair with your current wife while you were still married to your second,” Isabel Friedman, president of Penn Democrats, said to Gingrich. “As a successful politician who’s considering running for president, who would set the bar for moral conduct and be the voice of the American people, how do you reconcile this hypocritical interpretation of the religious values that you so vigorously defend?”
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Update: Salon’s Alex Pareene quotes Gingrich and then comments:
“I believe in a forgiving God, and the American people will have to decide whether that their primary concern. If the primary concern of the American people is my past, my candidacy would be irrelevant. If the primary concern of the American people is the future… that’s a debate I’ll be happy to have with your candidate or any other candidate if I decide to run.”
The American people are concerned about the future! Which woman will Gingrich next leave his wife for, and how embarrassing/ironic will it be?
Gingrich will continue pretending to run for president until early March, when he “expects an announcement” about whether or not he will continue pretending to run for president.
And teaching, even now, he said, is what keeps him going.
“Your illness and your aches and pains fall away,” he said. “There’s something happening in that space between you and students that’s magical, that’s mystical, that’s profound and it just sucks you in completely.”
A professor struggling through chemotherapy talks about teaching.
UD, who has been teaching for twenty-five years, will free associate a bit here, in response to these intriguing words:
something happening in that space between you and students that’s magical, that’s mystical, that’s profound and it just sucks you in completely
I’ve had classes in which the students so charmed me – their collective magical force so charmed me, day after day – that I worried I wouldn’t be able to grade them with any rigor at all. These groups were usually sophomores and juniors, whatever that means. Maybe there’s a sweet spot in the lives of university students — not too young, not too old… past the traumas of freshman year and not yet at the what-do-I-do-next traumas of senior year…
They were funny, ironic, and not yet hip. They were smart. They were emotional about things. Not vehement; sensitively responsive. I watched them take in my absurdities as well as my passions and become genially receptive to both.
So yes, I was sucked in. But am I willing to go as far as mystical?
Maybe. An interviewer asked Norman Maclean about his religion, and he said:
I suppose that in any conventional sense I’m a religious agnostic. There are things that make me feel a lot better. I find them in the woods, and in wonderful people. I suppose they’re my religion.
I feel I have company about me when I’m alone in the woods. I feel they’re beautiful. They’re a kind of religion to me. My dearest friends are also beautiful. My wife was an infinitely beautiful thing. I certainly feel there are men and women whom I have known and still know who are really above what one could think was humanly possible. They and the mountains are what for me ‘passeth human understanding.’
When does a very deep humanism become mystical? Maybe by definition it shouldn’t; it shouldn’t go there. But there’s no denying what this professor has noticed: something occasionally happens in the space between you and students. The space is sometimes charged – electrified – with a special sort of human exchange, even ‘above what one could think was humanly possible.’
For me it has to do not merely with those charm school sessions, in which I’m moved and gratified by the energy and inquiry and, hell, love of students (I’m thinking here of a moment just after I’d finished a class recently. I was ill with bronchitis – struggling through the session to keep my voice – and as I gathered my books and notes after class one student — I don’t know which one, because I had my head down, and a lot of students were passing behind me — one student simply put his or her hand on my arm and squeezed it gently.); it also has to do with rebellion. Or call it something milder – restiveness.
Youthful restiveness; the condition, among some of my students, of a somewhat belligerent, show-me, thing. They regard me with the narrowed eyes of outrageous skepticism as I prance around with my interpretations. Oh yeah? They lift their jean-clad legs onto their chairs, hug them closely, and glare at me. Says who?
They laugh with cynical disdain!
I do not like this laugh.
Or yes, I do like this laugh. I want them to be at odds, pissed off, picking away at things. I want them to have that congested personal / philosophical nihilistic thing going, because, yes, to take another of Professor Monte Bute’s words, there’s something profound about feeling as though you’ve been admitted into the thing they’ve got going. Something you’ve said about a poem or a story has coaxed a person’s inner life into a public space of discourse, and now you’re privileged to watch as – over time – that inner life clarifies and maybe begins to transform itself, as a result of its encounter with texts and people who’ve already experienced something similar and turned it into art and philosophy.
Imagine vomiting forever.
… Someone, whether it’s George Blaney, Tim Tolokan, his family, somebody who loves and cares about [University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun] has got to tell him to extend this any longer will do the state’s flagship university no good. This no longer can be a case where the coach lifts his leg, squirts on the NCAA like it is a fire hydrant and shrugs at a complicated rulebook.
… Kelvin Sampson at Indiana, Bruce Pearl at Tennessee, Butch Davis at North Carolina, schools will go to great lengths to protect valuable investments. So what UConn did in backing Calhoun isn’t shocking, although the hundreds of thousands in legal costs are.
… [The illegally recruited student] was expelled from the school — over the coach’s strenuous objections — after allegations [he] had abused a female student and violated a restraining order 16 minutes after receiving it. [The student] played no games…