Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Wider Ramifications of the Assault on Tenure: A Post by an Anonymous Guest Blogger

One of the things I like the most about blogging is that really smart, fantastic people get in touch and send me their ideas on important subjects. Today, for example, I got an e-mail from a reader who takes issue with some of the points I make in my post about an on-going assault on tenure. This reader's comments were so great that asked their permission to publish them as an anonymous guest post. Enjoy and feel free to leave comments.

I think that your comment on a conspiracy to eliminate tenure misses the larger point. I believe that America is on a path to a Mexican style of governance where a small group of wealthy families control the majority of the net worth of the country and the political process. There is also a small and docile middle class. The majority of the society is poor, desperate and crime ridden. A necessary but not sufficient precondition for this situation to occur in America is the diminution of critical reasoning which the loss of tenure for academics would accentuate. The political discourse in America has been reduced to a series of logical tautologies (in the original Greek sense) and non-sequiturs packaged into sound bites. I think that a more appropriate term is a coalescence of parallel interests rather than a conspiracy and that a few examples would be useful at this point.


Stockwell Day, the Canadian minister of corrections, stated in June of this year that it would be necessary to spend billions of dollars on correction facilities due to an increase in unreported crime. If the crime is unreported then how can anyone draw conclusions as to a change in the volume of crime?

The conservative government in Canada eliminated the long census form for next year. If the census data doesn’t support the assertions on which you base your policies then eliminate the census. I’ll argue my anecdotal evidence and ideological stance against your anecdotal evidence and ideological stance!

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School. He is one of the luminaries who support the slashing of federal government spending in America to reduce the long term debt. An unstated effect of this policy would be an increase in the income disparity of the wealthy with the rest of society. In a recent conference, he argued his point on the fact that a linear projection of the current increase in debt implies that by the year 2080 the total debt would be three and a half times the GDP of the country and the Interest payments alone would absorb the entire federal budget. The math is impeccable but anyone who makes a seventy year linear projection is either a fool or disingenuous.

In recent TV commentaries (not just Fox news), President Obama is presented as a secret Muslim with socialist aspirations who is simultaneously a corporate lackey and a tool of big business. What can I say?

I don’t have a problem with people who make these statements. They’re only trying to advance their own agendas and I suppose it could be argued that I’m cherry picking in order to advance my thesis. I do have a problem with people who have the responsibility to their profession to query these assertions instead of soft ball questions and rapt attention. I’m a science guy rather than humanities person but I do have analogues. In undergraduate school, I remember that the dosage levels for drugs were implied to have been handed down from God or in more measured form that the pharmaceutical companies had done their “due diligence” and based their dosage range on careful, extensive and statistically valid studies. Later on in life I discovered that a lot of these ranges had been based on the results derived from studies on a rather small group of white, healthy, middle class males. When your non white, sickly, poor female did not show the expected response to the dosage, it was not biological variability or patient non compliance but a normal aspect of a systemic faulty analysis of the data. The patient in this case is the body politic and we desperately need people like yourself to objectively analysis the situation and offer solutions to very important questions which go beyond the usual boundaries of academia.

7 comments:

Jo said...

A fellow Canadian, eh? ))))

When Stockwell Day was running his campaign, he had them play the song "It's no ordinary day" whenever he entered a room. That told me all I needed to know about him.

Clarissa said...

I don't know where Anonymous is from but I agree completely on Stockwell Day. What a buffoon!

Richard said...

These comments are absolutely brilliant and the claim that the U.S. is transformation into a nation state analogous to Mexico is right on. The Democratic and Republican Parties are really a single party (duopoly) quite similar to the PRI. It is clear that an oligarchy, based on corporate and financial position, not land holdings (the original Mexican oligarchy), increasingly is running the government. As the owner of this blog, do you think it would be ok for me to pass this comment on to an associate who also runs a blog (the Public Intelligence Blog) ?

Clarissa said...

Of course, Richard, you can pass it to the blog you mention. Also, feel free to leave a link to this blog here. I'm sure my readers will be interested in visiting it.

NancyP said...

Another implication of "being like Mexico" is that technical innovation will decrease, due to the decrease in the size of the middle-class talent pool interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) subjects.

I am dismayed to encounter poor technical writing skills in the existing STEM and medical students. Disciplined application of logical thinking and clear writing can help the writer identify unexamined assumptions, gaps in the hypotheses or experimental design, and even more importantly, place the project goal in a wider context. Is it really worthwhile to follow this avenue of research? It is a very useful exercise to have both an expert in your general field and an expert in a related field to read biomedical research grant proposal drafts. The fellow molecular biologist focuses on minute detail, the physiologist focuses on the "big picture" of a molecular biology grant proposal.

One can learn critical thinking, logic, and effective writing skills while studying any subject, as long as the faculty demand such effort.

As for the political health of this country, I blame television and religion. Americans have learned to be passive consumers of television and have let their B.S. detectors atrophy. Religion has become "dumbed down", as demonstrated by the recent Pew poll showing that atheists and Jews score more highly than Christians on a test heavily weighted toward elementary Christian Bible facts. The public face of Christianity, as presented by bishops, preachers, and political operatives, seems to consist mainly of "Ours is better than theirs", unseemly obsession with sexual activity to the exclusion of the rest of life, scapegoating gays and Muslims, and "if you believe, it will come true" (so-called "prosperity gospel"). There are strong elements of narcissicm and psychological self-help platitudes in the conservative evangelical emphasis on individual salvation to the exclusion of "good works".

For more on the "Prosperity Gospel" preachers, read Sara Posner, God's Profits.

Pagan Topologist said...

I cannot speak for all of Mexico, but in mathematics, there is a big buildup of activity and research. I have been invited to talk at research conferences in Mexico more times than in all other countries combined in the last 15 years. People, both faculty and students, are really excited about discovering new things.

Canukistani said...

PT. I’m glad that you find the math scene in Mexico so vibrant. Wish that the rest of Mexico was as positive. The situation in Mexico has reached the point where even the wealthy cannot hide from the social disintegration. I would like to share with you an email that I received this summer from an upper class friend who lives in the Miguel Hidalgo, D.F., an exclusive enclave of wealthy Mexicans.
HI VICTOR,

AS I SEE YOU HAVE HAD A BUSY LIFE, HOW WAS THE GREEK FESTIVAL, DID YOU EAT A LOT????

IN A WAY I ENVY YOU BECAUSE THE LIFE YOU HAVE IS PEACEFUL, NAIVE, AND LOVELY. THE LIFE I HAVE IN THIS BIG CITY IS BEAUTIFUL, BUT WITH BIG CONTRATS.

I DO NOT KNOW IF I TOLD YOU THAT A BUILDING FOR CONDOMIUMS OF 9 FLOORS HAVE ALMOST BEEN CONSTRUCTED, BESIDE MINE, WELL LAST THURSDAY I WAS WITH VICTORIA AND MY MAID AT 9 PM, SUDDENLY SOMEONE WAS KNOCKING REALLY HARD AT MY WINDOW OF MY BATHROOM, THE BRICKLAYER OF THE CONSTRUCTION WAS ASKING FOR HELP. HIS COMPANIONS WERE ASSAULTED AND BEING HURT BY THIEVES, WHO WERE TRYING TO STOLE ALL THE MATERIAL, INCLUDING THE MACHINES OF THE ELEVATORS, SO I CALLED THE POLICE AND THE STREET WAS CLOSED . TWO OF MY NEIGHBORS CAME TO MY APARTMENT AND WERE REALLY FRIGHTENED, BECAUSE WE DID NOT KNOW IF THE THIEVES HAD JUMPED TO OUR BUILDING. TWO OF THE 8 THIEVES RAN AWAY. I WAS REALLY SCARED BECAUSE THEY WERE CARRYING GUNS. WELL WE HAD A HAPPY ENDING AND TWO OF THE MEN WERE SENT TO THE HOSPITAL. THIS IS VERY COMMON IN MEXICO. WE ARE LIVING A BIG INSECURITY BECAUSE OF THE FIGHT AGAINST THE NARCOTRAFFIC AND UNEMPLOYMENT . THE NEXT DAY THE ARCHITECT OF THE BUILDING CAME TO SAY THANK YOU.

WE THE CITIZENS ARE VERY ANGRY AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT, BECAUSE THEY DO NOT DO ANYTHING, ROBBERY, ASSAULTS AND KIDNAPPING IS EVERY DAY. I JUST RECEIVED AN EMAIL FROM MANY FRIENDS WHO ARE TELLING US TO BOYCOTT THE BICENTENARIO PARTIES. WHEN WE GO OUT, WE HAVE TO PUT THE BAG IN THE BACK OF THE CAR AND BY NIGHT SOMETIMES WE ASK FOR A RADIO TAXI, SO WHEN WE GO OUT TO HAVE DINER OR WHATEVER WE HAVE TO BE CAREFUL. THERE ARE LOTS OF BEAUTIFUL PLEACES TO GO IN THIS CITY . ANY WAY DO NOT THINK WE STAY AT HOME ALL TIME, WE GO PARTY, AND IF YOU COME ON NOVEMBER YOU WILL ENJOY IT.

ALL MY REGARDS,

MARÍA GABRIELA