UC Davis Chancellor issues a statement about the pepper-spraying of protesters on campus.
Did you all check out Chris Hayes' big scoop about a campaign to undermine Occupy Wall Street this weekend?
Newt Gingrich will unveil his plan to privatize social security today. He also thinks children should work as school janitors. Oh, and, um, he's the new frontrunner.
Aaaaaannnnd.... that's the end of the supercommittee.
Alleged "Lone Wolf" terrorist arrested in NYC bomb plot.
At least 22 killed in Cairo, Egypt's Tahrir Square.
You stay classy, NASCAR fans.
Meet the 2012 Rhodes Scholars.
Leave a Comment:
The Republican Party is more interested in standing up for billionaires and rooting for economic failure than they are in actually doing something for the good of the country. The failure of the super committee is the most egregious example of GOP intransigence and radical recklessness to date. Here was a chance for a rational deal predicated on putting together a deal to place America on relatively sound financial footing, and Republicans arrogantly walked away. They would rather see rich people get handouts than anything else on this planet, apparently... http://www.sunstateactivist.org
The super committee failure was a bipartisan effort.
After 3 months, surely even without raising taxes they could find 1.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years! If not, where is the list of billions in cut they agree on? Neither side wants this to work because each wants the issue for the upcoming election.
Actually, Rob, I'm beginning to think it was never intended to succeed. The members never even met as a group. The "failure" of the committee accomplishes 3 things:
1) Gets spending cuts that both parties know are necessary, but are politically unpopular.
2) Gets tax increases that both parties know are necessary, but are also politically unpopular
3) Allows each party to blame the other for the "failure"...that is, political cover for the 2012 elections.
It's political theater, and I'm fairly certain that was all it was ever meant to be. Propaganda for the masses.
I've been saying since August that the SC was set up to fail, folks. Cassandra was ignored again...such a burden [heavy sigh].
The President is way smarter than anybody gives him credit for being; he has the percentages figured on dozens of moves ahead. He agreed to this bit of theater to get what he wanted - which was a vote to raise the debt ceiling. Now, with the deadlock and the so-called "sequesters" triggered; he has bought time to campaign against the obstruction of the GOP and to win the 2012 elections in a landslide. The incoming 113th Congress can repeal those sequesters when the time comes - and they will.
Not so fast, there lady. Looks like they aren't even going to wait until tomorrow:
McCann and Graham propose legislation to stop Defense Budget Sequestration.
LOL! Too funny! It's all grandstanding to look tough for the campaign. It will neither pass nor be signed into law.
Yep, President Obama, has announced that he will veto any attempt to change the automatic cuts. Time to pay the piper. You've danced long enough.
Amendment I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Ratified effective Dec. 15, 1791. Apparently - UC and Mr. Pepper Sprayer are above the law. Perhaps a class in Constitutional Law is in order?
The right to speak and the right to "occupy" are not synonymous. And there are guidelines, rules, and laws that govern the right to assemble. I don't condone the spray episode at UC nor do I condone the occupy moment blatant disrespect for civil servant law officers. Where is the post with the video of protestors mistreating law enforcement officers?
RobDon:
The First Amendment does not come with the caveat "with prior government approval." The point of protesting is to be disruptive.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/20/ret-police-captain-to-be-arrested-in-solidarity-was-the-proudest-moment-of-my-life/
The point of protesting may be to be disruptive, but the 1st amendment protects the right to PEACEABLY assemble.
If I want to assemble disruptively, I've gotta take my lumps when they come around.
Being peaceful and being disruptive are not mutually exclusive.
what part of "congress shall make no law respecting...the freedom of speech... and the right of the people peaceably to assemble" says that it comes with guidelines, rules and laws? Oh, that's right, it doesn't...
When I see you assembling and "occupying" the White House lawn, then I will believe you. Yes, there are ways that free speech and assembly ARE restricted, not to the content, but in other matters of government or public interest.
You can not just take that part of the constitution and interpret it out of the context of the whole. Like I said, try assembling on the White House lawn to prove your point. The fact that you can not, proves mine.
Apparently our President and Secretary of State have lost interest in supporting democratic protests in Egypt as well as the United States. The Republican presidential candidates are spending all their time attacking less fortunate Americans. Are we supposed to chose between indifference and hatred on 11/6/12?
Yes.
We are seeing that the more involved people in this country are sick of the apathy that is shown. The outright hate of the Republicans is going to be the downfall of their party. I am collecting signatures for the Recall of Walker, in Wisconsin. I have had many Republicans signing. They are as tired of the hate as we are. They are waking up to the fact that the Repukes want ignorant, uneducated people who don't know how to make changes. They are tired of the working class being made to look like slackers. They are tired of the VETS being treated like less then human. Change is coming. It will take lots of people fighting for their rights, but I think there are those people out there.
Oh, this makes your point so well.
Thank you for your boots on the ground. We are registering and updating voter registrations here in Florida as we speak.
Gov. Scott threw EVERYONE off of the absentee mail in ballots. This affects republicans as well as democrats. I don't get it. Many seniors here vote by mail. There was no announcement of this action. You really have to be active to get this kind of news.
Our efforts are to make sure everyone...yes, everyone that mailed in their vote before get the same opportunity this time. WE DO NOT DISCRIMINATE on party affiliation. This is also a very transient state. We need to make sure that everyone that votes ...has matching addresses on their IDs and Voter Registration cards....it all takes time and we are working hard for this NOW.
think barbaratop saying Repukes is a correct word. as i know that 99% here understands she is talking about the ones.
who yell let him die to some one no insurance.
cheers about over 400 executions.
boos a Army Soldier that was actually in Iraq because he was gay.
Also
This from Joe the dead beat dad Walsh, Vets are unpatriotic!!
There's been a lot of discussion of what is considered permissible in the use of pepper spray by police in more typical law enforcement situations. I found this report from October 2000, by the Pepper Spray Committee of the Civilian Complaint Review Board of New York City:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/pdf/pepperreport.pdf
I was particularly struck by these paragraphs on page 5 (emphasis mine):
I think these constraints have been consistently violated in the use of pepper spray on Occupy protesters.
Rachel, I am having great difficulty understanding how Congress can sign a contract with Grover Norquest who is a guy who is not even a government official. America didn't elect these officials so that they could enter into a signed agreement with anyone that monitors and guides there behavior and decision making. I know of another organization, Aipac, that does the same thing. So the game, as you know better than I, is "Play Ball our Way or it's the Highway". And, it works effectively resulting in Congress doing what is wrong for America. This all seems so illegal. I realize that the new "Get the Money Out" campaigns at the moment are designed to fix this problem and I pray that it will. But, I don't understand how Norquest's deal is even legal. This is an amazing conflict of interest for America. And, for sure there isn't a CEO that would ever allow anything like this to happen in their own organizations. I'm just mad as hell about this and the feeling of powerlessness that this causes for a very very long time. I need therapy. Thanks
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Hmm... I don't see anything in that about Gov. Norquist. If Norquist's pledge is preventing them from serving the majority of the citizens in this country, I would see that as a violation of their oath of office.
well great job Chris Hayes.
well after checking that out you can see it at work very clearly, like Kye repeating the get a job and take a bath spew.
Classy Nascar fan is an oxymoron.
I know this doesn't work in professional wrestling either, but I hope next time a SuperDuperCommittee is set up, that the ground rules are explicit that if the thing fails, every member will immediately quit his/her job and retire from politics forever.
well maybe a Gage match where they are put in a Gage and not let out until they do their jobs.
place it all on the Mall.
My proposal is that lawmakers work on commission. Pass a good bill
that will help your constituents and become law, you get a paycheck. Pass a bill
declaring Tuesday officially Tuesday, that's on your own time.
No work, no pay. And no paid vacations until your work is finished.
(deleted 'cuz I accidentally replied to something else here)
Maddow and team you really need to read this one. Have Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on your program for sanity on Iran expertise. Both Hillary and Flynt were in the Bush administration and quit just before the invasion of Iraq because they disagreed. Please have them on
They go after MSNBC's Morning Joe's uninformed remarks about Iran
http://www.raceforiran.com/the-iraqization-of-americas-iran-debate-mohammad-javad-larijani-and-the-mainstream-media#comment-62435
Mohammad Javad Larijani’s visit to New York earlier this week for meetings at the United Nations coincides with a striking upturn in anti-Iranian media coverage and commentary in the West. To address some of the issues raised in the media, Larijani met with several media personalities and a range of Iran “observers” at policy organizations in New York. His media appearances this past week not only provide a window into how the Islamic Republic sees its present situation and future prospects; they also provide a window into current trends in American elite thinking and discourse about Iran. And those trends are, to put it gently, disturbing.
Before we unpack that, it is interesting to note some points about Larijani’s background, for those who might not be familiar with him. From a Western frame of reference, one might describe him as a “Renaissance man”, but that strikes us as too limited a label for him. He is, of course, one of the Larijani brothers (who also include the current parliament speaker, the head of the judiciary, and the chancellor of Iran’s most prestigious medical school). Son of one of the most honored grand ayatollahs of the 20th century, Mohammad Javad Larijani studied both in the Qom hawza (seminary) and in the electrical engineering faculty at Sharif University of Technology (Iran’s MIT). He then pursued doctoral studies in mathematics at Berkeley, before returning to Iran at the time of the revolution.
Since the Islamic Republic’s founding, Larijani has had a distinguished political career, as a member of parliament and deputy Foreign Minister; he currently serves as secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, as an adviser to the head of the judiciary, and as an adviser to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. He also directs the Islamic Republic’s leading research institute for mathematics and theoretical physics.
As one might surmise from this background, Larijani is thoroughly grounded in modern science as well as Islamic theology and law. He is also well-schooled in Western philosophy and political theory; while talking about the Islamic Republic’s ongoing project to construct a democratic system grounded not in Western liberalism but in “Islamic rationality”, he can make very astute references to David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and other prominent Western liberal thinkers. And, of course, he can offer uniquely informed observations about Iranian politics and foreign policy. In short, it is a bracing intellectual experience (and a lot of fun) to talk with him.
These qualities come across in an hour-long interview that Larijani gave to Charlie Rose, see here. We ourselves have appeared on Charlie Rose, and admire his program. While we would not agree with all of Charlie’s interpretations of events in the contemporary Middle East, he strikes us as genuinely interested in using the interview to present Larijani’s ideas to his viewers, not to push his own political or policy agenda. Consequently, the interview offers a rich bounty of insights into high-level Iranian thinking about the nuclear issue, the Arab spring, and Iranian domestic politics.
If, however, one wants to learn more about the cultural and intellectual pathologies currently afflicting America’s Iran debate, it is hard to do better than the interview Larijani gave on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, see here. The chief interviewer is Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski (daughter of Zbigniew); she is aided by regular MSNBC commentator Mike Barnicle, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, and author-journalist Jon Meacham.
The interview is itself troubling—Larijani holds up fine, and is worth watching, but Brzezinski, Barnicle, Haass, and Meacham are clearly not out to offer viewers the chance to understand a well-informed Iranian perspective on important issues of the day. Their agenda is embarrassingly evident: to ratify the recent International Atomic Energy Agency report as “proof” that Tehran is trying to build nuclear weapons, to portray the Islamic Republic as ideologically hell-bent on Israel’s destruction, and to underscore how “isolated” Iran is becoming, regionally and internationally. The interviewers are out to affirm all of these claims as social “facts”—in a manner strikingly reminiscent of the affirmation of various social “facts” about Saddam Husayn’s WMD programs, ties to Al-Qa’ida, and other issues in the run-up to America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
As bad as all this is, the segment immediately following the interview, after Larijani had left the set (which starts at 16:28 in the previous link) is even more troubling. Brzezinski—who said she was “disturbed” by the interview—opens by comparing it with a breakfast meeting she attended with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where he “sat around making a mockery of the entire situation”; she “just saw that all over again” during the conversation with Larijani. Then, in a remarkable display of intellectual fatuousness, Brzezinksi, Barnicle, Haass, and Meacham collectively determine that Larijiani’s “confident” demeanor (their description, during the interview itself) is evidence that the Islamic Republic is the antithesis of a “rational actor” (sic; one really has to see it to believe it).
Haass, though, delivers the real punch line; in his view, the interview suggests that, for
Richard’s point about the United States coordinating with Israel over the use of military force against Iran resurfaced on Morning Joe the next day, see here, when Mika Brzezinski and company had on Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman—whom Richard is advising—to discuss his campaign. Although current polls suggest that Huntsman’s chances of winning the Republic nomination are not high, he would be an attractive candidate for Secretary of States in any incoming Republican administration. When the discussion turned to Iran, Huntsman had this to say:
Haass’s role in this is especially galling. Although, after the fact, Richard wants everyone to believe that he was all along opposed to the Iraq invasion, as Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff he helped oversee the preparation of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s infamous presentation to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003, see here, which was critical to “selling” the idea of a U.S.-led invasion. Now, from his platform as President of the Council on Foreign Relations, he is doing exactly the same thing with respect to Iran—adducing false “facts” and bad analysis to lay the ground, intellectually and politically speaking, for another U.S.-initiated war in the Middle East. And the mainstream media are falling in line to help him do it—just as, a decade ago, they helped Ken Pollack and many others disseminate utterly bogus claims and arguments to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Make no mistake: American elites are gearing up for military confrontation with the Islamic Republic—and, in the process, displaying all of the cultural, intellectual, and political pathologies that produced the 2003 Iraq war. We do not believe that the United States is likely to initiate such a confrontation before the next presidential election in November 2012. But Richard’s timetable—that is, during either an Obama second term or the first term of his Republican successor—seems on point. It will take a lot to head this one off. For those who, like us, believe that another U.S.-initiated war would be a strategic disaster—first of all, for the United States—the next 18 months will likely be the period in which either there is enough of an intellectual pushback to stop the folly, or the United States puts itself on an inexorable path toward attacking Iran.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
See Seymour Hersh's New Yorker Blog for more evidence that these charges against Iran are just like the bogus charges against Iraq before the invasion...Democracy Now.org has interview with him, also.
That wall of silence was very effective.
Yeah that was eerie.
Are you going to be covering the SOPA bill? At all?
OK, that's the first time I've ever seen a list of the Rhodes Scholars awards and how they break down by region and by college attended.
Not to besmirch the elite nature of the program, but I've been involved with different aspects of the recruitment and teaching of elite or extremely gifted students in different programs over the years, in Arkansas, South Carolina and in upstate NY.
So I've known the kinds of people who deserve these kinds of awards, have written countless recommendation letters, coached students on applications, etc. Some of these were kids who maxed the SAT and GRE with perfect scores, skipped senior years of high school to go straight into a top university, and so on.
Some of my kids would go to Swarthmore, Amherst, or Williams Colleges, which I considered the best they could get. Some went to places like USC or other "famous" schools.
Oddly, none were going to the Harvard, Princeton, or Brown. Or Stanford. I have cousins in Wisconsin that have gone to UW-Madison. Cuz they were from Wisconsin.
So these Rhodes Scholars... regardless of where they are from regionally, certain schools are definitely over-represented, aren't they?
Interestingly, the over-represented schools just happen to be those that, if you aren't a legacy, no matter how perfect perfection of all that is perfect your life and academic record may be, your chance of actually getting into them is on par with winning a jackpot in a multi-state lottery. Like hitting a precise number on a wheel in Vegas.
Yet all those Rhodes Scholars are drawn from those schools. That means that, regardless of the regional nature of the awards, there is nothing regional about them at all.
Further, the amount of family wealth needed to even begin to consider most of the schools from which most of the Rhodes Scholars were drawn from automatically precludes even attending such a school for most of the highest scoring high fliers.
YET, in the bios of those students, the majority seem to ALL contain some sort of undeveloped world angle or point of study-- which is the internationalist point of the Rhodes program. I get that. Except, when seeing the concentrated elitism of the schools drawn from, something about their undeveloped world focus rings self conscious and resume-building.
Like, add a trip to an undeveloped part of the world and stir.
I'm too cynical, aren't I? But I've read about the highly-paid coaches rich parents hire to literally CREATE EXPERIENCES for their children, experiences that are entered into for the sole purpose of application-stacking.
I'd believe the profiles and resumes more if they all didn't come from such a concentrated group of schools: Harvard and Princeton in particular. Stanford too. I'd wager those schools must have special offices with coaches, to prime people for the Rhodes applications.
But I think the Rhodes selection people really ought to be more aware of how deeply they are over-representing SCHOOLS that are basically off-limits to 99% of all students, no matter how well qualified they may be, simply because their admission rates are so very very low.
I hate to say it and see it, but I can't help but thinking that academia has become a hollowed out institution running a significant ponzi scam.
Ouch! That last paragraph obscures your (very credible and concerning) message with a mighty broad brush. 'Academia' isn't an institution; it's a large congeries of institutions, many of whom have been fighting the same fight as you.
I have too many friends in academia to consider them the enemy (I am a recovering academic), just as I had MANY friends in journalism even as I criticized the hollowing out of the US Press (going back to late 80s).
Many individual journalists were also fighting the same fight against the hollowing out of the corporate (mainstream) press, telling me, "Oh, we have to play nice with the media chain publishers who want to send 20-30% profits to shareholders while informing us we have to lay off half of our editorial staff... in order to effect change from WITHIN."
And they worked their asses off inside the system. Journalism faculty too, tried to LEAD the field in directions the corporate press didn't want to go. Didn't work out real well for them. None of them. The few that are still able to be gainfully employed in the field.
So for all my good buds working in the trenches, now associates and full professors, many of them tenured and still cranking out books, etc., sure, they're on the right side of this fight.
BUT the institution "academia" is absolutely across-the-board being hollowed out on the same scale as newspapers were.
They are running a pyramid scam of access and advancement just as surely as newspapers were fat and full of monopoly-driven ads that no one ever looked at, until digital technologies actually started tracking true, not inflated, ad exposure, which suddenly made the old ad sales system look like what it was: fraud.
Call frog-in-boiling-water-cliche if you like. 70% adjunct and grad asst teaching staff isn't the apocalypse, because tenure is a troubled institution that needs massive reform.
But 70% non-permanent or contingent staffing for huge physical plants and massive enrollments, massive tuition increases, massively declining state support for REQUIRED land grant charters and other state schools, grade inflation, literacy and learning declines in undergrads, midnight classes, 5-year plans because you can't get into all your required classes in 4 years, working or partying and studying maybe 3 hours a week while staying in a very high class 4-year hotel-- yeah that's a ponzi scheme institution that will most surely implode, collapse under its own weight (against my wishes) as surely as journalism is doing so right now.
That's rather a different issue than the one we started with. For starters, I think we agree that the handling of Rhodes Scholarships is one of many things that are badly tilted towards a select group of universities. Also, I think we agree that the dramatic overuse of non-tenure-track teaching staff is a major problem, both because of the disservice to the staff and the disservice to the students. And we agree that excessive spending on physical plants is a big problem; I suspect you'd agree that football and basketball programs also are an issue. All of these are things that each institution needs to address on its own, and damn well should.
But there are other things that are rather national in scope, reflecting the political failure to address what society wants from higher education, what it really costs, what it needs in terms of support to secondary education, and what it needs to demand from itself and its student population in order to work it out. If there is a Ponzi scheme in there, then it arises from the belief that each generation of graduates holds that the next generation will be the one to fix things.
I'm just saying that there's no monolithic hollowed-out institution here; just a lot of people failing to act and failing to take responsibility for not acting.
We are, I suspect, in violent agreement.
Yup, we do strongly agree on almost all of this. The difference being one of degree.
I realized I should have made more noise about what was happening with journalism, back when I started seeing it. But I was young, and I thought, oh, those veterans aren't pitching fits. They think they can't fight this. They don't think it is a big monolith. Just a lot of little decisions in a lot of newsrooms. What's happening in our newsroom is local to us. Sure, we're controlled by a chain, but the chain owner showed us the numbers and charts, and we have to make these cutbacks. We have to meet this contingency. We have to help the carpetbaggers siphon revenue in a pipeline back to some big corporate coffers while participating less and less in the intellectual Commons of any particular community.
And when the layoffs and paper closures came (and they always did-- even in the late 80s), the most experienced veterans in the newsroom were the first to get it, because they were more expensive and harder for management to bully on matters of journalistic principle.
The content in the papers got fluffier, more vapid, less reason to open any given section front. One chain daily I worked for, there literally was NO REASON to open a section front, because there was literally nothing local inside it. Just syndicated filler and ads. But oh, those ad sections just got thicker and thicker. By 1989.
And we wondered why nobody reads newspapers anymore? There's nothing in them, on purpose! Did a single-minded monolith of Rupert Murdoch create that ecosystem? No. But is a monolithic movement any less responsible for it?
I'm older now, and I'm gonna call what I see. I loved journalism and was basically forced to watch it die, die a lot of littles over 30 years now, and nobody made a stink until it hit the big metro papers in the important places.
That's why what happens at so-called elite universities is also important at all levels. Oh noes! (wringing hands) Their massive ENDOWMENTS took a hit in the recession! Woe is us!
I remember when flagship state universities didn't really have endowments to speak of, because it was (land grant) state subsidized education for all. Then the state and federal money dried up while the student loan money made them fatter than ever. And all of a sudden, all these different and various institutions all across the landscape just DECIDED they needed to have endowments, needed to have the same sort of funds to draw on that private schools had.
Huh. I wonder how they all just sort of decided on that. And I wonder how they found so many REALLY wealthy alumni and donors to cough up money on that kind of a scale. The middle class I remember going to college with never grew up to have that kind of money to throw around.
So yes, I do strongly disagree about the monolithic hollowed-out institution. What is happening is all of a piece. Perhaps not centrally coordinated by an evil mastermind, but no less of a sea change.
Perhaps by being outside now, I can see it more clearly, but I've sat in curriculum meetings and committee meetings with administrators who have their various agendas (make US News Top 25 Research School list in 2 years, one university president said to us with a straight face, the same year our department for getting us Time Magazine Public College of the Year-- it wasn't enough. More. Needed more. More bigger stadium, new facilities, more grants, more labs. At one point I had enough grants to buy out my entire teaching load for the year, and that wasn't enough.)
But you have a good point. I do need to back up my tossed off argument about academia being a ponzi scam.
Consider for instance Amway, the classic pyramid. The whole point of the scam is that it only pays off for those who get in early enough, because the value of the association becomes continually worth less and less as more people join the enterprise. Those who got in early can say, do this and you can have the same success I have had. See my results?
We already know the downfall of faculty buying into that, for the basic research model (for tenure). You either plow new fields of research, or you take a fine-toothed comb to ever-narrower bits of already plowed fields. And the ones that come behind you have the toothbrushes and soft paintbrushes.
The idea was that the boomer faculty would one day retire, faculty lines would open up, more Milton scholars would find a home, because, for some reason, Milton scholars kept reproducing through grad students at the same rate.
Yeah, that didn't work out for most folks either.
Meanwhile, the GI Bill did more to help create the US middle class of the post-war period than any single thing, save the earlier parts of the New Deal. Many faculty bemoaned declining admissions standards, but there was enough power in the granting of post-secondary credentials to allow people to hold the promise of advancement, a better life, not to mention a trained mind and critical thinking abilities.
And it stayed pretty cheap, even to the time I entered college. Relatively. And if you were really smart, you could apply to the good places that actually let you in because you were good. It might still be too expensive for you, the WWII vet leaving behind the family farm, 1st degree in the family person. But you had a shot at least.
With our disappearing middle class, the growth of the big money folks has infected state schools, the schools that were created to offer opportunities to the less-wealthy. Development offices flourished. Big capital improvement projects became an end in themselves because the wealthy alums wanted them, not because they did anything special for the students.
It's all of a piece. That's what I'm saying. The exclusiveness of the so-called elite schools is nearly a class-based admissions bar-- might as well build a moat around those schools. And all the real opportunities in our society flow through there.
And the promise of that credential, that degree? If you can even get it, after you start, maybe with a bunch of midnight classes, or maybe stacking up online ones that you don't really have to show up for or really do anything except copy and paste stuff off the Internet. That might get you through.
So you get the degree, and you head out into the rest of your life, unread, unthinking, and with a degree that means little without an unpaid internship (which the rich kids' daddy's buy for them).
Employers expect a degree to be like a professional certification of a narrow skillset. And if you haven't worked in that area within the last six months, it is assumed that you no longer know how to do it, or remember the standards of the field.
So the only job you can get going forward, no matter how rich your actual education, is based on the last certification for some narrow skill that you got, or the last job you held. Workplace amnesia. Don't put the richness of your life and work on your resume. Tell us what you did last year, ONLY, cuz that is all we're gonna look at.
Ponzi scheme? Diminishing value of the degree, not just as a professional certification, but also as a marker that human beings are rich in mind, richly read, rich in memory and perspective, knowledge and wisdom.
Got a toothbrush or soft paintbrush to delineate the value of the overall degree in the 2010s?
I think I could argue around the edges, but as far as I can tell, your basic point is sound. Each generation has fewer opportunities than the previous, and the lengths of generations are getting rather short. If you believe that higher education is for securing professional position (based on statistics that are mostly pre-Recession), then you will probably be disappointed. If you believe that higher education is for securing a position doing research, then you haven't looked at the demographics since the 1960s.
Of course, there are other things that universities are for. But nobody seems to be interested in finding a viable business model for the higher learning.
I agree! And I did try once, with an e-learning dot.com startup in the early 2000s. I wanted to be a "Blackboard-Killer" (Bb, not the thing on the wall). I wanted to invent interfaces for student-centered, project-based, portfolio-based learning, rather than the typical teacher-centered stuff Blackboard does.
My timing was bad, tho. Incorporated right before the crash. That was really dumb, eh?
My biggest regret, from my time in the 90s as an early early adopter of electronic tools in the classroom (my mom actually taught her third graders to program in logos on Apple IIe's, so I guess it runs in the family)-- my biggest regret is that I tend now to see e-learning tools as an utter disaster for the goals I set for them: to exponentially increase student capacity for critical and creative thinking and writing, independent initiative, exploration, and discovery (and collaboration).
Instead, I see many of the tools I embraced as partially responsible for increasing the decline in literacy skills, critical and careful reading skills, at the university level.
OTOH-- and my dissertation even touched on this too-- I may have lost the war for improving classroom outcomes (while better managing student's need for GOOD feedback, and my own need for a more manageable grading load), but something larger has been gained.
Writing without teachers, outside of classrooms, in the Paulo Friere sense-- the INTERNET ITSELF AS TEACHER.
Those with the eyes and ears to read and participate online, on their own, can often explode their hea
heads.
Let's try that again, since I ran out of edit time.
Writing without teachers, outside of classrooms, in the Paulo Friere sense-- the INTERNET ITSELF AS TEACHER.
Those with the eyes and ears to read and participate online, on their own, can often explode their heads and explore with their own initiative.
I think of the online world as a new Alexandria, as much of a Tower of Babel as it may be.
Some people, self-selected, DO avail themselves of this vast mind-exploding library. Many don't, and they also only learn what it on any given classroom syllabus. But others, those who write and engage and think and participate-- I do believe there are those whose literacy skills are exploding, without teachers, without books, in dialogue, fan fiction, radically democratized interfaces, and yes, even in writing their own code.
Or, as Donna Haraway would say, "feminist cyborg nomadic guerrillas"!
Oh my, Dr. Boese, I about peed my pants when I read that. (Pardon my nonelitist vocabulary, but me no Ivy Leaguer) You are a recovering academic after my own heart. I love teaching, and am married to a tenure-track professor, but cannot agree with you more on your thesis. I encountered elitism as a grad student and now on a daily basis. It is only my grounding in reality that allows me to feel sorry for these people rather than offended. I've always told my students that your education is what you make of it and will take you where you drive it. Students should be driving their success, not the school name. I know I am romanticizing this issue, but I don't care. We've lost our way. Anyone who doesn't believe me on this premise should read the bio of Nobel Prize winner, H.C. Brown, who started his schooling at *gasp* a community college.
We have a word for your thesis, Chris. And that is Scamademia--coming to a dot com or online book store, soon by an anonymous, cynical and sarcastic blogger near you ;-)
[winks at microgeek]
Thanks for the good words, fellow traveler! And as a partner to an academic, you have my sympathy. All my relationships while in academia broke up because I was such a workaholic, I couldn't pay attention to anything else, save my doggies.
But having a partner helps you get tenure, cuz you have someone else to throw stuffy faculty dinner parties while you are busy being a workaholic, so you can more effectively schmooz the colleagues on the tenure and promotion committee!
Blah! I'm not the cook in this family, that's for sure. I make a mean cheese omelet, but that's where it ends. We have had breakfast for dinner on many a wee late nights, though.
Ciao,
MG
I don't favor fracking, but it'll still be done, and when the inevitable negative consequences occur, it's good to have a short list of all the things they should have taken care of first. Duke has provided such a list. Here's a summary; the URL for the study itself is at the bottom of the story.
http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Duke_study_offers_seven_safeguards_for_hydraulic_fracturing_999.html
Someone should remind those people on Morning Joe, (I question their intellect anyway), that the reason Iran is such a bad guy is because we already removed their government back in the 50's and installed a dictator (Shah of Iran) and that is why they love us so much.
It didn't seem to work out very well because when the "people" took their country back, on the way to the palace, they stopped by the US embassy and picked up a few Americans to join their little party. Thus became the "hostage taking maniac ragheads" on the top of the news for a few years.
The propaganda from our government and the media worked very well. Iran will always be the bad guy when all they wanted was their country back. Granted, some of the things they are doing now are kinda scary, but who put them in the position of doing these scary things with the idea of having leverage to protect themselves? We need to stop removing the governments of other countries because they won't jump when we tell them to.
Id say it was true buttrue persians hate their Arab leaders. When I ran was Persia they were the top of all Science and art. Then the Muslims came and banned it all. Everyday Iranians are very westernized all thats left is get rid of Islam from Persia
By the way, this has got to be one of the healthiest ways to deal with an egregious situation that I've ever seen:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/pepper-spray-cop-works-his-way-through-art-history/2011/11/21/gIQA4XBmhN_blog.html
OK, I don't like Newt, nor do I support his "Fire the janitors" plan. However, I don't see a problem with a program to put kids to work in their schools. I did in in college, it was called Work-Study. Why not give 14-18 year olds age-appropriate work, with limited hours, to teach them the value of money and a decent work ethic? I started working when I was 16 and I have had at least one job since then.
By the way, howzabout today's xkcd, huh?
Watching the video from the pepper spraying incident at UC Davis and hearing the comments from "Nasty Newt" reminds me of the Republican reaction to the protests during the Vietnam War. I remember during that time the anti-war movement started with similar incidents with similar reactions from local and national politicians. Although the protests started small at the beginning they quickly blossomed to a national outcry against the government and the actions being taken at the time.
This incident and similar incidents with the OWS movement have slowly begun to blossom nationally and I believe these will gather steam for a national majority speaking up and turning this country around. Unfortunately it will take more time, more incidents and probably injuries to get more backing from a large portion of Americans. I fully back and understand the reactions from the students (against the monumental increase of tuition) and the stance of the OWS movement.
By the way-I work full time,have 5 kids and I take a shower daily Newt. I pray you are no more than a passing fancy and will soon fade away like the rest of the Republican presidential wanna be's
now i understand ..... nyc is able to defend its military police state ..... they are doing their own anti-terrorist hunt....so who needs the feds when they can "police" their own hood.... next up ... the mayor will be coining his own likeness on transit tokens...
CIA trained Police Force.
Hi all,
Have you seen today's XKCD? It's called "Money," and it attempts to show where all the money is and has gone in the US. It's pretty amazing.
http://xkcd.com/980/
I find it terribly ironic that UC-Davic Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi has a blog found here:
http://blogs.ucdavis.edu/common-sense/
And that particular blog from October (prior to the pepper spraying of peacefully assembled students) boasts a Civility Project. A project that she states was a committment to inclusiveness and tolerance.
"We are a campus known for its civility and our commitment to respect, equality and freedom of expression runs deep."
She should resign or be fired.
We are so anesthetized to violence we hardly recognize violent acts for what they are. Consider a definition of one type of violent act:
Not many juries would consider the pepper spraying of non violent and passive demonstrators who were making no threatening actions to be a "lawful sanction".