Three Passing (Liberal) Thoughts

by Cliopatria

1. In honor of the passing of Pope John Paul II, US flags are to be flown at half-staff"until sunset on the day of his interment." A number of states have followed suit. Do we regularly honor foreign leaders' at death with flag lowering? Or is it specifically because the Pope leads (spiritually, of course) American Catholics, and if so, has the US so honored other religious leaders, foreign or domestic? Is it because he said nice things about the US or because his criticism of our" culture of death" echo those of our President? [UPDATE: Kevin Drum asked a similar question and got some answers. It's President's Choice, and the flags were lowered for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death as well]

2. With regard to the Pluss v. Churchill discussions Ralph Luker has been leading over the last few days, two distinctions.

a. Churchill is a professor of ethnic studies a discipline predicated on deconstructing American self-delusions of tolerance and homogeneity, and on explicating the official and unofficial wrongs done to non-majorities; as such his attacks on US institutions and majority populations are consistent with his disciplinary mandates; they do not call his professional competence into question. Pluss, on the other hand, is an historian, and the highly racialized"analysis" of his own institution and situation does call his historical competence into question. Given a choice, if I were on a hiring committee, between historians who belonged to the National Socialists or the Communist Party of America -- all other things being equal, which they rarely are, and assuming that the information were legitimately acquired, as on the candidates' c.v.s -- I don't know that I'd give either of them the job.
b. Churchill attacked the US, its citizens and leaders, its history and its ideology. But he never said anything bad about CU until he was attacked, nor has he been accused of failing to fulfill his teaching obligations. Pluss publicly attacked FDU students and administrators on racial and academic grounds; I grant that it's a gutsy thing to do for an adjunct professor, but that's because it's so.... dangerous.

As with Churchill, in the Pluss case there is the outrage, and then there is the procedure. Whether or not"five or six" unexplained absences in a semester gets most faculty fired, it is grounds for disciplinary action or dismissal. Whether or not most professors have their citations double-checked by outside and inside reviewers, plagiarism and abuse of sources is grounds for disciplinary action or dismissal.

Three Bonus Readings:

The Gospel of Judas [via Brian Ulrich]
A proposal in favor of unionizing adjunct faculty, which does a pretty good job detailing a situation which it doesn't take a labor historian to find appalling. The link came from Anne Zook, whose sense of justice and fair play, and whose facility with the poetics of linkage, are among the finest in the blogosphere. Looking back on my own writings on the subject, I found this comment on grad student unions:
Why not argue that a unionized graduate teaching body would be a draw for the best students, who want the camaraderie, security and respect that collective bargaining brings. Why not argue that graduate students, like tenure/tenure-track faculty with their senate (or union, for some of us), like administrators with their little boardroom meetings, like undergraduates with their student government, that graduate students deserve to choose the institutions that best represent them and their unique interests in the academy.
The same could be said of adjuncts... except that the oversupply of Ph.D.s, and the difficulty of true labor mobility in nation-wide academic fields, and the deeply-rooted sense on the part of so many adjuncts that teaching is a good thing to be doing in spite of the exploitation, all make it far too easy for institutions (and that means you, if you're a faculty member who colludes in the regular use of adjunct faculty) to exploit their own graduates (even if it's not really their own graduates, it's former students just like them).
A primer on Pontifical Election: Thanks to the late John Paul II,"it appears this will be the first conclave during which the cardinal-electors will have private bathrooms." More to the point, election is by 2/3rds majority, unless no winner emerges after four rounds (each round consisting of two 4-vote days and a day of prayer), in which case they go to runoff or simple majority.

Because I scored 7 out of 9: Can you tell the difference between foolish pranks and historical trivia? [via Is That Legal?] I did pretty well, but there was guessing involved.

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More Comments:

David Lion Salmanson - 4/5/2005

Only 6. I claim sleep deprivation.

chris l pettit - 4/5/2005

Here is the most off the wall article I have seen...

http://www.worldpress.org/link.cfm?http://www.panapress.com:80/freenews.asp?code=eng077597&dte=05/04/2005

CP

Oscar Chamberlain - 4/5/2005

I think it flew at half mast for Churchill.

However, I think there has been a sort of flag inflation, and that the flag is flying at half mast more than it used to.

Is there anyway to find out how often it flew at half-mast during WWII (other than a brute force perusal of FDR proclamations)?

Grant W Jones - 4/4/2005

In answer to your questions, probably not. But, Jonathan Dresner asked if it is usual for the American flag to be flown at half-mast when a foreign leader dies. I took that to also mean political leaders. Although, I do not think Mao was worthy of the honor.

Jonathan Dresner - 4/4/2005

You do read me correctly, Mr. Stone. Though I would argue that Ethnic Studies -- like other area studies or topical studies fields -- can be and often is a legitimate field when its practitioners are versed in some "home discipline." Nor do I necessarily believe that the critical stance of Ethnic Studies is unjustified -- we are all of us engaged in critical scholarship of some form or another, myth-busting and mind-bending -- just that research, teaching, etc., shouldn't have foregone conclusions or ideological limits.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/4/2005

Yah, I got eight out of nine of them right, also; but I have to say that it beats me how I did it.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/4/2005

I'm inclined to agree with Stone about this. The University of Colorado administration ignored and overrode all the clues when its search for a department home for Churchill was rejected by several departments. By the norms of most traditional disciplines, Churchill simply didn't have the credentials expected of someone at a major research institution. So, the administration turned to ethnic studies. One of the problems here is that ethnic studies is a creature of recent vintage, with little in the way of accumulated expected norms and standards.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/4/2005

I don't think there is any other religious leader anywhere in the world who is quite comparable to the Pope. Is there a single Muslim senior figure? Or Buddhist? Or Jewish? Or Hindu? Or Protestant?

Dave Stone - 4/4/2005

In effect, Jonathan Dresner is arguing that Ward Churchill is well within his disciplinary norms, since those norms are "predicated on deconstructing American self-delusions of tolerance and homogeneity, and on explicating the official and unofficial wrongs done to non-majorities; as such his attacks on US institutions and majority populations are consistent with his disciplinary mandates; they do not call his professional competence into question."

This argument, it seems to me, is destroying the village in order to save it. In order to salvage some professional credibility for Ward Churchill, Dresner is implying that the discipline of ethnic studies is no discipline at all, at least if we define a discipline by explicit standards of methodology and some rigor in practice. This "discipline," as described by Dresner, is not defined by standards of methodology, but instead by ideologically-correct conclusions. Do universities operating on the public purse need to be supporting fields defined by the particular political conclusions they draw? Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but it strikes me that reasoning backwards from conclusions flies in the face of what scholarship ought to be about.

Grant W Jones - 4/4/2005

I remember that when Mao died the national flag was flown at half-mast, at least in California.

Rebecca Anne Goetz - 4/4/2005

Shoot, I only got 7 out of 9.

Van L. Hayhow - 4/4/2005

Me, too, but I guessed on 3 and went 3 for 3 on the guesses.

Julie A Hofmann - 4/4/2005

Woohoo!

Jonathan Dresner - 4/4/2005

Actually, I was talking about Churchill, but you're right.

I don't know, but if I'd written something with the kind of slippage Strom committed, I'd probably just be glad it got published and wouldn't try to draw too much more attention to it. Submitting it for a prize does seem kind of foolhardy, under the circumstances.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/4/2005

Jon, If Strom had not submitted her own book for the prize annually given by the Agricultural History Society, whose own journal she edits, it seems quite possible that the discrepancies in her citations would never have been caught. They were flagged by her own managing editor/ graduate student who then took the allegations to her department chairperson. Strom _might_ have recused herself from the competition because of her position in the Society. But she didn't and she got flagged because of it.