More Noted Still

by Cliopatria

At the Axis of Evel Knieval, David Noon hosts History Carnival XLIII; and Teaching Carnival XVI is up at Ancarett's Abode. Enjoy yourself and thank David and Ancarett for being super hosts!

Robin Wilson at CHE, Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed, Tim Burke at Easily Distracted and this AP story reported that a Pennsylvania legislative committee found little faculty abuse of their prerogatives in the classroom. The committee's 46 page report has not yet been released, but its unobjectionable recommendations have been. Our friend, David Horowitz, makes them the basis for his claim that this is another big victory for his"Academic Bill of Rights." According to him, the AP (and the Democrats) misreported the story. David Horowitz,"Pennsylvania Committee Finds Students Have No Rights," Front Page Rag, 15 November, is a hilarious read. I especially like the part where Horowitz quotes himself:

David Horowitz, author of the Academic Bill of Rights and sponsor of a nationwide campaign for academic freedom, hailed the report as a"major victory in the battle for student rights." Said Horowitz:"We have been trying to draw attention to this deficiency in university policies for three years. Now our pleas have been heard."

Only a pretentious, overpaid, windbag quotes himself in the third person. Or, does someone else write this crap for you, David?
See also: Scott Jaschik,"Who Won the Battle of Pennsylvania?" Inside Higher Ed, 16 November.

At Political Animal, Kevin Drum has an interesting post about"The Professionalization of the Blogosphere." He concludes:

For good or ill, I suspect that within two or three years virtually all of the high-traffic political blogs will essentially be professional operations. Think of it as the talk radio-ization of the political blogosphere.

The blogosphere has long been open to anyone who had an interest and means of access. Kevin's restricted his comments to"high-traffic political blogs," of course, but it seems to me that he means something other than"professionalization." By it, he apparently means that high-traffic political blogging will have become a primary source of income for those who do it. But the comment that we should"think of it as the talk radio-ization of the political blogosphere" is the tip-off that he means no more than that. Is what Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly do a"profession"? Where are the professional organization, the metrics of admission, the standardization of practice, the claim to self-regulation?

Finally, congratulations to Timothy Egan, whose The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl has won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction.

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Rebecca Anne Goetz - 11/16/2006

Of course, none of the "recommendations" are required by law, and the story indicates that no legislation will be forthcoming. I imagine that no matter what you think of the recommendations, in a year no one besides Horowitz will remember anything about them. (After all, committees have to produce *something* that justifies the money spent.)

Hiram Hover - 11/16/2006

I don't see where the committee's recommendations call for much if anything in the way of new procedures and mechanisms--essentially, they seem to call for reviewing and publicizing grievance procedures that already exist, which seems to me like bureaucrat-ese for doing nothing while pretending otherwise.

The one new recommendation I did notice, per the AP's description, was to "include questions related to academic freedom on anonymous course-evaluation forms." Maybe ratemyprofessors.com could take the initiative there....

Jonathan Dresner - 11/16/2006

I'm not arguing with you about Horowitz's tactics. But I don't see the recommendations as mere "clarification," either, which is what bothers me.

Ralph E. Luker - 11/16/2006

I disagree with you. I just don't know of anywhere in mainstream higher education, at least, where there is not already in place a mechanism for students to appeal what they genuinely believe to be a grievance. Horowitz's offense is in not telling student grievers to pursue the already established means of addressing their grievances. Instead of that, he's clutched them to himself as propaganda weapons. Any claim that he has the students' interests at heart is shere nonsense.

Jonathan Dresner - 11/16/2006

Big deal. Yeah, you can make money doing it, if you get lucky. Yes, having more money makes it easier to draw in good content. The more people do it, the more advertisers are drawn to it and the more feedback you can get, the more likely it is that advertisers will stick with it.

Sure. It's magazines and cable tv all over again.

So the hallmark of success in blogging is going to be money. That'll make it even easier for academics to say "your blogging isn't worth anything academically. You must be all about money...."

Jonathan Dresner - 11/16/2006

I have trouble reading the Pennsylvania recommendations as anything other than a win for Horowitz. They recommended institutionalizing the very processes which he says are necessary (including, god help us, new administrative offices). There'a bit of fast shuffling going on: if the report really found that there were no significant problems, why create new procedures and offices to monitor and adjudicate problems? It looks to me like they're trying to play both sides, but what they're really doing is implementing the ABoR in spite of the lack of evidence.

The only upside to this that I could see is if these procedures, once in place, become widespread and provide real data, so that we see a bit less of dueling anecdotes.