This was asked on a listserv I’m on, and I decided that the question is interesting enough to share here — largely because I’m interested in how you would answer.
In an article titled “What is a Generally Educated Person?” in the Fall 2004 issue of AAC&U’s Peer Review, Jerry G. Gaff asks readers to list 5 answers to each of these questions:
1. What are the ideas and skills students should learn?
2. Who are the people (living or dead) students should know?
3. What are the places students should visit?
4. What artistic or musical performances should they see or hear?
5. What are the books they should read?
You have to keep each list down to five items — the point is to choose what is most important rather than every good answer that occurs to you.
My answers (and some thoughts on the exercise in general) below the fold.
Category Archives: Academia
I’m hating their tactics, but I feel some lingering unease.
I am, as usual, late to the party reacting to the news that UCLA neurobiologist Dario Ringach has given up research on primates owing to “pressure put on him, his neighborhood, and his family by the UCLA Primate Freedom Project”. As reported by Inside Higher Ed:
Ringach’s name and home phone number are posted on the Primate Freedom Project’s Web site, and colleagues and UCLA officials said that Ringach was harassed by phone — his office phone number is no longer active — and e-mail, as well as through demonstrations in front of his home.
In an e-mail this month to several anti-animal research groups, Ringach wrote that “you win,” and asked that the groups “please don’t bother my family anymore.”
The North American Animal Liberation Press Office, a resource for the media on “animal liberation actions,” according to the group’s Web site, posted a news release from the Animal Liberation Front, a separate group that sometimes engages in illegal activities, about Ringach’s decision. The press release describes Ringach’s research as torturous and “a far cry from life saving research.” UCLA officials said that groups like ALF often misconstrue information, and that, in the interest of researchers’ safety, the university is not releasing detailed information about projects being attacked by such groups.
Colleagues suggested that Ringach, who did not return e-mails seeking comment, was spooked by an attack on a colleague. In June, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for trying to put a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of Lynn Fairbanks, another UCLA researcher who does experimentation on animals. The explosive was accidentally placed on the doorstep of Fairbanks’s elderly neighbor’s house, and did not detonate.
Calls from students to your home.
Since Julie blogged about a call to her home from a student who wanted to add her class, I thought I’d add a story of my own, from waaaay back:
In which the blogger has to think about what turns on the manner in which her students address her.
Thanks to all readers who responded with suggestions as to what my students should call me. As a number of you pointed out, what I choose here isn’t just a matter of local custom (there seems not to be a unified custom on this at my university), nor of personal comfort (for me or my students). After all, the form of address is going to play a part in setting the tone for my interaction with my students.
And here, maybe my indecision about the right form of address reflects the fact that I have aims that are potentially in conflict with each other.
What should my students call me?
OK, it’s the time of the semester when I get a bazillion emails from students enrolled in my classes, and students trying to enroll in my classes, and assorted others. And, the emailers each choose a manner of address out of thin air, since usually they haven’t met me yet and have no idea how I prefer to be addressed.
The problem is, I’m not sure how I would prefer to be addressed!
Silicon Valley job how-tos, adapted for the academic job search.
That Julie and her challenges!
A few days ago, Guy [Kawasaki] wrote a post called Everything You Wanted to Know About Getting a Job in Silicon Valley But Didn’t Know Who to Ask. Having spent several years in the mid-90s being a contractor, meaning every six or eight weeks I was off on an interview with someone or another, I can tell you his post is spot-on.
THE CHALLENGE…
All you academics who have been through the job market, how would you amend his list for academics?
I’ve looked at the tips. There are 15 of them! Tips 4, 5, 6, and 10 carry right over in a fairly straightforward way. I’ll adapt two of the remaining 11 tips. The adaptation of the other 9 is wide open for anyone else who’d like to chime in.
Random bullets (“Is the term actually starting next week?!” version)
*Updating syllabi to reflect the coming semester’s actual meeting days and assignment due dates? Really, really boring. The boredom further propagates when it requires updating a kazillion webpages, then uploading the updates to your site (one at a time, since Fetch thinks it’s cute today to “lose” the connection when you use the feature that lets you set up the whole list of files to “Put” all at once). And don’t get me started on the tedium of undoing the MS Word crappy formatting when you turn your word document into a webpage. I’m guessing there would be buckets of money (plus rose petals and chocolates) for the developer who could provide the mutatis mutandi utility for syllabus and webpage updates.
We’ll give you a deal on textbooks if you don’t mind some ads.
In light of my earlier post on academia and capitalism, occasional commenter Jake asks what I think about the newish move, described in this story from the Associated Press, to cut textbook prices by putting advertisements in them.
So, I’ll give you some key bits of the article with my thoughts interspersed.
Disciplinary misconceptions (philosophy version).
Chatting with the chair of the philosophy department at one of the local community colleges:
CC Dept. Chair: Yeah, so I’m scheduled to teach six classes this term.
Me: Six?! While you’re the chair?!!
CC Dept. Chair: Yeah, six. We have big enrollments, the full-time faculty are fully scheduled, and I can’t find enough part-timers to teach all the sections.
Me: Good grief! So you have to teach them yourself?
CC Dept. Chair: The enrollments are what will get us permission to hire another full-timer, so I can’t not teach them.
Me: Yikes!
CC Dept. Chair: Also, I need to counteract the effect of some of the instructors who, erm, are driving the students away.
Me: Driving them away?
CC Dept. Chair: Yeah. Dry lectures, three hour blue-book exams, that sort of thing.
Me: In philosophy? What the hell?!
CC Dept. Chair: Exactly.
Me: Seriously, philosophy class is supposed to be the one that’s so engaging that it lures you away from what your parents want you to major in.
CC Dept. Chair: That’s my feeling on it.
Me: Have these three-hour-blue-book-exam folks forgotten that our business is corrupting the youth?
CC Dept. Chair: Apparently. Which is why I have six classes worth of youth to corrupt this term.
Academia, capitalism, and conscience.
Regular commenter and tireless gadfly Bill Hooker asks what my take is on the movement afoot to get academics to put pressure on (and perhaps completely boycott) scientific/technical/medical publisher and information portal Reed-Elsevier.
What’s wrong with Reed-Elsevier? Among other things, they host “arms fairs” — like book fairs, but with munitions and torture equipment (which means it’s unlikely Scholastic will be hosting an arms fair at the local primary school).
But hey, are we expecting a company to be able to stay afloat on revenues from academic and technical publishing alone?