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“Declining (x) literacy”
Now that Constitution Day is nearly upon us (tomorrow, folks, the 218th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, not that its signing had much historical significance—quick, what was the criterion for ratification?), the New York Times has its obligatory obeisance-and-reflection, which turns out to be a bunch of historically-unreflective pap about “historical literacy:” The […]
Al-Arian and symbolism
Why did some faculty and many Tampa residents want USF to fire Al-Arian long before his indictment on charges that he helped finance the Palestinian Islamic Jihad? … After disposing of the claims that USF could have fought terrorism by firing Al-Arian or that it was obliged by its publicly-funded status to fire Al-Arian, we are left with the argument that a university has a moral obligation to maintain clean hands in its hiring practices and to be willing to fire faculty …
The shameful voting record of academics
…if we trust the methods in one study of academe’s party registrations, the greatest threat to the patriotism of universities is in the apathy of the faculty, … In the marketing and accounting departments at these two universities, for example, more than two-thirds of the faculty were either not found or didn’t have major-party affiliations (19 just not found)… But the Music Department at Stanford shouldn’t be cut any slack, either, as only 4 of 13 had major-party registrations. How awful!
A former student e-mails
Last night, a student from the fall e-mailed me. Over the course of the last semester, she and I had a running correspondence about the teaching of the course as well as the substance of it as well. She’s an older student who, for a variety of reasons, was justifiably irritated at some of the […]
Redemption
By Sherman Dorn on June 1, 2005
So the news today is filled with the revelation that former FBI No. 2 Mark Felt was Woodward and Bernstein’s Deep Throat, the anonymous source for much of their Watergate coverage. I expect that we’ll first see the lionization of Felt for being a whistleblower. Regardless of the putative motivation (in one version, revenge at […]
Posted in History, Notable posts, Random comments