Too many Ph.D.’s?

An AP Story says:

College students are getting a raw deal, a recent New York report asserted. The problem is they’re taking too many classes from part-time, or adjunct, professors.  But that same report unwittingly revealed something about how higher education is more culpable than it likes to admit when it comes to creating the problem.

The issue is a huge one in higher education far beyond New York, with about half of the nation’s college faculty now on part-time contracts. Adjuncts are cheaper for colleges, but they often lack the time and resources for focused teaching, and research shows students’ performance suffers if they are taught by part-timers too often.

In its report last month, a 30-member commission called for New York’s state (SUNY) and city (CUNY) systems to alleviate the over reliance on adjuncts by hiring 2,000 more full-time faculty for their 87 campuses.

But just one page away, the report also called for adding at least 4,000 new doctoral students.  There’s a connection between those numbers that deserves more attention.

The Atlantic as a Theatre of War, 1500-1825

Applications are invited for participation in the Seminar, to meet for approximately ten days at Harvard University in the first half of August 2008. Participants, for whom travel and accommodation will be provided, must be recent recipients of the Ph.D. or its equivalent or advanced doctoral students engaged in research on aspects of Atlantic history. Historians at the early stages of their careers in Latin America, Western Europe, and Africa are especially invited, to join scholars from the United States and Canada for presentation of work in progress and discussions of the theme of the Seminar. It is hoped that some of the expenses of the participants will be defrayed by their own universities.

Work in progress on the military and naval conflicts, whether officially sanctioned or not, among the European powers or their colonial proxies will be presented and discussed. Shifts in the modes of warfare, the recruitment and experiences of combatants, and the determinants and significance of success and failure will be especially important. Senior historians will chair the sessions on topics of special interest to them and join in the Seminar’s discussions.

The Seminar, under the auspices of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is directed by Professor Bernard Bailyn. For application forms, to be returned by April 30, 2008, or information, please contact Pat Denault, Administrative Director, International Seminar, Emerson Hall 4th Floor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. Telephone: 617-496-3066; Fax: 617-496-8869; E-mail: pdenault@fas.harvard.edu. All application materials are also available on our Web site.

The Case for History and the Humanities

The latest edition of the AHA’s Perspectives includes an article by current AHA president Gabrielle M. Spiegel entitled “The Case for History and the Humanities.”  It is not available on line yet but should be in the next few months.  When it is I will provide a link.

A.H.A. Program 2008

This year, the American Historical Association’s annual meeting will be in Washington, D.C.  Their program includes a number of papers to be given on military history, which is encouraging.  Click here for the session titles.

One promising session is Beyond the “New Military History”: New Histories of the Military, Warfare, and Society, chaired by Richard Kohn of UNC.

Grad students: depressed, burdened, and insecure

Why do “humanities grad students feel depressed, burdened, and insecure, more so than their colleagues in the sciences”?  To find out why and how it shows up in their program completion rates, click here (access to Chronicle of Higher Education required.)

John Adams, David McCullough, and Popular History

For those interested in the debate that still seems to rage on the subject of popular vs. academic history, there’s an interesting article (although it is 2 years old now) entitled “The Unpopularity of Popular History in the Academy: An Academic’s Thoughts on David McCullough’s Visit to Campus,” Oakland Journal (Winter 2006): 9-26.  This obscure journal is from Oakland Univ., in Michigan and was written by Todd Estes, a professor of American history there.   The entire article can be accessed here.

The article is a good one and makes a number of points worth considering, especially about “what’s wrong” with popular history.  Estes is a good writer, but one should be forewarned that Estes focuses almost exclusively on that question, and largely avoids the opposite side of the debate: why doesn’t the reading public like/read/buy/acclaim academic history. As such, Estes article is quite one-sided, and in fact presents some debatable assertions.  He faults McCullough for focusing on Adams’ character and ignoring politics and ideology, failing to put Adams within his times.   I suspect many readers would disagree with this notion.  Perhaps Estes was looking too much for the esoterica so popular in history departments, which was not in John Adams.  Isn’t it OK to provide a solid general background to the story of a man’s life (as McCullough does), without getting into, say, the meanings of parades and fetes and political culture of the 1790s, an over-emphasis on cultural history?  Sure it is.  McCullough’s focus on character is not “obsessive” as Estes says, it is central to the story he wants to tell.

In fact, Estes doesn’t really like stories, and even sympathizes with another historian’s complaint about John Adams:  its “narrative, narrative, narrative.”  Leave it to two academics to bemoan the fact that a book has too much narrative, and tells a story.  Estes goes on to quote from a review of so-called “Founders Chic” (a term that I actually find to be useful, as does Estes) by academic historian David Waldstreicher of Temple University.  He is a prize-winning author of one of the most poorly written history books I have ever suffered through: In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes (1997).  This is not to say that Waldstreicher’s research is faulty or that he’s a bad academic–not at all, in fact, quite the contrary.  The problem is, his prose is abyssmal, the book is one of the driest examples of cultural history (a genre already on suspect foundations), and he doesn’t really tell a story.  Yes, he tells the reader (if they can manage through it, which over 2/3 of my graduate seminar could not in 2003) facts, interpretation, information.  But how ’bout some narrative!?!?  

This gets to an important point:  because academics focus on interpretation (which is fine) to distraction, narrative and story suffer.  Hence, nobody reads their books!  Maybe there’s the rub, as noted in a Slate column several years ago called “That Barnes and Noble Dream.”  Doing history the way academics do means little public interest, no sales, and irrelevance–not to mention bitter jealousies toward folks like McDonough and Tuchman who actually write well about interesting topics.   Estes fails to engage with this question about why most folks detest academic histories, especially those that are written as salvos in petty historiographical wars of no interest and little meaning.

See also my previous post on this issue from 2006.

“This has nothing to do with free speech”??

As I noted here, two contoversial speakers were to speak at the Oxford Union yesterday, one of whom is David Irving, noted (and previously jailed) Holocaust denier.  The BBC tells us that “hundreds of protesters besieged the Union Society, furious at the decision to invite the leader of the far-right British National Party to speak there, along with a historian who has denied that the holocaust ever happened.”   Ultra right winger Nick Griffin was the other scheduled speaker, and he was “bustled in surrounded by a group of skinheads to protect him.”  As if that isn’t going to get folks ticked off, eh?

Still, where do we draw the line between unpopular opinions and preventing controversial people from speaking?  “This has nothing to do with free speech,” argued one protester, “it’s about giving credibility to fascists, making them appear to be part of the mainstream.”  Who decides that?  Its got everything to do with free speech, contrary to what this naive student shouted, but that does not mean everyone gets 30 minutes and a mike.  Leftists on American campuses routinely shout down conservatives such as David Horowitz, Jean Kirkpatrick, etc., and steal copies of right-wing student newspapers.  (Click here for example) That is surely wrong, although most of the time university officials do nothing in response.

The BBC goes on to report that “banners were draped over the walls surrounding the Union Society, bearing anti-racist slogans,” while chants reverberated through the narrow streets outside: “BNP – off the streets” and “Nazi scum – go home.”  Others, however, took a different tack:  One group supporting the event held a banner aloft bearing Voltaire’s famous dictum: “I disapprove of your views, but would fight to the death for your right to express them.”

Even then, the organisers decided to break it into two groups “for safety reasons.”  So the BNP’s Nick Griffin spoke in one room, while David Irving addressed students in another. Nonetheless, the Oxford Union Society is insisting the event was a success, albeit a qualified one.   President Luke Tryl said: “I think fascism is awful and abhorrent, but the way to take on fascism is through debate.

“War, Empire, and Culture” 2008

The 2008 Texas Tech Comparative Literature Symposium on “War, Empire, and Culture” April 11-12, 2008 at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas Proposal Submission Deadline: January 15, 2008 Whether calling it new imperialism or redefining it in terms of neoliberalism, the current war on terrorism has not only profoundly impacted American life and society, but it has also raised new questions on the function of war in constituting the American national imaginary and facilitating the American global vision. What effect does the preemptive war have on the concept of bellum justum or just war in the global context? How do we theorize wars, religious and secular, which have increasingly informed and reshaped our regional and global politics and environments, in relation to the U.S.-centered global order and global market? How do we understand the American and global “culture industries” that have conditioned both the acceptance of and resistance to wars? This symposium looks for papers that investigate the political and economic dimensions of wars in American and global contexts as well as papers that explore the representation of wars in different cultural forms, genres, and media. We welcome both proposals that examine war as a process of nation and empire building and projects that offer innovative interpretations of cultural production that foregrounds the dynamics of war and its impact upon our life, society, and environment. Possible topics may include but are not restricted to the following: – The war on terrorism and the media representation – The war on terrorism and capitalist imperialism – The war on terrorism and the discourse of human rights and free market – Religious conflicts between India and Pakistan, between Israel and Palestinians – Racial and ethnic conflicts in India, Ireland, Haiti, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka – Ethnic genocide in Darfur, Congo, Indonesia, and Turkey – Religious and Racial conflicts in Chechnya, Kosovo, Lebanon, and Tibet – War Atrocities: the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanjing, My Lai Massacre, and Comfort Women – War, colonialism, and neocolonialism – War and American exceptionalism – Nation building as empire building in the nineteenth century America – Spanish American War and U.S. imperialism in the Philippines – Mexican American War and the construction of the American Southwest – Westward expansion and American frontier myths – Casualties of war: displacement, migration, and expulsion – World War II and Japanese American internment experience – The American War in Vietnam and Hollywood cinema – The American War in Vietnam and the reconstruction of masculinity – The American War in Vietnam and Vietnamese American experiences – War and Memory – Women and war – War and anti-war movements – Drug wars in Latin America – Cyber war and post-humanity – War, technology, and discourse

Dr. Yuan Shu Box 43091 Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX 79409-3091 Voice: 806-742-2501 Fax: 806-742-0989 Email: yuan.shu@ttu.edu Visit the website at http://english.ttu.edu/complit/

Protests over Holocaust Denier

Is it right or appropriate for a major university to invite a convicted Holocaust denier to debate on its campus?  Many say no at Oxford.

In the face of angry protests, the Oxford Union debating society went ahead on Monday with plans for an evening debate featuring David Irving, a British author jailed in Austria in 2005 for denying the Holocaust, and Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party, acquitted by a British court last year of stirring racial hatred.

The invitation to the two rightist speakers plunged the Oxford debating society into one of the fiercest controversies in its 184-year history. In 1933, it stirred anger in Britain with its notorious “king and country” debate, in which members voted they would in no circumstances fight a war against Nazism.  Although an independent body with no formal links to the University of Oxford, many of the union’s members are Oxford students, and many of the union’s leaders have gone on to prominent roles in British politics.

D. Irving

See also this follow article from the BBC.

Ulster-American Heritage Symposium-2008

The Centre for Migration Studies at the Ulster-American Folk Park, Omagh, is pleased to host next year the Seventeenth Ulster-American Heritage Symposium, 25-28 June, 2008, in partnership with the University of Ulster, Queen’s University Belfast and the National Museums and Library Service of Northern Ireland. Since 1976 the Ulster-American Heritage Symposium has met every two years, alternating between co-sponsoring universities and museums in Ulster and North America. Its purpose is to encourage scholarly study and public awareness of the historical connections between Ulster and North America including what is commonly called the Scotch-Irish or Ulster-Scots heritage. The Symposium has as its general theme the process of transatlantic emigration and settlement, and links between England, Scotland, Ireland and North America. Its approach is multi-disciplinary, encouraging dialogue between those working in different fields including history, language, literature, geography, archaeology, anthropology, religion, folklife and music.

The particular theme of the meeting in 2008 will be ‘Changing Perspectives, 1607-2007′ with the aim of presenting and exploring recent research that challenges habitual ways of thinking about the historical relationship between Ulster and North America over the last four hundred years.

I was blessed to have been chosen to be on the program at the 2004 meeting in Omagh, Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and had a wonderful time (paid for by Ohio State Univ., which made it even better).  I presented a paper on Scotch-Irish disaffection during the American Revolution in backcountry Virginia.

The Centre for Migration Studies at the Ulster-American Folk Park, 2 Mellon Rd, Castletown, Omagh, Co. Tyrone, N. Ireland, BT78 5QY.

Tel: .028 8225 6315
Fax: 028 8224 2241
Email: CentreMigStudies@ni-libraries.net

Where’s my Professor?

The NYT has an article that should come as no surprise at all to those who go to or work at a large university:  “Professors with tenure or who are on a tenure track are now a distinct minority on the country’s campuses, as the ranks of part-time instructors and professors hired on a contract have swelled.”  The column goes on to note that “The shift from a tenured faculty results from financial pressures, administrators’ desire for more flexibility in hiring, firing and changing course offerings, and the growth of community colleges and regional public universities focused on teaching basics and preparing students for jobs.”  Many state university presidents say tight budgets have made it inevitable that they turn to adjuncts to save money.

Thirty years ago, adjuncts — both part-timers and full-timers not on a tenure track — represented only 43 percent of professors, but now they account for nearly 70 percent of professors at colleges and universities, both public and private.  Wow.  when I went to Washington and Lee University in the early to mid-80’s, I had only oneprofessor in four years who was not tenured or tenure-track, and all had Ph.D’s.  Quite a change now.

This of course leads to problems, as demonstrated by the example of Florida International University: it has “has 2,400 undergraduate majors but only 19 tenured or tenure-track professors who teach, according to a department self-assessment. It is possible for a psychology major to graduate without taking a course with a full-time faculty member.”

One thing that this article fails to point out is how many courses are also taught by teaching assistants, or TA’s.  These are common at large universities.  Most times, TAs are actually graduate students who get paid to teach part time (or grade, or research) in exchange for free or reduced tuition and a stipend.  When I left Ohio State my stipend was about $1800 per month, but out of this came some of my health insurance costs, as well as a number of deductions for services at the university I did not even use.  Thousands of students are taught each quarter at OSU, and other campuses across the land, by TAs, who do not have Ph.Ds.  Thus, students and parents are paying lots of money to send their kids to schools with great reputations but the faculty members who give the schools these reputations are usually not the ones teaching in the classroom, at least to undergrads.  Additionally, TAs are not that well “regulated” or controlled.  I taught US history at Ohio State for a dozen quarters, and only had a faculty member or departmental representative come in to observe me one time.  Once. 

Too far?

From the Washington Times Editorial page of November 16th:

Some universities have long been considered bastions of liberalism, but associate professor Paul Grosswiler at the University of Maine, Orono, may have taken that reputation to new heights. We learned a few weeks ago that, according to sophomore Rebekah McDade, Mr. Grosswiler offered extra credit to students in his history of mass communications class if they burned the American Flag or the Constitution, or if they got themselves arrested while defending free speech.

After the story broke, Mr. Grosswiler told the Bangor Daily News: “I don’t intend for students to burn either the Constitution or the flag, and over the years hundreds of students have understood that.” He later published an Op-Ed in that paper, defending his actions. He claims that he has used those examples to demonstrate the power of free speech. He said, “I tell students they have the First Amendment right to burn the flag.” Then, he tempts them with extra credit and tells them “no one has ever followed through in previous years.” The professor claims that no other students until now have been upset by his rhetoric.