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USM Forum -- Message Board -> AAUP-USM MESSAGE BOARD -> A must-read in response to all the anti-faculty posters
Post Info TOPIC: A must-read in response to all the anti-faculty posters
Angeline

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A must-read in response to all the anti-faculty posters
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While surfing the net (on my own time, I'll add) searching for the organized political and ideological roots of this anti-faculty attitude we see so much of on this board and in the local community (are we really shocked to see such beliefs in this most right-wing of states?), I came across the following article that might start a more substantive discussion: "FROM PLANTATION TO CORPORATION: THE ATTACK ON TENURE AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN FLORIDA" (http://www.csus.edu/psa/elkins.html)

Pertinent passages include:

As Professor Brian Nelson, former UFF State President, puts it: "Behind so many of the current schemes to reform higher education is, in a modern guise, the ideology of classical economics. What once was understood to be system of production and exchange that applied to economic relationships, is now to be extended to as many areas of human endeavor as possible, including higher education" (Nelson 1996:4).

By privatizing the public universities and following "modern business practices, "one can justify treating faculty like factory employees, and when they become (by whatever criteria is applied) less productive, or when, for example, the boss sees no particular need for, say, a department of philosophy, the employees can be fired. As another union activist wrote: "They [the Partnership] want academic administrators to have the same naked power to downsize and mechanize that corporate executives currently enjoy" (Mongar 1996:2).

And it is not just the faculty who will be the losers under this model. Privatizing the universities and raising tuition will again make higher education available to fewer and fewer students. The Report's rhetoric is chilling:

Low tuition for public universities and community colleges has been a tradition not just in Florida but across the United States. It certainly promotes broad access to higher education opportunities. It worked well in an era when state revenues were flowing smoothly to pay for operations and expansion of the schools. ... But we reluctantly conclude that in current circumstances, tuition as low as Florida's has become an anachronism. We can no longer afford the bargain of charging students a small fraction of the true cost of instruction and a fee far lower than most states charge. Accordingly we recommend that tuition in the state university system rise gradually over the next ten years to 50 per cent of the cost of instruction. That would mean going from the current $1,775 a year to about $3,500 a year in current dollars or $4,000 given inflation. (Emerging 1996:21)

Again, it is important to understand that the group that sponsored this document includes not just businessmen who know next to nothing about the nature and functions of the modern university but several presidents of Florida's public and private colleges and universities as well as the Chancellor of the State University System.

Today, while the faculty and the Union might be able to discredit and successfully resist the crudities and stupidities of another John's Committee, it will be a much tougher battle against the likes of the Business/Higher Education Partnership. These are extremely powerful and influential people. Moreover, since neither administrators nor faculty have done a very good job explaining to the general public what modern universities and their faculty do, and since the political right has dominated the discourse, pointing out the failures of America's universities, the Partnership's attack on tenure by opposing it with such terms as "efficiency," and "productivity" may sell well to a citizenry who are themselves experiencing the anxieties of the marketplace and corporate downsizing. Why should faculty be exempt? Why, indeed!

Article found here

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Thanks for the site!

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Thanks for the site.  I have some problems with the idea that the anti-intellectualism we are witnessing is due mainly to the privatization of higher education.  After all, for many years most colleges in this country were private, and professors were often held in high esteem by the students who attended them and by the families who supported them.  Academic values and academic freedom are still highly cherished (perhaps even more highly cherished) at many private colleges than at many public institutions, particularly at the very best private colleges, where the ideal purpose of a university education is still often taken seriously.  Indeed, it would be possible to argue that many of the problems now afflicting higher education in this country began with the massive growth of public institutions and state financial support.  At first public institutions imitated many of the values of the best private institutions, but it was only a matter of time before we began to see the kinds of attitudes we have seen expressed on this board tonight: "I'm John Q. Taxpayer, and, dammit, I'm the boss and I want to send my kid to a school where he can be trained to get a job and make some money!  To hell with 'knowledge for its own sake'!" 


There are lots of private schools (I am thinking of religious schools in particular) in which money is not yet the Almighty Criterion by which everything is measured.  It's entirely possible that as public colleges become more and more to resemble "trade" schools, the true spirit of liberal (with a small "l") learning will be preserved at private colleges and universities. 


Take my opinions as midnight ramblings; thanks for starting an intriguing thread. 



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Angeline

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I don't think that privatization is the same thing as a private school.  Privatization is the corporate, for-profit model that seeks to turn all human endeavors to profit, including education.  Private schools are usually organized on a non-profit model whereby enough funds are generated to keep the institution going but using the institution to generate profits for investors is not part of the mission.  One could safely argue that Thames has turned USM into a profit-making institution to benefit certain investors, namely himself, his family, and his cronies.  Who else, and I mean this seriously, has benefited from the Thames reign?  Thames is the epitome of the corporate model rum amok - using public funds and a public institution to enrich a few.



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Link Heater

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(http://www.csus.edu/psa/elkins.html)


 



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Scientist

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I post to remind readers that the attack on faculty and the general anti-intellectualism displayed recently on this board is not unrelated to the national Evolution- Intelligent Design debate.  This is the same war on a different front. 

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Enough is enough

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Scientist wrote:

I post to remind readers that the attack on faculty and the general anti-intellectualism displayed recently on this board is not unrelated to the national Evolution- Intelligent Design debate.  This is the same war on a different front. 
Scientist, you've got evolution on the brain. Hang it up. Your overgeneralizations are absurd. There is no relationship between the two factors you mention.

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2 Out Of 3 Ain't Bad

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Actually, there is a relationship between those two factors: both are responses to academics who must constantly prove just how smart they are.

In the case is evolution vs creationism, science seems to have a real need to disprove the existence of God, even though the laws of probabilities are dead set against life forming on Earth by accident. There is a perverse need to show that a scientist's mind is superior to the mind of a person who has faith in something, and there is no room for religion in our schools. Why, then, is there room for anti-religion in schools? Why should even one teacher be allowed to deconstruct religion by whatever means when noone is allowed equal time to defend that religion. Faith is considered a weakness by many who want to see some other social agenda pushed. However those with faith have stronger wills because they can believe in something not because their head tells them so but because their heart tells them so. Those who oppose evolution by countering with ID are sick and tired of intellectuals who take advantage of our country's laws to degrade and destroy religion when religion isn't allowed fair time in response. In other words, every school child must be exposed to science but a school child will be exposed to religion only if his or her family exposes them to it.

Not every scientist has an agenda, but the potential for abuse is so high that you cannot simply dismiss the possibility.

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Scientist

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Enough is enough wrote:




Scientist wrote: I post to remind readers that the attack on faculty and the general anti-intellectualism displayed recently on this board is not unrelated to the national Evolution- Intelligent Design debate.  This is the same war on a different front. 


Scientist, you've got evolution on the brain. Hang it up. Your overgeneralizations are absurd. There is no relationship between the two factors you mention.




I disagree, Enough is Enough.  The fight is an old one that will never die. Here is a quote from the link above that describes the sides involved:


"... By the middle sixties, one could discern slight changes in the State University System. The Board of Regents which administered the State University System (SUS) was growing stronger; power was becoming more centralized as the State educational bureaucracy expanded into something resembling the California and New York systems.


Even so, life on the plantation was relatively uncomplicated and tranquil as long as students and faculty behaved; as long as they were quiet about any left-wing political views they might hold, any views that contradicted fundamentalist Christian dogma, and particularly, any sexual behavior other than your standard, "natural," sanctified-by-the-Bible, heterosexual conduct.


However, all of this changed in the years between July, 1956 and July, 1965 when the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (FLIC) was in operation. Created through the efforts of Charley Johns, a good ole porkchopper from Starke, Florida, this committee, which became known as "the Johns Committee," conducted a reign of terror against suspected left-wingers, ungodly faculty, and homosexuals, the full scope of which is just now coming to light.[2]


Originally created to assist in Florida's attempt to subvert the 1954 Supreme Court's Brown school desegregation decision by ferreting out communists in the NAACP, the Committee turned its attention in 1958 to exposing communists and homosexuals in Florida's universities. Beginning at the University of Florida, then to Florida State and finally to the University of South Florida, suspect faculty and students were summoned at any hour of the day or night, sometimes when they were either teaching or attending a class, to some motel room on the outskirts of town. There Committee members and their staff confronted them with whatever evidence they had of the faculty member's or student's "deviant" behavior, and the individual was forced either to resign (in the case of faculty) or withdraw from school (in the case of students) or face public exposure and humiliation. There were no public hearings, no semblance of due process. Florida statues required that any teacher charged with "moral turpitude&qut; was entitled to formal proceedings. None were held.[3] At Gainesville alone, the Committee "forced [the] resignation of at least 20 professors and the dismissal of over 50 students"(Stark 1985:93). Pretending to be students or faculty attending Florida State University, Committee staff or others hired by the Committee held parties to entrap gay faculty and students. No one knows the exact number of students who left FSU for fear of being exposed as homosexual."...



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eie, i own it

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Enough is enough wrote:


There is no selective advantage to nom stealing, so don't.

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Vet. Science

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This horse is not dead in the larger world, but for the purposes of this board, it has been beaten to a pulp. I don't understand Scientist's motive in starting this up again for what? the third time? the fourth time? I too am beginning to think he has OCD or an axe to grind.

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Scientist

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2 Out Of 3 Ain't Bad wrote:

Actually, there is a relationship between those two factors: both are responses to academics who must constantly prove just how smart they are. In the case is evolution vs creationism, science seems to have a real need to disprove the existence of God, even though the laws of probabilities are dead set against life forming on Earth by accident. There is a perverse need to show that a scientist's mind is superior to the mind of a person who has faith in something, and there is no room for religion in our schools. Why, then, is there room for anti-religion in schools? Why should even one teacher be allowed to deconstruct religion by whatever means when noone is allowed equal time to defend that religion. Faith is considered a weakness by many who want to see some other social agenda pushed. However those with faith have stronger wills because they can believe in something not because their head tells them so but because their heart tells them so. Those who oppose evolution by countering with ID are sick and tired of intellectuals who take advantage of our country's laws to degrade and destroy religion when religion isn't allowed fair time in response. In other words, every school child must be exposed to science but a school child will be exposed to religion only if his or her family exposes them to it. Not every scientist has an agenda, but the potential for abuse is so high that you cannot simply dismiss the possibility.
Thanks "2out of 3".  Your response is all anyone needs to see the point I was trying to make.  I see no need to reply to the previous poster because you represent the perfect example of the anti-intellectual position.

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Scientist

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Vet. Science wrote:

This horse is not dead in the larger world, but for the purposes of this board, it has been beaten to a pulp. I don't understand Scientist's motive in starting this up again for what? the third time? the fourth time? I too am beginning to think he has OCD or an axe to grind.
I didn't mean to start that debate again, Vet. Science.  I just wanted readers to realize the big picture of this ant-intellectual war.   There are very deep religious reasons for this war and many interesting connections.   Read the post by "2 out of 3" for an example.

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Thank you faculty

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I think anyone who criticizes college faculties should be ashame. They're in the avant-garde for all progressive movements. Without them there would be no affirmative action,no abortion on demand,no abolition of religion in the classroom,no lifetime tenure.The world would be a sadder place to live.

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Just an opinion

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2 Out Of 3 Ain't Bad wrote:

Actually, there is a relationship between those two factors: both are responses to academics who must constantly prove just how smart they are. In the case is evolution vs creationism, science seems to have a real need to disprove the existence of God, even though the laws of probabilities are dead set against life forming on Earth by accident. There is a perverse need to show that a scientist's mind is superior to the mind of a person who has faith in something, and there is no room for religion in our schools. Why, then, is there room for anti-religion in schools? Why should even one teacher be allowed to deconstruct religion by whatever means when noone is allowed equal time to defend that religion. Faith is considered a weakness by many who want to see some other social agenda pushed. However those with faith have stronger wills because they can believe in something not because their head tells them so but because their heart tells them so. Those who oppose evolution by countering with ID are sick and tired of intellectuals who take advantage of our country's laws to degrade and destroy religion when religion isn't allowed fair time in response. In other words, every school child must be exposed to science but a school child will be exposed to religion only if his or her family exposes them to it. Not every scientist has an agenda, but the potential for abuse is so high that you cannot simply dismiss the possibility.


Studies have shown time and again that the vast majority of scientists in this country also believe in God.  Many of them simply see no contradiction between belief in God and acceptance of evolution, as you apparently do.  However, I will take LVN's advice and not respond to you any further, since you've already demonstrated that you are unwilling to consider any evidence that contradicts your prejudices.



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Exactly

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Thank you faculty wrote:
I think anyone who criticizes college faculties should be ashame. They're in the avant-garde for all progressive movements. Without them there would be no affirmative action,no abortion on demand,no abolition of religion in the classroom,no lifetime tenure.The world would be a sadder place to live.




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Never the twain shall meet

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2 Out Of 3 Ain't Bad wrote:

There is a perverse need to show that . . . there is no room for religion in our schools.
It's not perverse at all good buddy. Ask youself the question "WHOSE religion." Mine? Theirs? Yours? That's why Baptists, among others, have worked so diligently to maintain the separation of church and state.

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Mr. Wizard

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Thank you faculty wrote:
I think anyone who criticizes college faculties should be ashame. They're in the avant-garde for all progressive movements. Without them there would be no affirmative action,no abortion on demand,no abolition of religion in the classroom,no lifetime tenure.The world would be a sadder place to live.


I am a firm advocate of "lifetime" tenure and of academic freedom (coupled with appropriate academic restraint). It upsets me that affirmative action, abortion on demand, abolition of religion in the classroom, and academic tenure are linked in the mind of this poster. On the other hand, given that Elkins' rant is cited as a "must-read" by the defenders of academic freedom on this board, I can certainly understand why the linkage exists. Why must you good folks always bundle your political agendas with principles whose value should be shared by liberals and conservatives alike? Is it really a good idea to continually provoke people whom you are trying to persuade?

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Southern Justice

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Both Conservatives and Liberals are unable to divorce their dogma from their everyday lives. An entertaining exercise is to catch a Conservative in the middle of spouting a Liberal thought and vice-versa.

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Lest we forget

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Mr. Wizard wrote:

 I am a firm advocate of "lifetime" tenure and of academic freedom (coupled with appropriate academic restraint). It upsets me that affirmative action, abortion on demand, abolition of religion in the classroom, and academic tenure are linked in the mind of this poster. On the other hand, given that Elkins' rant is cited as a "must-read" by the defenders of academic freedom on this board, I can certainly understand why the linkage exists. Why must you good folks always bundle your political agendas with principles whose value should be shared by liberals and conservatives alike? Is it really a good idea to continually provoke people whom you are trying to persuade?
Thanks for your post.  Please understand that not everyone on this board subscribes to a leftist agenda; many posters are conservative, libertarian, moderate -- you name it.  Angeline tends to have one point of view about politics; others (myself included) tend to have a different point of view.  The one thing most of us do agree on is that Shelby Thames and what he represents have been disasters for USM.

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Angeline

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It takes a minimum of research to see that Thames's support is the bidness community and Republicans (though, thankfully, not all Republicans), so I am wrong to find further evidence of the linkages between Thames's goals and the ideology that undergirds it?


Review this Hattiesburg American article from a year ago about the infamous bidness leaders' meeting in support of Thames:  Republicans and the ADP organized it.  Again: not all Republicans are the problem, but all of the problem with Thames is Republican.


http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050305/NEWS01/503050301/1002



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Angeline

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Money quotes from the above article, with a surprise Psychology Department reference:


Mader said she was asked for help to find a host for the event and she contacted Bonnie Drews. She is the wife of Fred Drews, who is a local dentist, chairman of the Forrest County Republican executive committee and a former student of Thames.

Bonnie Drews, a Southern Miss graduate as well, agreed to co-host the event. Bonnie Drews said Thames might be at the meeting.

Bonnie Drews related her own experiences and difficulties in the job market after graduating from Southern Miss with an education and psychology degree when she was younger. Focusing more on research instead of liberal arts may be the direction the university needs to go in the future for financial reasons, she said.



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Justice for All

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The Republicans remind me of the Islamic fundamentalists. There's not a dime's worth of difference between them.

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Angeline

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Justice for All wrote:

The Republicans remind me of the Islamic fundamentalists. There's not a dime's worth of difference between them.
Just so everyone knows - not even I would agree with the above statement by Justice for All.

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Southern Fried

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Justice for All wrote:

The Republicans remind me of the Islamic fundamentalists. There's not a dime's worth of difference between them.
I guess you must have skipped classes when they were teaching critical thinking.

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Mr. Wizard

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Angeline wrote:
It takes a minimum of research to see that Thames's support is the bidness community and Republicans (though, thankfully, not all Republicans), so I am wrong to find further evidence of the linkages between Thames's goals and the ideology that undergirds it?
Review this Hattiesburg American article from a year ago about the infamous bidness leaders' meeting in support of Thames:  Republicans and the ADP organized it.  Again: not all Republicans are the problem, but all of the problem with Thames is Republican.
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050305/NEWS01/503050301/1002


I can't really take issue with your analysis of Thames' core of support. I could point out Gene Taylor, but I'm not sure he's regarded as a "real" democrat. I've heard one of Thames' deans is an active democrat, but I can't vouch for that. But even if you are correct in your assessment of Thames's support being essentially (I can't accept entirely) Republican, it strikes me that you are more interested in preaching to the leftmost section of the choir than you are in explaining the broader merits of academic freedom to a wider audience.


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Lest we forget

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It would be very interesting sometime to have a lengthy discussion of why so many Republicans, libertarians, and even moderate Democrats distrust the current state of American academe.  It would also be very interesting sometime to discuss why many of the anti-academic tendencies we are witnessing today were perfectly predictable given the heavy, heavy preponderence of Democrats and leftists on university faculties.  However, this is not the proper forum for such a discussion.  I simply don't want Angeline or anyone else to think that these tendencies have arisen entirely without provocation.  "For every action there is an equal an opposite reaction"; it's a fundamental law of nature.  That, though, is the last I'll say on this topic (at least until another such thread is created, as one inevitably will be, despite my pleas that we avoid getting into larger political battles and focus instead on opposition to SFT).

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