Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education

Jim Lindgren thinks he is a great choice.

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Ideological diversity through affirmative action

Now, affirmative action based on political ideology!

The University of Colorado is considering a $9 million program to bring high-profile political conservatives to teach on the left-leaning campus.

CU officials want to create an endowment for a Visiting Chair in Conservative Thought and Policy.

The program would bring a rotating cast of scholars, historians, politicians and media personalities to a town often ridiculed by the political right as “the People’s Republic of Boulder.”

The first scholar could be on campus next year for a one- or two-year stint, CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said. University officials said they hope the fund would yield the $200,000-plus per year necessary to provide a stipend and a staff person.

“A good campus is always trying to find ways to add diversity of thought and scholarship,” Hilliard said.

I can’t think of anything more ridiculous or unhelpful, but then, affirmative action is almost always unhelpful. I only hope this does not give Arjun Singh any new ideas.

Hat tip to the Volokh Conspiracy, where I saw this story. Also Ilya Somin discusses here why affirmative action based on ideology is a bad idea. An excerpt:

However, whether or not the discrimination is the cause of the problem, affirmative action for conservative academics (or libertarian ones) is a poor solution. Among other things, it would require universities to define who counts as a “conservative” for affirmative action purpose, a task that they aren’t likely to do well. Affirmative action for conservatives would also give job candidates an incentive to engage in deception about their views in the hopes of gaining professional advancement. Moreover, conservative professors hired on an affirmative basis despite inferior qualifications would find it difficult to get their ideas taken seriously by colleagues and students. They might therefore be unable to make a meaningful contribution to academic debate – the very reason why we want to promote ideological diversity in hiring to begin with.

Indeed.

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Criticize the prof, get sued!

This case is so absurd that it is difficult to take it seriously. Priya Venkatesan, who taught writing this year at Dartmouth College, is threatening to sue former students under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for criticizing her in course feedbacks. This report has the details along with snippets of Ms Venkatesan’s own writing, which should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind why she got so poor evaluations.

Oh, and Title VII, for those who are unaware, is the primary federal law that prohibits discrimination in employment. For the life of me I don’t see how that can be used to sue the students, who are neither Ms Venkatesan’s employers nor her colleagues. Besides, as any lawyer would point out, they have an obvious first amendment right to censure their professor in evaluations. Maybe Ms Venkatesan has a postmodernist explanation for all this…

Here’s a link to the Dartmouth blog coverage on the matter. Also, my thoughts on Title VII and other anti-discrimination laws.

(Link via Instapundit)

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The quota farce in India

Buoyed by its Supreme Court success on the reservation issue, the Indian government now wants to introduce quotas in private educational institutions as well.

I quote from the report in the Telegraph (emphasis mine) :

The Centre plans to table a bill to introduce quotas and control fees in private higher education institutes in the monsoon session of Parliament.

Aided and unaided private higher education institutes, including management schools, will be covered. But private unaided minority-run institutions will be exempt from the proposed law.

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Reverse McCarthyism?

Dean Christopher Edley of Berkeley responds to the John Yoo controversy:

While serving in the Department of Justice, Professor John Yoo wrote memoranda that officials used as the legal basis for policies concerning detention and interrogation techniques in our efforts to combat terrorism. Both the subject and his reasoning are controversial, leading the New York Times (editorial, April 4), the National Lawyers’ Guild, and hundreds of individuals from around the world to criticize or at least question Professor Yoo’s continuing employment at UC Berkeley School of Law. As dean, but speaking only for myself, I offer the following explanation, although with no expectation that it will be completely satisfying to anyone.

Professor Yoo began teaching at Berkeley Law in 1993, received tenure in 1999, and then took a leave of absence to work in the Bush Administration. He returned in 2004, and remains a very successful teacher and prolific (though often controversial) scholar. Because this is a public university, he enjoys not only security of employment and academic freedom, but also First Amendment and Due Process rights.

It seems we do need regular reminders: These protections, while not absolute, are nearly so because they are essential to the excellence of American universities and the progress of ideas. Indeed, in Berkeley’s classrooms and courtyards our community argues about the legal and moral issues with the intensity and discipline these crucial issues deserve. Those who prefer to avoid these arguments—be they left or right or lazy—will not find Berkeley or any other truly great law school a wholly congenial place to study. For that we make no apology.

Does what Professor Yoo wrote while not at the University somehow place him beyond the pale of academic freedom today? Had this been merely some professor vigorously expounding controversial and even extreme views, we would be in a familiar drama with the usual stakes. Had that professor been on leave marching with Nazis in Skokie or advising communists during the McCarthy era, reasonable people would probably find that an easier case still. Here, additional things are obviously in play. Gravely so.

My sense is that the vast majority of legal academics with a view of the matter disagree with substantial portions of Professor Yoo’s analyses, including a great many of his colleagues at Berkeley. If, however, this strong consensus were enough to fire or sanction someone, then academic freedom would be meaningless.

…

Assuming one believes as I do that Professor Yoo offered bad ideas and even worse advice during his government service, that judgment alone would not warrant dismissal or even a potentially chilling inquiry. As a legal matter, the test here is the relevant excerpt from the “General University Policy Regarding Academic Appointees,” adopted for the 10-campus University of California by both the system-wide Academic Senate and the Board of Regents:

Types of unacceptable conduct: … Commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty. [Academic Personnel Manual sec. 015]

This very restrictive standard is binding on me as dean, but I will put aside that shield and state my independent and personal view of the matter. I believe the crucial questions in view of our university mission are these: Was there clear professional misconduct—that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney—material to Professor Yoo’s academic position? Did the writing of the memoranda, and his related conduct, violate a criminal or comparable statute?

Absent very substantial evidence on these questions, no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing a faculty member. That standard has not been met.

In an ideal world, what the dean said would be no more noteworthy than a routine enunciation of the basic principles of tolerance and freedom. Unfortunately, these principles are seldom remembered when dealing with opinions that differ from ours. McCathyism is no less abhorrent when applied against the ‘other side’; and for remembering this, the dean deserves praise. Bravo!

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Welcome to Nineteen Eighty-four

Think twice before writing a violent story. Steven Barber, a student at the University of Virginia at Wise, was searched, involuntarily committed for three days, and finally expelled from the university, for … hold your breath … writing a story in which a character contemplates murder and suicide.

I don’t know which is more disturbing – the fact that the administration acted so viciously (and possibly unlawfully), or the fact that some people justify the administration’s action by pointing out parallels to the Virginia Tech massacre. Just a thought – if everyone who expresses disturbing thoughts or ideas is placed under a period of mandatory observation, our lives might be more secure, but would it be a life worth living? 

(Link via The Volokh Conspiracy)

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Quotas in Science research?

Here is a link to an article by Christina Sommers in which she talks about gender politics, affirmative action in higher education and recent, extremely worrying developments. Read the whole article, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

(Link via The Volokh conspiracy)

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How dare you read that book!

Keith Sampson, a university employee and student, has been charged with racial harassment for reading a book called “Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan” during his work breaks. Apparently, the mere presence of the word Ku Klux Klan offended a co-worker, despite the fact that the book is in fact about opposition to the Klan. The school’s Affirmative Action Office agreed. In a letter to Sampson, they accused him of “disdain and insensitivity” and ordered him to stop reading that book in the presence of co-workers.

Sigh… 

Update: The affirmative action office has (following the uproar?) issued a new letter to Sampson, effectively canceling its previous order and making a complete retreat from its earlier position.  

Further Update.

— 

Also read:
Don’t Glock in school.
Did you use the word?

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Reading the Bible makes you dumb

Caltech student Virgil Griffith downloaded, using facebook, the ten most popular books in each college, and correlated it with the average SAT score of the students in that college. The results are funny and interesting. Of course, it is not a scientific survey and not meant to be taken too seriously. 

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Don’t Glock in school

This story is so unreal, that it can’t possibly be false. A student was slapped with a three day suspension by his school, because the pen he was using happened to contain the logo G which stands for the Glock company, a gun manufacturer.

This is not really about guns or extreme political correctness or even freedom of expression. Or rather, it is about all that, but above all it is about the lack of something else. Something called common-sense.

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Mathiness

This term looks rather busy. I am taking two (possibly three) classes and teaching one. Blogging is likely to suffer as a result.

I am excited about the class I am teaching. It’s called “How to solve it” and teaches techniques for solving mathematical problems. It also doubles up as a training program for the Putnam competition. The Putnam, for those who don’t know, is an annual math competition for undergrads studying in the US. Compared to the IMO, the problems are similar (though somewhat easier) – however it offers significant monetary rewards (unlike the IMO). This last fact is exploited by our math department to fund our annual banquet, which is why I need to do a good job.

I am off to tea. Happy problem solving! 

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Lang-Bang!

So how is it listening to Serge LANG?

For starters, awesome! On second thoughts, phew!

Well, Lang is a guy who actually jumps around while lecturing and every five minutes or so, comes up to a member of the audience and asks the poor creature questions!

So Jennifer was sitting there along with the rest of us, when Lang came up to her and started ,”So tell me..”

She, being female, sensed the trouble before the rest of us. “NoNoNoNoNo…”, she cries out.

Lang, is unmoved. He completes his question, tells Caltech(and the world in general) that she would have known the answer if she had only read Analysis from Lang’s book, and resumes his talk.

There were around 15 of us, including several professors, in a small Caltech classroom listening to Lang talk on “The Heat Kernel and associated zeta functions”. It was fairly elementary, and Lang is a nice speaker, but I am lucky to be one of the few who escaped the Lang sabre.

But the talk was great fun. The funniest exchange is as follows.

Lang(bellows) : If the writers of undergraduate textbooks in analysis weren’t incompetent idiots, all of you would have already known about the big bang of mathematics, the heat kernel!

Member of the audience, a professor: So is it there in your analysis book?

Lang: Well, it was in the appendix in the old edition, but, in the current edition, it is there in the text.(Smiles mischievously and walks up to a professor) Ok Sir, tell me, by Aristotelian logic, what can you therefore conclude about me?

Professor squirms and refuses to say anything.

Lang: That is not good! He wants to take the fifth amendment! Ok, you(points to a grad student), tell me, what can you conclude?

Student: You are no longer an incompetent idiot!

LOL!

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