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			<p>Archive for March 2003</p>

				
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			<div class="post" id="post-533">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/more-on-de-genova/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to More on De Genova">More on De Genova</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 31, 2003, 11:39 am <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
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					<p>The Columbia University anti-war teach-in that has been making headlines over the past few days was the brainchild of political science professor Jean Cohen. Cohen is beside herself at the <a href="http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/000581.html">outrageous comments</a> assistant professor of anthropology Nicholas De Genova made at the teach-in&#8211;among them that he wishes for &#8220;a million Mogadishus&#8221; and that the only true patriots are those who help defeat the U.S. military. She did not hold back when she spoke to a reporter for the <i>Columbia Spectator</i>, and the results appear in <a href="http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/03/01/3e8820b855697">today&#8217;s issue:</a></p>
<blockquote><p>
&#8220;He and the press have hijacked this teach-in, and I&#8217;m very, very angry about it,&#8221; said Jean Cohen, Professor of Political Science, who first had the idea for the event. &#8220;It was an utterly irresponsible thing to do. And it&#8217;s not innocent. &#8230; This was a planned undermining of this teach-in.&#8221;<br />
Cohen emphasized that De Genova had not originally been invited to speak. He was replacing Kimberle Crenshaw, a law professor who dropped out because of a medical emergency.<br />
&#8220;At the last minute someone couldn&#8217;t speak, and he just kind of appeared,&#8221; Cohen said. &#8220;&#8230; He ended up on that platform by accident, almost by manipulation.&#8221;<br />
Cohen said that as soon as it was clear that there was an opening in the program, De Genova was &#8220;right there, all ready with his speech&#8211;which makes me suspicious.&#8221;<br />
&#8220;It&#8217;s bad luck that there was an opening, but he was all too ready,&#8221; she said.
</p></blockquote>
<p>Cohen&#8217;s final take on the situation: &#8220;I don&#8217;t think what he&#8217;s said is some kind of formalistic liberal freedom of speech,&#8221; she said. &#8220;This kind of thing is reprehensible. if he were paid by the [political] right to do this, it could not have been more effective.&#8221; That&#8217;s probably true. The trouble is, though, that De Genova was&#8211;I venture to assert&#8211;not paid to destroy the teach-in, and his remarks were not part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. The trouble is that De Genova was speaking from the heart, in the name of a movement that has quietly tolerated a lot of similarly horrific expression for all too long now. Cohen should not look to the right to see where De Genova got the idea that he could make such statements without reprisal, but to the left.<br />
<a href="http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/03/31/3e881bf8297f2">Elsewhere</a> in the same issue, De Genova argues that the media furor surrounding him is the result of the <i>Spectator</i>&#8217;s irresponsible reporting. Apparently, his statement about a million Mogadishus was taken out of context, and apparently, to De Genova&#8217;s thinking, there is a context in which such a statement is reasonable, hopeful, and even patriotic. Here it is, in his own words:</p>
<blockquote><p>
I also affirmed that Iraqi liberation can only be effected by the Iraqi people themselves, both by resisting and defeating the U.S. invasion as well as overthrowing a regime whose brutality was long sustained by none other than the U.S. Such an anti-colonial struggle for self-determination might involve a million Mogadishus now but would ultimately have to become something more like another Vietnam. Vietnam was a stunning defeat for U.S. imperialism; as such, it was also a victory for the cause of human self-determination.<br />
Is this a tirade against &#8220;anything and everything American&#8221;? Far from it. First, I hasten to remind you that &#8220;American&#8221; refers to all of the Americas, not merely to the United States, as U.S. imperial chauvinism would have it. More importantly, my rejection of U.S. nationalism is an appeal to liberate our own political imaginations such that we might usher in a radically different world in which we will not remain the prisoners of U.S. global domination.
</p></blockquote>
<p>Below De Genova&#8217;s letter is one from Eric Foner, the teach-in organizer who denounced De Genova&#8217;s comments as &#8220;idiotic&#8221; (even though he was there and heard them in context). Foner writes to denounce the <i>Spectator</i> as idiotic as well for criticizing the &#8220;atmosphere of intellectual conformity&#8221; at the teach-in:</p>
<blockquote><p>
Let me direct the editors to a resource they seem not to have previously encountered&#8211;the dictionary. Mine defines &#8220;teach-in&#8221; as follows: &#8220;An extended meeting usually held on a college campus for lectures, debates, and discussions to raise awareness of or express a position on a social and political issue.&#8221; Spectator&#8217;s complaint makes no sense, since the combination of education and advocacy is the essence of a teach-in.<br />
The editorial acknowledges that speakers disagreed with one another, then says there was &#8220;an atmosphere of intellectual conformity.&#8221; I suppose this means that we did not present pro-war talks. I can hardly believe that the editors think that students have no access to the government&#8217;s arguments. Those who feel so deprived can simply turn on any television newscast.
</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s comforting to know that there is only one argument for the war, that this argument is the one presented by the government, that the media are freely and willingly parroting it, and that it&#8217;s all propaganda anyway. No wonder there was no need to represent various pro-war positions at the teach-in. I had thought that those who were anti-war would be better able to comprehend, explain, and defend their position if the teach-in included alternative viewpoints. But now I see how very wrong I was.</p>
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			<div class="post" id="post-532">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/from-hate-crime-to-hate-bias/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to From hate crime to hate bias">From hate crime to hate bias</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 31, 2003, 10:15 am <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
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					<p>At Utah&#8217;s <a href="http://www.wsusignpost.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/03/26/3e8123603d936">Weber State University</a>, there has not been a single hate crime recorded in recent years. But you are wrong if you think that means Weber State is a welcoming, tolerant, and safe place to be. Officials at Weber State are indeed so eager to disabuse the campus community of that notion that it has instituted a new category of hate: hate bias.<br />
Hate bias is defined by Keith Wilder of the campus diversity center as the mere expression of unorthodox opinion: &#8220;If someone has a bias and they speak it out, or they say it, or they announce that this is the way they feel about something, and people just kind of walk by without focusing in on it, it&#8217;s a little bit like a cancer left alone. It grows and it has an effect.&#8221; Wilder&#8217;s idea is that hate bias leads to hate crimes, and as such it must be combatted before it spreads. His notion also appears to be that bias is itself hateful&#8211;that holding or expressing strong, unorthodox opinions on controversial questions having to do with race, gender, or sexuality in and of itself is a hateful, harmful act.<br />
Creepy as the reasoning is, it works well for Wilder because it gives him something to do. There may be no hate crime on his campus, but there are plenty of what he likes to call &#8220;bias incidents.&#8221; To combat hate bias, and the hate crimes that are bound to arise from them, Wilder has signed Weber State up to participate in the nationwide <a href="http://www.stophate.org/stophate/index.html">Stop the Hate</a> program. Stop the Hate tracks hate crimes and hate bias on campus, recording as much information as possible on who says and does things that are deemed to be biased. Wilder is clear that hate biases are not illegal&#8211;but he is also clear that this is why those who commit hate bias must be watched. &#8220;It&#8217;s those very incidents that have to be recorded and mentioned so at least we have an idea of what the bias is like on campus.&#8221;<br />
Does instituting the ideologically loaded, surveillance-oriented Stop the Hate program count as a bias incident? Of course not.<br />
UPDATE: John Rosenberg <a href="http://www.discriminations.us/storage/001966.html">uncovers</a> a hate bias incident at the University of Virginia.</p>
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			<div class="post" id="post-531">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/advanced-degrees-in-plagiarism/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Advanced degrees in plagiarism">Advanced degrees in plagiarism</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 31, 2003, 9:26 am <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
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					<p>When we think of college students plagiarizing, we tend to think of undergrads buying short essays off the internet and handing them in on their own. But at Chico State, <a href="http://www.chicoer.com/articles/2003/03/30/news/news4.txt">plagiarism</a> has been raised to an entirely new level. Three&#8211;count them: <i>three</i>&#8211;Master&#8217;s degree candidates were caught turning in entirely plagiarized MA theses this year.<br />
To their credit, Chico State administrators admit that there is a huge problem of academic dishonesty on their campus, one that grows out of a broader national culture of educational cheating and that is enabled by professors who are both careless about watching for cheaters and reluctant to report those they do catch. According to Duke&#8217;s <a href="http://www.academicintegrity.org/">Center for Academic Integrity</a>, &#8220;On most campuses, over 75 percent of students admit to some cheating. In a 1999 survey of 2,100 students on 21 campuses across the country, about one-third of the participating students admitted to serious test cheating and half admitted to one or more instances of serious cheating on written assignments.&#8221;<br />
To combat the problem, Chico State admins are planning to institute an honor code (along the lines of West Point&#8217;s &#8220;A cadet will neither lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do&#8221;) in the hope of changing the culture of the school. A professor who used to be a firefighter recommends severe punishment for cheaters. Comparing fighting plagiarism to stopping fires, he told the <i>Chico Enterprise-Record</i> that &#8220;If we can&#8217;t prevent it, we need to jump all over it and put it out.&#8221;<br />
May they stick to their guns (or their hoses). I&#8217;ve known several college teachers who have caught students plagiarizing, only to be told by administrators to lighten up when they turned the students in: it was clear that the punitive teachers were considered to be the problem, rather than the plagiarizing students. And then there is the case of the University of Virginia, where the honor code recently became a means of <a href="http://ns.headroyce.org/~humanities/research/uvascandal.html">facilitating cheating</a> rather than preventing it.<br />
On a related note: Berkeley&#8217;s prestigious Haas School of Business recently dropped 5% of the applicants it had slated for admission upon discovering that they had <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/article.asp?id=11263">falsified their applications</a>. Most lied about their employment history; one submitted a faked letter of recommendation and invented promotions he had never received. Haas instituted background checks on all applicants this year in order to reinforce the importance of ethical business practice.</p>
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			<div class="post" id="post-530">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/blowing-up-grade-inflation/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Blowing up grade inflation">Blowing up grade inflation</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 30, 2003, 10:10 am <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
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					<p>It&#8217;s official: grade inflation exists. Duke environmental science professor Stuart Rojstaczer&#8211;who confesses that he has not given a &#8220;C&#8221; in more than two years&#8211;has done the homework no one else would do, and has posted the results on his newly created web site, <a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com">www.gradeinflation.com.</a> Rojstaczer studied grading trends over time at 66 colleges and universities in order to document the nature and extent of a problem that most agree exists but that no one knows how best to address. Along the way, he found <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&#038;node=&#038;contentId=A52648-2003Jan27&#038;notFound=true">some interesting things</a>: that less than 2 percent of grades given at elite institutions are D&#8217;s or F&#8217;s, for example, and that at schools such as Pomona, Duke, Harvard and Columbia, about half of all grades are A&#8217;s.<br />
Rojstaczer has come to some disturbing conclusions: that students avoid taking courses from professors who don&#8217;t inflate grades, that they evaluate such professors less positively than professors who give easy grades, and that professors respond  by inflating grades; that grade inflation deprives students of an incentive to study hard and that it also deprives them of the ability to recognize when they have learned; and that as such it severely erodes the concept of meritocracy to which higher education is supposedly dedicated.<br />
Rojstaczer offers several explanations for the grade inflation that has infected college campuses since the 1960s, citing professors&#8217; Vietnam-era tactic of enhancing grades to help men students avoid the draft, and noting, too, how the massive tuition hikes of the 1980s created a consumerist mentality in parents and students, many of whom figured that the least all that money could buy was a transcript lined with pretty rows of A&#8217;s. What he does not mention: universities&#8217; growing reliance on graduate student and part-time instructors, whose combined lack of experience, lack of authority, and lack of job security make giving out the easy A an important survival strategy; and the cumulative effects of racial preferences and higher education&#8217;s increasingly adamant &#8220;celebration&#8221; of diversity, which, as Harvard professor <a href="http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i30/30b02401.htm">Harvey C. Mansfield</a> has trenchantly and controversially pointed out, practically demand a lowering of academic standards across the board. It&#8217;s worth noting that the two inflation spikes Rojstaczer attributes to anti-war protest and consumerism also correspond, historically, to the advent of affirmative action in college admissions and the rise of the campus diversity craze in the wake of the Bakke decision.<br />
In fairness, Rojstaczer is in the business of documenting and describing a trend, not psychoanalyzing it. At the same time, it is hard to imagine successfully combatting grade inflation in the absence of a clear understanding of its causes and its rationalizations&#8211;not least because there is now an entire generation of university teachers that is itself the product of a grade-inflated education and because that generation makes up for its lack of intellectual rigor (one might even say its lack of comprehension of intellectual rigor) by strenuously denying traditional concepts of merit (this is most rampant in the humanities and social sciences). I was born in 1968: on this issue, I know all too well, and all too personally, whereof I speak.<br />
Opponents of grade inflation tend to assume that if we can just all agree that grade inflation exists, then we&#8217;ll all be able to concede that it is bad, and then we can just all stop inflating grades. Rojstaczer&#8217;s study aims to be Exhibit A in this project: he has proven to all those grade inflation deniers out there that they are categorically wrong (as with so many other inconvenient historical events, there are those who pretend this one has not happened). But this is just the first, essential step in a project that many will resist, refuse, and even attempt to sabotage&#8211;for both selfish reasons (it takes a lot less time to deliver an inflated A than to explain to a weeping student why she got a C) and for political ones (some colleges have lowered standards so far that they literally cannot afford to raise them).<br />
A case that illustrates this last point is currently brewing at Brooklyn College (better known as the school that <a href="http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/000549.html#000549">screwed over</a> history professor KC Johnson for failing to exhibit proper political opinions). I&#8217;ll have the details in subsequent posts this week.<br />
UPDATE: Stuart Rojstaczer writes to clarify that &#8220;the argument of Mansfield that affirmative action is a significant component of grade inflation isn&#8217;t borne out by the data.  For example, the percentage of black undergraduates nationwide, essentially stable from 1976 to 1994 (10.0%  in 1976 and 10.7% in 1994), is not synchronous with the renewal of grade inflation in the mid-1980s.&#8221; It will be interesting to see how Mansfield and other academics who espouse the theory that affirmative action has had much to do with grade inflation reconcile their personal observations and experiences with the numbers.</p>
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			<div class="post" id="post-529">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/distancing-from-de-genova/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Distancing from De Genova">Distancing from De Genova</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 30, 2003, 8:12 am <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
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					<p>If you haven&#8217;t already read about the recent anti-war teach-in at Columbia, you can find out all you need to know from <a href="http://www.instapundit.com/archives/008525.php#008525">Glenn Reynolds&#8217;</a> and <a href="http://volokh.blogspot.com/2003_03_23_volokh_archive.html#200062129">Eugene Volokh</a>&#8217;s commentary and links. The issue that has the blogosphere and the mainstream media in an uproar: the extreme statements of Nicholas De Genova, an assistant professor of anthropology who deliverered himself of some statements even hardcore anti-war activists could not stomach. Among them: that the only real heroes are the ones who help defeat the U.S. military, that to be a patriot is to be white supremacist, that he wants to see Iraq defeat the &#8220;U.S. war machine,&#8221; that he dreams of a world order in which the U.S. has &#8220;no place,&#8221; and that he&#8217;d like to see &#8220;a million Mogadishus.&#8221;<br />
Since journalists and bloggers got hold of the story, it has morphed from a simple account of what De Genova said to a more complicated story of how comments like his discredit both the anti-war movement and Columbia University. Yesterday&#8217;s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/education/29PROF.html?ex=1049605200&#038;en=b2571f49df0e2981&#038;ei=5062&#038;partner=GOOGLE"><i>New York Times</i></a> reports that there is very blunt and unequivocal distancing on both fronts. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger (yes, the same one named in the Michigan affirmative action suits) is quoted as saying that &#8220;Under well-established principles of the First Amendment, this is within a person&#8217;s right to free speech. &#8230; Not for a second, however, does that insulate it from criticism. I am shocked that someone would make such statements. I am especially saddened for the families of those whose lives are now at risk.&#8221;<br />
Columbia history professor Eric Foner, who helped organize the now notorious teach-in, was even more direct: &#8220;Professor De Genova&#8217;s speech did not represent the views of the organizers. &#8230; I personally found it quite reprehensible. The antiwar movement does not desire the death of American soldiers. We do not accept his view of what it means to be a patriot. I began my talk, which came later, by repudiating his definition of patriotism, saying the teach-in was a patriotic act, that I believe patriots are those who seek to improve their country.&#8221;<br />
One could nitpick: Bollinger&#8217;s comment has the vaporous, &#8220;soundbytten&#8221; quality of much adminspeak, and Foner&#8217;s both disingenuously pretends that there is not a strong anti-American streak in the anti-war movement and naively imagines that no one will notice his disingenuousness. (Glenn Reynolds points to a similarly naive distancing effort <a href="http://www.instapundit.com/archives/008539.php#008539">here</a>.)<br />
But one could also note that the De Genova debacle may mark the beginning of a necessary sea change. Commentators on both left and right have long been calling for the anti-war movement to police itself better than it does, and to publicly disavow the actions and statements of those who seek to commandeer anti-war energy in the service of various revolutionary and/or hate-driven agendas (the most recent and eloquent of such calls is authored by <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/03/29/de_genova/index.html">Andrew Sullivan</a>). Nicholas De Genova may have finally driven that point home to the folks who most need to get it. Time will tell.<br />
UPDATE: David Horowitz wouldn&#8217;t have missed the chance to comment on De Genova&#8217;s comments for all the world. <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6962">Here are his thoughts</a>, along with some choice words on Eric Foner&#8217;s recent scuffles with the media.<br />
Also of interest is <a href="http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/72239.htm">this <i>New York Post</i> interview</a> with Columbia student William Pratt. Pratt, whose father is an army colonel serving in Kuwait, did not take kindly to the spectacle of a &#8220;Columbia professor wish[ing] death upon the father of a Columbia University student and possibly [on the parents of] other students.&#8221; He sent an email to De Genova inviting him to share his thoughts on the American military with his father, who will be attending Pratt&#8217;s graduation later this spring. De Genova has yet to reply.</p>
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			<div class="post" id="post-528">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/tommy-who/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Tommy who?">Tommy who?</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 28, 2003, 7:05 pm <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
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					<p>A Hunter College journalism professor gave a pop quiz this week. The <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/70584p-65651c.html">extra credit question</a>, offered ostensibly to give students a chance to win back an easy point: &#8220;Who is Tommy Franks?&#8221; None of the thirty students in the course knew the answer.<br />
Thanks to reader Christopher D. for the link.</p>
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			<div class="post" id="post-527">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/students-expose-bias-on-campus/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Students expose bias on campus">Students expose bias on campus</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 28, 2003, 6:41 pm <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
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					<p>Here&#8217;s a memo sent out to the entire Saginaw Valley State University community last week:</p>
<blockquote><p>
To the University Community:<br />
We share our students&#8217; confusion, fear, horror, and sadness about the U.S. bombing of Iraq and feel called to address the issue with a Teach-in for Peace.<br />
This event is scheduled on Thursday, March 20 from 9:00 to 12:00 in the Performing Arts Center (526 seats) and in Founders Hall from 9:00 to 2:00 and 6:00 to 8:30. At the teach-in, your faculty colleagues and students will read poetry and will discuss the ethical, historical, psychological, political, and sociological ramifications of the war. A flyer and a schedule should be in your mailbox with Wednesday&#8217;s mail.<br />
We are inviting faculty to modify your syllabus on Thursday and invite students to join them at the teach-in. We will have moderators standing at each door so students may sign in and out, and we&#8217;ll send faculty their attendance list. You could also, of course, choose to give your students the choice either to attend or to remain in class, but we are really hoping that many of our colleagues, both faculty and staff, will join us. If you do not teach on Thursday, can you offer your students extra credit for attendance at this important university event?<br />
We cordially invite everyone in the campus community to join us. Call or email one of us if you have questions or comments.<br />
Mary Harmon, mharmon@svsu.edu Professor of English<br />
Rosalie G. Riegle, riegle@svsu.edu Professor of English<br />
Scott Youngstedt, smy@svsu.eduAssociate Professor of Sociology
</p></blockquote>
<p>And here&#8217;s the web site that students put up to protest what they see as an abuse of professorial authority: <a href="http://www.geocities.com/svsutruth/index.html">http://www.geocities.com/svsutruth/index.html</a>. The students who created the site post the faculty memo and append this succinct and damning comment:</p>
<blockquote><p>
As clearly displayed above, these three faculty members felt the need to ask other professors to cancel their classes and to assign extra credit if their students attended this propaganda meeting.</p>
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			<div class="post" id="post-526">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/athletic-rapist-gets-a-pass-at-penn-state/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Athletic rapist gets a pass at Penn State">Athletic rapist gets a pass at Penn State</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 27, 2003, 2:33 pm <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
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					<p>College athletics has had more than the usual number of <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/zillgitt/2003-03-05-zillgitt_x.htm">scandals</a> lately. Penn State now joins the illustrious ranks of Georgia, Rhode Island, Fresno State, and Florida State for putting a bowl game ahead of justice. Last December, a Penn State football player &#8220;<a href="http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2003/03/03-27-03tdc/03-27-03dnews-08.asp">accepted responsibility</a>&#8221; for raping a fellow student. Cornerback Anwar Phillips was suspended for two semesters (spring and summer)&#8211;but that didn&#8217;t stop him from travelling to Florida with his team to compete in the Capital One Bowl on January 1. Penn State lost to Auburn, although Phillips did block a pass at one point during the game.<br />
Phillips is spending his suspension fighting legal battles. Last Friday, he was charged with sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault, both second-degree felonies. Yesterday, Phillips waived his right to a preliminary hearing and his lawyer entered a not guilty plea.<br />
<a href="http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2003/03/03-26-03tdc/03-26-03dnews-07.asp">Penn State officials say</a> that since the game occurred between semesters, and since Phillips&#8217; suspension formally commenced with the start of the spring term, he was eligible to compete. Concerned students, parents, alums, and taxpayers might legitimately wish to know how that explanation is not merely a pathetic attempt to excuse the fact that winning a game mattered more to Penn State officials and coaches than fairness, decency, and its own <a href="http://www.sa.psu.edu/ja/codeconduct.html">code of conduct</a>. They may also wonder why an athlete in a big money sport gets a <a href="http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2003/03/03-27-03tdc/03-27-03dsports-column-01.asp">lighter punishment</a> for a sex offense than regular campus mortals. But Joe Paterno, Penn State&#8217;s head football coach, <a href="http://ydr.com/story/psu/7675/">isn&#8217;t talking</a> and neither is Penn State president Graham Spanier.</p>
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			<div class="post" id="post-525">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/indoctrination-and-due-process-at-citrus-college/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Indoctrination and due process at Citrus College">Indoctrination and due process at Citrus College</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 26, 2003, 1:20 pm <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
				<div class="postentry">
					<p>Rosalyn Kahn, the Citrus College speech professor who was recently placed on administrative leave for <a href="http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/000543.html#000543">violating her students&#8217; civil rights</a>, now claims that her own rights have been violated. Kahn&#8217;s students accused her of offering them extra credit for writing anti-war letters to President Bush (and of not offering analogous credit to students who wrote letters supporting the war). They also said she offered extra credit to students who wrote letters to California Senator Jack Scott arguing for the importance of adjunct instructors (Kahn is herself an adjunct), and had students fill out postcards detailing the importance of adjuncts. Kahn delivered the letters to Scott herself; the postcards did not carry addresses when the students filled them out, and Kahn told her class that she would address them herself. Some students were so upset that they appealed to Citrus College administrators. They got nowhere. Then they appealed to <a href="http://www.thefire.org/">FIRE</a> (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), which leaned on Citrus College admins to investigate the claims. They did so, devoting a class session to interviewing Kahn&#8217;s students in an attempt to determine how she was conducting the course. The results of that preliminary investigation were definitive. The college concluded that Kahn had indeed abused her authority by violating her students&#8217; First Amendment rights, and placed her on administrative leave pending a deeper investigation. The college also promised to write to President Bush and Senator Scott to revoke the letters and said it would sanction Kahn.<br />
Now <a href="http://www.sgvtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,205~12220~1261628,00.html">Kahn says</a> her own civil rights have been violated. In a six-page statement released by her lawyer, Kahn categorically denied the allegations and says she was removed from the classroom without ever being asked for her own side of the story. &#8220;A terrible wrong has been done to me and the teaching community,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;I believe that each individual has the right to develop, hold and defend a personal belief system. &#8230; Students in speech communication learn to explain and defend propositions that they support, and as an exercise in persuasion only, also propositions they personally oppose. In early March, the college president, Louis Zellers, adopted unproven allegations against me as though they were fact.&#8221; According to today&#8217;s <a href="http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i29/29a01401.htm"><i>Chronicle of Higher Education,</i></a> Kahn&#8217;s statement swears that she offered extra credit to students who wrote letters regardless of their viewpoint, and that Citrus College had failed to provide her with &#8220;the protections of due process.&#8221;<br />
I&#8217;ll leave the commentary on due process to the lawyers who read this blog, though it appears from the comments to <a href="http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/000548.html#000548">this Critical Mass post</a> that the point of putting Kahn on paid leave rather than firing her outright was to protect her due process rights.<br />
As for the allegations themselves, they are compelling. Here&#8217;s what one of Kahn&#8217;s students had to say to <a href="http://www.thefire.org/issues/oreilly_transcript_031403.php3">Bill O&#8217;Reilly</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>
All right, Gina. Just tell us what happened.<br />
GINA CANTAGALLO, CITRUS COLLEGE STUDENT: Well, I was in class, and she provided an extra credit assignment for us. She said we could receive extra credit if we wrote a letter to President Bush in regards to the war.<br />
So I went home, did the assignment, and I came back, and I had a letter that said I supported Bush, I supported our country, I supported our troops. She looked at the letter and said this is unacceptable.<br />
O&#8217;REILLY: Really?<br />
CANTAGALLO: Yes. I said, &#8220;What&#8217;s wrong? You said write a letter on the potential war,&#8221; and she said absolutely not, I wanted you to write a letter stating you were against war and against us overriding the U.N.<br />
O&#8217;REILLY: Now how many kids in the class took her point of view, do you know?<br />
CANTAGALLO: I don&#8217;t know that, but I know there&#8217;s at least nine that didn&#8217;t do the assignment because they didn&#8217;t want to write an anti-war letter.<br />
O&#8217;REILLY: All right, but you did the assignment. You completed the assignment.<br />
CANTAGALLO: Yes.<br />
O&#8217;REILLY: And you didn&#8217;t get the extra credit.<br />
CANTAGALLO: I got no extra credit.<br />
O&#8217;REILLY: But the ones who did it the way she wanted it done, as far as editorial point of view, got the extra credit.<br />
CANTAGALLO: Yes.<br />
O&#8217;REILLY: Now what steps did you take after that because that&#8217;s patently unfair.<br />
CANTAGALLO: Well, I was scared. I was really scared because she&#8217;s an authority figure of mine, and I didn&#8217;t know what aspects or what steps I could take as being a student. But I went to the dean, and nothing seemed to happen right away, and&#8230;<br />
O&#8217;REILLY: You told the dean.<br />
CANTAGALLO: I&#8230;<br />
O&#8217;REILLY: You said &#8212; just like you told us. And what did he say? What did the dean say?<br />
CANTAGALLO: They said they would handle it appropriately and speak with her. Nothing got done that week.<br />
A colleague of mine, who was in the same situation, Chris Stevens, wrote &#8212; we wrote e-mails, tons of e-mails to Republicans, to conservative parties, got tons of feedback, and that&#8217;s when FIRE stepped in.<br />
O&#8217;REILLY: OK. So then &#8212; and what did he do?<br />
CANTAGALLO: Within a week, the problem was solved&#8230;.
</p></blockquote>
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			<div class="post" id="post-524">
				<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://erinoconnor.org/2003/03/proselytizing-profs-at-usc-and-beyond/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Proselytizing profs at USC and beyond">Proselytizing profs at USC and beyond</a></h2>
				<div class="postmetadata">March 26, 2003, 9:15 am <!-- by Erin OConnor --></div>
				<div class="postentry">
					<p>USC <i>Daily Trojan</i> columnist Rebecca Zak has <a href="http://www.dailytrojan.com/article.do?issue=/V148/N41&#038;id=01-prof.41v.html">lots of questions</a> about how the war is being handled on her campus:</p>
<blockquote><p>
Are USC professors actually attempting to foster an environment conducive to unfettered critical thinking, or are students bouncing ferociously between the Pentagon&#8217;s propaganda and the liberal agendas of their teachers? &#8230; Are we being encouraged to think freely or to be too afraid to consider the merits of prowar arguments? Are campus liberals being lured into self-righteous and poorly thought out proclamations against the war by professors who fail to poke holes in fallacious arguments?
</p></blockquote>
<p>Zak&#8217;s hardhitting and forceful column amasses numerous examples of how, in recent weeks, USC professors have been manipulating students in the name of encouraging them to think critically. Here&#8217;s one of many:</p>
<blockquote><p>
Consider the comments of international relations professor Laurie Brand in yesterday&#8217;s Daily Trojan (&#8220;Faculty openly discuss Iraq war&#8221;): &#8220;I take encouragement from the fact that &#8230; people in the U.S. and elsewhere have the moral commitment to peace and justice and the courage to speak out against this war.&#8221;<br />
Let&#8217;s read between the lines here. People who don&#8217;t speak out for peace are immoral. People who don&#8217;t speak out against this war are cowards. People who support the war in Iraq support injustice. Oh, yes, and people who support the war have been, in Brand&#8217;s words, &#8220;seduced by the Bush administration&#8217;s lies.&#8221;<br />
Brand is clearly trying to manipulate us, not foster a critical discussion in which the valid points of both the prowar and antiwar camps are considered.
</p></blockquote>
<p>Zak&#8217;s list goes on. She sees through the shimmering rhetoric of professors who claim to want &#8220;dialogue&#8221; and to be encouraging &#8220;critical thinking,&#8221; but who discredit themselves by making it clear that true dialogue and good critical thinking can only lead to one conclusion: their own. Her conclusion:</p>
<blockquote><p>
Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I would be the last person to curtail free speech on campus and I think that professors should be able to express their opinions about the ongoing war.<br />
But it&#8217;s not playing fair to bill an ideological rally as a teach-in, and it&#8217;s not OK to claim that you&#8217;re fostering critical thinking when only antiwar opinions are represented.<br />
Professors need to think carefully about their roles in encouraging discussion on the war in Iraq and about the unintended consequences of publicly proclaiming their views. Too often, students are being force-fed reasons to oppose the war instead of being encouraged to think on their own.
</p></blockquote>
<p>At a moment when professors are giving <a href="http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/000543.html#000543">extra credit</a> to students who parrot their own antiwar position and sending <a href="http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/000564.html">bullying emails</a> to students about their personal antiwar activities, such words of warning are as badly needed as they are hard to come by. Too bad they are not likely to be heeded by those who most need to hear them.<br />
A lot of those ideologically loaded &#8220;teach-ins&#8221; are taking place around the country at the moment. Yesterday at UMass, for example, an <a href="http://www.dailycollegian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/03/26/3e812fe2949fa">extremely slanted teach-in</a> featured six professors and one student speaking out against war. Among them was communications professor Sut Jhally, who argued that those who support the war are the dupes of Washington&#8217;s fascistic propaganda machine:</p>
<blockquote><p>
Jhally brought up a concept mentioned by Confucius, who taught that it is necessary in controlling a people, to &#8220;rectify the language.&#8221; In relation to modern times, Jhally said Confucius would be referring to controlling the media. Control of the facts that are available would most likely force people to think along very specific lines, he said.<br />
&#8220;If you can control the categories in which people think, you can imprison them in their own imaginations.&#8221;<br />
He also compared what the current Bush administration is doing to methods that the Nazi government employed during World War II. He quoted Hermann Gheoring [<i>sic</i>], a member of the Nazi party to emphasize his point. Jhally, quoted, &#8220;All you have to do is tell them [the people] they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.&#8221;<br />
He said that the events of September 11, served as the propaganda that the Bush administration was looking for, and that he feels this is why the United States is at war with Iraq now.<br />
&#8220;If Sept. 11, [2001] wasn&#8217;t planned, Osama bin Ladin came along and answered his [George W. Bush's] prayers,&#8221; Jhally said.
</p></blockquote>
<p>Last week, an anti-war teach-in at American University was <a href="http://www.theeagleonline.com/section.cfm/108/2/4895">billed by a dean</a> as part of &#8220;a tried-and-true process at a university to promote a diversity of views&#8221; and as a demonstration of the university&#8217;s commitment to free speech. The teach-in&#8217;s organizer, history professor Peter Kuznick, made it clear that there is only one educated, morally just opinion to be had on the war, that intellectuals have it and that the public does not, and that the mission of the teach-in is to help students arrive at the proper viewpoint: &#8220;I think public support for this war in the public is very, very thin. The nation always rallies behind the president in times like this</p>
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