The Dartmouth Observer |
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Commentary on politics, history, culture, and literature by two Dartmouth graduates and their buddies
WHO WE ARE Chien Wen Kung graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004 and majored in History and English. He is currently a civil servant in Singapore. Someday, he hopes to pursue a PhD in History. John Stevenson graduated from Dartmouth College in 2005 with a BA in Government and War and Peace Studies. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He hopes to pursue a career in teaching and research. Kwame A. Holmes did not graduate from Dartmouth. However, after graduating from Florida A+M University in 2003, he began a doctorate in history at the University of Illinois--Urbana Champaign. Having moved to Chicago to write a dissertation on Black-Gay-Urban life in Washington D.C., he attached himself to the leg of John Stevenson and is thrilled to sporadically blog on the Dartmouth Observer. Feel free to email him comments, criticisms, spelling/grammar suggestions. BLOGS/WEBSITES WE READ The American Scene Arts & Letters Daily Agenda Gap Stephen Bainbridge Jack Balkin Becker and Posner Belgravia Dispatch Black Prof The Corner Demosthenes Daniel Drezner Five Rupees Free Dartmouth Galley Slaves Instapundit Mickey Kaus The Little Green Blog Left2Right Joe Malchow Josh Marshall OxBlog Bradford Plumer Political Theory Daily Info Andrew Samwick Right Reason Andrew Seal Andrew Sullivan Supreme Court Blog Tapped Tech Central Station UChicago Law Faculty Blog Volokh Conspiracy Washington Monthly Winds of Change Matthew Yglesias ARCHIVES BOOKS WE'RE READING CW's Books John's Books STUFF Site Feed    |
Thursday, March 06, 2003
On Ethnic/Gender Studies (cont'd) Responding to an earlier post of mine (scroll three postings down), Chris Hummel on Dartlog explains why he is skeptical about the College's decision to hire Laura Liu, an Asian-American Studies/ Geography/ Women's Studies professor. (Update: Dartmouth students can find the blitz on the Dartmouth Asian Organization bulletin.) I pretty much agree with everything Mr. Hummel says, as anyone who's read my op-eds will realize. Some additional points: 1) On student involvement in shaping the curriculum and hiring decisions: if you think professors don't know what it means to be liberally-educated, then what about students? As I've said many times before, "liberal" has less to do with the freedom to do what you want with your four years, and much more to do with the freedom from dogma, ideology, and ignorance. Mr. Hummel and myself share the view that the classics are the way to go. 2) The history of ethnic studies in the US needs to be made known. I'm currently writing a paper on the armed takeover of the Cornell student union in 1969 by black militants. One of the demands of those militants was for a Black Studies program whose goal was black self-empowerment (the militants also wanted a separate Black college and a separate judicial system). Such were the circumstances out of which Black Studies in the US emerged, and they make for troubling reading for anyone concerned with questions of academic freedom. The programs were politicized from the start; have Ethnic Studies programs today divorced themselves from this legacy? I am not sure... |