Thanks Todd

Todd Zywicki has some very kind words on Volokh for this site, Dartlog, Joe's Malchow's Dartblog, and Voices in the Wilderness. He ought to add Free Dartmouth, The Little Green Blog, and Julia Bernstein's OutVox to that list as well.

Update: oh, and don't forget the excellent John Kalb and Brad Plumer either.

Posted by kungfuzi at 9:34 PM | |

 
Power Line on Ackerman

Power Line calls for Dartmouth alums to "Annoy Ackerman -- elect Robinson and Zywicki."

It ain't just Ackerman whom they'll be annoying if they get elected, believe me!

But seriously now, this really isn't a terribly sound reason for electing them. In fact, I can imagine circumstances in which annoying the faculty may not be a good thing at all. Sure, press for changes that may go against faculty sentiment if you believe them necessary. But ultimately, I think it's far better for everyone with a stake in Dartmouth that there be a modus vivendi between the faculty and the trustees, not mutual hostility.

Also, in that same post, The Big Trunk calls Robinson and Zywicki "insurgents" ("insurgent candidacies" was the exact term he used). Can we please stop using this term? The petition candidates are not terrorists, and I'm hugely surprised that conservatives, who are usually the first to point out bad examples of moral equivalence, are implicitly making such comparisons.

Posted by kungfuzi at 5:31 PM | |

 
Susan Ackerman, Deconstruction, and the Trustee Election [Warning: Long]

As I noted previously, a fair number of those who oppose the petition candidates have resorted to accusing them of wanting to drag Dartmouth backwards. The latest to do so is religion professor Susan Ackerman '80, who has managed to come up with this humdinger (thanks to the new Voices in the Wilderness blog for the Valley News link):

Both petition candidates, in short, seem to me to long nostalgically for some 'Dear Old Dartmouth' of the past, without admitting the idealized past they crave represents a Dartmouth that was often hard on women, gays and lesbians, and minorities; monolithic in terms of its social life; and fostered an anti-intellectual environment.

The statement above comes from a longer mass blitz that Ackerman sent to friends from her era and other like-minded alumni (well, if they share your views, then why do you need to tell them how to vote?). According to the Valley News, Ackerman has, in that same email, attacked Robinson and Zywicki for advocating "the same sorts of reactionary ideologies as were represented in last year's elections by Rodgers."

I'll tell you what fosters an anti-intellectual environment: ad hominem attacks like these. Ackerman once said, defending the secularity of her department, that "the world of the academy is a world that depends on data, depends on evidence and depends on analysis of data and evidence" Well, show us some frickin' evidence for these claims (I'm going to presuppose that the rest of her blitz doesn't -- if this is wrong, please let me know), so that you can say with confidence, as Hamlet did, "Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'" Argue why the positions Robinson and Zywicki are reactionary. Point us to an article in the Review or an episode of Uncommon Knowledge in which Robinson has called for the return of the Indian symbol. Show me where and when on The Volokh Conspiracy Zywicki has extolled the virtues of single-sex education. It's not enough to "reason" as follows: Robinson's a conservative who worked for that nasty Ronald Reagan; all conservatives are evil; therefore, when Robinson speaks about undergraduates needing to "learn about the plight of American Indians by studying the displacement of the Cherokee Nation and the 'Trail of Tears'," he must surely be lying. He must surely want the opposite.

This is what I mean by "postmodern logic": I was referencing Derrida and Deconstruction (I'll explain "at its worst" in the next paragraph), and from now on will use Deconstruction so as to avoid any confusion. According to The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, Deconstruction allows a text to be read as "saying something quite different from what it appears to be saying, and that it may be read as carrying a plurality of significance or as saying many different things which are fundamentally at variance with, contradictory to and subversive of what may be...seen...as a single, stable 'meaning.'" This is done, writes Barbara Johnson in Critical Terms for Literary Study, by finding "signifying force in the gaps, margins, figures, echoes, digressions, discontinuities, contradictions, and ambiguities of a text."

I actually doubt that Susan Ackerman has performed a thorough deconstructive reading of Robinson's and Zywicki's statements, because deconstruction, for all its flaws, actually requires that you perform what literary critics call a "close reading" of the text in question. That is to say, evidence is required. Also, Deconstruction doesn't allow the reader to find in the text any one stable meaning, and yet Ackerman appears to have imbued the trustee candidates' positions with exactly that. Why? I suspect that this is because she's read so much deconstructive theory that it's become part of her critical apparatus, especially when dealing with people she doesn't like. But Deconstruction, as far as I know, is meant to be applied without fear or favor, without taking into account political positions or the people who've written the text. After all, as Derrida's famous saying goes, "Il n'y a rien hors du texte." So when Ackerman presumes that Robinson and Zywicki actually want the College to go backwards, despite the evidence to the contrary and despite the requirements and axioms of the Deconstructive method (which of course is insulated from its own claims!), she is doing injustice to Robinson and Zywicki as well as to Deconstruction.

All this is predicated on reading the petition candidates' statements as progressive. Tim believes that "it is perfectly plausible to say that the candidates want to go in a more conservative direction," and that "though it is not 'value-neutral' to use the words 'backwards' to describe conservative changes, someone can honestly believe such changes make the college more backwards." Well, sure. If it can be demonstrated that what the candidates say is explicitly reactionary, then there's no need for Ackerman to employ Deconstruction at all.

Here's where a little comparative analysis comes in handy. Robinson and Zywicki both talk about the importance of Dartmouth as an undergraduate college. Well, so too do all the other trustee candidates. No sane candidate would dare echo James Wright's words that Dartmouth is a "research university in all but name." What about freedom of speech? Well, Gregg Engles believes that Dartmouth "must also include a faculty with diverse points of view, prepared to join in vigorous debate on important issues, and free from the intellectual orthodoxy that exists on many U.S. campuses today." Richard Lewis says, "I believe free speech, open dialogue and debate are important to the development of the most prepared Dartmouth students." Athletics? Sheila Cheston believes that "Part of what is special about Dartmouth is the inviting college environment, the embrace of athletics and outdoor activities, and the attention paid to developing the whole individual." Hmm, that last part sounds a lot like Zywicki's belief that "Dartmouth should recommit itself to the education of well-rounded students and leaders." See what I'm getting at here? The petition candidates' vision of the ideal Dartmouth that people are calling reactionary is not radically different from that of the other candidates.

Where they do differ is in their appraisal of Dartmouth at the present moment. And here's a good reason for voting for them: because, while everyone might more or less agree about how Dartmouth should be like, there exists considerable disagreement as to the current state of the College on the Hill. Is it in good shape or bad shape or mediocre shape? I don't know. I wasn't involved in student government. I had a great time there, and perhaps complained about political correctness a little too much back when I was younger. Even The Review these days acknowledges that "Students are getting along fine at our small College; the campus culture remains genial and gregarious; most of the faculty tend to do a professional job, many professors are excellent, and some, very occasionally, can be inspirations." But it seems to me important that people sit down and talk about the present state of Dartmouth, and I think that Zywicki and Robinson and T. J. Rodgers will help facilitate this dialogue. Because it may very well be that things at Dartmouth aren't going swimmingly, and that serious change is needed.

This goes back to the question of ideological diversity, which in the case of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees will most likely express itself as disagreement over means rather than ends. So yes, at the end of this long post, I am modifying what I said earlier about ideological diversity. It's still my primary reason for voting for Zywicki and Robinson, but I'm now thinking more in terms of what it means in context rather than as an abstract good. (There's still the possibility, of course, that at some point in the future, the trustees will disagree over ends.)

Posted by kungfuzi at 8:46 AM | |

 
Blogger

Blogger has been behaving weirdly lately, so I haven't been able to post my further thoughts on the trustee elections. I've also been pretty busy at work.

Update: Brad Plumer says that he's not terribly interested in the elections. But he raises an interesting point about adjunct professors nonetheless.

Update 2: I'd love to hear the thoughts of Stefan and James at Armavirumque as well.

Posted by kungfuzi at 5:12 AM | |

 
Congratulations!

Let me be the first to congratulate my fellow blogger and great friend John Stevenson for being admitted into the University of Chicago's PhD programme in Political Science. We shall be following his academic career with great interest.


Posted by kungfuzi at 7:50 PM | |

 
Some interesting websites I chanced upon recently

If you're weary of election blogging, take a little break and browse some of these websites:

- Orbis Latinus. Covers the historical development and grammar of the Romance languages, from Latin to Romanian to Catalan. While not all languages have been covered yet, there's more than enough there, including helpful maps and tables, for many hours of browsing -- especially if you're into the more common languages like Latin (both medieval and classical), French, Italian, and Spanish.

- Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. Largest and most reliable online collection of maps that I've come across. My own interest is chiefly in the Historical Maps section, which has detailed and large drawings of just about every part of the world at every point of time in the past. See for instance this map of the Byzantine Empire circa 1265, or this map of the North Pole from an 1885 Scottish geographical magazine, or this one of India in 1760.

- Dictionary of the History of Ideas. The entries contained here, on subjects as diverse as "Academic Freedom", "Renaissance Humanism", and "Health and Disease," are enormous and written by the likes of Isaiah Berlin, Quentin Skinner, and Arnoldo Momigliano. Be prepared to set aside some serious reading time for them.

Posted by kungfuzi at 5:51 PM | |

 
Calling Brad Plumer and Andrew Samwick!

Amidst all the spirited discussion of Dartmouth's trustee election, notable voices are absent. Where art thou, Bradford and Professor Samwick?

Posted by kungfuzi at 4:55 AM | |

 
Why Robinson and Zywicki?

Lots of alumni bloggers have been weighing in on the forthcoming alumni elections. John Kalb believes that "It's not about frats, or faculty, or grad students, or fundraising, or whatever else, but rather it's about whether people think the College is heading in the right direction." Tim Waligore responds by wondering whether this is a sufficient reason to vote for the petition candidates, Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88. (Tim's post links to even more blogospheric opinions, so head over there for more comprehensive coverage.)

I said earlier why I support Zywicki's candidacy. The big thing for me is that he's an academic, whereas none of the current trustees and the other election candidates are (even though a number of them have held academic positions in the past). As for Robinson, I've been very impressed with his work as moderator of Uncommon Knowledge, and I think he'll bring similar good sense and passion to his trusteeship. Zywicki and Robinson will add to the dialogue about Dartmouth's future points of views that are contrary to the mainstream (libertarianism and conservatism respectively). This ideological diversity is healthy even if you don't agree with their views. Electing them in no way guarantees that liberal-progressive viewpoints will fail or that conservative-libertarian viewspoints will dominate. It should ensure that disgruntled alumni (I'm not one of them, by the way) have trustees who'll listen to their criticisms.

Some of the criticisms of Zywicki and Robinson are exceedingly silly. The DAPAAA email I posted below, for instance, claims that both petition candidates' "messages about wanting to make Dartmouth better are really 'code' for going backwards." In another example of postmodern logic at its worst, The Little Green Blog, without citing any evidence except an op-ed in The D, accuses them of "covering up their ambitions to make Dartmouth a conservative and backwards institution." Right. It's pretty clear that Zywicki and Robinson, like those nasty, horrible Reviewers and their ilk, want nothing less than a return to the good old days of single-sex education. The Indian must come back too. As for Robinson's belief that undergraduates should "learn about the plight of American Indians by studying the displacement of the Cherokee Nation and the 'Trail of Tears'," that's just a ruse, a coverup. So too is Zywicki's radically anti-progressive notion that the College should - quelle horreur! -- seek to improve its governance through "greater openness and transparency."

The D's latest Verbum Ultimatum is similarly inadequate. The D is endorsing Richard Lewis '84 and Gregg Engles '79 because they recognize Dartmouth's "proud tradition of undergraduate focus and small-college feel" and because both seem to have "progressive ideals." Lewis, for example, is cited for wanting to trim the costs of a Dartmouth education. So how does that distinguish them from Robinson, who's called for Dartmouth to "rededicate itself to its central mission, providing the best undergraduate education in America," and from Zywicki, who has criticized the College's "confused financial priorities"?

Posted by kungfuzi at 10:51 PM | |

 
Dartmouth's Trustee Election

Just received this email today from the Dartmouth Asian Pacific American Alumni Association (DAPAAA), whose mailing list I have hastily unsubscribed to.

Hi all,

We'd like to draw your attention to the upcoming Trustee Elections (starting March 7). Whatever your views, your vote COUNTS. These trustees will impact our administration and our students and our prospectives. A helpful site that someone alerted me to is: www.strongdartmouth.org that gives overviews of all the candidates.

PS We have some good news re: tenure-track professor for Asian American literature...let's keep these good news coming. Please don't forget to subscribe to the listserve: dapaaa@yahoo.com: job listings, news, and local events are posted there.

I also wanted to pass on this email: these Trustee elections are fueling strong sentiments on all sides, so FYI:

***

This trustee election matters tremendously for the future of Dartmouth College and it's critical that all alumni take the time to understand the issues and positions of each candidate, and VOTE. To refresh your memory, the trustee election allows for multiple voting, so you can vote for one or six people, with the persons having the highest numerical total winning.

As a concerned alumna, I believe that the two petition candidates ­ Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88 -- present destructive views of the College, that their election would be highly damaging for the institution and President James Wright, and that their messages about wanting to make Dartmouth better are really 'code' for going
backwards. I highly urge you NOT to vote for them, and tell others as well; here are some points I would encourage you to share:

Athletics ­ Dartmouth athletes would be stunned to hear that they're mediocre, per Peter Robinson (neither Robinson or Zywicki were athletes at Dartmouth). The women's basketball team is undefeated in Ivy League play, and men's hockey is ranked 17th nationally, with women's ranked #2. Men's soccer won the Ivy League title, the figure skating team was national champion in 2004, the Rugby Football team has qualified for the nationals this spring, and men's basketball just defeated Princeton, Cornell and Columbia: quite a hat trick for first year coach Terry Dunn!

If athletics is in disrepute at Dartmouth, consider the University of Michigan: Dartmouth has 34 teams with a student population of 4,500, while national powerhouse Michigan has only 27, with a student population of 38,000. Since 1969, Dartmouth has increased the student body by 35 percent, but the number of teams by 70 percent. President Wright has stated repeatedly that intercollegiate athletics activities are a central part of the educational experience at Dartmouth.

Football ­ Buddy Teevens '79 is the new Dartmouth football coach and he's satisfied that Dartmouth is an environment to which he can recruit football players successfully, with the full support of the President, the athletic director, the dean of admissions and the dean of students ­ all focused on supporting Dartmouth's strongest winning record in the Ivy League.

Undergraduate focus ­ What Dartmouth has is what every other college wants. The Dartmouth academic experience is rich and full, and student satisfaction is at its highest levels ever. If either petition candidate spent time on campus, they'd see how vibrant student life is, with nearly 300 student groups. The number of applicants to the class of 2009 is the highest in Dartmouth history!

To quote students in The Dartmouth: "Dartmouth isn't perfect, but keep it all in perspective. To focus on what's wrong about Dartmouth is to miss out on everything that's right about it." The petition candidates claim the administration (and current Board) has weakened Dartmouth; clearly virtually all students disagree!

Dartmouth's future ­ Let's talk about continuing Dartmouth's pre-eminence in 2050, not what Dartmouth was in 1950. No great institution focuses on its rear view mirror. A new Booz Allen survey recognized Dartmouth as one of the 10 most enduring institutions in the world, with the likes of GE, Oxford and The Rolling Stones.Dartmouth isn't 'broken,' in fact it's terrific.

Faculty ­ The Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience targets support for 25 new Arts & Sciences faculty positions to further decrease class size. 96% of Dartmouth students surveyed are satisfied with faculty! If Dartmouth's priorities change, there's a substantial risk that the College would lose many bright lights, especially younger, talented educators.

The petition candidates say Dartmouth faculty members don't like teaching, preferring research. Yet student guides to colleges consistently rate Dartmouth faculty as among the most exciting and involved professors across the country. Zywicki himself hasn't taught students at George Mason University for TWO YEARS as he worked at the FTC and is now visiting at Georgetown Law Center. Dartmouth professors teach at Dartmouth!

Alumni involvement ­ Neither petition candidate has meaningful participation as alumni. Other alumni have contributed MILLIONS of man-hours, interviewing and recruiting students, running clubs and class organizations, serving on Alumni Council, contributing to the College Fund, etc. It's fine to be an outsider, but you owe the institution involvement FIRST. "Hijacking" the Dartmouth Board of Trustees isn't the way we operate at Dartmouth.

Greek organizations ­ today there are more Greek organizations than when either petition candidate was a student. There is no 'war against fraterNities and sororities.' President Wright has publicly stated his support for them, and recently Phi Delta Fraternity was rechartered.

Free speech ­ the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a self-appointed group that allegedly monitors speech on campuses. It rates most Ivy League colleges, as well as Stanford and MIT and many other top colleges, poorly. Why isn't Peter Robinson fired up about Stanford? Moreover, Trustee TJ Rodgers has written to FIRE recommending upgrading Dartmouth's rating because HE IS CONVINCED THAT THE COLLEGE PROTECTS FREE SPEECH!

The petition candidates claim to be running independent campaigns, but their materials were mailed from the same PO box in White River Junction and are EXACTLY the same. Mmmm.

Lastly, Robinson and Zywicki both speak about their debt to Dartmouth for their education, their friendships and their careers. Has either repaid that debt? Ask them. After all, alumni generosity is what allows Dartmouth to continue to educate each generation and if you're not supporting the College, you're preventing someone else from benefiting as you have.

Momentum is building for this point of view, and a website, www.strongdartmouth.org, is now live. It contains facts in support of the College, designed to share another perspective with alumni about the issues, since the petition candidates are apparently keeping their websites live.

We really need people willing to step forward and endorse these points of view (as part of an organization called Alumni for a Strong Dartmouth.) We hope that you are comfortable allowing your name to be used on this site, and if there are others who you know are comfortable being named, please let us know as well. It's important
that we demonstrate the breadth of support for the College across the alumni body, since one misperception is that most alumni are angry and disenfranchised. Thanks for your help!

I'll add my comments in a later post. For now, check out the extensive election coverage at Dartlog.

Posted by kungfuzi at 4:41 PM | |