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Regarding the Gospel of Judas: Ben Brumfield at Horizon suggests that we think critically about the press release; about the"launching" of scholarship; and the problematic combination of lawyers and antiquities, in particular, Mario Roberty and antiquities.
Free Speech: Sherman Dorn points out that David Horowitz will be in Florida today to testify on behalf of his"Academic Bill of Rights." We'd like to know if Horowitz really believes that students should be given standing to sue biology professors who do not teach"Intelligent Design" or history professors who do not deny the holocaust.
Text Books: If you don't have your copy of Daniel Cohen's article in the current Journal of American History [or, even if you do have it], I recommend that you read Scott Jaschik's"What History Students Read" at Inside Higher Ed. Cohen finds a dreary reliance on textbooks, even to the exclusion of other books, in American history survey courses. No matter how well written they may be, textbooks are a deadly way of communicating lots of information. When we're choosing books for students to read, why not begin by choosing books that are, in themselves, worth reading and build the course around them rather than choosing a textbook and, maybe, nothing else? The last time I turned down a teaching job, it was because a textbook had been chosen for me. It was so thick and dreadful looking that I knew I didn't want to read it, much less inflict it on students.
Oxford History of the United States: There was a brief note in the NYTimes in the last week about the publication of a new and revised edition of Robert Middlekauf's The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. It's about time for it, since the book first appeared over twenty years ago. But the note referred to a larger question about what has happened to the Oxford History of the United States. When I left graduate school, announcement of the series was trumpeted with great fanfare. Its general editors were Richard Hofstadter and C. Vann Woodward. It would be the new 10 volume history of the United States to which we could turn with confidence. Well, yes, but Hofstadter and Woodward have been dead for some time now. In the intervening 30 years, their project produced four fine books: Middlekauf's The Glorious Cause on the Revolution and confederation, James McPherson's The Battle Cry of Freedom on the Civil War and Reconstruction, David Kennedy's Freedom from Fear on the Depression and World War II, and James Patterson's Grand Expections on post-world war II America. Still, that leaves six volumes of the OHUS yet to appear. And, since Patterson ends with Richard Nixon's impeachment, there's probably a seventh volume needed to bring the series up to the 21st century. Kennedy has apparently succeeded Woodward as general editor of the series, but at this rate it will be 2050 before the series is complete. I wonder who holds the outstanding contracts.
According to what I was told, the original plan was to end with Grand Expectations, but since the project was so many years behind schedule, it was decided that another volume was needed.
Derek Charles Catsam -
7/20/2005
And the Patterson book is indeed listed as being in the series. I am almost sure that the original intention was not for there to be a final volume -- I would not be surprised if Patterson himself did not initiate its inclusion -- an addition with which I am happy. From what I've read it should be typical Patterson.
Schulman has pretty broad-ranging interests in 20th- century US history. I have no doubt about his ability to execute the 1900-1929 volume.
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Ralph E. Luker -
7/20/2005
Good reporting going on here that helps track these things down. I believe our information on the colonial era volumes is still a blank.
James Stanley Kabala -
7/20/2005
I found a listing for the Schulman volume. It has no publication date or even title, but it does have a page count.
Wouldn't it be remarkable if, after years of seeming moribundness, the project (except the apparently doomed colonial volumes) was brought to completion within the next half-decade or so?
Brands' volume is called Prometheus Unbound: America 1865-1900, and it already has a page count, but not a publication date. It's probably done--Brands is a machine.
There is no information on Amazon as yet for the Howe or Schulman volumes.
James Stanley Kabala -
7/20/2005
My post above, listed as a reply to Ralph, was supposed to be a reply to Derek.
James Stanley Kabala -
7/20/2005
I have had heard it confirmed from the horse's mouth (i.e., from Patterson himself). I suppose that it could have been removed from the series and released separately, as is said to have happened to some previous submissions, but given the success of Patterson's previous volume in the series, this seems unlikely.
Derek Charles Catsam -
7/20/2005
Patterson's book is scheduled to be out later in the fall. I have read the intro and epilogue. I did not realize it was going to be part of the Oxford series, though. Has this been confirmed?
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Ralph E. Luker -
7/20/2005
Thanks for the information, Mark. Schulman may be a better choice than seems obvious at first glance. He gave a paper on George Tindall's work, which was largely in that period, at the SHA convention a year or so ago and did an absolutely first-rate job.
Mark Klobas -
7/20/2005
The 1815-1846 volume is being written by Daniel Walker Howe; at this point he has 17 of 20 chapters completed. In addition, H. W. Brands is writing Volume 7 (1865-1900) while Bruce Schulman is writing Volume 8, which will cover America from 1896 to 1929. I can't seem to find any trace of the volumes covering the colonial period.
I must confess that I'm a little puzzled by some of the choices for authors. Wood is a superb choice, but given Schulman's previous research in the 1970s and 1980s, I would have thought he would have been better suited to write Volume 11.
Oscar Chamberlain -
4/7/2005
I'm not sure how indicative lecture notes are of content. I do post mine, after the class, as a convenience to students, particularly if I used some visuals or web links. But while they give a general sense of what I cover, they do not provide much guidance to my perspective nor would they include any asides or responses to questions.
I have refused to post notes ahead of time. In part that is because I'm often putting them together at the last minute, in part because I don't want students to mistake the notes for the class.
The one exception was the semester I had a profoundly deaf student and the signer asked if I could get notes to her ahead of time. That way she would have some idea of where I was going. Since I had to have them done ahead of time, I went ahead and posted them for everyone.
John H. Lederer -
4/7/2005
"I think posting lecture notes is impractical and provides bad incentives"
Did not MIT promise to do this? How is it working out?
Carl Patrick Burkart -
4/7/2005
Yes, I agree. I also agree with Dr. Johnson's latest suggestion that all courses require a detailed syllabus be posted online (I think posting lecture notes is impractical and provides bad incentives).
I also think that the administration and the trustees do have a role to play in improving undergraduate instruction. Perhaps they could insist that teaching excellence be a much bigger part of tenure and promotion decisions. Mandating that tenure track instructors teach a higher percentage of courses (particularly introductory level courses) would also help. I realize that a greater emphasis on teaching (and the scholarhsip of teaching) might result in less research production by faculty. As far as the Humanities and Social Sciences go, however, it is a tradeoff worth making.
In other words, defenders of the University need to offer counter-reforms to this Horowitz nonsense that focus on dramatically improving undergraduate teaching (bad teaching includes indoctination).
Oscar Chamberlain -
4/6/2005
I agree with your conerns about alternatives, but John has a point. There are a lot of people who think that universities are not giving enough bang for the buck, and we have not done a very good job of either explaining why they are wrong or fixing what might be wrong. These other controversies add to this perception, fair or not.
State university systems in particular are large and complex bureaucracies. Legislative oversite is difficult, and faculty governance has severe limits on that scale. That leaves administrators who are usually distrusted by both the legislature and the faculties in the middle.
Expanding the right of students to sue would only make matters worse, but those of us who teach within this system have to think long and hard on how to make things better, and how to connect more with the larger public.
John H. Lederer -
4/6/2005
I think this is the text of the bill. whereases excluded:
Section 1. Subsection (7) is added to section 1002.21,
107 Florida Statutes, to read:
108 1002.21 Postsecondary student and parent rights.--
109 (7) STUDENT ACADEMIC FREEDOM.--As detailed in s. 1004.09,
110 students have rights to a learning environment in which they
111 have access to a broad range of serious scholarly opinion, to be
112 graded without discrimination on the basis of their political or
113 religious beliefs, and to a viewpoint-neutral distribution of
114 student fee funds.
115 Section 2. Section 1004.09, Florida Statutes, is created
116 to read:
117 1004.09 Postsecondary student and faculty academic bill of
118 rights.--
119 (1) Students have a right to expect a learning environment
120 in which they will have access to a broad range of serious
121 scholarly opinion pertaining to the subjects they study. In the
122 humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, the fostering of
123 a plurality of serious scholarly methodologies and perspectives
124 should be a significant institutional purpose.
125 (2) Students have a right to expect that they will be
126 graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and
127 appropriate knowledge of the subjects they study and that they
128 will not be discriminated against on the basis of their
129 political or religious beliefs.
130 (3) Students have a right to expect that their academic
131 freedom and the quality of their education will not be infringed
132 upon by instructors who persistently introduce controversial
133 matter into the classroom or coursework that has no relation to
134 the subject of study and serves no legitimate pedagogical
135 purpose.
136 (4) Students have a right to expect that freedom of
137 speech, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom
138 of conscience of students and student organizations will not be
139 infringed upon by postsecondary administrators, student
140 government organizations, or institutional policies, rules, or
141 procedures.
142 (5) Students have a right to expect that their academic
143 institutions will distribute student fee funds on a viewpoint-
144 neutral basis and will maintain a posture of neutrality with
145 respect to substantive political and religious disagreements,
146 differences, and opinions.
147 (6) Faculty and instructors have a right to academic
148 freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects, but they
149 should make their students aware of serious scholarly viewpoints
150 other than their own and should encourage intellectual honesty,
151 civil debate, and critical analysis of ideas in the pursuit of
152 knowledge and truth.
153 (7) Faculty and instructors have a right to expect that
154 they will be hired, fired, promoted, and granted tenure on the
155 basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in their
156 fields of expertise and will not be hired, fired, denied
157 promotion, or denied tenure on the basis of their political or
158 religious beliefs.
159 (8) Faculty and instructors have a right to expect that
160 they will not be excluded from tenure, search, or hiring
161 committees on the basis of their political or religious beliefs.
162 (9) Students, faculty, and instructors have a right to be
163 fully informed of their rights and their institution's grievance
164 procedures for violations of academic freedom by means of
165 notices prominently displayed in course catalogs and student
166 handbooks and on the institutional website.
167 Section 3. The Chancellor of Colleges and Universities
168 shall provide a copy of the provisions of this act to the
169 president of each state university. The Chancellor of Community
170 Colleges and Workforce Education shall provide a copy of the
171 provisions of this act to the president of each community
172 college.
173 Section 4. This act shall take effect July 1, 2005.
Carl Patrick Burkart -
4/6/2005
I am arguing that this bill would actually increase problems without solving any problems. Even if it never passes, this bill and others like it will require the higher education world to expend energy fighting demogoguic nonsense rather than solving the very real problems that do exist.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by changes in governance. If you mean stripping the faculty of responsibity for curricular and pedagoguical decisions, who would then make the decisions? Administrators? Trustees? The state legislature? If so, I would point you to the K-12 system, particularly the system of textbook adoption as the likely outcome.
John H. Lederer -
4/6/2005
"There are problems in higher ed, most stemming from the extremely low priority given to quality classroom instruction. This bill will do nothing to address the problem."
I agree that there are problems in undergraduate education in higher ed that this bill will do nothing to solve.
However, if a clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles began telling driver's license applicants that they were little Eichmanns, the DMV would have a problem it needed to resolve, even though the resolution would do not much for the many and general problems at the DMV.
I would suggest that the bill is one aspect of a general problem in higher education. I think there is serious question whether the present forms of governance of higher education work. That is not just the problem of political or ideological bias, which is, in my opinion, real but not a great threat. The problem includes increasing monetary inputs with no gain, and perhaps a loss, in output, a university system that increasingly is seen as separate from the general politic, a problem of credentials that lack substance, hypocrisy in professed policies, declining professional integrity, and other problems.
Higher education is in trouble. Its seeming inability to become aware of its problems may be the biggest.
Carl Patrick Burkart -
4/6/2005
If you read the Florida Bill and the report that accompanies it that was written by the bill's sponsor, you will see that it explicitly intends to give students standing to sue proffessors, not just for supposedly lowering their grade for political reasons, but for teaching "extreme views." Thus you will have the judiciary deciding what views are extreme and what constitutes fair grading. The bill's sponsor specifically mentioned a non-tolerance of creationism as a lack of balance.
There are problems in higher ed, most stemming from the extremely low priority given to quality classroom instruction. This bill will do nothing to address the problem. It will make matters worse by encouraging administrators and professors to be cautious of introducing anything subjective or controversial. The result will be an increase in rote memory, multiple choice tests, grade inflation,and the further decline of undergraduate teaching.
John H. Lederer -
4/6/2005
Actually I have not practiced law for many years, instead troubling my mind with history. When I practiced law I felt that major reforms were needed because litigation was out of control.. be that as it may be.
I think you touch on the nub of the problem. There is nothing objectionable in what Horowitz's bill proscribes if good faith is assumed and we ignore the ridiculous cases that imagination can create. Professors ought not ignore "serious academic theories" and ought not ridicule their students for disagreeing with the professor. Heck, professors ought be reasonable, courteous people, and if they were, there would be no call for the bill.
The rub is who decides when bounds are passed. Is a professor beyond the bounds if he were to teach that history is an invention of a kumquat? How about when he teaches that there are no problems with Darwin's original evolution theory as a complete explanation for the development and changes in life (Cambrian explosion -- didn't happen)?
The natural answer to who decides would be his colleagues. After all they presumably know the field. But recent history seems to say that they fail as judges of what is within the bounds. It illuminates that the assertions of plagiarism, and factual misrepresentations in Churchill's work, and making of physical threats, were apparently known to his university long before he became a cause celebre over his Eichmann comments. It illuminates that the problems with Belleisles work were known and publicized *before* the Bancroft committee voted to award him history's most prestigious prize. It illuminates to examine the composition of the committe appointed by Columbia to investigate allegations of anti-semitism. It illuminates to see the apparent drumming out of the profession of those whose views are not very radical, but very politically incorrect.
Political correctness apparently trumps professional integrity among the teaching professions.
So who gets to decide if the profession fails its test as arbiters? Who gets to decide that teaching that a kumquat invented history is illegitimate bunk? If not colleagues, whom?
Ralph E. Luker -
4/6/2005
Mr. Lederer, Would you identify for me any historians in Florida who you believe are teaching that "history was invented by a kumquat." Surely we must legislate against them for doing so! Have you read the legislation introduced in the Florida legislature? Is it that you are predisposed as a litigator to favor increased legislation?
John H. Lederer -
4/6/2005
Arguing from the extreme example may be legitimate, but it also tends to obfuscate and put emotion in the argument.
If a purpose of Horwowitz's proposed bill is for students to sue professors who don't teach creationism, then equally a purpose of those opposed to his bill is to have unfettered freedom to teach that history was invented by a kumquat.
Perhaps my argument was poorly put (ok, probably poorly put) but I found the original statement of Horowtiz's bill something other than an objective rendering of the fact.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/6/2005
Mr. Lederer, Your point would be what? Surely you don't want to broaden the lawyers' access to money that is intended to educate American students -- right? I take it you favor equal access rights. Equal access to the courts, equal access to sense and nonsense in the classroom. Why, before you know it, you'll recognize the post-modernist in yourself.
John H. Lederer -
4/6/2005
At The History Conference
The History Conference took a strong position on Prof. Horowitz's proposed bill.
According to conference participants, history professors will oppose any reform in what they teach, preferring to be able to present one side, two sides, three sides, or no sides of issues as they choose, subject of course to their institution's speech code. Professors want immunity from legal challenge if they choose to teach the non-existence of the holocaust, teach that evolution is a fraud, or teach that history began in 1983 when a kumquat dreamed it all up, as was suggested in the thought provoking paper Prof. Snerdley presented at the conference.
"Anything less would be a despicable assault on acadmeic freedom" said Prof. Snerdley."The essence of academic freedom is that tenured professors be able to teach anything. They should be able to ensure that those who become tenured professors have similar views on anythingness so that the same degree of academic freedom can be preserved for future generations. Any suggestion of responsibility to others to be balanced is nothing more than an opening for Sen. McCarthy to reappear" said Prof. Snerdley, who cautioned participants that the late Senator's funeral had been closed casket and no one had actually seen him in the casket.
Three graduate students had to be taken by ambulance to Good Fellow Hospital after eating candied kumquats that were apparently intended solely as a "illustrative aid" for Prof. Snerdely's talk.
Prof. Snerdely fiercely denied an assertion by one graduate student, forcibly removed from the conference, who shouted during the presentation that parts of Professor Snerdely's paper had been taken from the "Kumquat Growers HowTo".
========================
"Sherman Dorn points out that David Horowitz will be in Florida today to testify on behalf of his "Academic Bill of Rights." We'd like to know if Horowitz really believes that students should be given standing to sue biology professors who do not teach "Intelligent Design" or history professors who do not deny the holocaust."
Ralph E. Luker -
4/5/2005
Thanks for the information. The Wood and Patterson volumes should be excellent.
James Stanley Kabala -
4/5/2005
James Patterson has written a second volume, on 1974 to 2001, which, I believe, will be out fairly soon.
Gordon Wood is currently working on the early republic (1789-1815) volume.
I remember being told that someone had was currently writing the 1815-1846 voleume, but I don't remember who it was.
