America the Conformist

[Modernistfan]

America seems to have embraced conformism to a degree that I have never experienced. Increasingly, people are afraid to consider any idea that might be seen as "out of the box" for fear of being attacked. They seem to be making decisions out of inertia or out of fear of ridicule.

A completely nonpolitical example will suffice. A couple of months ago, I was having lunch with my cousin from Los Angeles. He was talking about his son, who had just graduated from UCLA, and was talking about the UCLA athletic teams. I brought him up short with the suggestion that, given the financial crunch that UCLA was facing as a result of the state fiscal crisis, given the almost complete lack of interest among the student body in the athletic teams, and given the fact that Division I athletic teams have no relation to the primary educational mission of the university, it would be wise for UCLA to drop out of Division I and drop all athletic scholarships. In fact, the school has been embarrassed several times in recent years by misbehavior, including criminal misbehavior, of athletes, especially football players. They cannot give the student tickets away for football, except for the USC game. A large fraction of the UCLA student body is from immigrant families who have little familiarity with American football. There is a little more interest in basketball, but it is not real great, except on the rare occasions that UCLA gets past the first round of the NCAA playoffs. My cousin looked at me in disbelief, as though I had just handed him an Al Qaeda recruiting brochure.

As another example, why do people buy SUV's, particularly large American-made SUV's? They certainly do not do it because they enjoy the way they drive or handle; they are ponderous and slow, and ride harshly, like the trucks on which they are based. Most buyers do not need their off-road capability and rarely if ever need to haul objects that would not fit in a car. I am convinced that the buyers do it out of fear of seeming different or being ridiculed if they arrived at the country club or their children's soccer game in a small, sporty car, such as an Acura RSX (almost certainly my next car). So they buy unsafe, environmentally unsound vehicles they really do not like out of the desire to fit in.

What has happened to this country? The phrase "the land of the free and the home of the brave" in the "Star-Spangled Banner" no longer seems to fit. It should be "the land of the scared and the home of the fearful."

[Brendan]

Political correctness trumpets diversity but is in practice rigidly conformist, and has taken over our (Australia's) academies and schools. At least athletes can avoid the PC indoctrination. What happened to the dean of Harvard for suggersting that their might be biological differences in the way males and females think is instructive (see http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_07_25_05hm.html). He dared not to conform with academic feminist PC - and look what intolerance resulted!

In general, I just like this quote from Hanson & Heath about the modern academy:

As one of our students recently put it, “My literature class turns out to be gender, my history class racism, my philosophy class guilt, my psychology self-esteem, my anthropology colonialism, my English 1A a personal journal—my Greek class about everything else.” After all, where now but in a single class period on thirty lines of Sophocles can a twenty-one-year-old meet without prejudice grammar, syntax, music, logic, aesthetics, philosophy, history, ethics, religion, civics, and literature?

Hanson, Victor Davis & Heath, John – Who Killed Homer? [Encounter 2001 p188]

[Ralph]

I have zero interest in sports but the reality is that college athletics is a powerful glue keeping alumni involved and loosening their purse strings. I don't think its a matter of conformism but rather that sports are central to many universities and their collective view is that a strong program does have benefits for the primary teaching function.

As to SUVs, I don't know where you get your information. Very many of my friends have SUVs and I don't know one who uses it off-road. SUVs are to transport kids. The station wagons of a past generation simply don't exist and "SUV" covers a very wide range of vehicles.

Some of my friends ditched their SUVs when their kids flew the coop but many still have children at home.

[Ted]

they are ponderous and slow, and ride harshly, like the trucks on which they are based

That is a blatantly erroneous statement

[Ralph]

Political correctness trumpets diversity but is in practice rigidly conformist, and has taken over our (Australia's) academies and schools. At least athletes can avoid the PC indoctrination. What happened to the dean of Harvard for suggersting that their might be biological differences in the way males and females think is instructive (see http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_07_25_05hm.html). He dared not to conform with academic feminist PC - and look what intolerance resulted!

In general, I just like this quote from Hanson & Heath about the modern academy:

As one of our students recently put it, “My literature class turns out to be gender, my history class racism, my philosophy class guilt, my psychology self-esteem, my anthropology colonialism, my English 1A a personal journal—my Greek class about everything else.” After all, where now but in a single class period on thirty lines of Sophocles can a twenty-one-year-old meet without prejudice grammar, syntax, music, logic, aesthetics, philosophy, history, ethics, religion, civics, and literature?

Hanson, Victor Davis & Heath, John – Who Killed Homer? [Encounter 2001 p188]

*****

City Journal is a publication I have taken since the first issues and it's very useful to me. It is archly conservative and the article about Larry Summers distorts much of the underlying issue. Before the flap about women and genetics Summers was losing popularity amongst faculty very fast and not because of any threatening ideas. By his own belated admission he didn't know how to talk to top professors without alienating them. He has promised to change his ways.

A legitimate question raised with regard to his controversial speech was: should a university president be embroiled in controversy when his/her main functions are alumni relations and fundraising? I know nothing about Australian universities but HERE fundraising is the main qualification for a university president.

Personally I believe a top honcho doesn't give up the privilege of staking out controversial stands but that's probably a minority view.

[Brendan]

A legitimate question raised with regard to his controversial speech was: should a university president be embroiled in controversy when his/her main functions are alumni relations and fundraising? I know nothing about Australian universities but HERE fundraising is the main qualification for a university president.

Thus introducing the weird notion of a corporate campus model/life promoting PC ideology opposed to such corporate models commented upon by so many in recent times. Why is fundraising and schmoozing alumni such a priority for an educational institution (particularly the rich ones), here or there?

The very tools which today’s critics in the university use to dismantle Western culture and to deny the Greeks their progeny are themselves invariably Western. No postmodernist goes on the attack against the “elitist construction of science” without resorting to a rational argument based on evidence, data, illustration, and logic—the entire Greek manner of formal invective and philosophical refutation. To craft his clever sabbatical request or grant proposal, the deconstructionist Classicist does not quote God, footnote the president, insert the chairman’s sayings, claim a drug-inspired supernatural revelation, break into religious chants, hand out cassettes, begin dancing, or warn openly of mayhem to come for disbelievers. No multiculturalist thinks his academic freedom is an oppressive idea, her notion of a university separate from the church and government a burdensome notion, or their presentation of research and opinion in journals peer-reviewed and free from state censorship “hegemonic,” “patriarchal,” “sexist,” or “racist.”
Hanson, Victor Davis & Heath, John – Who Killed Homer? [Encounter 2001 p126]

[Modernistfan]

As for SUV's being ponderous and slow, get any comprehensive car test magazine and check out, for example the 0-60 mph acceleration times for the Honda Civic EX versus the Chevy Suburban or the Hummer H2. You will be very surprised as to how slow the SUV's are in comparison to a reasonably good compact car with a 4-cylinder engine (the SUV's are V8's). The Acura RSX, based on the Civic platform, and still with a 4-cylinder engine, albeit a bit larger one, is definitely much faster than most American SUV's. If you want to transport children, get a minivan, not a SUV. They are much safer and somewhat more fuel-efficient.

As to sports being critical to alumni donations, somehow Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, Yale, Columbia, Amherst, and many other top-ranking institutions, have somehow been able to maintain alumni donations despite having no athletic scholarships and little success in the major sports. If UCLA aspires to that ranking academically, and it should, it would not hurt the school to go that route. For example, UCSD (La Jolla) has never fielded a football team (except maybe club level) and is Division III in basketball and some other sports. In fact, of the UC schools, only UCLA and Berkeley field Division I football teams. In any event, it hardly helps attract alumni donations when the school goes 6-6 or 5-7 and a half dozen or so players every year get in trouble for everything from misuse of handicapped parking placards (really!) to assault to theft to rape.

[Brendan]

Just FYI, but as far as I know American universities are the only ones in the world that have scholarships for sport and athletics. When Oxford takes on Cambridge in the Boat Race the oars are manned (PC alert! To my knowledge the only female participants have been the cox) by humanities, science and classics students there on academic merit (and/or family connection).

Sports medicine, sports psychology and the like may have degree courses, but getting a university scholarship to run track seems another American peculiarity to me.

[Ralph]

Just FYI, but as far as I know American universities are the only ones in the world that have scholarships for sport and athletics. When Oxford takes on Cambridge in the Boat Race the oars are manned (PC alert! To my knowledge the only female participants have been the cox) by humanities, science and classics students there on academic merit (and/or family connection).

Sports medicine, sports psychology and the like may have degree courses, but getting a university scholarship to run track seems another American peculiarity to me.

*****

I'm sure you're right that sports centrality is peculiar to American universities.

There's much more to the continuous evolution (or perhaps Intelligent Design) of American higher education. Every school is engaged in marketing and major, continuous fundraising whether it's a well-known school or a fundamentalist institution. We have decidedly non-PC new law schools dedicated to teaching law on a Christian model and, trust me, they are as busy hunting down dollars as my school.

As to elite Ivy League schools, the simple reality is that they can distance themselves from what the multitude does with no risk at all of any adverse consequences so pointing out the fact that Harvard, for instance, doesnt give athletic scholarships is irrelevant to understanding the overwhelming majority of schools that do.

[Barry]

There is as much chance that UCLA would give up its athletic programs and scholarships as there is that the U.S. would drop its military.

[Ralph]

Brendan forgets that The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. We've just taken that vital natural selection process a bit further.

[Teresa B]

Hey, did I just think outside the box? Seriously, though--I think conformism tends to be human nature, whether or not college athletics are due to that, or necessity as far as keeping a university alive.

PC is a weird thing on campuses, as it seems to be expected of everyone, yet the university is extolled as the quintessential place for diversity and freedom of expression. How do they reconcile this?

One example might be our USF campus here in Tampa, where the now-infamous Sami Al-Arian was a prof. of engineering. Before he was arrested, the only PC opinion on the Sami problem was to allow him to continue on the faculty. However, everybody but the faculty wanted the guy out of there ASAP. When the president of the U finally fired him, she was harshly criticized by most of the faculty, and one prof, in protest, even resigned her position as chair of some committee . (She's still on the faculty.)

So I surmise it's fine to have outre and controversial opinions on campus, but you better make sure they're PC on campus.

Teresa

[Ralph]

There are so many universities and colleges in this country. In most there is little true "PC" pressure. Indeed, most students AND faculty are fairly limited in their interests to their own agendas which in itself is certainly conformist.

At least at the law school level, debate is very lively and I wouldn't count on my colleagues to coalesce around any single view unless it's something like a motion to adjourn a faculty meeting.

[Brendan]

With "Mission Statements" like the following blancmange of PC and modern management spin and a Diversity Advisory Team to provide the boot-work, I find the last claim dubious at best.

Mission Statement
Pace University is committed to providing the best possible private education to a diverse and talented student body at each Pace University location. The University’s continuous commitment to Opportunitas must be retained, strengthened and, when necessary, redefined in an uncertain world where many are excluded from the full benefits of higher education due to economic and social factors beyond their control. Pace’s sustained emphasis on excellence will be a constant, which will guide decision-making regarding academic programs and other endeavors. In a world of increasing interdependence, Pace must strengthen its international efforts and continue its significant investment in technology. In addition, the University’s commitment to self-evaluation and civic engagement must remain as major goals. All of this must be accomplished during a time of considerable economic change and in the context of strengthening Pace’s own financial base.

http://appserv.pace.edu/execute/page.cfm?doc_id=9959

[jbuck919]

unless it's something like a motion to adjourn a faculty meeting.

That's the only time I ever speak up at one.

[Ralph]

With "Mission Statements" like the following blancmange of PC and modern management spin and a Diversity Advisory Team to provide the boot-work, I find the last claim dubious at best.

Mission Statement
Pace University is committed to providing the best possible private education to a diverse and talented student body at each Pace University location. The University’s continuous commitment to Opportunitas must be retained, strengthened and, when necessary, redefined in an uncertain world where many are excluded from the full benefits of higher education due to economic and social factors beyond their control. Pace’s sustained emphasis on excellence will be a constant, which will guide decision-making regarding academic programs and other endeavors. In a world of increasing interdependence, Pace must strengthen its international efforts and continue its significant investment in technology. In addition, the University’s commitment to self-evaluation and civic engagement must remain as major goals. All of this must be accomplished during a time of considerable economic change and in the context of strengthening Pace’s own financial base.

http://appserv.pace.edu/execute/page.cfm?doc_id=9959

*****

Brendan,

Your copying and pasting of the Pace University Mission Statement reflects your understandable unfamiliarity with American law schoools. While, of courwe, there is real financial dependence on the Mother University accreditation requirements insure that law schools are the most autonomous graduate schools in the country. Everything from pay to working conditions is different from undergrad and other grad programs - a reality that, frankly, insures that law professors are chronically not liked by colleagues in other schools.

I'm not sure if our Mission Statement is online but it's significantly different than the university's and in practice our culture is also very different from sister schools.

[Brendan]

Ralph,

Law faculties may coinsider themselves above such things. Science faculties once thought so too (see Higher Superstition by Leavitt and lMove). Like law, the sciences thought that they were dealing with areas of inquiry outside postmodernist redefinition.

If the culture of academia changes at the core (and I'm not convinced it's a hopeless caase despite my posting only one side of the argument) then it will eventually reach those parts relatively unaffected to date. But in legal decisions in Australia we are seeing more and more "cultural" decisions made in violation of the law:

Cultural assault on human rights

August 24, 2005
ON Monday, Peter Costello said migrants should understand our core values. Such as equality for women. Yesterday, it was the Prime Minister's turn. He met Muslim leaders to sell the message that all Australians, whatever their race or culture or religious beliefs, must agree to a core set of values. Like an abhorrence of violence. Nice idea. But if we are having trouble selling that message - which, given the summit, apparently we are - we only have ourselves to blame.

Look beyond Canberra talkfests. Under cover of "culture", violence against women has been sanctioned by the state. On Thursday August 11, Chief Justice Brian Martin of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory headed out to a remote Aboriginal settlement at Yarralin. There, he sentenced a 55-year-old traditional Aboriginal man for bashing a 14-year-old girl with a boomerang and forcing her to have anal sex. The man will spend one month in jail. While that inadequate sentence will be appealed, how did the Territory's most senior judge get it so wrong?

Martin accepted that Aboriginal culture justified the bashing of a young girl. He accepted the man may not have understood that the girl's objections meant she was not consenting to sex. Expressing "a great deal of sympathy" for the man, the judge said this was "a very difficult case" because, at the age of four, the girl had been promised to him in marriage according to Aboriginal customary law.

But here's the real difficulty. Why does an educated man - a judge - allow one man's culture to be used as an excuse for violence and rape of a child? (And let us call this rape. The child did not consent. Yet the man was sentenced for the lesser crime of unlawful sexual intercourse.) At what point do we say the laws - our values - apply equally to everyone? And mean it.

It is true the judge told the man his behaviour was "not acceptable or permissible or justified" under Northern Territory law. And that those laws apply to everyone. But let's face it. Actions speak louder than words. That applies whether you're dealing with imams preaching violence or Aboriginal men practising it. And in remote Aboriginal communities where, for this man and many like him, English is like a foreign language, words look particularly limp. Even for those fluent in English, the most powerful message is in the punishment. A month in jail is a slap on the wrist that says cultural rights trump human rights.

This case is not just about one man who bashed and raped a child. It is about a grandmother who sanctioned the violence and rape and helped the man take the girl hostage for four days. It is about an Aboriginal community that makes outcasts of those, like this girl, who report violence and rape. It is about abhorrent aspects of traditional Aboriginal culture such as polygamy, rape and violence. And it is about our own modern culture which excuses these repugnant practices under the protection of "culture".

Call it double-barrelled cultural failure with a long history. While Howard and others talk about certain non-negotiable Australian values, those in powerful positions have, over decades, negotiated away some of our most fundamental values. It is documented in A Fatal Conjunction -- Two Laws Two Cultures by Joan Kimm. In the mid-1960s, when sentencing an Aboriginal man to 12 months' jail for killing his wife, a judge said: "I propose to make allowance for your racial customs."

In 1969, a 13-year-old girl from the Yirrkala people was belted when she refused to become the third wife of a 42-year-old man. Kimm recounts that the defendant's defence was that "unless Yirrkala Aborigines were given immunity from European law, the heart would be torn out of their society". The judge accepted that, described the assault as a "storm in a teacup" and recorded no conviction.

In a 1974 Northern Territory case, an 18-year-old Aboriginal man pleaded guilty to having sex with a 10-year-old girl -- another case of promised marriage. The judge said: "I do not regard this offence as seriously as if both participants were white ... [because] social customs appear to be different."

Two years ago when a 50-year-old Aboriginal man was prosecuted for raping a 15-year-old girl, the man used the magic formula in court: "but it's Aboriginal custom - my culture". The judge said the girl "knew what was expected of her" and jailed the man for 24 hours. Though this decision was overturned on appeal, the fact is that educated people, such as judges, have long been excusing indigenous violence.

Now consider Martin's decision in Yarralin. This is not progress. It is further proof that "culture" is fast becoming one of the most pernicious words of our time. The consequences for indigenous people have been, and will continue to be, devastating until we wake up to the noble-savage myth. There is nothing too noble about polygamy and rape and violence. Cultures that embrace those practices are in dire need of a Western takeover.

Sure, let's talk about the nasty parts of sharia law. But let's also talk about the nasty side to Aboriginal law. And if yesterday's feminists are wondering why they lack traction with today's young women, it's because of their silence on the big issues. Such as this one. Allowing cultural rights to trump human rights is never a good look.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/co ... 22,00.html

[Ralph]

Brendan,

I certainly can't comment on any aspect of Australian legal education or law other than to note that the three to five students from my school whom we send to Australian law firms every summer come back ecstatic about their experience.

You seem to merge a viewpoint about PC in a university or law school's self-view with the nature of doctrinal shifts as articulated by appellate courts. That's simply too broad to be sustainable. Perhaps I've misread your view.

[jbuck919]

[quote="Ralph. I'm not sure if our Mission Statement is online but it's significantly different than the university's and in practice our culture is also very different from sister schools.[/quote]

Of course it's online:

Mission Statement

Pace Law School, in pursuit of the professional and academic mission of the University as articulated in its Mission Statement, is dedicated to:
Educating students from diverse backgrounds to be competent ethical lawyers in the diverse callings of the profession, animated by a concern for the communities that they will serve.

-Promoting excellence in teaching.
-Advancing knowledge through legal and interdisciplinary research and scholarship that are recognized by regional, national or international audiences for their contribution to the law and legal profession.
-Contributing to the achievement of a more just society through professional education, legal scholarship, and service to those in need.

In furtherance of its mission, Pace University School of Law is committed to continued development of innovative programs having national distinction

(Sorry you are under the weather, Ralph.)

[Ralph]

[quote="Ralph. I'm not sure if our Mission Statement is online but it's significantly different than the university's and in practice our culture is also very different from sister schools.

Of course it's online:

Mission Statement

Pace Law School, in pursuit of the professional and academic mission of the University as articulated in its Mission Statement, is dedicated to:
Educating students from diverse backgrounds to be competent ethical lawyers in the diverse callings of the profession, animated by a concern for the communities that they will serve.

-Promoting excellence in teaching.
-Advancing knowledge through legal and interdisciplinary research and scholarship that are recognized by regional, national or international audiences for their contribution to the law and legal profession.
-Contributing to the achievement of a more just society through professional education, legal scholarship, and service to those in need.

In furtherance of its mission, Pace University School of Law is committed to continued development of innovative programs having national distinction

(Sorry you are under the weather, Ralph.)[/quote]

*****

Oh, so that's my mission? Thanks, much.

I'm feeling better. A nasty short-term bug but I had to take five entering students to P.F. Chang's for dinner last night and I hope they didn't see that I had the shakes. They might get the wrong idea as to the cause.

[jbuck919]

I'm feeling better. A nasty short-term bug but I had to take five entering students to P.F. Chang's for dinner last night and I hope they didn't see that I had the shakes. They might get the wrong idea as to the cause.

Indeed. In New York, this might have resulted in a general alert of terrorist attack by nerve gas.

[Ralph]

I'm feeling better. A nasty short-term bug but I had to take five entering students to P.F. Chang's for dinner last night and I hope they didn't see that I had the shakes. They might get the wrong idea as to the cause.

Indeed. In New York, this might have resulted in a general alert of terrorist attack by nerve gas.

*****

Never thought of THAT!