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Young_Thinker
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tomarin
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The irony here is that in general people who devote their lives to careful study of the history of a particular era or people (i.e. the people that you seem to be trashing here) don’t believe this, at least not with respect to their professional work. Otherwise they wouldn’t spend the lion’s share of their time marshalling facts and contructing persuasive arguments in the form of books and journal articles in order to convince their fellow specialists that their judgements are correct.
I think you’re being too cynical about academia based on some selective trends and extreme cases. If the result of your cynicism is that you’re willing to breezily dismiss the consensus views of professional historians in favor of non-credentialed internet polemicists who clearly have an axe to grind, then I would humby suggest that something’s not right with this picture.
And here’s the problem, bluntly stated: by doing so you give the impression that it is you who believe that all points of view are equal. That ought to worry you – if you want to be taken seriously, that is.
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dzheremi
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Do you know anything about the linguistic history of South Arabia? It is quite unique. I think calling the Queen of Sheba a “Gulf” Arab is quite anachronistic, to say the least. Easily as anachronistic as calling her an Abyssinian would be (and I agree, it is; she may be conceptualized as a mother of the Habesh, but that does not make her an Abyssinian any more than Yemen being an “Arab” country makes the ancient South Arabians of the same culture and language background as the Arabs to the north who eventually destroyed the South Arabian cultures and languages by imposing on them their own Arabic language via the Islamic religion. They are NOT the same!)
Sabaean alphabet (the ultimate source of the modern Ethiopic script)
Nabataean alphabet (the ultimate source of the modern Arabic script)
There are various ways by which the Ethio-Semitic (a “catch-all” term for the South Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, as distinct from the modern South Arabian languages Soqotri and Mehri, all of which are severely threatened by Arabic) languages have preserved the proto-Semitic forms that put the separation between the South and Central Semitic languages at very, very early date indeed. Certainly before the proposed migration or expansion of Arabians into Eastern Africa (as I have read that the South Arabians who eventually settled and established Axum arrived as late as the first century BC). Take that as you will.
(I love this stuff, by the way; I hope you don’t feel like I’m haranguing you.)
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Maria65
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I am personally of the opinion that it is one planten with multiple personalities. Hmm…there’s a movie in there somewhere…“The Three Faces of Planten”…or maybe “The Four Faces of Planten”…
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sedonaman
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I don’t think you read my posts or their links very carefully.
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Young_Thinker
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Thank you very much. However, I was just giving a simplified explanation to say that she was not Ethiopian in any way(it bothers me when people say that she had been). I was not emphasizing language.
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tomarin
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Mind telling me what I got wrong?
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Contarini
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That’s tritely true, but of course there are particular ways in which the leaders of the Catholic Church tend to fail, and others in which they are less likely to, precisely because of the kind of institution the Catholic Church is. Same with the academy.
No, it doesn’t.
I think that the way Summers was treated was outrageous. But the fact is that ideals of academic freedom are extremely hard to uphold when one’s most basic beliefs about decency are at stake. Most people are at least tempted to make some exceptions for what they see as truly outrageous remarks which they cannot imagine possibly having a valid basis or even being made without some kind of sinister agenda. Anyone who crosses that line–whatever it may be in specific cases–is going to be accused of not really engaging in scholarship. Holocaust denial is another example. I think that the persecution of people like David Irving is wrong. Holocaust deniers need to be refuted rationally rather than being shut up by the strong arm of the law. But the fact is that people of various ideological perspectives tend to seek ways of excluding certain extreme opinions from legitimate expression. This does not mean that they are “consciously rejecting” the ideal of serious scholarship. They always argue that the outrageous positions in question are not serious scholarship.
Here’s an analogy. Medieval and early modern people didn’t think that it was cruel and uncharitable to burn people at the stake. It would be unfair to say “the medieval/early modern Church *consciously *violated its own principles of charity by executing heretics.” Rather, medieval and early modern Christians found ways of arguing that their actions were not in fact violating charity. The answer to this unfortunate fact is not to say “let’s forget that silly business of loving your neighbor.”
I have never suggested that it isn’t a problem. I have suggested that the solution is to hold the academy to its expressed ideals rather than throwing the ideals out the window.
You continue unable or unwilling to suggest a constructive alternative.
I don’t know what you mean by this or how it is relevant.
I did, and I’m rather mystified. It’s not talking about the academy, and it’s written by academics (so why do you trust it?–just because it tells you what you want to hear?). I imagine that you are suggesting that there is no difference between the academy and politics in this regard. Well, I’ve spent a lot of time in the academy, and I know that the paragraph in question does not describe how professional academics operate as a rule.
I have sat in a graduate seminar with an ex-Christian, radical feminist scholar and heard her admit sadly that, “much as we might like to believe otherwise,” there is no support for a prochoice position in early Christianity. Her assumption that everyone around that table shared her sorrow was highly inappropriate. But her professional honesty as a scholar prevented her from somehow twisting or obscuring the evidence as she saw it. I have seen scholars do this kind of thing over and over. It’s the norm, albeit a norm that is far too often violated. It’s easy to compile a list of their lapses into ideological bias and convey a highly misleading picture of the reality of the academy. The majority of academics have a liberal bias (in any of the various ways people define “liberal” in contemporary “culture wars”–some are liberal in some ways and not in others). So of course, the more conservative you are the more such lapses you are going to notice. Criticism of the academy is a healthy thing, as long as it doesn’t lead to a cynical abandonment of the principles of academic freedom, fairness, accountability within a professional guild, etc.
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dzheremi
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Oh, I know. I am just saying that if you’re going to say that she’s a “Gulf Arab”, it’s an anachronism in the sense that self-identified Gulf Arabs are speakers of Arabic (which she most certainly would not have been, as Arabic is not attested until roughly 5 centuries after she was born), born into or otherwise having adopted the Arab culture (which she would not have, as hers was a Sabaean culture; still Semitic, but not “Arab” as we think of today), and residing in or otherwise originating from one of the Gulf countries populated by people self-identifying Arabs (this is one that might or might not apply, though I have my doubts as to whether there was unified sense of “Arab” identity shared equally by speakers of Old South Arabian, Central Semitic, etc., at least prior to the establishment of identifiably Arab kingdoms like those of the Ghassanids and Lakhmids. Once Islam comes along, forget about it; history is seriously rewritten to suit the accounts of the victors, as I’m sure you know).
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Contarini
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No. You are, because you refuse to admit that there might actually be people in the academy who don’t operate this way. You want to believe that everyone does this, so you can feel free to do it. Well, you are the one hiding from reality. You need to hold yourself to standards of intellectual honesty even if you can point to hundreds or thousands of your ideological opponents who do not.
Many people do. Why don’t both you and I resolve not to be among them?
I do absolutely nothing of the kind.
But left-wing ideology is not the only thing emanating from the academy. The academy certainly tilts left (compared to American society as a whole–of course, a European might say that American society is pathologically right-wing and the academy is an island of sanity and moderation! That’s why this kind of language is so unhelpful–we had much better talk about things like truth and justice). But there are plenty of conservative academics. And because of the nature of the academy, their liberal colleagues are forced to give them somewhat of a hearing, at least some of the time. (For instance, when Brad Gregory wrote a book on martyrdom in the Reformation era which rejected much fashionable academic theory and argued that we should try to understand the martyrs as they understood themselves, he was criticized a lot. But that meant that he got a whole forum on his book at Sixteenth Century Studies, and reviews that publicized his book while trying to point out what the authors thought was wrong with it.) Not perfect, but much better than the purely ideological world you offer as the supposedly “realistic” alternative.
You have yet to show that anyone “seeks error,” much less that this is the norm in the academy.
And your mistake is that you think that you are allowed to dismiss ideologically unpalatable statements as not being “serious academic research,” while left-wing folks are to be condemned if they do the same thing.
I think that Summers should be taken much more seriously than Churchill, and I think that what happened to him is far more outrageous that Churchill’s firing. If Churchill really committed plagiarism, then the university was certainly right to fire him. But it does look a bit suspicious when a university starts investigating someone for academic violations only when their writing becomes ideologically controversial. That could be said to have a “chilling effect” on academics’ willingness to say controversial things.
It is a mess any way you look at it. But I’m certainly not willing to say that the university was wrong to fire him. It looks to me as if it was probably right to do so. But *if *it fired him just because of the 9/11 piece, then it was just as wrong as the Harvard Senate was when it voted no confidence in Summers. And many people did call for Churchill to be fired *solely *for his willingness to say controversial things. That is wrong.
A good professor encourages students to verify what he or she says.
But to take your example of a flat earth and push it in a more relevant direction: do you think a creationist professor should be denied tenure? By your argument, you have denied yourself any right to protest when such people are denied academic jobs simply because they hold views most folks in the academic world think are silly and unfounded.
This blog post puts it very well. (And I shouldn’t need to say–but in a dialogue with you probably do–that of course I do not necessarily agree with all the positions expressed by Prof. Leiter!)
In a nutshell: to you it seems obvious that Summers’ argument was professionally responsible and Churchill’s was not. To others the opposite appears to be the case. To others both appear defensible, or both indefensible. The only way to have an atmosphere where important issues can be genuinely debated is to establish a blanket rule that finding someone’s opinions outrageous does not mean that they should lose their job or be otherwise silenced. If you look at other posts on Leiter’s blog, for instance, he uses some very strong language criticizing people with whom he disagrees ideologically and whose arguments he finds specious or dishonest. But he doesn’t call for them to be fired. That’s the line one shouldn’t cross as an academic. You let bad ideas die under the fire of hostile reviews. You don’t try to shut down the discussion.
I agree, by the way, that there were much better reasons to fire Churchill than Summers. Summers’ professional competence was not seriously questioned. Churchill’s was. But for those who find Summers’ remarks completely beyond the pale, it’s easy to argue that
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Contarini
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Some did. You are assuming that there is some monolithic bloc of liberal academics who condemned Summers and defended Churchill. That’s not true.
What is your basis for this statement? Do you have access to some secret document listing what professors are “supposed to be”?
Of course one would expect academics to generally have somewhat above average intelligence. But anyone who has been through grad school will tell you that raw intelligence counts for less than discipline, focus, and commitment. There are plenty of non-academics who probably have a higher IQ than most academics. What the academic discipline gives is just that–a set of intellectual disciplines. Of course a very intelligent person who makes it through the process will stand a better chance of making a permanent mark on the profession. And of course intelligence helps in many ways (though it can hurt in others, since highly intelligent people are often impatient with the level of drudgery involved in earning a Ph.D. and getting tenure–one of the most brilliant people I knew in grad school dropped out–possibly to become a nun though I haven’t heard from her for a while).
A university doesn’t give “credibility” to someone’s opinions but to their credentials.
I’m not sure what you mean by this, since Churchill was in fact fired. As far as I’m aware, he didn’t falsify his resume academically. He claimed to be a Native American, which is of course not an academic claim, and is hard to prove false!
There is no monolithic thing called the “academy.” The academy is an institution with certain professional ideals. Members of the academy often violate these ideals, like members of most other institutions. That does not discredit the ideals. Nothing you have said shows that the academy as a whole “doesn’t even try” to uphold these ideals. If you bothered observing the behavior of academics in anything like a fair and consistent way, you would see how absurd this is. You find academics all the time defending the rights of people with whom they disagree. Sometimes they fail to do this.
Edwin
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Young_Thinker
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All right.
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sedonaman
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The faculty of Arts and Sciences voted 218–185 on a motion of “lack of confidence” in Summers’ leadership. Sounds like a sizable bloc to me. I don’t think they did this just for the fun of it.
That’s what I’m saying. And it’s reasonable to expect it.
Then what are “dispositions” for? Would a school require its students to have the “correct” dispositions if its professors lacked credibility for not having them?
First of all, he was hired because those in charge of hiring believed he was an Indian. This was obviously an overriding consideration because he lacked a PhD.
Technically, it is not an academic claim, but in reality, you have to ask yourself whether the university would have hired him for the position, given him tenure, and promoted him if they thought he was a white man, who are thought not to have the “correct” perspectives to understand the experiences of people of color. So it became a de facto academic claim, otherwise there would not be the obsession for diversity of skin color that there is.
Now you are not using an academic argument! It is not up to the university to verify the claims an applicant makes on his resume; the burden of proof is on the applicant to substantiate them. This goes for applicants in other areas as well. For example, does a student applying for admission have to prove he meets entrance requirements, or does the school accept his application form as prima facie evidence that he does?
While it is true that he was not fired for falsifying his resume, he should have been – on just that alone the instant it became known [or not hired in the first place].
It depends on what the ideals are; they have been changed over time:
A familiar example of this “expanding their subject” is the linguistics professor who uses his credentials to sell himself as an expert in foreign affairs.
Then I repeat from my prior post:
While they might sometimes fail, sometimes it’s on purpose. That is what I’m talking about. Take the case of student Steve Hinkle, an incident that didn’t just happen; it was caused, and it was caused by people who had no interest in serious scholarship, but rather forcing a self-righteous agenda. By contrast, what Hinkle proposed was an academic endeavor. And how many faculty members risked their skins by coming to his defense? One. There was what could be described as a sizable bloc against him – or, more likely, didn’t care a hoot about serious scholarship.
Hinkle also further illustrates my statement that sometimes serious scholarship is undesirable. This grotesque denial of academic freedom also showed that while institutions often tell students to “be prepared to have your most cherished beliefs challenged,” what their code of silence means is that it doesn’t apply to those who are “more equal”. BTW, Hinkle won a $40,000 federal lawsuit.
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friendship
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Hi. At first if we accept what you said we must ask why Persia(Iran) didn’t have such Golden age before? Islam ordered all people to seek knowledge so Iranians and other muslim people started to seeking knowledge and golden period begun.
Before Islamic period, in persia people coudn’t be educated and education was only for aristocarcy. It was iran’s law!! Iranians had many warriors but didn’t have great scientists. Islam gave this right to people to be educated.
On the other hand we had many great muslim scientists in other islamic lands: afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, etc. Many Arab and Turk scientists in different scientific roots, Except Iranians(persians).
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friendship
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It is not important who is the writer. Read what written.I am personally of the opinion that it is one planten with multiple personalities. Hmm…there’s a movie in there somewhere…“The Three Faces of Planten”…or maybe “The Four Faces of Planten”…
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friendship
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It seems KingAlfred stoped his lies about Islam. Thank god. I don’t know why some people leave reality and get lies!
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friendship
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And I’m sorry for didn’t read all posts and answered all questions. As I said I can’t come online more than one day(frieday) in every week. If some of you have a important question about Islam you can ask me in private massage and I’ll try to answer you very soon.
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Maria65
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Here in the West, we have this thing called a sense of humor. It’s nice, you should try it sometime.
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friendship
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We are discussing. Some times a bon mot in dilectology shows a chicane. Your one was a “ad hominem” whitch is a fallacy. So I asked you to don’t write that.Here in the West, we have this thing called a sense of humor. It’s nice, you should try it sometime.
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