The Cranky Professor

January 6, 2009

Academic Nepotism and Panetta

I know that lots of them on both sides of the aisle do this kind of thing, but it always offends me and the big man is in the news, so here you go:

The surprise selection of Leon Panetta as director of the Central Intelligence Agency in President-elect Barack Obama's administration would leave his public policy institute at CSU-Monterey Bay in the hands of his wife, Sylvia.

Applauding Panetta's selection for the top CIA post, university President Dianne Harrison said Monday she had been "assured by Leon that Sylvia will continue to run the institute and it will be business as usual."

. . .

Panetta and his wife founded the institute at CSU-Monterey Bay in 1997 in partnership with the university to provide studies in government, politics and public policy. Panetta played a key role in Congress and in the Clinton administration to get the university established on the former Army base.

So before leaving public office Panetta got a public university established somewhere, then he and his wife found an institute, which they control so tightly that he can leave her in charge while he goes back to Washington? Ick. Just ick.

Further: A little googlng gets me nowhere - I find nothing much about Sylvia Panetta other than her husband and her co-directorship of the Institute, though maybe she, too, is a lawyer. Don't know. Academic politics as usual.

Further still: Whoops! I mistakenly deleted a comment from this post in the midst of spam clearance. It had something in it reminding us that the academically significant institute at Monterey is the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy. Sounds important, hunh? Oh - go here, scroll to the bottom, and check out her academic credentials. Of course, Wikipedia is currently leading off L.P.'s entry with "Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is a Democratic politician and scholar . . . ." As far as I can tell, the reason the article claims he's a "scholar" is that: "[h]e is the founder and director of the Panetta Institute, serves as Distinguished Scholar to the Chancellor of the California State University system and is a professor at Jesuit-run Santa Clara University teaching public policy." He's a J.D. with a tell-all book about the Nixon administration, which sounds like "scholar" is a courtesy title.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM | Comments (1)

December 31, 2008

If they're fictitious paper gains, are they fictitious paper losses?

On the Yeshiva University front:

The university's chief financial officer, J. Michael Gower, said in an e-mail that the school's actual principal investment in a hedge fund linked to Madoff had been only $14.5 million.

On paper, that stake had exploded in value over the past 15 years to $110 million, but Gower said all of those "profits" now appear to be entirely fictitious, meaning that the losses were mostly fictitious too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:08 AM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2008

Whatever happened to "don't put all your eggs in one basket"?

From an interesting Madoff article at Bloomberg.com:

U.S. foundations that invested with Bernard Madoff donated more than $73 million to nonprofit organizations in 2007, according to a tally based on foundation tax returns.

The Dec. 11 arrest of the 70-year-old New Yorker has directly affected some 400 U.S. nonprofits, from Amnesty International to the Death Penalty Information Center to the Lymphoma Research Foundation. A precise accounting of Madoff-related losses isn't possible. Each week brings new disclosures, and several foundations that said they had money with Madoff haven't indicated how much. He is accused of operating a Ponzi scheme.

. . .

The JEHT Foundation -- which gave away $24.2 million last year, primarily toward criminal justice reform -- and the Picower Foundation -- which distributed $268 million since 1989 -- both recently announced that they've been forced to close.

I don't really understand the chart at the link - how the JEHT foundation had assets of $7.5 million but gave away $24.2 million, but still. Maybe they left out a zero or two? The Picower foundation, which seems to have lost everything, had $958,425,057.

By the way - look at the number of higher education recipients in the lists. Ripples.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM | Comments (1)

December 22, 2008

How much HAS Harvard Lost?

At the Huffington Post:

Harvard University's admission that it lost $8 billion from its $36 billion endowment fund, as staggering as it sounds, may grossly underestimate the true magnitude of the loss between from July 1 through Oct. 31 2008. According to a source close the Harvard Management Corporation (HMC), which runs the fund for Harvard, the loss is closer to $18 billion if the losses on the fund's illiquid investment are realistically appraised.

In other words, not a little less than a quarter, more like half. Yikes.

via Cliopatria. Though now that I look around, Prof. Soltan has a picture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:14 AM | Comments (1)

December 18, 2008

UK schools and league tables

So what my colleagues here have built here (for I am just a relatively recent arrival) is not just a program that is top of the league table, but one that is stunningly good. Really, I'm a naturally shy and retiring guy (you know that), but facts must be faced.

The way the RAE worked involved a national panel which put out a call to all UK universities to pick out for each department or subject area those of their academic staff who were judged to be productive in research, and to submit four publications by each of those, plus various other data. In each subject a national panel worked for a year or so reading and grading everything submitted. They mixed in a score for the research environment and a small percentage for esteem indicators like major prizes and awards, and then presented the results as a vector of five integers: first, a rounded percentage corresponding to work of a quality that leads the world in originality, significance, and rigour (4*); then another corresponding to quality of international excellence but not at the very highest level (3*); another corresponding to internationally recognized quality (2*); another corresponding to nationally but perhaps not internationally recognized quality (1*); and a fifth corresponding to work falling below nationally recognized standards for research work (Unclassified).

One happy professor.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2008

Advice for academic job candidates, II

Candidates - don't settle for portfolio services. Develop enough of a relationship with your recommenders that they at least tailor something to different types of schools. The all-purpose to whom it may concern recommendation really isn't inspiring me to want to interview you.

I am appalled by how few recommendations mention our name(s) or even that magic phrase "at a liberal arts college." Do the recommenders not care enough to use mail-merge? Admittedly, I'm only half of the way through the files and one poor distinguished named chair kinda guy has already recommended five (5) candidates to us in glowing terms, so how much worse it would be with personalization I don't know. Maybe I could make some decisions between them? Perhaps he might indicate that he thinks one of the five people (among the 45 files I've read so far) would be better here than the others?

My previous advice to candidates is here.

Further:

Well, don't say that all professors are too burdened to write individual letters - that I can't get what I want. I spent much of today (Thursday) reading folders (and more! more files being completed by late arriving items!) and came across a nice example of what I would like to have seen more of. Distinguished professor of this'n'that has written recs for 4 out of the 63 candidates I've reviewed; the most recent folder from one of that professor's students had two letters via Interfolio (both boilerplated with greatness). Then came a letter from a department person where the candidate is currently teaching; the recommender visited every class taught there (ooh - we're a teaching-centered liberal arts college, too!). Finally, one letter came from the distinguished professor of this'n'that on stationary with colored letterhead. Colored ink signature. Aimed not just at the liberal arts market as opposed to R1s, but actually mentions our name twice (second occurrence in a locally acceptable short version). Does the candidate make the cut for a conference interview? Well, I have to say that if the candidate makes the cut, it is because the candidate is answering the advertisement (see earlier advice), meets the stated criteria, AND has 2 excellent recommendations pointed to our needs, not just the needs of every active search committee on the market. By the way, the distinguished professor of this'n'that's other 3 letters? Via Interfolio. So ask - perhaps you will receive.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:33 PM | Comments (5)

December 15, 2008

Living in your head

Have you ever been accused of living in your head? Well, take Susan Sontag as a cautionary tale - take a bath every day as an antidote.

And yet the innumerable tiny details that preoccupy Sontag over the years, the moments when she does describe her relation to the physical world, are revealing. There are a surprising number of entries in which she resolves to bathe more frequently. "Take a bath every day," she writes over and over, which somehow one doesn't imagine reading in the journals of an adult. But bathing is difficult for her; it involves a confrontation with the physical body she finds distressing. She tells us she sometimes falls asleep in her clothes. There is something endearing in this self portrait: the arrogant command of her authorial voice somehow belied by a sweet image of the unworldly woman writer, so uncomfortable with the basic physical demands of life, so flustered by soap and water.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:26 AM | Comments (1)

Why does higher education cost so much?

The Chronicle of Higher Education tries to answer that important question by looking at the University of Kansas.

I'm going on hearsay, folks, because I don't subscribe and the Chronicle has a lock-down policy on content that's worse than the Wall Street Journal. Here's what Erin O'Connor's gleans:

CHE points out that in the past twenty years, Kansas has tripled its operating budget, while maintaining a steady enrollment of 26,000 students. During that time, state support has doubled--but while state funding in 1988 covered 40 percent of the operating budget, it now covers only 22 percent. Grants and contracts cover some of the difference, but not all of it. Meanwhile, tuition for in-state students has quintupled. Kansas is still very affordable, at around $7,000/year -- and is much less expensive than rival flagships. Still, the tuition rate has increased at three times the rate of inflation over the past two decades.

Where is all the money going? To various things aimed broadly at enhancing student experience and so improving retention: new facilities (two science buildings, a fitness center replete with climbing wall, renovated dorms, a multicultural resource center, a performing arts center, a writing center, revamped high-tech classrooms, increased library services, IT), more professors, and more bureaucracy to administer all the new student services, to publicize them, and to study them. Energy and health care premiums also add to the total.

She also points out the thing that frightens us; is all the money making any difference?

All that aside, there is one thing that the article does not cover. With all its attention to how much money Kansas has pumped into the thesis that the spending will improve educational outcomes, no attention is paid to whether educational outcomes are any different than they were before Kansas began its spending spree.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM | Comments (1)

December 10, 2008

So is it bad that university endowments are doing so badly?

Harvard freezes faculty salaries and halts most searches. Their endowment dropped 30%.

The president of Bard College thinks pretending to be a bank was a bad idea all along for universities.

The Bard College president has for years been telling anyone who would listen that endowment growth in higher education was irresponsible and encouraged all the wrong strategies. He has called for colleges to spend the money they raise, rather than stocking it away. With the economy crashing, and tuition-dependent colleges like Bard worried about enrollment and wishing they had larger endowments, is Botstein sticking to his views? How does higher education look to the person who warned that endowment dependence was a terrible thing?

Botstein wants you to know that it's not Schadenfreude he's feeling. "I don't wish any of these institutions ill."

But to Botstein, what is happening now is proof that the endowment strategy doesn't work. "Institutions should not be banks. They are not good at it, and they are no better than anybody else. It should come as no surprise that as investing vehicles, there was a certain amount of arrogance and hubris," he said. "There was much too much time and money spent on getting richer and richer without being clear about why."

via Professor Soltan

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:39 PM | Comments (1)

December 9, 2008

The Mayor of Boston looks hard at payment in lieu of taxes - and wants more.

The mayor of Boston wants to renegotiate and standardize the payments in lieu of taxes currently in place between non-profits and the city. The article claims that non-profits of one kind or another own 50% of the property, but are paying $32 million in taxes. Here are two paragraphs you need to read:

Combined, tax-exempt institutions give the city $32.4 million annually in payments in lieu of taxes, a drop in the bucket when compared with what the city spends on police, fire, and other services. If their properties were taxable, the institutions would be writing checks for 10 times that amount - between $350 and $400 million each year, city officials estimated yesterday.

. . .

For example, Boston University contributes $4.6 million each year, the highest of any institution, while Harvard University - which owns twice as much land in Boston - pays $1.9 million. Northeastern University contributes only $30,600.

What a mess. I wish him luck.

via Inside Higher Ed

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:50 AM | Comments (1)

December 8, 2008

The Academic Job Search - hints for the Candidate I

I'm on sabbatical, but I feel the duty to serve on one of our searches this year. I read a bunch of the completed folders this afternoon.

Candidates: please, please, read the advertisement. Apply for the job advertised. I marked a bunch of NO columns on rubrics sheets because the candidates were not applying for the job we're offering. That's different from the people whose folders you have read and reread to see which parts they do and don't seem to have; no, some people are missing the basics. Some people's folders make you wonder if they read the advertisement other than to get the mailing address.

Another quick hint - if you're going to write a single cover letter for all jobs on the market, don't mention your eagerness to teach graduate-level courses. Just say you are eager to teach. That way you'll cover both graduate institutions and places like this. Two people I've already read got the NO mark because once I read that line in the cover letter I looked for any evidence of actual interest in teaching undergraduates at a small liberal arts college and didn't find a lot. I might have read more generously at this stage if you hadn't annoyed me on page 1 of your file.

Finally, be sure to use the correct name for the institution. We're Hobart and William Smith Colleges, not Hobart Smith College. There's no need for you to learn about the complicated history of the coordinate colleges unless we hire you, but don't make the committee wonder about your reading skills. That leads to a NO on the ol' rubric sheet.

All that said, good luck! Because luck is a lot of what it takes.

Here's the second piece of advice.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:24 PM | Comments (2)

December 3, 2008

Great reading rooms of the world

Well, actually I'm in the Manuscripts and Archives reading room next door, but it's a fine place to work, if a tad less aggressive in its grandeur. I'm playing about with Richard Upjohn and the Hobart chapel - and I'm satisfied about 2 points I needed to settle.

And I've requested photos of some plans and elevations - interesting to see the stages of his revisions!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:08 PM | Comments (1)

November 24, 2008

Just what we need - MORE Ph.d. holders

Yes, even in this year of aborted searches and hiring freezes people can stand up with a straight face and be pleased with rising rates of Ph.d. completion. I'm pleased that Inside Higher Ed uses the headline Doctorate Production Continues to Grow, as though we're talking about an industrial process rather than the individual accomplishment of scholars. Since the story admits that "the overall gains continued to be driven by significant numbers of Ph.D.s and other doctorates awarded to non-Americans," perhaps they're right. We import an increasing number of graduate students to keep the doctoral programs churning.

Our provost said aloud in the monthly faculty meeting last year that there was a coming shortage of doctorate holders on the market. The room burst into laughter.* And that was before this year created another cohort of the accidentally unhired. Ah, to own a taxi company in New York City!

Luckily, though, the story has this hopeful bit: "...the number of Ph.D.s awarded in the humanities dropped by 4.6 percent, to their lowest point since 1994."

*to be fair to the provost, perhaps she was thinking of the disproportion of PhDs being awarded in the sciences to non-citizens and the difficulty in making a hire under those circumstances. Surely, though, in a world with more than 250 complete applications for a position in the English department (hearsay, but from a member of the search committee) it's not disastrous if the number of degrees in the humanities drops by 5 or 6 percent?

Further - Oh, I should add: no hiring freeze here; we're going ahead with our searches, though there may be less ready replacement for people on leave and such next year.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 AM | Comments (1)

November 23, 2008

Carnivalesque 45 - a blog carnival of Ancient and Medieval findings

Welcome to Carnivalesque 45 - a blog carnival of Ancient and Medieval findings!

Lots of people are talking conferences - it's a way of not thinking about grading, of course. J. J. Cohen at In the Middle gets some organizational information about what sort of audience to expect for his paper at the Leeds Congress and breaks out into a rash:

Yeah, nooo pressure at all. I'll just wear a nice suit and juggle oranges on a unicycle while reading from my translation of Judith Butler's Giving an Account of Oneself into medieval Latin. Slowly.

Dr. Virago complains at Quod She about her future office, but then she shows pictures of the Modern Panopticon! She's right - those are a lot of windows to clap to.

What brings people to the blogs they read? Jonthan Jarrett at A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe (IN a Corner of Tenth-Century Europe? I'm not sure) looks at his referrer logs and decides to do something for the searchers.

If I leave aside the porn searches and count only strings that look academic, the two things that bring people to this blog from search engines more than anything else are, firstly, my piece on the First Crusade, which is good as that's what it's there for, and secondly, the piece I wrote about Charles the Simple, because it includes a reference to and a map of the Treaty of Verdun. It's searches for "treaty of Verdun" that bring people to that, and they can't really be getting what they want out of it. I'm not going to try and fill that gap here, because there are already better sites out there explaining what the Treaty was, but I will do two things. Firstly, I will make an important point about the Treaty's effect, and then I will do what I do best, or at least most, and tell you a story from a charter that helps to illustrate the sort of thing that was going on.

Dr. Weevil is also checking meta-blog information. He blogged a bit from 14th century essayist Yoshida Kenko that reminded him of the essence of blogging:

If I fail to say what lies on my mind it gives me a feeling of flatulence; I shall therefore give my brush free rein. Mine is a foolish diversion, but these pages are meant to be torn up, and no one is likely to see them. (Kenko, Essays in Idleness 19, tr. Donald Keene)

Then a little later,

Belatedly wondering if anyone else had quoted Kenko's proto-blogger manifesto, I did a Google search on "Kenko + blogger + Idleness + flatulence". The first result of "about 93" was my own 11:57pm post, dated (timed?) "9 minutes ago", which means that Google had it in their database approximately 25 minutes after I posted it. I would be less impressed if I had even 0.1% (e.g.) InstaPundit's traffic.

Speaking of meta-blogging, how many of us started out as anonymous bloggers only to be outed? Or noticed? It just happened to Another Damned Medievalist.

Disiecta membra! Got to love them! Carl Pyrdum at Got Medieval shows us a marginal guy ripping himself apart! And monkeys!

We don't always have to reinterpret the same ol' same ol' - we can dig up new stuff! But then we find ourselves in an arms race with, you know, the public. Who sometimes dig things up without consulting the experts. Alun Salt at Archeoastronomy considers all sorts of issues along these lines - starting with Great Britain's current finding regime, the Portable Antiquity Scheme. The broader consideration is of how we might encourage a world in which a conserved heritage is more valuable than a marketed heritage. Lots of links for people interested in ethics and morals of archaeology. Here's the Portable Antiquity Scheme in case you don't already have it bookmarked.

Talking about the ethics and morality of archaeology, Dr. Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology offers a guest entry by Florian Freistetter of Astrodicticum Simplex - who manages to go to a lecture and restrain himself from standing up and shouting by taking diligent notes:

A few weeks ago, on 17th October, I had the dubious pleasure of attending a lecture by Erich von Däniken with the title Götterdämmerung, "Twilight of the Gods". The great hall in Jena's Volkshaus was rather full: I believe there were 650 to 700 people there. It was a strange feeling, being in the same room as all those people and knowing that most of them would probably believe what Däniken was going to tell them.

Speaking of aliens, Michael Drout, in his only political blog posting, asked Why Settle for the Lesser Evil?

Gesta at On Boundaries posted on a Chris Wickham lecture, 'The problem of the dialogues between medieval history and medieval archaeology.' Gesta links comments on the same lecture by Jonathan Jarrett and Magistra et Mater, and notes:

What is interesting from my point of view is that clearly I had my teaching head on rather than my research head in this lecture. While Magistra and Jonathan were mulling over the implications for the way they write history, I was pondering how we start to address the problems at undergrad level. I fear I am becoming institutionalised.

Do you know what Zenobia really looked like? Judith Weingarten has some ideas. Coin pictures at Zenobia, Empress of the East!

And since we're turning to the classical world, let's talk Classics as a major - and one of those awkward conversations we sometimes have this time of year during registration for Spring classes. Are your students declaring majors? Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti has Ed Turner's letter to young Ted Turner (yeah, that Ted Turner) on the subject. Ed wrote:

"I am appalled, even horrified, that you have adopted classics as a major. As a matter of fact, I almost puked on my way home today."

How would you help Ted answer Ed?*

Edward Cook at Ralph the Sacred River tells us why the Jesus Bowl is just another crock. Everyone loves Magic Bowls, but this one's nothing special.

And a different sort of bowl - and back to the idea of the morality of digging up or owning things, Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber talks about buying a Song dynasty bowl. Read the comments.

Just remember, don't go buying things as if the sales catalog is accurate! David Nishimura at Cronaca pointed out a couple of stories about a Fatimid ewer selling at Christie's for 3.2 million pounds. The same piece had been cataloged in January of 2008 as a 19th century claret jug and valued at 100-300 pounds. Jug, ewer - is it the price point that inflects the nomenclature? Whatever - caveat emptor!

The December 2008 (early modern) will be hosted at Investigations of a Dog. Go make suggestions!

*Fun fact to know and tell - Ted Turner started Latin under the same man I did, W.O.E.A. Humphreys at the McCallie School. Note that I am not listed as one of the notable alumni.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:22 PM

Another Salvo in the SAT Wars

As highly selective colleges drop their SAT requirements for graduation, there's this article to consider from someone who had a lot of information at his disposal - Peter Salins, who was Provost of the State University of New York System from 1997 to 2006 on Does the SAT Predict College Success?

Salins has one criterion for success - graduation in 6 years. He had a big system with some variety in the schools to look at. His answer? Yes. Go read and see.

You'd think this is a question we could have answered to general satisfaction long ago, given the energy that's been poured into it. Perhaps that in itself is a lesson about the social sciences?

via Joanne Jacobs.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:59 PM | Comments (1)

November 20, 2008

Early Medieval Church Silver at Dumbarton Oaks

I got to visit Dumbarton Oaks last weekend with my nephews (and sister!) - the Sion Treasure is a highlight for me. It was the perfect preparation for someone to spend the week reading the Liber Pontificalis and its telegraphic mentions of the largesse of the popes. Here's what the LP (in Davis's translation, linked above) says Paschal I gave to the church of Santa Caecilia, which he rebuilt:

For love of the venerable saints [Agatha and Caecilia], to decorate this church [Sta Caecilia in Trastevere] this holy prelate provided an apse adorned with mosaic and a silver canopy of wondrous size, weighing 600 lb 8 oz. He finished and marvellously embellished the holy altar's propitatorium* and the confessio** inside and out, and its grills, with silver sheets, weighing in all 154 lb 15 oz. At this virgin's holy body he presented an image of silver sheets weighing 95 lb. In front of the altar's vestibule he provided a cornice covered in silver sheets and 2 columns, where he placed 1 arch and 2 chevrons, weighing in all 100 1/2 lb. There too he presented 3 sliver-gilt images weighing 48 1/2 lb. For this church's arches this prelate provided 26 great silver chalices weighing in all 109 1/2 lb. There too he presented 2 silver canisters*** with six wicks, weighing 2 lb 9 oz; a fine gold bowl weighing 3 lb. This pontiff provided 2 silver canisters with nine wicks, weighing 10 lb; 3 silver bowls weighing 5 lb.; a silver gilt thurible weighing 1 lb. (LP, Life 100: chapters 19-20)

And that's before the biographer lists the fabrics Paschal donated.

This kind of amazing silver work - Dumbarton Oaks' example probably coming from a provincial monastery in Lycia in Anatolia - was not uncommon in the Mediterranean world. Click and see two other views of the stuff from the same site.

The inscriptions in silver are also splendid and eye-catching - and help liven up for me some of the tedious textual inscriptions I study as evidence for how patrons wanted people to see and use their buildings.

Moments like this also make the neo-Baroque so common in modern 1962 Missal arrangements seem quite dull. This is real silver, not gold leaf or gold thread embroidery. Imagine what people thought about their altars in the 6th century as opposed to what we might surmise from the plaster and gold leaf decorations of the 17th?

*propitatorium - well, it's the word the Vulgate uses for whatever was on top of the Ark of the Covenant - what the KJV calls the "mercy seat." It doesn't show up often in the Liber Pontificalis, so we're not exactly sure what it is except that it was associated with the altar. Some people translate it as "altar frontal." I find that more convincing than "ciborium" or some kind of rear ledge over the altar.
**confessio - the container for the body of the saint.
***cannister - some kind of cylindrical floor-based oil lamp

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:28 PM | Comments (2)

Scholarly Moodswings

I don't know about you, but I go through life with a kind of academic bipolar disorder. I read things and think thoughts and suppose that they've already been thought - and published, usually in German. Then I swing around and realize that nothing has been said before - nothing! There's so much work to do!

I'm having one of those up moments this week. It's a nice way to be about your reading.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

Against Legacy Admissions

This is a strange article at Inside Higher Ed about challenges to legacy admissions. Evidently law professors are trolling for cases to take to court to test their theories?

But this week -- for the second time this year -- a law journal is publishing a legal analysis that suggests that legacy preferences are illegal. The new issue of the Santa Clara Review features an article -- whose lead writer would like to find plaintiffs to test his theory -- arguing that the 1866 Civil Rights Act bars legacy admissions at public and private institutions. An article earlier this year in the Washington University Law Review argues that the "nobility clauses" of the U.S. Constitution ban legacy admissions at public institutions.

I find the argument from the "nobility clauses" strangest. Oh, well.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:31 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2008

The Return of Martin Guerre Lives! Or something like that.

Have you ever seen or taught The Return of Martin Guerre, book or film? Of course you have! It's a staple of humanities courses! (aside - I wonder how much Natalie Zemon Davis made off that? It was well-deserved!) Man goes to war, man returns from war, another man returns from war who is proven after lengthy court struggle to be the real man - you know.

Here's a kind of real-life version in Chile. Man disappeared during dirty war. Body declared his in 1995. Wife receives compensation payments. Body declared not his in 2006. Man returns from just over the Andes, where he's been living (the original Martin Guerre was working in Spain). Excitement ensues.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:49 AM | Comments (1)

November 18, 2008

Admissions officers bewildered by this year's Early Decision applicants

You see, they're up. The applications. Almost everywhere anyone asked. They were supposed to go down, because:

Admissions experts predicted that the binding nature of early decision would discourage students and families in a year when many are uncertain about their personal finances and would want to consider public college alternatives or to weigh aid offers from a range of colleges before committing.

This is good - no one wants to be Beloit, cutting 40 jobs because they fell 36 student short this year.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:45 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2008

College death

For all we go on about huge university endowments and scandalous college president salaries it is useful to remember that colleges can die - especially in a troubled economy like this one. Here's an interesting article about college closings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:15 AM | Comments (1)

November 13, 2008

You just might be a scholar if . . .

. . . the sentence "You've got I.L.L." makes your heart leap! Inter Library Loan - where would we be without it?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:55 PM | Comments (1)

Campus Priorities

Lucky B.A.W.! Go read the whole thing.

As someone more on the admin side, I was flabbergasted that these science faculty, who are supposedly all about the grants and the funding, couldn't see the writing on the wall in terms of where their cash will be coming from in the future. This is a land grant institution. We've been asked for a sizeable budget cut THIS YEAR, with more to come. And when things get better, do you think that money's gonna magically reappear?

Given our state's history, my Magic Eight Ball says, "Signs point to no."

The icing on the cake? As I was leaving the auditorium, earnest chick was behind me speaking sotto voce to her companion. Her major complaint (other than those previously aired, that is)?

"He kept saying 'guys' a lot. I think that sort of gendered language bodes ill."

Right. Keep on keepin' on, sister-girl. You'll have no funding, and the university will have no coherent vision for staying competitive, but at least the Vice-Chancellor won't use pronouns in an offensive manner. Thank God that you're able to save us from ourselves!

And thank God that I'm not the chair of this hiring committee.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

The Dream - or Nightmare - Palace of the Wittgensteins

I've never cared for what little I knew about Wittgenstein the person - but this book may explain why he was so very odd. And we wonder why Freud turned out the way he did? It was the clientele in Vienna!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

Someone training for the wrong line of work at the University of Iowa

UI anthropology student Morgan Hansen, who is seeking a certificate in museum studies, felt "unnerved" by the idea that art could have been stolen during the flood.

That's a student who should consider other degree certifications; she's quoted about the University of Iowa's failure during the floods this year to move all the art objects to safe storage and then back again without a few things going missing.

OF COURSE people steal from art museums during natural disasters, and one should automatically plan to watch the movers carefully. Never heard of things "falling off the truck?" Maybe she shouldn't go into museum work - she's too optimistic about human nature.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:21 AM | Comments (0)

November 5, 2008

A Superfluity of Andrews

I'm at a friend's campus trying to use VPN to get into my home network to use the Visual Resources Collection. It's not working. They have firewall issues with VPN. So I want to email that nice Andrew in I.T. who I was talking to and ask if there's a work around. I don't know his email address (we have multiple ways of naming people) so I go to the look up page for that kind of thing and search by first name. We have 40 people on campus named Andrew or with the last name Andrews. I'm not sure what the proper word for a group of Andrews is, but I'm suggesting that we have a Superfluity of them.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:43 PM | Comments (0)

November 3, 2008

Choosing publishing venues by journal grades - or lose your departmental budget!

Here's an interesting article at Aardvarachaeology (with a bias toward Scandinavian archaeology - but hey, you learn things all over) about the grading of journals in Europe and why scholars have to pay attention to the grades:

Suddenly, humanities scholars will have to start paying a lot more attention to where they publish. In Norway and other countries, a department's funding is directly linked to the ERIH [European Reference Index for the Humanities] grade of the journals where its faculty publishes.

Grade A means global readership. Grade B means international readership. Grade C means national readership. Only good respected scholarly journals get graded at all. Here's a rundown of grade A and B journals focusing at least to a great part on Scandinavian archaeology (not including e.g. Mediterranean archaeology practiced by Scandinavians). My emphais.

Some of the external reviewing systems in European universities would give us fits! American professors might well have the sense that their tenure or promotions might depend on the grade or quality or something of the journals where they publish, but not something larger like departmental funding!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:54 AM

CNN.Money's 10 Most Expensive Colleges

CNN.Money's 10 Most Expensive Colleges:

Price is tuition only.

George Washington University - $40,437
Sarah Lawrence - small liberal arts
Kenyon - s.l.a.
Vassar - s.l.a.
Bucknell - s.l.a.
Carnegie-Mellon
Colgate - s.l.a.
Columbia University
St. John's College Annapolis - eccentric s.l.a.
Wesleyan - hmmm - kinda s.l.a., though they have ph.d. programs. - $38,934

I've seen other versions, but this struck me this morning.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:38 AM | Comments (2)

November 1, 2008

Genetic engineering we can all use: beer with resveratrol

Genetic Engineering we can use, from a student research project at my alma mater!

College students often spend their free time thinking about beer, but some Rice University students are taking it to the next level. They're using genetic engineering to create beer that contains resveratrol, a chemical in wine that's been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease in lab animals.

Rice's "BioBeer" will be entered in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition Nov. 8-9 in Cambridge, Mass. It's the world's largest synthetic biology competition, a contest where teams use a standard toolkit of DNA building blocks -- think genetic LEGO blocks -- to create living organisms that do odd things. Notable past iGEM creations include sheets of bacteria that behave like photographic film and bacteria that smell like mint while they're growing but like bananas when they stop growing

It doesn't sound from the press release that they'll be chugging this genetically modified product at Beer Bike this year.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:30 AM | Comments (1)

October 30, 2008

Returning Art Looted by the Nazis

Here is a good article about the process one museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, has gone through with one painting, a Fernand Leger, before returning it to the heirs of the 1939 owner.

After 10 years of detective work, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has concluded that a $2.8 million painting it has owned for decades was stolen by the Nazis. The museum has returned the 1911 painting, Fernand Leger's "Smoke Over Rooftops," to the French heirs of a Jewish art collector who died in 1948.

"Having researched this to the end of the road, we decided we had to return the painting; it was the right thing to do," said Art Institute Director Kaywin Feldman.

Other museums have faced similar challenges to their collections. The institute's saga began in 1997 when the museum received a letter claiming that the painting had been taken from Alphonse Kann, a legendary French collector who owned "tons of Picassos, Braques and late-19th-century Impressionist paintings," according to Patrick Noon, the institute's paintings curator. His story helped inspire a 1964 movie, "The Train," starring Burt Lancaster, about a trainload of art that the Germans tried to spirit away before the Allies liberated Paris in 1944.

First they had to decide this was the right one - Leger painted at least 5 other "Smoke Over Rooftops." Then they had to deal with the awkward sales history - once in 1942 to one Parisian gallery owned by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the great dealer in everything Cubist and a German Jew himself, and once to a second gallery owned by a German specialist in selling degenerate modern art for and to the Nazis.

It sounds like this was an expensive process, and the MIA hasn't released a figure yet. The conclusion, though, says something about the strength of their collection:

Initially the museum hoped Kann's heirs would lend or give it to the museum but that proved impossible. Asked if the institute would try to buy it back if the Leger were to be offered at auction, Feldman and Noon smiled ruefully and shook their heads.

"We have two other very nice Leger paintings in the collection," Noon said.

If art history undergraduates ask why they should learn French and German (and Russian would be useful for this line of work, too), tell them this story.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 AM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2008

The Little Things in Life

Click and follow the photostream for a quick explanation of how the little things can sometimes make or break a day.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:29 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2008

Why the Corporate World Needs University Endorsements

Prof. Soltan writes at Inside Higher Education about how someone like the execrable Prof. Nemeroff can drag down the name of Emory University:

Keep front and center the fact that in this sense the university is immensely valuable, even to people like Nemeroff, for whom the shabby, earnest ethos of the institution is a joke and a personal insult. To play the professor is to play the man with integrity, the man who has eschewed the corporate world because he's above single-minded profit-taking. He's motivated by science and altruism.

And it is precisely everyone's appraisal of the university professor as a serious person, motivated more by ideas than money, that Nemeroff and his corporate clients exploit. Professor Nemeroff shares with you his admiration for our new drug! This admiration emerges solely out of his intellectual scrutiny of its properties. You can trust his sober, disinterested point of view because... he's a professor...

The character emerging from what UD's been describing comes out of a nineteenth century novel. The fraud, the poseur, the hypocrite, the confidence man who breaks the rules more and more flagrantly because he's sure he can get away with it. The world, after all, is a cynical place. He knows how to play it.

This is a comic character, full of high sentence and secret hoardings. The only writer today who can do him justice is Tom Wolfe.

Charles Nemeroffs are amusing in novels. Their reality is sad, sad, sad. If you care about the American university. (my emphasis)

I wonder how much further into the 21st century the idea of the sober, disinterested pursuit of truth will survive as a characteristic attributed to professors in general. I think Prof. Soltan is right that it does still operate now. I'm not certain what will break it up faster - revelations like those about the corruption of science by Prof. Nemeroff or the realization by the broader public that Republicans are correct when they say that almost all professors are members of or contributors to only the parties of the left.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:16 PM | Comments (1)

Everyone builds trebuchets . . .

. . . but at Arizona State folks are building a mangonel. Here's the story: Beware of Flying Pumpkins During Homecoming.

Update: Aha, the Hobart & William Smith Trebuchet Contest was in the Spring of 2004, back before the total collapse of my blog database in January 2005. No wonder I couldn't find any entries with the search term "trebuchet." So I have to re-post the picture from that time, now very long ago.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:24 AM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2008

Put your money where your mouth is.

Alan Bennett donates a bunch of manuscripts to the Bodleian and criticizes the tuition-policies of British higher education. So, has he founded a scholarship to keep one student at a time out of debt?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:09 PM | Comments (5)

October 21, 2008

Narcissim rewarded with high office in Higher Education? Say it's not so!

"I have created an organization that is more driven by relationships than reporting lines." If there's a more succinct summary of narcissistic management, I haven't seen it.

That from the regular Confessions of a Community College Dean column at Inside Higher Ed. The Dean thinks: "I suppose it's possible that W[ashington] S[tate] U[niversity] is the land of milk and honey, in which peace and love reign, and into which an outsider attempted to introduce sin. Anything's possible, I suppose."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:55 PM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2008

Can a middle-aged professor learn new tricks?

I may have succeeded in turning over one of the heaviest of new leaves. For many, many years I have bought bottles of vitamins and taken about half of them and then drifted off into unfortified existence, little caring about my vitamin D or calcium levels. Today I can report that I am about to finish a bottle of Wegman's Complete Multi Vitamins and Minerals with Important Antioxidants.

There's hope for you! Change!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:15 AM | Comments (3)

October 16, 2008

Self-pity, bronchial division

I am very tired of prednisone and how it makes me feel. I'm in the maximum dosage stage* of my second course of the nasty stuff, which always makes me feel miserable, dry-mouthed, and sleepless. Ugh.

On the bright side, we get a training session today for the Xerox multi-function device that replaced all the desktop printers at Houghton House - finally I may be able to fax again!

*40 mg per day for 4 days, 20 mg for 4 days, 10 mg for 4 days. Ugh.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:36 AM | Comments (2)

October 15, 2008

Those Bonobos - the chimps that made love, not war

Well this is a relief. Science has proved, once again, that conflict is more natural than peace. Me, I'm not surprised, but people who took college anthropology courses might be, if their professors liked to make analogies between people and animal behavior.

A type of chimpanzee known to use sex for greetings, reconciliations, and favors may not be all about peace, love, and understanding after all. A new study reveals that some bonobos--one of humankind's closest genetic relatives--hunt and eat other primates. [I love that weasely "some". Let's face it - bonobos eat monkeys. Where were all the qualifications of "the bonobos we have observed so far" back when they were telling us how the bonobo showed that free floating sex produced peaceful chimps? Don't believe my report of utopianism - go read the wikipedia entry, where the females are also reported to have a higher status. So far it doesn't have any monkey-eating.]

Groups of the endangered chimpanzee subspecies were observed stalking, chasing, and killing monkeys they later consumed.

Scientists have long known from stool samples that some bonobos eat rodents and small antelopes in their natural forest habitats in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but many researchers thought this was the extent of their hunting activities.

Gottfried Hohmann and Martin Surbeck, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, thought differently.

"We saw that their relations with neighboring monkeys were frequently hostile and found a black mangabey finger in bonobo feces last year," Hohmann said.

"We did not know if the mangabey had been killed by another predator and then scavenged by the bonobo or if the bonobo had killed the mangabey itself, but this raised our suspicions."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:22 PM | Comments (0)

My next desktop

When I come back from leave I get to request a new school computer - but Brian Tiemann explains in considerable detail why the new 24 inch LED Cinema display is what I need.

The clincher is the power connection for your laptop running out of the display. One step closer to the goal of charger-brick-less living!

Further: Ack! Via John Gruber's Daring Fireball I find that my MacBook won't run this new screen without an adapter. And at that point the MacBook will only be 18 months old, so that doesn't sound likely. Hmmm.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2008

Worried about economic collapse? Get over it!

Apocalypse postponed. Normalcy restored.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:42 PM | Comments (2)

October 9, 2008

Smug - it's the new black

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:20 AM | Comments (2)

October 1, 2008

So what do we mean when we say we teach Arabic?

Inside Higher Ed has an interesting article on Arabic pedagogy. The problem is deciding what to teach - Arabic is a complicated phenomenon. I blogged about the difficulties of diglossia (multiple languages or dialects inside a single package) a while back and compared a lot of American instruction in Arabic to teaching Latin and then sending our students to Italy and Spain. Really, that's not an unfair comparison.

From today's article:

Teaching conversation skills in an Arabic classroom may seem like an uncontroversial thing. It would be standard, after all, in many introductory courses for other languages. But when Munther Younes started integrating instruction of the formal written language with a spoken dialect in Cornell University classrooms 18 years ago, he was a pioneer.

"What we're doing that's different ... is that other programs either teach the classical language by itself - they're a small program and they don't have the manpower or support. Other programs that are bigger introduce a spoken dialect, but they do the two in separate tracks. What we do at Cornell is integrate the two into one track, with two sides, so students learn to read what Arabs read and write, and they learn to speak what Arabs speak," says Younes, a senior lecturer and director of Cornell's Arabic program.

"So it's an honest reflection of what really happens in the Arab world."

Arabic is characterized by a so-called "diglossic" situation, in which the formal, uniform written language (Modern Standard Arabic) differs considerably from the various spoken dialects. Traditionally, and still, the former has been privileged in foreign language classrooms -- in some cases to the total exclusion of -- the latter.

The reasons are complicated. Some are pedagogical -- fear of confusing students in constantly switching between varieties. Some are practical -- native Arabic speakers pick up the dialect at home and study Modern Standard Arabic in school, and carry that tradition to the North American classroom. And some are ideological or political. Modern Standard Arabic is the language of literature and Arab culture, while the dialects lack respect. Arab students, Younes says, "would be condemning the dialect in the strongest terms [while speaking] in the dialect."

Among other things, the Cornell program has decided to teach Levantine Arabic (Syria, Lebanon, etc.). That's at least mutually intelligible with Egyptian. But what about other Arabics?

This is a real problem for American higher education. As is the problem of trained instructors - which also comes up in the Inside Higher Ed piece. Here at these Colleges we're supplementing our meager offerings with visiting native speakers. I hope it helps.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:33 AM | Comments (1)

September 23, 2008

Debunking those College Admissions Season stories

Inside Higher Ed has a story about the survival of early decision admissions, despite Harvard having dropped the practice in 2006. I was glad to see this paragraph:

Despite some media hysteria about the difficulty of getting into college, most institutions admit most applicants. Nationally, 68 percent of applicants are admitted. Those institutions that admit fewer than 50 percent of applicants receive only 31 percent of all applications, and enroll only 18 percent of first year students. My emphasis.

I don't think I realized what a small percentage of the nation's students end up attending selective institutions (though I would've if I'd thought about it for a minute). I knew that most people have more problems getting organized to apply than actually being admitted.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:14 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2008

Room and Board

I had not fully understood the burst of dorm-building at community colleges in Upstate New York. Here's the Student Housing page from Finger Lakes Community College. And from Monroe (that's Rochester) CC.

This piece from Inside Higher Ed's Confessions of a Community College Dean made me think a little more about what's going on:Perversely Enough, We're Upscaling.

I knew that recessions (or economic slowdowns, since I’m really not interested in splitting semantic hairs here) generally bring increased enrollments at cc’s. The reasons are straightforward enough: the opportunity cost of education is lower when jobs are scarce, the need for a degree is higher when jobs are scarce, and our low tuition becomes much more attractive when things get precarious. This is old news. People who otherwise might have gone somewhere more expensive will take a second look at the local cc when money is an issue.

Unless – and this was the part I didn’t realize – they’re so ridiculously broke that the logic circles around. According to my source, who’s in a position to know, some of our increasing number of homeless (or intermittently homeless) students are actually transferring to four-year schools earlier than they would prefer. The draw is financial aid for dorm rooms and meal plans.

Financial aid at the cc only covers tuition, fees, and a (low) estimate for books.* It doesn’t do anything for living expenses, which aren’t getting any cheaper. But financial aid at the nearby residential four-year colleges includes room and board. If you’re intermittently homeless, the prospect of aid covering a place to live and a meal plan is nothing to sneeze at.

So the perverse impact of the economic downturn is that we get more people from the upper end of the economic scale, since they’re playing it safer by choosing the low-cost option, and fewer people from the lower end, since we don’t offer subsidized room and board. Perversely enough, we’re upscaling.

And here's the Monroe CC faq where we ask and learn the answer to "Can Financial Aid be used to cover the cost of living in the MCC Residence Halls?"

Quick answer, yes, depending on eligibility.

When I first read about the new dorms going up for FLCC I figured it was a way to get money out of the state-run bonding entity, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, and use it to build revenue-generating dorms. After all, we funded our new dorms the same way at about the same time

I'm used to the mission-statement version of Residence Life - that we foster the whole person by providing housing and programming. I also knew a little about the financing of dorms. I had never really thought that NOT having dorms could in certain circumstances cause a higher transfer rate out from community colleges to four-year schools. The Higher Education Industrial Complex never ceases to surprise.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:01 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2008

Fun facts to know and tell - Accreditation or Property Protection - which came first??

In the course of writing a comment at Tim Burke's (about the post linked below) I happened to visit the website for the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools website. I think of Middle States and its regional counterparts as accreditation agencies, though I have always understood that accreditation is not a neutral procedure.

I clicked on History.

They began as a group of college presidents organizing to protest the taxation of college property! The connection between lobbying government for tax benefits and assuring the government that association members are providing standardized education began early. From their history:

The genesis of the Association can be traced to a meeting of activist college presidents in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in February 1887. The meeting was held to protest a proposed tax on college properties and concluded with the consensus that education from early age through the university was in chaos. The presidents chartered themselves as the College Association of Pennsylvania, soon thereafter renamed the Association of the Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Middle States and Maryland.

. . .

The initial objectives of the Association were to standardize the qualifications required for admission to college, to determine the desired characteristics for college preparatory schools, to recommend courses of study for both colleges and schools, to foster school and college relationships to each other and to the government, and to study and recommend best practices of organization and governance.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:49 PM | Comments (0)

Busted!

Someone just knocked on my library study door! Ack!

Luckily it was a student who knew I was up here on the XXX [redacted] floor. He's doing honors and just picked up the key to a space he shares with some other honors folk and saw my light on.

Still, my illusion of refuge just vanished!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:40 PM | Comments (0)

Tending Your Academic Garden in the Autumn

Prof. Tim Burke has a thought-provoking essay on what may be the end of a long period of growth for higher education, especially at selective institutions. It goes well what I blogged about yesterday - faculty retirement (or the slowing thereof).

Read it here - Planned Contraction or Chaotic Retreat?.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:40 AM

September 18, 2008

Here's a silly question about the current economic news - "Will Professors Delay Retirements?"

The answer, Of course! And there is no big rush to hire more tenure track professors to replace them.

I'm not saying that anyone lied to me (especially in the early 21st Century, where "being wrong on the basis of partial information" is the same as "telling deliberate lies"), but I first heard the 'coming great wave of retirement' line in the Fall of 1983 when certain entirely well-meaning professors told me and my compatriots that maybe graduate school was finally not such a bad idea after all. There would be retirements! And jobs!

I haven't seen it yet.

Of our retirees last year, one was accelerated by a medical condition and one by a spouse's work-related move. A third was pretty much planned. This in a faculty of something like 180, and from 3 professors with 113 years of combined service. Not that they aren't all fabulous people, professors who I would have been delighted to take courses from myself, and colleagues I regularly pushed advisees toward, but 113 years of combined service and only 1 unforced retirement.

There are and will be, for the foreseeable future, very few jobs. Those of us who get them or have them are lucky - lots of other very qualified people could have filled the same positions.

I figure the biggest shift in the academic market - and this is just a guess - are new positions reflecting new curricular areas. I'm sure those new position creations will at some institutions come at the cost of traditional lines.

Further - see this from Tim Burke - Planned Contraction or Chaotic Retreat?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2008

"...largest investment in the nation's aesthetic- industrial complex"

The Big Poem.

via Prof. Soltan.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2008

Think the American Professoriate has it bad?

This is an interesting (but brief) account at Inside Higher Ed of how tenure / untenuredness works in Europe and Argentina. Argentina sounds wacky: Defend your position against all comers!

That sounds a little like this element of Harvard's system:

While other universities simply ask for [outside] evaluations [of scholarship], Harvard sends a 'blind letter', a list of potential candidates that includes the tenure candidate and other leading scholars in the field.

Outside scholars are not told which of the listed professors is the internal Harvard candidate.

Commenters provide some other horrific examples.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)

September 15, 2008

Ugh - big power outages

I'm glad not be teaching this morning - I have a feeling a number of students will be using the "my alarm clock was dead" excuse today! Geneva had big storms and a big power outage last night. Something's up with my cable box; if it's blown out that'll make 2 since July 4th! I'm hoping there's something up with cable in town more generally. By the time I drifted over to campus (I was in no hurry - I needed to put something in the mail and the post office doesn't open until 9 anyway) there still wasn't any coffee in the café. They only got power back at 8 or so!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:29 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2008

Hurricane Shut-down

My alma mater is battening down the hatches.

We dodged hurricanes during my four years (1980-1984). There was one pretty serious blow that happened just before orientation week one year; when we got back the live oaks were missing many of their leaves, but I think I remember that only one tree went down on campus. There was a legacy of masking tape on all the windows for months!

Sometime during my first year someone explained to me that the map of the Gulf on the big brown shopping bags at Weingarten's were actually printed there so that you could cut one up, stick it to the refrigerator with a magnet, and track the incoming tropical storms.

Here's praying William Rice's Marsh doesn't fill up this time!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:21 AM | Comments (0)

September 9, 2008

Seneca Lake

This isn't what Geneva looks like today - it's kind of breezy and cooler - but this picture from last week makes me happy; looking at Seneca Lake every day is one of the things that makes life in Geneva pleasant, even in the depth of winter.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:06 PM | Comments (0)

September 8, 2008

How much are professors worth?

Prof. Bainbridge hears a rumor of a law professor with a $600,000 salary offer. Somehow I have a feeling that no one in the humanities is making that much. Medicine, yeah.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:07 AM | Comments (1)

There's Stolen Art and there's LOST Art

A day after reports surfaced that Wellesley College's Davis Museum may have unintentionally thrown out a prized 1921 painting by French cubist Fernand Leger, President H. Kim Bottomly promised that new controls will be in place by October to better protect the museum's art.

. . .

The Leger had been loaned to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for an exhibit that ended in April 2007. The work was then sent back to Wellesley, where it sat in a crate for months before the museum checked and found it was missing.

It is unclear what happened to the oil painting, which measures 25 by 21 inches, but museum officials have speculated that it may not have been removed from the crate before that crate was discarded.

One supposes that "new controls" may include "a new director" and "a new conservator." Read it all.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:36 AM | Comments (0)

September 3, 2008

100s of Unique Images. *Sigh*

This is the poster for the poster sale I mentioned yesterday.

I really hate this colloquial usage of unique. I hate it slightly more than my utter incapability to make this picture do right.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:08 PM | Comments (1)

September 2, 2008

Poster Sales Days

They set up folding tables across the front of the Scandling Center and sell posters the first days of the semester. I found this article about most popular posters amusing. Sadly, Dali's Persistence of Memory didn't make the list.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:09 PM | Comments (1)

September 1, 2008

Britticisms about Latin. Latin translations of Britticisms? Hmm.

My pleasure reading in my library study this week (for those moments when translating Hrotswit's Dulcitius makes me tired) is Nicholas Ostler's Ad Infinitum, a biography of Latin. It's a quickish read and very entertaining. Luckily for my workflow I already know Latin, so I'm suffering few of the temptations to go a-whoring* with Akkadian or some such, which his Empires of the Word: a Language History of the World inspired.

Ostler is just now (p. 191) talking about litterae humaniores, the educational side of good grammatica. He says: "The Frankish chronicler Gregory of Tours, his Latin famously ropy, might well remark (around 575), 'The rhetorician philosophizing is understood by few, but the plain man speaking by many.'

Ropy?

Hmm. I popped open the OED website (my complete hardback is in the office) and found these meanings for "ropy."

1. a. Forming or developing viscid, glutinous, or slimy threads; sticky and stringy.
b. transf. of the air.
c. fig. Bad, unsatisfactory, unreliable, unwell. slang and colloq.
d. Of a cow: producing ropy milk.
2. Having the form or tenacity of a rope; suggestive of a rope.

I think Ostler means 1. c. But I'm not certain. One could argue that Gregory of Tours' syntax is somewhat viscid.

-----
*about a-whoring. More fun Latin! So, last week I was reading the Life of Christina of Markyate. Please see this photograph for the result of all this leisure reading! I was using the C.H. Talbot translation in the handy Latin-on-the-left-page edition from Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching; zipping right along, I saw this sentence:

For lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: Thou hast destroyed all them that go a-whoring from Thee. [emphasis mine; capitalization of 2nd person pronouns, sic]

Of course I check the left page to see what on earth Talbot could have construed as "a-whoring" and find:

Quia ecce qui elongant se a te peribunt: perdidisti omnes qui fornicantur abs te.

The earliest usage of "go a whoring" in the OED is from Coverdale's translation of Exodus in 1535. Fornico doesn't show up in classical Latin - or at least it doesn't show up in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, whose citations specifically exclude Christian authors. Lewis and Short give us Tertullian as the first usage. Nobody gives us enough usage to justify that abs te except understanding fornicare as a verb of motion - "to go a-whoring." I wonder on the basis of that bit of Latin if the slang predated the written English by a LONG shot! Parts of the Life of Christina of Markyate probably date to the 12th Century, her own time.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:56 PM | Comments (3)

A Man on Sabbatical

And don't I look relaxed?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:47 PM | Comments (2)

August 31, 2008

Last Day of Summer

Hobart & William Smith Colleges start classes on Labor Day - so this is the last fully free day of summer; students down at the Boathouse were taking advantage of the amazing weather.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:47 PM | Comments (1)

August 29, 2008

Renovated Library Goodness!

Just inside the front door - today's papers! With seating! No more reading off bamboo rods . . . .

From little touches like this to big ideas about fostering student group work and individual research - this renovated first floor has them all.

The occupancy certificate came through yesterday morning, so the new first year students get to see the new Information Commons (I know, ick) in operation their first day!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2008

Hobartiana!

My friend Greg Avery (Hobart '94) bought this commemorative saucer recently on eBay - it shows the Hobart Quad from the south. Because it shows Coxe Hall and Medberry Hall but NOT Williams it must be from 1900-1907 or so. The inscription on the back is barely legible, but he's doing some research.

Click on the image to go to my Flickr stream, where there's a detail.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM | Comments (2)

August 27, 2008

What everyone is wearing this summer

We gutted and renovated the ground floor of our Library this summer. Today is the inspection for the certificate of occupancy. The inspector keeps setting off the fire alarms. Luckily, when they were testing the alarm systems a week or so ago someone handed me a set of these. Otherwise I might be distracted or something.

- - - - -

Update: I hear the building passed! The circ desk will move back downstairs after lunch!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:45 AM | Comments (1)

August 25, 2008

You'd think school had started or something - but no!

We're getting there. There was a new faculty orientation event this afternoon - and I offered a little walking tour of South Main Street to provide a little transition from some useful panel discussion to happy hour at the Red Dove. Looks like a nice crew - certainly all the folks I got the opportunity to talk to are very pleasant. And to make it feel just like September, the evening ended with a 2.5 hour Human Rights Commission committee meeting.

As I headed home I noticed - and politely averted my eyes from - a number of porch parties on Pulteney Street, epicenter of off-campus student dwellings. The school year is gearing up.

It's going to be very strange to NOT be teaching - the 2nd autumn that's happened since my 3rd year of graduate school?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2008

Why We Blog

The other day I posted a picture on my flickr stream of my new home away from my home away from home. One of my regular readers happens to be the just-now-formerly-acting-head-librarian (I'm not sure how else to describe Sara other than, say, Library Goddess, but those two will have to do).

She noticed a particularly horrible chair with green padding in the first photo. She brought me a new one - much more comfortable for sitting with my feet up and reading purposes.

I'm an even happier camper now!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:02 AM | Comments (1)

August 19, 2008

Sense on College Drinking - lower the drinking age to 18

College presidents from more than 100 schools across the country are calling on lawmakers to do something about binge drinking: Consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.

"Twenty-one is not working," says the group's statement, signed by presidents from prominent colleges such as Dartmouth, Duke and Syracuse. "A culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge drinking' - often conducted off-campus - has developed."

I agree entirely. The current binge drinking culture was created by the 21 year drinking age. Lower the drinking age, reopen serious campus pubs, strictly enforce public drunkenness laws on campus - that's my prescription. But then I'm just a professor.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 AM | Comments (8)

August 16, 2008

The calm before the storm

The Quad, studentless, Friday afternoon.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 PM | Comments (1)

August 15, 2008

Beer goggles

This is the kind of finding that gives research science funding a bad name - people who are drinking find others more attractive than those who don't. Woo hoo. And, news flash: As well as changing perceptions of attractiveness, alcohol also encourages us to engage in behaviour we would otherwise avoid.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:24 PM | Comments (2)

August 13, 2008

The ultimate university "the situation is under investigation" statement. Really.

"We're sure that there's probably some facts and information that's just not available. I mean, you see a lot on the video, but we need to make sure everything is revealed before we take any action," said Fort Hays provost Larry Gould.

That's in response to this:

FORT HAYS, Kan. -- A professor at a Kansas university who dropped his pants and mooned a room full of students and teachers is under investigation after video of the incident was posted on YouTube, school officials said.

Bill Shanahan, a professor at Fort Hays State University, was at a debate with the Fort Hays State debate team last March when the incident occurred.

School officials said they believe things got out of control when the team got low scores from two of the judges.

Shanahan is seen on the video jumping up and down, ranting and then mooning the crowd in the room.

You'd think checking the video would clear things up for Provost Gould.

Here's the YouTube link - the language is as bad as the mooning.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:55 PM | Comments (3)

August 8, 2008

I guess school starts soon?

Walk away for a week and they make some real progress around here! The ground floor of our library was gutted this summer to turn it into a Learning Commons. When I left last week they were messing with wiring - now there's furniture being dragged in and there are carpets down over most of it!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:25 PM | Comments (0)

August 3, 2008

Technology and the Life of the Mind. Sorta.

Prof. Burke posted an interesting set of questions late in July about how he might change his note taking (etc., etc.) habits by using software. The comments have been very interesting - mainly recommending EndNote and Zotero. I have Zotero, a Firefox plugin, but have never really switched over to it. I tried Tinderbox twice, but I never felt like I came anywhere close to seeing its potential.

I'm posting this entry here to remind myself (see how disorganized I am?) to keep reviewing the comments over at Easily Distracted to see if I get struck by lightning. I, too, am thinking that now (before September or October, say) would be a good time to revamp my work-style for a couple of new projects before they get too far along.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2008

Old School Tieism

Mutual fund managers had significantly better returns on investments made in companies led by their former classmates than they did in companies where no such connections existed, according to a recent study. Indeed, investments in so-called “connected” stocks outperformed non-connected stocks by more than 8 percent, the study found.

From Inside Higher Ed.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:59 PM

July 28, 2008

Rutgers' new stadium

Prof. Soltan offers us a dismantling of the dream-land of Big U stadium building.

Skeezy Football Coach + Unbuildable Stadium = today’s Rutgers University.

It’s easy to do the math. I mean, it’s easy for us. At Rutgers, they’re still struggling to understand.

The most conspicuous thing about Rutgers and their football dreaminess is that they're one of those come-from-nowhere schools. I mean 20 years ago who cared about Rutgers football? Syracuse was doing its best to be New York's College Football Team (though that always sounds like a reach to me for NYC, but whatever). Rutgers has that enormous advantage of being in the middle of a massive population of rich folk suffering from a severe skybox deficit - how could they NOT build an enormous stadium on the banks of the Raritan?

Of course, they could build more college classrooms around the state to take up some of the unserved high school graduates, but skyboxes are more fun than classrooms.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:41 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

Opening the Hadrian Show in London

There's a big Hadrian show at the British Museum - and here's a description of the opening from Bloomberg Muse:

For the first time in many years, the ruler of London addressed the assembled populus in Latin. Boris Johnson, mayor of the U.K. capital, climbed onto the podium at the opening of the British Museum's Hadrian exhibition and began spouting classical prose.

After awhile, he paused to ask the audience, ``How much more of this do you want? There's yards of it.'' The July 23 audience didn't demur, and perhaps some of them understood what he was saying since there were several professors of classical studies present.

So the mayor plunged on. He is himself, as Neil McGregor, director of the museum, pointed out, the ruler of a vast empire, namely the London government machine.

It was an impressive performance. Tony Blair is able to speak in passable French; President John F. Kennedy famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner'' in German. But most British officials nowadays probably no longer have a working knowledge of Latin.

It may be that this was the best Latin speech made by a British politician since the Romans departed in the fifth century. Mayor Johnson studied Greats -- a four-year program in classics -- at Oxford, and is evidently a master of the Latin language. MacGregor, thanking the Italian ambassador for his help, described him as "the representative of the former colonial power.''

Here's a review of the show, as opposed to a love letter to Boris Johnson, from the 24 Hour Museum. It's getting great reviews; maybe because I'm just back from Rome I'm not all that thrilled - but they'll have things on show from all over the place. Still, they can't bring the Pantheon - and all the portrait busts in the world can't make up for that.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM

July 24, 2008

Summer winds down . . .

. . . and the work on renovations accelerates. The library is all atwitter about August 18th as a date to move back downstairs to the renovated 1st floor. The Scandling Center has proceeded so far that yesterday lots of interestingly shaped boxes (LOTS - had to be 75 or 100) arrived.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:57 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2008

Getting ready for those incoming students?

That little lecture to your first year advisees on why they shouldn't post compromising pictures online?

Read this. Two years in prison.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:41 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2008

Whew!

We had a cookout last night to welcome the new folks to the Houghton House community - a new professor of studio art, a new professor of architectural studies, and a new adjunct architectural studies professor. It was sweltering on my balcony, but fun - I guess there were 19 or 20 adults and a couple of children. Everyone brought stuff - I bought the meat and bread and did the grilling. It was peculiarly breezeless last night, so that meant that I stood in a haze of smoke much of the time - and my glasses sure showed it this morning - grimy!

If I'd had a camera handy I would've caught two of my colleagues rehanging art; when I came downstairs with a load of stuff at the end Ted and Bonnie were adjusting two prints by Ted's wife that hang side by side. They're hanging much straighter now than they have since last fall. I swear the building settled or something since I hung them last May, because I've never been able to get them straight again.

That's a department-as-community - invite people to a party and they bring ice, beer, salad, and picture-hanging expertise.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2008

Those damned capitalists!

They’re accusing Apple of concocting the whole thing as some sort of profit-making scheme.

That's John Gruber on the Free Software Foundation on the iPhone.

Me, I just hope that TIAA-CREF owns a LOT of stock.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:58 PM

July 1, 2008

Ehem.

As of this morning this is The Cranky Associate Professor.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:43 AM | Comments (13)

June 25, 2008

Prof. Soltan on Ms. Winehouse

Prof. Soltan says:

Winehouse’s music gathers grief and pity. It may be a pleasure - an aesthetic pleasure - to hear her music, but the pleasure has to do with letting go of the natural noise of good for the sake of a free-fall into the perverse and malign. Along with Charles Baudelaire, Malcolm Lowry, and many others, Winehouse is part of the expeditionary team to hell. (my emphasis)

Well put.

Listen here - Back to Black. Baudelaire, but with a beat you can dance to?

Rehab (a live version from the Jules Holland show - actually an interesting contrast to the video issue version). Me, I like the skirt. So arch it's Huysmanian?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:17 PM | Comments (1)

Political Tightropes

This is a (n in)famous neocon.

This is a really, really sharp Swarthmore professor who is a specialist in modern Africa. (click and read more of his stuff).

Compare and contrast. I keep doing it without any resolution. Luckily, I'm a medievalist - no one wants to know what I think.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2008

Vote for me for Fascist Dictator . . .

. . . and I will set you free from competing style guides! What IS it with journals with their own house styles?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:47 PM

June 17, 2008

How they get away with it

Inside Higher Ed has a first person thing from a person who, after 20 years as an adjunct, has just been offered a tenure track position.

Some have asked why I continued to teach as a part-timer if things were so tough, and to be honest, every spring I begin asking myself that same question. In fact, I have left teaching twice. The first time I was offered a position as a business manager for a corporation that owns travel stops throughout the Southwest. The money was good, the hours were close to what I would put in as a part-time instructor (counting prep time and time grading papers), and I had benefits.

I hated it.

There is something about teaching that keeps pulling me in. I love writing, and I love sharing my passion for it with my students. I love feeling that I might be making a positive difference in people’s lives. I love feeling like I’m contributing something to my community.

I guess that's how administrators get away with it - they can find people who really, really like the classroom. Despite the grading. Despite the insecurity.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 AM

June 13, 2008

Talking about . . . religion, education, professors, a core curriculum, Darwin

Go read this interview with a Univ of Chicago professor. All of it. I can't find the heart to comment, but I'll pull out some quotations to tempt you:

And so I specialized in religions that are dead, which has the great advantage that nobody talks back. No one says, “That’s not what I heard last Sunday!” Everybody’s dead. And I like that. Now, I sometimes have to deal with religions that keep going. And they’re more problematic because then you deal with people who believe things. They also find their own beliefs puzzling or challenging or interesting—they’re almost synonyms. So they have not only their beliefs, but their interpretations of those beliefs. And I have my interpretations of their beliefs. Sometimes we can sit like this and negotiate it. Other times it’s in a book or transcript. And then in a third sense you have to run back and forth. You have to represent both sides of the conversation as you try to figure out what it’s all about. You get good at doing that with dead people because you’ll never hear from them because you have to do it all the time. And that’s what a historian does. They run back and forth to make both sides of a conversation happen.

And most people who teach religion have a clear relationship with the religions. I cannot. Obviously, most of them are dead, I would get in trouble with the ASPCA [American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] if I sacrificed a bull ox to Zeus. I have a friend who recently died, but he actually decided to show kids what a sacrifice looks like, so he sacrificed a lamb at Easter time. “We talk about it so much—here’s what it looks like!” Half the class puked, half the class had angry letters from mommy and daddy. But he did demonstrate that it’s not just a metaphor. It’s a messy and not altogether pleasant process. Since [then] we’ve converted it entirely into an economic question. I ask students the meaning of sacrifice, and they always start talking about “mommy and daddy sacrificing so I could go to college.” We’ve been at war for four years, and I haven’t heard one person yet say some soldier sacrificed themselves. That language is gone. It’s entirely economic.

I was told [curtailing the Core] was done to increase electivity, and I think electivity is a good idea. I also think being told what you should do is also a good idea, as long as there are options. But it turns out that’s not actually how it’s been used. It’s been used to carve out spaces for double majors, to which I am unalterably opposed. One major is bad enough. I would like to abolish majors altogether. So two is unbelievable. And then you find out one is for mommy and daddy and one is for you, so then I thought let’s take this issue head-on and stop this crap. It seems to me that majors ought to be flexible enough that if you were in history and then suddenly said my real interest is in biology, they might say, “Well, why don’t you look into the history of biology”—I mean we’ve got a whole fucking library called the Crerar Library of the History of Science. I mean, they ought to be able to find some way to fit you in.

Now, the thing about a Core is it really has to represent a hard-won faculty consensus. I mean, it can’t be “we’ll put this one in for that group, and we’ll put this one in for that group.” It has to be that of all the books we could possibly inflict on you—only in 10 weeks, and you waste the first week, you waste the last week, so you’ve got eight weeks. If they’re not crazy, they’re going to take two weeks to read a book. So you’re down to four books. Now what that Core really ought to be doing is saying that if there were only these four books in the world—or the other way around, out of all the books in the world, these are the four books you should read. If they’re not prepared to say that, they should shut up shop. That’s my first comment. I find too much politics, too much accommodation. “We can’t get the so-and-sos to join us unless we read this.” And they don’t care what it is, it’s got to be a little bit of this, or the economists won’t join the social science core, or something.

via Prof. Soltan.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:11 AM

June 10, 2008

Historical Context - Colleges Construction

This Saturday I give my second architecture-on-campus talk of the month -- last Saturday was Reunion and a talk on the Chapel (built for Hobart College, named after Bishop John Henry Hobart, the man on the left in the purple stockings). This week is a talk for the Geneva Historical Society about many of the 20th Century buildings on campus and their reasonably consistent use of Jacobean gables -- like Smith Hall, named for William Smith in the green stockings on the right.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:06 PM

May 28, 2008

One step closer to putting that whole Rome episode behind me...

Today the receipts all went in. Yay!

.....Further - they all came back on Friday. Booh! After some work, I think I can turn them all in again. Yay!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 PM | Comments (2)

May 19, 2008

At least it didn't snow