… Academic Freedom Must Be Preserved | National Association of Scholars.
See also: Love and Fear in the Villanova Classroom.
I signed the petition, but my name has not year appeared. I think it important to push back against Villanova's pusillanimous administration.
Villanova as an organization wants to be sure that the concepts of diversity and inclusion are advanced at the university, something they or the Church are obviously not pleased with.
ReplyDeleteWhile a protestant at the Catholic college Rivier, now a Catholic University, I took the class "Introduction to the Bible" as a religion requirement, taught by a rabbi, and would have loved to have answered questions at the end of the course about how the course advanced inclusion and diversity. Even in the 80s, it was something that the Catholic Church wanted to forward.
To put the questions on the CAT should prove to be a good way to ensure "sensitivity" to these ideas, even if you think they are only to be framed as "Progressive", to ensure that it is in the classroom conversations, knowing that it will come up in the end. Not addressing these issues may be what is maintaining prejudicial teaching biases at times -- something no one wants other than supremacists of one sort or another.
The idea that these questions have anything to do with anyone's integrity is to be paranoid. If true conservatives are losing some battle of ideas with moderates and liberals, it has nothing to do with questions that may be asked after courses are completed. These political mindsets are approaches, tools that we have, to bring about such things as liberty, freedom, good laws-- and diversity and inclusion. So teach away all, conservatives, liberals and moderates, go for it, the Catholic universities want you -- just be aware when your course conversation has taken a supremacist slant -- something no one wants.
In the greater American society, and in the world, we know that the values of inclusion and diversity are under siege with the supremacist massacres, for instance -- so no need to go after people who want to keep the status quo as if they are all "Progressives" -- some may simply be people who are appalled. Instead of calling these people "Progressive" let's call them "Appalled" -- this will include all of us.
Let's be appalled if Villanova does not take simple steps such as these questions to get the conversation in their university classrooms to where they have wanted it for decades.
What would Rabbi Schenkerman give me for a grade on this response, and how would the Pope and the Rivier University administrators feel about it? Have I brought to the conversation important ideas that could advance diversity and inclusion? And may I ask these questions, please?
Rus, I'd reframe this issue in an apolitical way that I think should concern even teachers who agree with the veneration of vaguely defined "diversity and inclusion."
ReplyDeleteI taught college for ten years, and I live with a public high-school teacher. In both spheres, but especially at the college level, teachers have less autonomy and freedom now than they did just a few decades ago. Colleges and universities are phasing out tenure by default, simply by hiring ever more adjuncts whose employment is highly tenuous at best. Even tenured faculty now play a diminished, in some institutions utterly impotent role in the governance of universities. I stopped teaching at the university level because the school was standardizing the curriculum—a slapdash process completed in two or three hours, with a computer science professor supervising those of us in the English department—and going forward I would no longer be able to customize my syllabus or choose my own books.
These "diversity and inclusion" student evaluations only give bureaucrats more power over increasingly powerless teachers who are already in danger of becoming curriculum-delivering robots. By supporting this stuff, you're not sticking it to the small number of conservatives in academia; you're giving license to administrators to screw the vast liberal majority of academics even further. This can and will be used against teachers, even ones you would praise as inclusive and progressive. Bureaucratic initiatives never stop with their initial stated aim, never.
I would not want to "stick it" to conservatives nor "screw" liberals, and appreciate what you say, Jeff. I used to identify with conservatives, but now neither, because of what spokespeople for those groups say that they represent. Now you have me imagining Jake and Elwood Blues walking into a Catholic university, being told, "Here at Villanova, we have both kinds of people, conservative and liberal."
ReplyDeleteA computer science professor supervising those of you in the English department is neither conservative, nor progressive, nor liberal, nothing but stupid -- No more discussions of diversity, inclusion, nor English.
So then, let's have no CAT questions whatsoever. If the questions of diversity and inclusion cannot be asked at the end of a course, what can, "Did you enjoy the course?," "Will you tell your friends?"and "Won't you give it a 5-star rating?"
It reminds me of a really cool conversation device that Mary & I recently picked up from a movie. The family was at the dinner table, and an older woman said that she had decided to have a surprise baby. When family members objected to her going through with the pregnancy, she said that it was an announcement, not a discussion.
Rus, I apologize for my assumptions about whom you wanted to stick it to, metaphorically speaking. I'm politically homeless, so I should be more careful about making such assumptions.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't student evaluations simply ask the questions that I always found useful as an instructor? They could ask whether the course was well organized, whether the course met their expectations, whether they learned more than they expected or less, what could be done to make the course more informative, etc. Even asking students if they felt they were treated with respect, which at least lets them define their terms, is fine with me.
My other problem with the hyper-bureaucratization of higher education is the dull uniformity of thought that's resulting from it. I want there to be far-left colleges, far-right colleges, religious colleges, stridently secular colleges, and weird schools that defy ideological categorization. Instead, there's now little cultural or ideological distinction between, say, Villanova and Oberlin and the University of Delaware. Why attend one over the other, why support one over the other, when the dominant on-campus culture at all of them is a bureaucracy with the same scope and priorities as the HR department at a gigantic corporation? College life has been quantified into joylessness. I'm glad I went to college when I did, and I'm damned glad I left teaching of my own free will before it got worse.
If what is done with such questions that have to do with ideals that we as a country strive for, inclusion and diversity -- because, after all, we are all included and a diverse bunch -- goes against anyone having a good education -- the problem has nothing to do with so-called conservatives or progressives. Mishandling or misusing answers to questions that have to do with the goals of a Catholic university can be done by inept conservatives as well as anyone, Catholics as well as atheists.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, that's what we should be talking about, what to do with answers to questions of diversity and inclusion, that either support or go against the goals. But, if we are asking how a university that puts a computer scientist in an academic supervisory position over English faculty, will handle answers to such questions -- we have to include that there will be ineptitude no matter what questions get asked or don't get asked. Instead, these political labels should be used to debate how to resolve uncovered issues, whether the approach coming from the liberals is better than the one coming from the conservatives, or moderates, or progressive, communists, anarchists whomever. But diversity and inclusion are already dead in poisoned water if we cannot even ask the question.
Do you really believe that unless students are allowed to pass moral judgement on their professors in evaluations that give even more power to administrators, there will be no discussion of diversity and inclusion on college campuses?
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