Category: Scholarship

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An "Intelligent Design" theory I am willing to support

On my official blog, I try to steer clear of direct and overt politics and such. I don’t agree with the right’s argument that academia is too liberal to be fair to conservative students and I’ve voiced my opinions about all that here, but generally, I save my expressions of my politics and religious beliefs for my unofficial blog.

But I want to come out here all in favor of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or, as it has also been called, Pastafarianism.

A friend of mine sent me a link to an August 29 New York Times article, “But Is There Intelligent Spaghetti Out There?” As the article reports, the Kansas State Board of Education is giving preliminary approval for the teaching of alternatives to evolution like “Intelligent Design” in science classes. Bobby Henderson, “a 25-year-old with a physics degree from Oregon State University,” has some problems with this, which he shared in an “Open Letter to the Kansas School Board” in which he explains that if they are not willing to include the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s teachings about the origins of life in their “Intellifent Design” curriculum, he would take legal action. To quote from the New York Times piece:

In perfect deadpan he wrote that although he agreed that science students should “hear multiple viewpoints” of how the universe came to be, he was worried that they would be hearing only one theory of intelligent design. After all, he noted, there are many such theories, including his own fervent belief that “the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.” He demanded equal time in the classroom and threatened a lawsuit.

Soon he was flooded with e-mail messages. Ninety-five percent of those who wrote to him, he said on his Web site, were “in favor of teaching Flying Spaghetti Monsterism in schools.” Five percent suggested that he would be going to hell. Lawyers contacted him inquiring how serious he was about a lawsuit against the Kansas board. His answer: “Very.”

I think this is interesting for a whole variety of different reasons, but I will limit myself to two for the time-being:

  • The “Intelligent Design” movement is a fantastic example (maybe the best example ever) of how simply renaming something changes the values assigned to it by an audience. These folks were getting nowhere with the term “creationism,” largely because of the overt religious connotations. But “Intelligent Design:” well, who could be against that? It’s the same tactic we’ve seen with “The Death Tax” (which is a name that tested significantly better than what it really is, “The Estate Tax”), “Personal Savings Accounts” as they connect to Social Security, and so forth. But somehow, the language and approach of “Intelligent Design” seems unusually persuasive, perhaps beause the words “intelligent” and “design” so often have positive connotations.
  • The “Intelligent Design” movement is another example of what I see as a sort of re-emergence of religiosity into the public sphere. This is perhaps the most overt example, but I think that there are subtle ways in which the line that has traditionally separated “church” from “state” has become quite a bit more porous in recent years. Part of it is the Bush administration of course, but I also think a lot of it is a response to 9/11. Personally, I have nothing against religion per se, but a) I’m not a religious person and I don’t want to be compelled to be a religious person by the state, and b) we shouldn’t be teaching religious concepts of origin (or just about anything else, for that matter) as “science” or even as “scholarly,” and c) we shouldn’t be doing these things in publicly funded institutions.

Unless we do go down the Spaghetti Monster path. I’m all for that.

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That's done (sorta); now what do I need to do?

Monkey writer

I managed to meet the deadline that I had set up for myself with my textbook project just over a week ago– at least technically I met the deadline. This “on-again/off-again” project has been “on-again” in the past six or eight months, so I’m feeling confident about my progress and possibilities of finishing this project, or at least more confident than I have felt in the past. Of course, there’s still a fair amount of work that needs to be done, more revisions and such, it still has to be sent out to readers (yet again), if it’s approved it will take a year or more to actually publish, and even with all that, there is still no guarantee that this thing will ever actually appear as a textbook. Someday, when the dust for all this settles, I’d like to write something about the textbook writing experience. It’s been an education, no question about it.

Anyway, I worked on this a lot for the last 10 days or so, and this morning, the day after I emailed stuff to the editors, I have this odd “what now?” kind of feeling. Frankly, I know “what now”: I have to get ready for that pesky fall semester that is going to be starting here in about two weeks. I need to tidy-up my blogs and some other web projects. I should do at least a little thinking and reading about my longer-term project on the history or writing technologies before the computer (btw, thanks to Dennis Jerz to this link of Flickr picts of “writing machines,” mostly typewriters). And I am also interested in trying to focus some more time on actually trying to read the scholarship in my field and less time in trying to create more of it.

Not to mention I have a life, which includes a seriously neglected garden and a flabby body that needs to get to the gym. Immediately.

So I guess what I’m saying is that I know the answer to the question of this post. It’s just a matter of convincing myself that I need to go on to something else, I suppose. Okay contemplative monkey– get to work then!

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Academic Commons: Looks promising to me

I just found out about Academic Commons, “a forum for investigating and defining the role that technology can play in liberal arts education. Sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College.” It looks like they are running both an on-going blog and a quarterly (the first edition, August 2005, is available here).

And it also looks like they are attracting some “big names” in the world of technology and education. Their first issue includes articles and interviews with Jerry Graff, Michael Joyce, and Richard Lanham. Something I’ll have to check out in more detail soon.

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What's wrong with Kansas?

Nick Carbone just posted this Inside Higher Ed story to various mailing lists, “University as Author?” which is about a pending case before the Kansas Supreme Court which might decide that the Kansas Board of Regents can declare that it “owns” all of the rights to the intellectual property of faculty teaching at public colleges.

Of course, what the Board of Regents is really going for is a piece of the action for technologies developed in the laboratories at Kansas universities. There’s not a lot of money to be made by most English professor-types. But there might be some implications to the Board’s/University’s grab at all this Intellectual property for the likes of me:

Ann Springer, associate counsel for the American Association of University Professors, which filed a brief on the dispute, said that if colleges own their professors’ works, then they are also responsible for the content. “They would have to review everything that is written,� she said, adding that if the university were considered responsible for content, it might seek to contain controversial content. “I don’t think [the University of] Colorado wants to be responsible for all of Ward Churchill’s writing, but they would be.� She added that faculty members would have far less incentive to innovate if the institution could claim full ownership of their work.

I do think that the Board/University is entitled to some portion of IP rights, especially for IP that is developed largely with the support of the University and IP that is developed by a faculty members as part of his or her job. But I don’t think they ought to get all of it. And if this decision were to be upheld, I think you would see a chilling of innovation, and/or some interesting wranglings by professors to protect their rights.

For example, if I write an academic book (or textbook or a novel or a musical or whatever), if I receive some sort of release from the institution to complete that book, and if that book “counts” in the process of tenure and review, then I am okay with the institution claiming at least a portion of that IP. Not all of it, but some of it, probably negotiated in some process (at EMU, that would probably be a union issue). On the other hand, if I write a book with no support from the institution and if it doesn’t count as “intellectual work” in the tenure and review process (btw, in my department, a textbook does indeed count as a “book”), then I don’t think I owe the institution a dime.

Maybe the smart thing for these professors in Kansas to do (and who knows, it might be the rest of us sooner than later) would be to carefully construct a very specific and legally defined “life” outside of the institution. As I understand it, there are plenty of academics (particularly in fields like business, law, medicine, but also in areas like education, journalism, and public relations) who maintain a “private practice” or a “consulting” business while being a professor. Framed as that sort of arrangement, perhaps faculty-types would have a better chance of holding on to the IP that is really theirs and theirs alone.

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Blogging and "academic branding"

I’ve read and read about the Chronicle of Higher Education article “Master (or Mistress) of Your Domain” by Michael J. Bugeja in a couple of different places, but I like the way John talks about the article here. I disagree with the presumption that Bugeja is making about what it takes to become an associate or full professor, to be “nationally recognized,” because the majority of colleges and universities are not tier 1 research facilities and thus have different standards for tenure.

But I do agree (obviously) that it’s a good idea for academics to have a web site and to even think about investing in your very own domain name. I’ve been darn happy with stevendkrause.com. Sure, I have to pay a little money out of pocket, but it’s much more reliable service than EMU’s servers and I can pretty much do whatever I want with it. Personally, I think it’s the best $40 or $50 a year I spend.

Slight update:

Oh yeah– Like Collin, I too think that Bugeja’s self-promotion is kinda creepy and slimy-sounding. I do think it’s important for academics to do self-promotion, something that I think many folks (including me) are kind of reluctant to do. On the other hand, Bugeja has probably gone a wee-bit too far here.

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What academic blogging means to me (and what it is likely to mean in the coming year or so…)

As I mentioned the other day, Alex and Collin both had some very good and reflective posts about the reasons for academic blogging. Good posts. Go read them.

For me, keeping an academic blog has been useful and satisfying for all kinds of different reasons. I use this blog space to kind of keep notes and make links for myself (for teaching, for scholarship), my blog is a way making connections with other scholarly-types, I like the immediacy of blogging, I like the control I have, and I like the attention, modest though it may be. This is just a guess, but I’m pretty sure that more people read my blog every month than have ever read my more “real” scholarly publications.

In fact, I for one am likely to write even more on my scholarly blog and even less in more conventional outlets, at least for the next year or two. Why? Because I can.

See, in the next week or two, I should be will be as done as I am likely to get with a textbook project that I’ve been working on (and off and on) for years now. That’s the kind of project that will make you want to take a “break,” believe me.

Plus I’m in a comfortable and “settled” space life and career-wise. I’ve been tenured for a while now, and, because of the way things work at EMU, I will almost certainly be promoted again to “Professor” in a few years based on the work I’ve already done. My wife, Annette Wannamaker, is going to be starting a position in the department here at EMU as an assistant professor, specializing in Children’s Literature. This situation– both of us employed in good tenure-track positions that allow us to live in the same house like “normal” couples– has been something we’ve been working to achieve for almost 10 years now. We’re darn happy about it and because of this arrangement and the difficulty in getting this deal in the first place, I seriously doubt that we’ll be leaving EMU (which means we won’t be “going on the market” again, which we’re pretty darn happy about, too).

In other words, I’ve reached a point in my career where I don’t have to play the usual “publish or perish” games. And because of that, why not just blog?

Of course, my situation is a bit unique and perhaps different from a lot of other bloggers out there. It seems to me that grad students and tenure-seeking faculty need to make some careful decisions about blogging, about what to write or not write (I’m thinking here of the need to avoid posting things to a blog that might hurt future or on-going employment), and about how much and how often to write. Collin says that blogging is something that has helped him with his other academic writings, but I think I tend to agree with Alex when he writes:

You don’t give up other scholarly pursuits completely to go “all in� on blogging (or, at least, most don’t). But the truth is, rather than writing this entry, I could be working on a half-dozen other projects that would actually show up on a vita. The direct payout is not at all clear.

And again, by “direct payout,” I think what Alex means is stuff that will count in the academic game of getting a tenure-track job, getting tenured or getting a better academic job, getting promoted, etc.

For me, blogging is a benefit in and of itself. But I also see it as a dangerous procrastination activity. In the time I have spent this morning on this entry, I could have (probably should have) gotten some more work done on my textbook. Which is what I think I’ll go do right now…