The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: jimbogumbo on Today at 12:10:29 PMDid I mention the snipers? Yes, State Police head Carter has confirmed that over the two days this "action" was undertaken there were in fact police snipers on rooftops. All to combat a protest which featured no violence, no destruction and in fact little (if any) disruption of campus activities.

Holy shit. What the ever-living fuck?! Talk about making 'some' students feel unsafe on campus.

Different topic, but an interthread connection (first two paragraphs): https://prospect.org/education/2024-05-02-many-faces-of-campus-activism/

It is simler in this way also. Administrators always overreact, contrary to Fox News headlines.


I asked someone once about a student I suspected of lying about an instructor. All I to my source was I'm going to say a name, tell me what you think. Her response: " He lies, he lies all the time. He can't help himself. He lies even when the truth would be better for him."


That was definitely the case at IU, and AZ, and WI etc etc. The response simply makes things worse for the campus. In the IU case, yes they could ask the police in (albeit under a shady pretext), but it wasn't in the administration's best interest. They did it anyway.


Even if justified to have police get students to disperse, batons, let alone snipers, rubber bullets or chemical gas is unjustified for peaceful gatherings. Almost all of these were peaceful UNTIL cops started busting.


No matter whether the students are justified, ill-informed or pawns, the institutional response is often counter productive.


And in case you think I'm over reacting, in two days it will be May 4, followed soon by May 15. We've done it before, and learned nothing.

In some ways the situation is much simpler than any of that.

The students are occupying government property designated for a specific activity, not camping, or private property that is designated for whatever, but not camping.

If administration tells students they have to go, it is a lawful command.  Same with the cops.  If the students do not leave, the cops can lawfully use reasonable force (and before we vilify them too much, police are not breaking heads or using chokeholds, they are wrestling students and sometimes a professor into handcuffs and then escorting them off campus----hardly the treatment Palestinians are subject to).

Should police not enforce lawful orders simply because the complaints against Israel are justifiable? 

Also "duplicative language without appropriate attribution": As a society, we're like the Marlon Brando character Johnny Strabler in The Wild One. "Hey Johnny," a woman asks him, "what are you rebelling against?" His laconic, iconic response: "Whaddya got?"

Loved Oppenheimer.  Fell asleep half way through Barbie.  Don't think I'm it's demographic.

Quote from: dismalist on Today at 12:52:02 PMI don't give a shit about which higher education institutions will survive in the eternal struggle for resources. There are enough that some good ones will surely survive. I see the current fracas on campuses as a failure of governance in some places. Those with good governance will succeed.

But, to not put too dismal an edge on this, there is [Robert] Conquest's Third Law of Politics: The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. :-)

Somebody explains ["duplicative language without appropriate attribution" follows]: What makes this paradox so insightful? I take it to mean that any organisation that survives long enough ends up being run in such a way as to contradict its founding purpose. As an organisation grows and becomes more complex, it ends up acting primarily to ensure its own perpetuation. The purpose for which it was founded becomes secondary to its own survival. In fact, for many in the organisation, possibly the vast majority, its continued survival becomes confused with the purpose it was originally founded to deliver. This can lead to behaviours that seem rational when viewed from the perspective of perpetuating the organisation but look counter-intuitive when considered from the perspective of what the organisation ostensibly exists to do.

This is descriptively good stuff. I'm just predicting that those protesting got the details wrong. To hell with psychologizing -- they're being instrumentalized, useful idiots.

Pretty much what Ivan Illich wrote in the 1970's. Eventually, any organization evolves to become the cause of the problems it was designed to solve.  Healthcare, education etc.  Healthcare was designed to reduce suffering but causes a fair bit of harm and suffering along the way.  Teaching students about structural racism and violence - and they take it far too seriously and start to engage in their own separation into in/out groups and maybe tearing up the quad.

Quote from: jimbogumbo on Today at 12:10:29 PM[. . .]

Never any major shows of police force, because essentially nothing was shut down.

[. . .]

Paralysis followed by incompetent overreaction by the corporate management of Ivy League and Ivy League-adjacent universities reflects the new normal. Well, not really new, since Thorstein Veblen wrote about this over a hundred years ago in The Higher Learning in America and The Theory of the Leisure Class. Tents and building occupations are bad PR that could hurt the bottom line, especially as commencement ceremonies draw near.

Quote from: dismalist on Today at 12:52:02 PM[. . .]

there is [Robert] Conquest's Third Law of Politics: The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. :-)

[. . .]

You've reminded me of Erving Gottman's "total institutions."

Quotethey're being instrumentalized, useful idiots.

Got to internationalize something. If not the Intifada, something else.

Quote from: lightning on April 30, 2024, 01:50:13 PMI've attended two of them. Both were pleasant and entertaining. It certainly was not a waste of time. The first one that I attended was more like a traditional reunion, in that social media had not taken over yet as the primary medium for staying connected with people from high school. I caught up with people that I had not heard from in years. I maintained contact with them via social media. I was not an early adopter of social media, but after the reunion event, I went all in.

The organizers for the second more recent reunion that I attended were brilliant, in that they acknowledged how social had media replaced a lot of what high school reunions were used for, so the reunion event was shorter, much less formal, and a lot cheaper. I even brought SO Lightning. Folks were friendly. Any enmity or anxieties from the old days did not re-surface.

I'll be honest. Returning to a high school reunion as a tenured full professor at a widely recognized university with recognized D1 athletics, was an ego boost, when re-connecting with the "cool" kids and my clique of "smart" kids, both of whom peaked & had their best years of their life in high school . . . . .

There, I said it. Hate me.

Closest I came to a high school reunion was coming across the contact details of my high school girlfriend.  I sent a short message of greeting.  Reply came back to the general effect of "That's nice.  Next time, don't call us, we'll call you."  So much for happy memories of a sadly non-misspent youth.

I am not aware of any high school reunions, but I get an invite to my undergrad class reunion every few years.  I've never been able to go, but I also do what lightning does and humble brag my arse off.  I was NOT a stellar undergrad, but it's a lot of fun to email them using my uni address and sig line, plus links to Research Gate, Google Scholar and LinkedIn along with "sorry I can't make it. I have a flight to Johannesburg that day." 

Anybody who gets a chance to rub it in the faces of the "cool kids" (and I was most assuredly not one) should take it.

There, I said it.  You can hate me too.

The Friends group in Fairfax County [VA] Public Library system is having quite a sale:
https://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2024/05/record-setting-number-of-books-on-sale-to-help-reston-regional-library/
Posted on WTOP Radio 5/1/24

Yesterday morning, two outreach staff from the city public school system did a tabling event out front of our library.