the wonder that is facnet

Facnet is a campus email list for general discussion of matters of interest to the university community, in particular the faculty. I believe it was named facnet to mean "faculty-network," but the scrip list is open and the archives are public.

Consequently, lots of faculty and staff shoot their mouths off on facnet.

For instance, facnet was a venue for complaints about Sarah Palin being chosen as a fund-raising speaker at a 50th anniversary gala for the university this summer. I weighed in on that one only to the effect that public universities' foundation boards maintain accounting secrecy in California, and so we have no right to know how much the university is paying for this event. Others expressed dismay at her choice because she's inappropriate as a speaker at (1) a public university, (2) in need of more public funds, (3) which might be achievable only with tax increases, (4) which she is apparently opposed to, given her activity with the so-called tea party movement, and, oh yes, (5) she's an idiot.

Meanwhile, several people, mainly staff members of the university rather than faculty, attacked critics for being leftists, for only wanting leftists to speak on campus, and so forth. This is both an ad hominem fallacy, and rather deliberately ignoring the context (there have been very few leftist speakers at the university, and certainly no one who represents the fringe the way Palin used to in the GOP).

Our commencement speaker (Marc Lamont Hill) was named this week, and from the same pool of staff came a weird, veiled accusation, couched not only in condescending and ad hominem rhetoric, but also an attempt at sarcasm. "Where is the outrage?" was the opening salvo. The email went on to make totally bizarre and non sequitir connections to other campus political issues, and to conclude, under a thin veil, that faculty are leftists and therefore only object to right-wing speakers because of this ideological divide.

I responded, pointing out that almost all of the email was making irrelevant points, and making the case that, regardless of all else, the choice of a speaker on campus should be open to honest debate. This morning, in another fit of attempted sarcasm, the emailer thanked me for "going the extra mile" and thanked all the faculty for not disappointing. The implication of this, I suppose, is that we confirmed the emailer's preconceptions.

I feel like posting a lesson in sarcasm, or a list of definitions of fallacies committed in this exchange. Because there's a way to use these elegantly, and then there's what the emailer did. I don't mind being the target of sarcasm or ad hominem as much when it's done well.

Perhaps I'll develop a little primer on successful sarcasm later, like the one I did years ago on the dos and don'ts of sneering. Some people, as George Carlin used to say, need practical advice.

fatal education

I could have typed that as "fetal," and said most of what I meant.

I teach a course I designed years ago about various political, pedagogical, epistemological, and ethical issues of life in the mediated, siliconized, affluent parts of the world. It's part of a pair of connected courses on the theme of human being in the information age. For several springs now I've used a book on post-structuralist thought and information technology - Mark Poster's Mode of Information. It's not easy reading, and every couple years I seek out an alternative, only to find that there's nothing else out there that does the philosophical heavy lifting and the concentrated concern with contemporary social life that Poster's book does.

Anyway, I go through this thing every year and do more work on Baudrillard, Foucault, and Lyotard (the three chapters in the book that I have my students read). Every year I write pages and pages of stuff that is somewhere between notes and an academic paper, and sometimes I share these with my class.

But what's really striking to me at this moment about the course is that nothing in my teaching life causes me more anxiety. This class is slowly, by degrees, killing me. I feel sick and panicky right now - half an hour before class, totally prepared, not only with a main agenda but several side trips we can go on, and no fewer than two backup plans in case the whole thing goes kablooey. My respiration is rapid and shallow, my pulse and blood pressure are elevated, my skin is clammy. (I am not hyperventilating, though if were to start, it's an interesting random fact about me that I am one of the best-performing hyperventilators on record. I figure this is because I am LungBoy [TM], with a lung capacity approximately 150% of normal adult males. Another story for another time, perhaps.)

Partly, this is because this course has provided me both some of the most rewarding and exhilarating, and some of the most dismal and soul-crushing, teaching experiences. I have succeeded and failed spectacularly in the course.

I never feel entirely confident handling this course material, which I know extremely well, because I can never tell how my students will respond, how they'll take it, whether they'll take it. I never actually feel like I've mastered the course material sufficiently (as though this was a necessary condition of teaching it, and as though teaching doesn't actively construct one's mastery on the fly, but ya know what I mean...).

I never walk into the class confident that all my students won't walk out. That's a weird feeling to have. Maybe today's the day?

privacy

Is your garbage private?

The press release today from the CSU Stanislaus administration suggests that CSU Stanislaus Foundation Executive Director Susana Gajic-Bruyea's garbage is private. The press release omits the information that Gajic-Bruyea is also Vice President for University Advancement - that is, an employee of the CSU, with an office in the CSU Stanislaus administration building. That's important, because the administration is claiming that the Foundation Board and the university are really separate entities.

It's important because, in the press release, the allegation is presented that the allegedly non-existent document state senator Leland Yee acquired outlining some of the details of the university's contract with Sarah Palin was discovered to be missing from Gajic-Bruyea's recycling bin in her office.

AFTER Leland Yee's press conference, in which documents related to the Palin fund-raiser were presented to the press, the university's Vice President for Advancement (who also serves as the Executive Director for the Foundation Board) looked through the recycle bin in her office for the relevant pages of the contract, and found that they were missing. The university has launched an investigation into, basically, who could have stolen documents from the recycle bin...

Here's what I imagine happens to my garbage and what I pitch into the recycle bin in my department office, in my narrow-minded rationalistic conception of the world and causality: I imagine that people take it away and recycle it, or take it to the dump, as appropriate. When I return to my office days after having thrown something away, and find that it's not there, my first thought is not that it's been stolen. I'm not generally surprised when documents I put in the recycling bin aren't there afterwards. That's because, to me, a recycling bin is a place to put things I expect other people to take away and recycle, and a garbage can is place to put things I am throwing away that I expect other people to take away and compost, burn, or put in a landfill.

Do I retain a privacy right, or property right, or any other kind of right over the things I thus discard?

What could be the basis of the assertion of such a right? Do I have it only if I've discarded or recycled something the discovery of which is embarrassing to me? So, can I throw away, hypothetically speaking, gloves I've worn while committing a crime, and when these are later found in my trash, assert that my trash can is, as it were, my confessor, and throwing my bloody gloves in the trash tantamount to a protected confidence?

Let me offer another analogy. Let's say I've just shot Tony Danza to death in cold blood. (I most certainly did not. This is the kind of thing some philosophers like to call a thought experiment.) I then throw my pistol into a dumpster. Someone finds my pistol, and police begin an investigation, using the pistol as evidence. Do I have, at that point, legitimate grounds to say that the pistol I threw away was my private trash, not meant for anyone else to have, to see, or to use against me in legal action?

Let's say I throw the pistol away in my office (which is a place of public accommodation, where I have very little right to privacy). How legitimate are my grounds to say this is private material of my own?

I'm not at all sure I've got a good analogy going here, but I suppose I was seduced by the trope of the smoking gun.

welcome to CSU Ionesco

I love absurdist drama - have since I saw a terrific high school production of The Bald Soprano, as part of the North Carolina high school theater competition. (My play, Escape, was being performed by my school, so I went to the regional and state competitions.)

I never wanted to exist inside an absurdist drama, but now I do.

So, the university turns 50 this year. Celebrations are planned for the summer, including what the university Foundation Board is billing as The 50th Anniversary Gala fund-raiser, starring Sarah Palin (presumably as Mrs. Smith). When this was announced, there was a tremendous backlash, some of it about Palin, but much of it about how the Foundation Board came to this decision, how it would be paid for, etc.

Ready? Here we go!

Under California law, the Foundation Boards of all public universities and colleges are not subject to the California Public Records Act. The Foundations are considered separate entities to that extent. Public money is used by Foundation Boards - sometimes a lot of it - and their purpose is, on paper, to support the public university, but the Foundation Boards themselves aren't public.

The Board has come under fire for choosing Palin, and the inappropriateness of her as a speaker at a public university has been pretty embarrassing to the university. People snicker about it.

When state senator Leland Yee filed a public records act request for documents regarding Palin's contract with the university, the Foundation Board told him there weren't any. Then they sent email to the campus assuring us that no public money was being used. If it's not immediately clear to you how you can have a contract without any documents, or how you can have a record that you're not spending public money on an event without any documents, then you're still sane and sober. Let me push you a little further into our madness.

At a press conference today, Yee broke the story that last week, during the university's spring break, and during furlough days when university employees are not working, employees of the Foundation Board were on campus, shredding documents. Documents related to Sarah Palin's fund-raising event. Including the contract.

And then they put the shredded documents in plastic bags in a dumpster. Where some students found them.

Our Foundation Board has oversight and approval authority over everything printed with the university logo on it. When I requested business cards, they had to approve them - not the issuing of them, but what was printed on the card. This is in order to protect the public image of the university.

Let's recap: Act One. Foundation Board needs to promote and protect the image of the university. Enter Sarah Palin. Snickering. Act Two. Deny existence of documents that aren't subject to public scrutiny in the first place. Shred them. Toss them in dumpster.

It's not that way, it's over here! It's not that way, it's over here! It's not that way, it's over here!

rejection season

I've received a handful of rejection letters from the various universities I've applied to for tenure-track positions. Most have been standard-issue form letters that say, more or less, "we've filled the position, we received many high-quality applications, thanks for applying." This doesn't say anything about your application, its relative merits, etc. It doesn't say whether yours wasn't a good fit.

Occasionally, they get more detailed, sometimes even telling you when something odd happened during the process. For instance, I got one this year saying that the funding for the position was reduced so that it went from an open-rank position to entry-level. (That I received that might mean that they assumed I wouldn't work for the cheaper price, which could have been true, but I'll never know.)

Years ago, I got one from a school in a very lovely place, who had put out a very general job description, that noted they received more than 700 applications.

Today I received one of the weirder ones. It had the usual form letter fare, but then included a final paragraph that said (to paraphrase): "Obviously, this is disappointing, but keep in mind that your achievements are abiding." What the ?

I have to assume everyone they rejected got this letter, and that it wasn't sent to some particular group of applicants who had either more extensive or more impressive CVs. I mean, I do have 40-some conference presentations, a handful of peer-reviewed publications, several book chapters, and so forth, but under contemporary standards I don't think that's a lot of accomplishment as a scholar. Plus, to me, "abiding" (that word is verbatim) suggests enduring, as though something I've done has significantly changed the philosophy world, and I know for fact this is impossible. Or at least not deliberate.

text of a speech I didn't give at the CFA Assembly

The 72nd CFA Assembly was held in Los Angeles this weekend, so yes, it was our second trip down to LA in 9 days. We just drove back up through Kern County dust and windstorms (which badly scratched the passenger side door of Eddie Jetta by nearly impaling us with a tumbleweed), and hard rain through Madera, Merced, and Stanislaus counties. It was harrowing, and now I've got to try to calm myself, and get some work done for my long class day tomorrow.

Luckily, last night I hardly slept. I was up half the night thinking about what a hellish academic year this has been for us and for our families and students. In particular it's been hell on lecturers.

I spoke last night to a lecturer activist whose campus is contemplating cutting 80% of the remaining lecturers for next academic year. It brought back so much of the strife we've dealt with at Santa Claus the last couple years, and my own personal worries about the end of my job here, and of the end of my academic career - a real possibility still, but more remote for me.

It got me thinking about the relative risks, rewards, and stress levels of faculty activists who are on the tenure track versus those of us on the tenuous track. This isn't to say the tenure-line faculty have been anything less than superb in their support -- for the most part. But they haven't so immediately faced loss of employment, loss of their colleagues, and the guilt and unfair blame we feel.

At the Assembly we discussed the CSU Chancellor's latest scheme to invent a problem and impose a draconian solution that helps to blame faculty - this "deliverology" nonsense they've bought from Michael Barber. CFA brought in a Barber critic named John Seddon to speak about how deliverology has worked in the UK (a key example: their public health service is now much worse and the cost management controls imposed by deliverology have resulted in increased costs).

So, there lie in bed, thinking that after all we've done to try to help preserve as many jobs of our fellow lecturers as we can, along comes a new plan that will necessarily result (is planned to result) in even greater loss of faculty work. And I got up and wrote a few words to say at the Assembly. I wouldn't have read it, but I would have used it to speak from - so I'd be more loose and spontaneous, which I like. Anyway, since I didn't say it, here's the text I wrote:

Good morning fellow faculty activists. I wanted to say something this morning about what has been, for me at least, the elephant in the room this whole weekend. Could I have all the lecturer activists please stand for a moment?

[Presumably, they'd stand. They're about 33% of the Assembly.]

I've spoken to many of my fellow lecturer activists at the Assembly this weekend, and not a single one expressed any confidence at all of returning to work, and to our struggle, next academic year. This is important to me because all of the troubles and stress we've dealt with has been compounded for lecturers who know their jobs are even more precarious now than a year ago, despite our fighting back. I hope to see all of you next fall. Thanks, you can sit down again now if you like.

We know why our situation is as precarious as ever next year: deliverology. I don't know about anyone else here, but I think the original version of this story by Franz Kafka is much better written. It also has a happier ending.

Because all of us are exhausted, and all of us can't afford to stop fighting, and all of us are facing the potential futility of our fight, I wanted, finally, to offer something I've been telling myself all year, for what it's worth. No matter the outcome for ourselves and for our colleagues, we haven't failed. We haven't failed ourselves, we haven't failed our colleagues or students, and we haven't failed our universities. And no matter the outcome, we should have hope. I don't have hope because I think the outcome will be good - I don't, in fact. I have hope because we're here now, and because we have fought, in solidarity and in love, and no matter what happens, we still won that solidarity and that love.

if it's not one thing, it's another

Been a long time since I've added any of

Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things

8. Old arenas. I just love 'em.

Tonight marks the very last regular-season NHL game in Pittsburgh's Civic Arena, known officially for the last decade as "Mellon Arena," because Mellon Bank (now Bank of New York Mellon) bought naming rights, but which the cognoscenti know is really the Igloo. The Penguins will play the New York Islanders. (Since the Pens are in the playoffs, this won't be the last NHL game played in the Igloo.)

Originally opened for the Ice Capades in 1961, the Igloo is the oldest arena in use in the NHL. All the old rinks have been replaced. It started in 1980 with Joe Louis Arena replacing the old Detroit Olympia. Joe Louis is sleek, ultra-modern, and therefore dated (ESPN's John Buccigross recently compared it to a K-car, which is apt). The Red Wings have been terrific in the Joe, so that's built some degree of atmosphere for the place, but in general, the modern arenas are soulless. Maple Leaf Gardens, the Forum in Montreal, the Buffalo Auditorium, Chicago Stadium - all replaced with these big box places.

I only attended one Penguins game at the Igloo, despite living there 8 years (and that's a whole nother story), and it was after having lived in California longer than that. We had seats in the very last row, right under the dome. Sound from the ice and from loudspeakers got kind of swallowed up, up there, but the feel of the place was still somehow intimate (compared to the San Jose Sharks' home arena, where a similar seat, costing a similar amount, is actually located in a virtual space stored on a series of servers distributed mainly in Quincy, Washington).

7. Post-punk alternative bands. I just love 'em.

My most recent obsession is with a band called Land of Talk. They are also yet another Canadian band (which has been a weird trend for me lately - New Pornographers, Feist - what gives?). As far as this kind of band goes, Land of Talk has some fairly predictable characteristics: high energy; discordant, angular guitar sound; occasionally screechy vocals; lots of angsty lyrics. This kind of thing can be done very very badly. Very. But when it's done well, and I submit that Land of Talk do it very well, it stomps up and down on several very important buttons in my brain. Very good accompaniment to a drive to the recycling center, for instance.

gala event this summer at Santa Claus!

Late last week, just before a staff furlough day, the university's Foundation Board announced that Sarah Palin would speak at this summer's 50th anniversary celebration, as a fund-raiser. This has provoked the kind of reaction you might expect from faculty -- anger that someone of her ilk was chosen to speak as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of a public university.

The conversation on campus has largely consisted of faculty and some staff saying she's inappropriate because she's demonstrated the intellectual integrity and curiosity of a deranged sociopathic muskox in heat, and other staff and administrative people saying that her detractors are leftists and should shut up because her invitation restores political balance to campus events. I think the balance of truth on these issues is clearly on the side of the muskox, but I also think this debate misses the point.

The other topic of conversation is whether she's going to be a viable fund-raiser, given that the event as described involves her speaking (at an amount the university refuses to disclose, although she commands $100,000 speaking fees), a five-course dinner, and dancing. At $500 a ticket, the university would have to sell 200 tickets to make up her speaking fee -- and never mind the tremendous amount it would cost for the dinner, dancing, rentals, security, etc. The university Foundation Board has responded to this issue by saying that not one red cent of public money would pay for her speaking fee, and that the event is to raise money, not to address the university. I don't think that's the point, either. (Although it's obviously also not an intellectually honest response, since the money in the Foundation Board is meant to be used prudently for the advancement of the public good served by the university. Claiming that the university community and their values aren't important in making this decision suggests that the only business the university believes it's in is business.)

Today it was revealed that Fox News' new Sarah Palin show (which isn't, yet, called "The Sarah Palin Show") had planned to air a segment edited to make it appear Palin had interviewed LL Cool J about his being a real American. LL Cool J discovered this, made a fuss about it, and Fox News pulled his segment, expressing their disappointment that he didn't want to be associated with a program that could inspire Americans. Interesting.

I think the real issue here is how this decision was made, by whom, when, involving what kinds of planning processes, with whose input. A current university employee with GOP political aspirations works on that side of the house, for instance. That person has consistently vilified the faculty and dismissed student concerns about budget priorities, the unilateral change to our academic calendar, and other issues that have plagued the university in the last several years. The decision has been made with absolutely no consideration of the actual community the university serves, the actual community the university is, or the real working and learning lives of the members of the university. This is not my interpretation, it is the Foundation Board's own claim about their choice.

What this illustrates is how universities have evolved as organizations (for it is a widespread tendency, not at all isolated to this campus). One part of the university engages in the day-to-day work of teaching and learning, where students and faculty engage in the challenge of education, in what are almost uniformly uncomfortable, poorly-equipped, poorly-maintained, inadequate and impoverished spaces -- because resources are not spent on improving the teaching and learning environment until absolutely necessary, or funded by a prominent, elite donor. Every month I encounter classrooms without supplies, or without working equipment, and the staff charged with those essential background activities can't keep up. Another part of the university spends large quantities of money on raising money, and does not have any legal requirement to account for its activities. My part of the university claims that the money-raising part of the university should be working in the interest of the university. The money-raising part of the university claims I have no right to ask about their activities, and that their activities aren't relevant to me, aren't addressed to me, and aren't for me.

Nominally, the university is in the business of education - teaching, learning, research, scholarship, creative activity, cultural re-production, the development of citizens. There is another, shadowy university that has no other purpose than fund-raising. And its purposes beyond that are not something they can be called upon to discuss.

face-to-face politics

To the driver who honked his horn, shot me the bird, and proceeded to yell at me about Barack Obama at the corner of Crowell and Monte Vista this evening at 8:58 PM:

Your approach to political discussion is interesting. Obviously, you noticed the Obama/Biden magnet on my trunk, and decided I was an appropriate person to talk to. As an invitation to dialogue, a blaring car horn and a fuck-you gesture significantly inform, as did your initial shouted question, "You actually like what this guy is doing to the country?" I rolled up my window and didn't engage with you because I don't believe the complexity of the issue of health care reform could probably be meaningfully discussed in those circumstances.

Now I'm remembering how I responded to all those "W '04" bumper stickers I saw absolutely everywhere here as the economy tanked and the Iraq fiasco dragged on in 2007 and 2008. I kept driving.

Of course, I did sometimes express to other passengers in my own car that I thought the economic, social, and global policies of the Bush administration were terrible, sometimes illegal, sometimes unethical. I never flipped anybody off and yelled at them because of a "W '04" sticker, and I frankly believe taxing people in the top 3% or so of income in order to extend health care to people who are susceptible of going bankrupt over an illness is a much better idea than invading a country on the basis of a series of false pretexts.

I'm sure you're really genuinely angry that health care reform has passed, and that you genuinely believe expanding health care coverage for more people is somehow illegal, unethical, and terrible. (It follows that you'll refuse to accept any benefits that may accrue to you as a result of passing the bill.)

But we can't talk, not on your terms.

the significance of notes

Phenomenology is hard.

I'm working today on a revision of a paper on sensation, re-directing phenomenological attention from the usual -- the transcending perceptual act of a subject consciousness -- to the subjection of our senses to their basic elements. It's tough stuff, for a lot of very complicated reasons that would take too long to explain here.

Anyway, I'm re-reading one of the greats, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, and stumbled across this typically intriguing line:

"Just as, when I look closely at snow, I break its apparent 'whiteness' up into a world of reflections and transparencies, so within a musical note a 'micromelody' can be picked out and the interval heard is merely the final patterning of a certain tension felt throughout the body."

(p 211 in the old Colin Smith translation - with, by the way, a footnote citing Heinz Werner. Some people think Merleau-Ponty stole his phrasings and ideas from others, including Werner. I dunno.)

I tell Lauren this, and she doesn't seem to have this experience. I get certain feelings from particular notes, especially on a guitar - certain affective dimensions and resonances. E feels, in a way, earthen, solid, or even stony. A feels warm but changeable and a little slippery. D feels angular and pointy. And I mean the notes, not the chords or keys - though the keys carry forward a lot of that general atmosphere from their home notes (as it were).

So not only do particular individual notes have proto-meanings for me, but changing the key of a song alters its emotional color to some extent as well. Take a well-known old song that's been stuck in my head all day: Roger Miller's "King of the Road." There's a key change for the last verse, up one-half step, which is a weird thing to do in a guitar song anyway, but also, to me, fundamentally alters the way the song tenses and releases.

Naturally, I assumed I was being goofy, until I read that line. Merleau-Ponty's description is right on for how a given note feels to me, though I'm emphasizing the emotional rather than the bodily feeling of it. Mid-20th century cognitive psychology, in particular by Gestalt psychologists, is strongly suggestive of these kinds of links - Merleau-Ponty spends a lot of time describing their research on the connection of color to mood, for instance. We know, too, that brain anatomy is partly responsible for the connection between smell and memory. So why shouldn't notes have that kind of relation as well? Maybe I'm not that goofy after all.

tax burden

I just filed our taxes for 2009. We're getting our usual sizable refund.

As I was filing, I was thinking about the way people complain bitterly about the burden of taxation that US citizens are prone to feeling they're under. People complain that 1/3 or some absurd amount is taken away from them by the greedy government. Like most people, I do object to some of what the government spends money on, though my list is different from most tax revolutionaries' lists. (I like roads and schools, not so much prisons and wars.) But the notion that the government is paupering us to spend like drunken sailors doesn't really fit the fact pattern in my life.

This year, a typical year for me, my effective rate of taxation, after all the deductions and so forth, was a grand total of 11.34%. Now, if you look just at the very much reduced federal "taxable" income (which is about 1/3 less than my adjusted gross income), I pay about 12.97% of that to the feds. But if you take the tax amount from the adjusted gross, my total federal tax is a quite reasonable and doable 8.95%. My rent per month is more than double what I pay in federal income tax.

The state tax is even more interesting. Californians of a certain political stripe love to harp on the incredibly high tax burden of Californians. This is a lie, there's no other word for it. The actual rate of property tax here is below every other state I'm familiar with. And the income tax is even lower. My income tax rate this year, versus my taxable income, was 2.7%. In relation to my adjusted gross income, it was 2.4%.

You know what? I pay about the same amount per month for satellite TV as for state income taxes. (And again, I'd prefer more schools than prisons...)

There are governments that impose serious taxes on people, and do things like fund universal health care, strong educational systems, programs to eliminate the urge to commit crimes, and to rehabilitate people who do. Given how much of our tax dollars go to the military-industrial complex, and how little goes to helping ordinary people's lives, the social services portion of our tax dollars are stretched incredibly thinly. And most of us should shut the hell up about burdensome taxes.

the future of the CSU, part 2

Today, let's look at

Deliverology
Deliverology is the name of Chancellor Reed's latest, greatest initiative to... uh... to...

Well, on one hand, Deliverology is supposed to be a way to improve graduation rates, by cutting budgets and eliminating faculty authority over courses. If it's not clear why improving graduation rates depends on cutting budgets and eliminating faculty authority, then I suppose you're not up to date with the most recent trends in corporatized public institutional management.

Deliverology is the "make the trains run on time" practice developed in Great Britain by Sir Michael Barber, as a way to run trains on time. You get the idea. It turns out to be rather simple: to make the trains run on time, you eliminate stations, eliminate employees, and reduce service. And voilà! Trains. Running. On. Time.

Apparently, the basic evidence that Deliverology works is that customers figured out how to get around the system. The ingenuity of people should not be underestimated.

Anyway, since trains are exactly like higher education in every conceivable way, it's obvious that using these strategies will work perfectly to make higher ed work better in California. And "work better" here means... um... you know, better. Like, better.

How about we let Sir Michael Barber speak for himself on the need for Deliverology in higher education:

Obsessions with policies that are wrong and expensive, such as continuing marginal reductions in class size or protecting teachers' "rights" to teach as they wish in the citadel of their own classrooms, is widespread. Many still cling to the demonstrably false view that creativity consists of each teacher making it up in the classroom. This is not creativity, it is betrayal.

You see, it's simple. The basic problem in higher ed is that faculty insist on "making it up in the classroom," that is, "the citadel of their own classrooms" where they presume to have "'rights'" to... uh... to...

So, Deliverology is a theory which states that:

(1) Faculty do not have the right to determine what they teach, or how

(2) When faculty do determine what and how they teach, they betray (uh..., someone...)

(3) Faculty must be controlled, and their teaching determined by someone who knows better than faculty what faculty should teach (in their own areas of specialization, because they... don't... er... know?... their fields?

(4) Students get more from their educations when faculty don't use their expertise to determine what and how to teach in the classes they are... experts... uh... in?

You might wonder, why? At least, I do.

the future of the CSU

The CSU administration has begun rolling out a strategy for dismantling faculty power and gutting the last vestiges of the integrity of disciplines, in particular in the liberal arts and humanities. It has several elements. Today we'll look at

Restructuring

Restructuring refers to the CSU administration's intention to replace as many faculty-taught university classes as possible with online courses with much higher enrollments, taught through extended education. Most of the courses slated for restructuring are general education courses. Restructuring has several implications for faculty work.

(1) The faculty who had taught those courses through the regular university are often "temporary" faculty, who, at the CSU, are a relatively stable workforce some of whose members have preference for work (a right to be re-hired to the same or similar assignment of work and amount of work). That is to say, these are faculty who have taught at the CSU for long enough to establish that they are competent professionals. Their primary employment is typically at the CSU. Many of them have careers that parallel the tenure-track faculty in every way except that they are never eligible for tenure. Restructuring eliminates their work through the regular university, so it eliminates the job protections they have earned.

(2) By shifting regular faculty work into extended education, and eliminating these positions for untenured "lecturer" faculty, the CSU cuts their academic budget. In addition, because teaching work through extended education does not earn benefits, the CSU eliminates its costs in that regard. For the instructional faculty affected, this changes their work from relatively stable, relatively dignified, relatively regular work, earning benefits (for very many - you have to work at least 40% of full-time to earn benefits), to work that is as precarious as casual labor, temp work.

The reason we can be confident that this will happen -- that is, that the faculty work will be shifted to extended education rather than eliminated outright -- is that the demand for higher education is not significantly lower in California than it was before the economic recession and state budget crisis. In fact, it is higher, and has continued to grow. Not that that matters. The CSU has had the plan in place long before, and was waiting for the economic crisis to provide the opportunity and excuse to implement it. "Oh no!" administrators lament, "our budget has been slashed! We must do everything we can to make sure our students can continue their educations, but we just can't afford these pricey faculty employees! We have to outsource their work -- it's the only way!" Given that most CSUs spend less than half their income (much less) on instructional faculty, this is shameless lying.

(3) So, the upshot is, the official faculty of the university will shrink, drastically (more than 20% at CSU Stanislaus from Fall 2008 to Fall 2009, with 15% cuts planned for 2010-11 academic year!). Meanwhile, many of the same people will be re-hired by the university to teach the same classes for a fraction of their previous wages, without benefits. Much of their teaching work will be online, with little or no support for technology, little or no access to university resources (library, etc.). But many of us have families, or are in the habit of paying rent or eating, and we'll have to choose this worst-case-scenario employment.

For students, the implications are pretty devastating as well:

(1) Extended education courses are often called "self-support," which is a euphemism that means students will get no state funding to support their education in those courses, and will have no access to most kinds of financial aid. What most students and the public do not realize is that the state budget allocation to the CSU pays for around 70% of the cost of their education; they pay 30%. If they must pay 100% of the cost, the cost obviously goes way up for them. Add to that that they will not be eligible for aid. Add further that they will still have to enroll in the regular university in order to earn their degrees and take courses for their majors. Essentially, the CSU will require them to pay fees twice, while providing a lower quality of service and less access to that service.

(2) This means, pretty obviously to me at least, that students who have fewer financial resources will be increasingly left out of opportunities for CSU education. Some have said that the CSU administration are not at all secretly pleased with this result, since it will leave the CSU with a "more desirable" student body. This is another euphemism that I shall not unpack because the very idea of it is too disgusting to me to contemplate.

(3) Like my lecturer colleagues, students will be left with the worst-case-scenario option for continuing their educations at the CSU. They'll simply have no choice but to pay and pay again, or else give up.

Why?

(You have to read that with Cindy Lou Who's voice.)

I believe the CSU administration's agenda is to achieve the following:

(1) break down faculty labor into modular components

(2) outsource faculty labor to cheapest available vendors

(3) maximize the extraction of funds from consumers of their services

(4) maximize flexibility in the allocation of public funds

This is the same agenda that has been pursued by privateers of such governmental functions as defense, and such public functions as provision of utilities and services. The CSU's refusal of public accountability (for instance, in the case of their million-dollar political efforts to resist Senate Bill 218, which would have required CSU to give public audits of their foundation boards) is a strong indicator of their intentions.

another open letter

Dear Talentless Spam Email Marketers,

I really have no need for 74% 82% 80% 78% 83% 80% discounted Viagra. I'm not trying to brag, I'm really just tired of the spam. You could at least get your story straight on the discount.

Anyway, why do you figure I'm on the market? It's because I'm an avowed hockey fan, isn't it. Jerks.

Yours sincerely,

Exiled Nigerian Prince Martin Embegke

P.S. I have a special offer to tender only onto you, dear one...

new career options #4

I'm one of those people who talks back to television. I especially talk back to ads, when they speak to me in some special way, or when they seem to miss a golden opportunity of some kind. I wonder sometimes if I haven't missed my calling to be in the advertising business.

I couldn't do market research, which would bore me to death. I'd have to work on the creative side, coming up with taglines or writing copy. I'd re-write all the ads for Progressive insurance, for example. Here's my idea. Same set-up with the bright white fake big-box retail electronics store, same actress as "Flo." Same great big nametag. The main difference - it's subtle, but I think it would be very effective - is that when "Flo" leaps out at an unsuspecting customer to chirp manically about Progressive policies, they punch her in the face. Every commercial would have the same basic script. "Flo" pops up. "Can I he-" WHAM! Memorable, eh?

I can obviously write better than the people who are putting together the awful ads for Bud Light and Chevy. The Bud Light ads where the guys express their love for Bud Light more freely than for their women? Half-assed. In my Bud Light ad, we pan over piles of greasy pizza boxes and discarded aluminum cans and brown bottles - about 4 cases' worth of Bud Light. We discover a disheveled, greasy guy in a greasy Barcalounger, apparently passed out. See? Simple story, told with bold, indelible images. Perfect.

And then, Chevy. Here I think we want to identify our target audience. Sell Tahoes by showing them in use - being driven very badly on crowded freeways by people who are totally oblivious, or possibly comatose. Avalanches being driven aggressively, tailgating and swinging wildly from lane to lane, with, of course, nothing in the truck.

Not only am I a veritable font of brilliant advertising ideas, I also have experience in the very similar field of higher ed. All we really do in higher ed is persuade people to believe things without any evidence or reasoning, right? Right?

death eating a cracker, signifying nothing

I'm not sure how to set this up. I blame the dreams, and Neil Gaiman. We took a brief junket to SoCal during the interim between Winter and Spring over the weekend, and my dreams were bizarre. On the drive back, Lauren read to me from the Neil Gaiman novel we're reading right now, American Gods.

I ended up with this thought.

I am missing a certain register of belief. I can't account for this, at the moment, but I know it's true. I simply can't make myself take seriously those metaphysical concepts the human species seems so prone to apply to experiences of the cycle of life (birth, death, rebirth, etc.), the significance of life (sanctity, the general goodness of life), or any of the various ways people seem to like to assure themselves that they'll continue life everlasting.

What I realized today is that my basic metaphysical belief related to life is a simple, ridiculous, counterfactual sense that, whatever Life might mean, my life, as I understand and live it, is everlasting.

Don't get me wrong. I believe that I know that, realistically speaking, I will die sometime. Everything alive dies. But my sense of life, of my life, is that it does not end. I suppose this could be because I can't imagine what the end of my life would mean, aside from the consequences for the living. If I were to die, that would mean the end of my existence, but that's an empty idea to me. The end of my existence is inconceivable, because with the end of my existence, the universe ends.

Death, therefore, means nothing to me. Life means everything.

winter term

Todat is the last class day for me this Winter term, because I'm taking a furlough day on Monday. Which brings me to...

Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things

9. Winter Terms. I just love 'em.

A unique feature of this university has been it's unorthodox academic calendar, with two 13-week semesters (Fall and Spring) and a 4-week intensive Winter term between them. The Winter term changes the way one teaches and learns, or, if you are not assigned or taking a class during Winter, provides effectively (given when Fall ends and Spring begins) up to around 2 months' time between semesters for work, research, recharging, whatever. I've had some of my best teaching experiences and best periods of productive research during Winter.

Not only is tomorrow the last class day of this Winter term, but it's likely to be the last day of Winter term ever. The university president wanted to eliminate Winter term, so he formed a committee to conclude that it would save money during the budget crisis. That committee, illegitimately formed outside of normal channels, and ignoring processes and procedures in state law, CSU system policy, and local campus policy, concluded that it would in fact save money. There are really only two further problems with that committee's recommendations, namely, that it ignored the input of the many constituencies on campus that want to keep Winter term, and that their assumptions about cost savings ignored costs for changing all the courses in the university catalog (because we're shifting to an entirely different calendar).

So, the change eliminates a program popular with faculty and students, will make it harder for many of our students to graduate, will likely not save money, and the decision was made illegitimately. But that's not all. In fact, I'm disappointed that the discussion on campus of how bad this decision is focuses so much on the money it won't save.

The elimination of Winter term is part of the president's broad, unilateral restructuring of the university to emphasize non-state-support, for-profit units of the university and minimize the public funding for instruction at this increasingly allegedly public institution. Replacing Winter term in the new academic calendar will be a 3-week "inter-session" held through Extended Education (read: the for-profit unit of the university). This is part of a systemic effort, largely invisible to faculty, students, and most others who aren't looking extremely carefully, to phase out state-support academic programs that are less "efficient" and replace them with for-profit versions of the same course work. In addition, the effort is underway to turn away from our mission and toward technical programs.

Some faculty have decried this as a move away from the liberal arts mission the university initially had. Although that's true, and my own department - to say nothing of my own career - are targets for elimination as a result, I think this is driven not by some hatred of liberal arts. It's grasping for whatever might produce revenue most efficiently. Because the new mission of the university, the de facto mission, is just that: generating revenue, cutting costs. (I can see it in faux-Latin on an official crest: "ingenero vectigal , incidere sumptus.")

marriage ban

Proposition 8 is on trial. The judge in the case is asking its supporters for evidence that it will, as it was claimed, protect the institution of marriage from damage that same-sex marriage would cause. So far, defenders of Prop 8 have testified that same-sex marriage would be good for couples and children, and that there is no actual evidence that same-sex marriage will disrupt heterosexual couples. They just kinda know it will, they say.

Prop 8 supporters have also claimed that marriage is invalidated by couples who do not have biological children, since the sole purpose of marriage, according to them, is for sexual reproduction and child-rearing. These are obviously specious and intellectually dishonest claims, but hey, it's politics. It's not about telling the truth about your policy goals or motivations, it's about manipulating people to vote for them. However, the tide turned.

Today the San Francisco Chronic reported on the testimony of a long-time same-sex marriage opponent who claimed in court that same-sex marriage would increase divorce rates, again, without presenting any actual evidence. One might think you'd need evidence to support a claim like that.

One might be wrong! Face the facts: 100% of divorces are the result of marriages! Expanding marriage rights is going to increase the number of couples who divorce, because, as my statistics prove, marriage causes divorce.

The trial is making it increasingly clear that the only way to save the institution of marriage is to destroy it. Marriage is the leading cause of divorce. Therefore, marriage should be banned. T-shirts and bumper-stickers to follow.

new career options #3

I suppose an obvious new career option for anyone with a PhD in the humanities is to turn to crime.

I have some skills and relevant experience as a criminal. I can be very deceptive and sneaky (viz., PhD in humanities). I learned at a very young age how to move about the house without being heard or seen, at any hour I chose. Beginning in junior high, I taught myself how to palm things, hide them wherever I could, and how to use a credit card to break into doors or windows. [Incidentally, that's a skill I recommend to anyone. People forget their keys.]

Most of my criminal experience came during college - which I suppose is true for most college-educated people, of my generation at least. [College life has changed, and colleges have changed, and now there's far more surveillance and discipline going on for most students to get the full benefit of the opportunities campuses afford them.] A friend of mine and I started hanging around our campus late on Sunday nights during our freshman year. We spent a lot of time in the Art building, which was always open, legitimately or not, so some painter or sculptor or musician, or a pair of them, could get in to work or to meet for a tryst, or possibly both. It took a handful of Sundays hanging around there before we struck on the idea that other academic buildings could also be open - or made to be open.

We spent the next month of Sundays on nighttime prowls of the campus, checking every door to every building, seeing where we could go, what we could get into, mainly for the sheer hell of it. There were odd doors in odd buildings that people would prop open or forget to lock, and that gave us access to almost every building on campus over the time period of our crawls. We were experimenting on how far into any building we could get, and in the process learned a bit about what people were studying and researching.

In addition to our usual B&E activities, we would do whatever petty looting or stealing we could arrange easily. Because we had no money, we used to hunt under vending machines for lost change. One night my friend found a six-pack of generic orange soda behind a machine. We figured that meant the vending machine service people sometimes left surplus just lying on the floor, so that became a major target. Plus, he thought he knew how to use a wire hanger to yank stuff out of vending machines from the little doors at the bottom.

We took door signs from every building we could get into, as a kind of trophy. We glued them on the walls of our dorm: "Rm 218," "WOMEN," "Dr. Shepard," "NO SMOKING" and so forth.

One night we broke into a weird maze-like building on campus, and got completely lost in the hallways. We couldn't find our way out again. Eventually we found a stairway down, and tried to take that back to the ground floor. Instead, we ended up underground, in a series of catacombs under the campus. They seemed to lead in a spider web throughout the place - one thread stretching the quarter-mile to the quad, another 500 feet to the library, one locked and padlocked and locked again leading to the administration building. But one catacomb was open, and it led, we believed, in the direction of the student union. We followed that, trying doors and gates as we reached them, hoping to find our way back up to the ground to escape. Finally a door opened, to a small room with a mini fridge, microwave oven, another door leading somewhere else, and a table and chairs. Some kind of break room. My friend looked in the fridge (there was the foraging operation to think of, after all), found a can of Beanie-Weanie, and handed it to me just as we heard voices and footsteps beyond the other door in the room. We retreated rapidly.

I don't remember too clearly what happened next. Several blind turns and stairways doors later, we were back on the bricked sidewalks crossing the campus, on a part of the long sidewalk crossing the campus that we didn't realize we had been anywhere near. Instinctively, we walked away from where we'd been, doubled back, and then started back toward our dorm - which meant walking back past the scene of the crime. There were a handful of campus police roaming about near where we had entered the catacombs, through the unexpectedly open door.

We concluded we'd broken into the cops' break room, and consequently, stolen one of these cops' lunch for tonight's graveyard shift. "WHERE'S MY BEANIE-WEANIE?!!" he would roar, as we recounted the story to ourselves years later.

There's no way this kind of stuff will keep us afloat now in 2010, but I think I might be able to put a resume together - you know, puff this up into Professional Experience. Maybe I can track down that cop and ask him for a recommendation.

fear

I've been a fairly public critic of my university's administration, and of the CSU chancellor, just about from the time I first set foot on the campus. It's built into my personality to do that kind of thing, so it surprises me, even now, when I'm reminded that most of my colleagues and most employees are fearful of management's power. Fear might be the biggest obstacle to labor organizing, in fact.

I don't experience a lot of fear. Even this past couple of years, with my job becoming increasingly precarious, and the local administration becoming more tyrannical, I haven't had very much fear of losing my job. I've had some, but I don't think it has really changed my behavior that much.

Why I don't let fear get to me, I figure, boils down to two key factors. One is that I don't have a mortgage banker or children counting on me. But more important, in day-to-day life, is the joy of the struggle and the solidarity and love of my comrades. Sincerely, when I'm about to protest one way or another about the CSU's management, fear dissipates on contact with enjoyment of the task and with community spirit. Organizers have to bring that to the workers they're talking to, and to actions, to be successful, and to make it worth the risks - whatever they turn out to be.

I've just finished reading Multitude, in which Hardt and Negri conclude that the way to counter the violence of imperial war is, in part, through joy and love. I thought that was fairly obvious, in my own life, so it was good to have that affirmation. They even have a formulation of something I've been telling students for years: "Another world is possible." My phrase is: The world is a built world; it can be torn down and rebuilt.

[Though often repetitive, I think anyone interested in contemporary political struggle might get something from Hardt and Negri. You could probably get away with reading just the last chapter, though the stuff on empire and war in the first chapter set it up well.]

Multitude was the politics book I picked up right after reading Cynthia Willett's book Irony in the Age of Empire, in which she argues that satire is the best way to expose the thoroughgoing political corruption, and the destructiveness of chaos capitalism, in the contemporary world. Bracing stuff for hopeful pessimists like me. It allows me to realize that, if the worst I have to fear is losing my job because of destructive management practices, then, big deal. I doubt the administration is going to order a beat-down of faculty or student activists any time soon. And if they do (as has happened recently in California), we'll do our best to enjoy that. Meanwhile, I can't help it - there's just something intrinsically hilarious about the arrogant excesses of managerial power.