Welcome Instapundit Readers!!

When I graduated from college, I was determined to pursue a Ph.D in Comparative Literature, hoping to expose myself to the best of European & American literature so that I might teach students to appreciate great books where they could find insights to guild them in their lives’ journeys. Not only that, I hoped to write about literature, showing how those great writers of the past addressed themes that we confront in our lives today.

In short, I saw the profession of university teaching as one where a scholar would help students relate literature to their own lives. These works would, I hoped, remind students that there is more to life, to quote my favorite poet, than “getting and spending.” They would see the study of literature as a life-long avocation, something to pursue alongside their professional endeavors.

I abandoned my study of literature for a great variety of reasons, notably because I became increasingly aware that graduate programs in the humanities were increasingly replacing study of the great works or literature themselves with a focus on criticism. Professors of literature scoffed at the notion that the books under study were any more than texts, with some even dismissing the notion of their greatness.

Just over three years ago, I decided to study mythology at Pacifica Graduate Institute because that quirky program seemed less focused on criticism and more devoted to studying ancient stories and rituals and considering their real-world meaning. Indeed, as I begin work on my dissertation, I intend to explore how understanding the role of the goddess Athena in the lives of Greek heroes can help men realize the importance of the non-sexual feminine in their own lives.

Given this appreciation of literature and myth, this belief that this great stories can help us lead rich and more fulfilling lives, it’s no wonder I ordered Anthony Kronman’s Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life soon after reading upon it on Instapundit. The very title encapsulated the primary reasons behind the decision I made not to pursue a Ph.D. in Literature.

When I received the book, I was delighted to discover that, like yours truly, Kronman is a graduate of America’s finest liberal arts college. While an undergraduate he too had a professor who led animated discussions where they considered important questions about life. But, as he pursued his own career in academia, as a professor and dean at Yale Law School, he found the question of life’s meaning

exiled from the humanities, first as a result of the growing authority of the modern research ideal and then on account of the culture of political correctness that has undermined the legitimacy of the question itself and the authority of humanity’s teachers to ask it. I have felt puzzlement and anger at the easy sweeping aside of values that seem to me so obvious and important. And watching these developments, I have been moved to wonder about their causes and consequences and the likelihood of a cure.

In his book, he explores just that. And I found myself nodding my head in agreement with many of his observations. While coming from a different political background than I (he had volunteered for the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society in college; I had served as state president of the College Republicans), he had reached the same conclusion about the state of the humanities in colleges and universities as had I.

Proof that the humanities can serve to bring together people with different political views, even different backgrounds as they remind us of our common humanity.

After diagnosing the problem, that humanities professors no longer see their various disciplines as concerned with the meaning of life, Kronman looks to the history of post-secondary education in America to find its source. While professors were once jacks of all trades, able to teach a great variety of classes in a number of disciplines, today’s college and university teachers have become increasingly specialized, with little ability to teach outside their narrow field of interest. As the same time, a set curriculum has evolved into a smorgasbord.

He shows how secular humanism replaced more religious ideas of instruction with the research ideal. And with the research ideal came an end of the notion of the humanities as initiating a student into a great “conversation that is always alive, where every participant who has ever joined it is still actively engaged, and to which each new generation . . . is introduced.” Devoted to their particular field of expertise, professors were no longer interested in considering the question of what living is for. Their narrow focus replaced a broad interest in themes common to a great variety of works from any number of eras served to “undermine the unique authority they once enjoyed as guides to the meaning of life.”

Another force would join the research ideal in undermining that authority, political correctness. With its concomitant multiculturalism, political correctness has made it increasingly difficult for “students to accept the notion of a common human solidarity that transcends the experience of the particular group to which they belong.” Kronman regrets that:

The sad result of the humanities’ use of racial and gender diversity as a criterion for the selection of texts and teaching methods has therefore been to make it harder to pursue the question of life’s meaning in the only discipline in which there is still any chance of asking it.

And I would note that some of the works selected so that diversity may also include sexual orientation seem to have been chosen not to show how, despite our differences, gay and lesbian people still confront some of the same issues as do our straight peers, but instead focus on the most marginal aspects of gay culture, written more often than not by the most angry and unhappy homosexuals.

Their inclusion in the curriculum seems designed to please the most radical of gay activists, rather than directed to offering students a balanced perspective of gay life, allowing straight students to see that gay people face the same struggles as do they and giving gay people the resources to see our struggles in terms of the very issues with which men and women have wrestled since our ancestors first expressed themselves in words.

For example, his observation that “[h]uman sexual desire . . . has an element of fantasy that distinguishes it from the thoughtless sexual appetites of other animals” applies to gay people as well as straight people.

(more…)

Whereas yesterday I had a driver’s high, today I experienced whatever is its opposite. I started flipping out somewhere in eastern Tennessee. When you’re pushing hard to make it cross country in three days, you don’t have time to appreciate the beauty of the land. You don’t have time to relax.

When I crossed into Virginia late Tuesday afternoon, early evening, I realized how beautiful in this state where once I lived. And the leaves were just beginning to turn. Alas, that it became dark as I headed north on I-81. That made the driving even more challenging. Not just that. I had forgotten the extent to which trucks use that route. I had to concentrate as much on driving as if I were driving through LA.

And then I understood how draining driving can be. I had thought I would arrive refreshed “back east” as we Angelenos call this part of the country. Well, I made it here and am now staying with my friend Rick Sincere, but am a little zoned.

Rick and I did have a great evening, going to dinner on the Corner, the shopping district near the main grounds of the University of Virginia where I completed my legal education (actually the law school was not on main grounds, alas, alas).

We visited the lawn, the center of the University designed by Mr. Jefferson (Thomas, that is) himself. Chatted briefly with Al Clark, the Room Seven Resident, a member of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society of which I was a member when in law school.

i delighted in the statue of Homer on the lawn, smiling as I considered my own odyssey and the epics i was listening to as i headed east.

It was interesting seeing how much the University had changed since I was here. And how the names and locations of various buildings and local establishments, some no longer in business, came to mind as I walked around. Places that I had not even considered since I was last in town.

Earlier today as I drove, I was listening to The Odyssey, hearing Odysseus recount the ‘odyssey” part of his journey (only about one-third of the epic) when he takes his long journey home from the Trojan War, with numerous adventures.

On my journey, I could not afford to have such adventures as I had to haul a** so I could make it east in time to see my friends. Well, while I am delighted to be here at Rick’s, I regret that I really didn’t get to enjoy the drive today–as beautiful as the country was.

The long and the short of is if you’re going to drive cross country, don’t try to do three days in a row where you need to make 850 miles a day. While you may get a driver’s high on the second day, you start wigging out on the third. At least I won’t need to drive any more that 5 hours/day for the next 8 days. And only on three of those days will I be driving two hours or more.

When last I left Odysseus, he had arrived home in Ithaca, not knowing where he was, but greeted by the goddess Athena. I can understand the disorientation, but lack the divine welcome.

UPDATE: Rick has a post acknowledging my visit. Check it it. And while you’re there, check out his blog which is a source of information on matters libertarian, musical, electoral and central Virginian.

Thanks to GP Reader Lesbian NeoCon for sending along this piece swimming in irony…..

Women’s Studies Departments Ignore the Plight of Women in Islam - FrontPage Magazine

Despite their vigilance in behalf of women’s rights in America and other Western nations, Women’s Studies Departments across the nation have been strangely passive in the face of the barbaric treatment of women in Islamic regimes. Numerous hours are spent in the classroom, dissecting the reasons for the ‘wage gap’ in America, violence against women and the ‘privileges’ accorded Caucasian males. But courses on the plight of women in Islamic regimes are strangely absent. Where there are a few courses that touch on Islamic women in Women’s Studies programs, the focus is often cultural and literary, while the abuses go unmentioned.

This failure to confront the abuse of women who live in Islamic countries stands in stark contrast to the mission statements of many Women’s Studies departments, which describe their focus as the inequality that women suffer in patriarchal societies. Thus the official mission statement of the Penn State Women’s Studies Department declares that “As a field of study, Women’s Studies analyzes the unequal distribution of power and resources by gender.” Why then does the Penn State department not offer a course analyzing the extreme inequalities that characterize the status of women in the Islamic world?

<…..>

In a study of eight prominent universities, the University of Pennsylvania was the only school which offers a course specifically concerned about the equal and oppressive treatment of women in Islamic nations. That course, “Women Social Movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” focuses on the struggle of women in these nations to claim equal rights with men while still maintaining their identity as Muslims.

Well, come on.  We know the answer to these questions.  America’s universities, especially the Women’s Studies departments, are chock full of America-hating, white men-hating, anti-capitalist left wing professors.  They can be shown a true global threat against women right to their eyes yet only see what they want to see:  Evil White American Men.

[Related Story - Ivory Tower Decay - Michael Barone, Real Clear Politics]

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Welcome Instapundit Readers!!

Several things struck me today when I read about the decision of the University of California at Irvine (UCI) to rescind its offer of the deanship of its new law school to Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the nation’s top liberal constitutional law scholars. The school deemed the outspoken professor “politically controversial.” Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake said “Chemerinsky’s political views would make him a target for criticism from conservatives.”

It was not just that in its article on the rescission that the LA Times identified him as “liberal.” When a professor is outspoken, mainstream newspapers tend only to identify his political/philosophical leanings if he is right of center.

But, what really struck me, impressed me indeed, was that a number of bloggers who themselves are right of center were quick to denounce the decision. Glenn Reynolds (the first to inform me of the decision) found the hiring and firing within one week “just weird,” noting the Chemerinsky was a “a nice, fair guy regardless of his politics.” Hugh Hewitt, more conservative than Glenn, labeled the decision UCI’s Disgrace. Hugh wrote:

It had selected my friend and regular radio guest Duke University Law School Professor Erwin Chemerinsky as the school’snew dean. Erwin is a man of the left, of course, but a remarkably distinguished and accomplished scholar who enjoys the esteem of professors, jurists and practitioners across the ideological spectrum.

Seems a liberal law professor who counts among his friends one of the nation’s most outspoken conservative bloggers would surely respect intellectual differences in a new law school. Such a man would not be likely to let his own political views prejudice his administrative responsibilities.

While I knew sometime in law school that I would likely never practice law, I completed my legal education, in large measure because I enjoyed the intellectual atmosphere at the University of Virginia (U-VA). One of my favorite professors was among the most left-wing. As I wrote in previous post:

In my last semester in law school, I chose a course with my second favorite law professor (one of the most liberal members of the U-VA Law faculty) over one (which met at the same hour) with my favorite professor (a conservative) because I thought I could learn more from teacher with whom I frequently disagreed.

That professor, while offering a challenging course, showed great respect to students who offered conservative viewpoints in class. U-VA was one of the few law schools where liberal and conservative students regularly conversed and even attended the events of each other’s organizations. It was indeed a most civil environment.

It would seem that a liberal law professor of Mr. Chemerinsky’s caliber, respected by his “ideological adversaries” might be able to create just such an environment at the new law school being created at the University of California at Irvine. Indeed, acknowledging that he’s a “liberal law professor,” Chemerinsky said, “My hope was that I’d address it [concern about his views] by making the law school open to all viewpoints..”

It’s unfortunate the school thought his viewpoints would get in the way of his intellectual leadership. And it says a lot about my favorite bloggers that they are standing up for a guy with whom they are often at odds on matters of politics and legal interpretation.

UPDATE: Just caught John Leo’s comments on the matter. He sees this as a “test case for conservatives who support free speech and argue vehemently against political tests for faculty and administration appointments.” He asks whether “these principles apply only to conservatives, or do they protect liberals as well” (Via Instapundit). Let us hope that conservatives who decry the bias against our philosophical allies on campuses stand up for a liberal who faces discrimination because of his ideas.

And it seems that Chemerinsky is cut from the same cloth as some of my liberal professors at U-VA. Leo notes that this liberal professor gave a student a 4.0 for a “Scalia-esque” final exam.