April 20, 2022

to my fellow academics in Florida, which has just crippled the tenure system

De Santis just signed legislation in Florida that makes it easier to fire tenured faculty at the state’s public colleges and universities. I’ve pasted a link to a news article about it below.

To my friends at public universities in Florida - please accept my sympathy. I'm sure I speak for a great many academics here. To have such an ignorant loudmouth for a governor is bad enough, but this legislation (which may not survive a court challenge, as I explain below) is a disgusting insult. Your state government may not respect you, but your colleagues do.

I offer a sincere willingness to help in whatever way I can. I know getting another academic position can be difficult, especially for those of us in more senior positions. My wife is at a university in a neighboring state. That means I commute 3 to 4.5 hours, depending on traffic and construction, twice each week. If I wasn’t a fifty-something full prof, I might stand a chance at getting a position in her area. Alas, I’m a fifty-something full prof and, thus, not competitive in open searches against younger PhDs who can promise a far longer period of productivity. But I’m willing to bet there will be universities out there delighted to cannibalize the Florida public university system for talent, including mine.

One possible bright side - as implied above, there's a good chance some of this bill will be tossed out by the courts. The law can be applied to new hires, but it probably violates existing faculty contracts. Not an expert on contract law here, and I could be completely misunderstanding the situation, but if I was in Florida, I'd be reaching out to an attorney.

But far more importantly, it reveals yet again how tenure is misunderstood. It can be described as a "lifetime appointment," but only in the way judge appointments are "lifetime appointments." Faculty with tenure are not in bulletproof positions. We can be fired for cause, just like everyone else.

It bothers me that Republicans use this as a wedge issue to divide labor organizations from the Democrats with whom they’d normally align. Why should professors get lifetime job security when we can lose our jobs any time the economy goes south or some numbskull manager makes a bad business decision? That this derives from a greatly oversimplified understanding of the tenure system hasn’t been easy to correct.

(Which brings up a related question – where the hell was the business community in Florida when this bill came up? Bills like this come up in my own state all the time. They rarely get out of committee, and the one time it did, businesses across the state mobilized to defeat it. They know the value of higher education when it comes to innovation, and they want educated employees. They want the public higher education system to be strong, and they know that killing tenure would weaken it. Surely businesses in Florida understand this as well as those in the Upper Midwest.)

We often hear that tenure allows freedom to follow what may be unpopular research or pedagogy. It does, but it goes beyond that. What it allows is *consistent* freedom to engage in academic endeavors. If we had to redirect our efforts every time the university's leadership changes, we wouldn't accomplish anything. Can you imagine what would happen if university presidents threatened the jobs of anyone not expressing their personal views on climate science? Human sexuality? Public health? History? Or if they took a dim view of research that didn’t have obvious immediate benefits to anyone in particular? That’s what the tenure system prevents.

Appointed judges are a great analogy. They're given lifetime appointments so they don't all get fired and replaced with ideologues every time the White House or governor's residence changes hands. That would create legal chaos, with previous decisions overturned every few years. We see value in these lifetime appointments because it advances the interest of consistent justice.

And for the upteenth time - no, we professors aren't trying to indoctrinate young adults into leftist ways of thinking. (Most of us aren’t, at any rate.)

Some of this "leftist" thinking isn't a matter of opinion. It's physical reality. When I teach about evolution or climate change, I'm not expressing a biased opinion - I'm providing factual information. Those who teach about sexuality may be telling us things that run counter to certain religious beliefs, but they're not telling us these things to advance some sort of "woke" culture (whatever the f-word that means); they're telling us these things because a substantial amount of research is revealing them.

Seriously - if a scientific discovery contradicts your opinion, the problem is with the opinion. Facts can't change to accommodate them. Scientific facts are scientific facts, and we're not going to pretend there's a legitimate fact-based counterargument where it doesn't exist just to create a false sense of "balance."

I've heard the same anecdotes as the rest of you - some conservative student somewhere feels oppressed by the progressive environment at their institution. Opportunities were denied, term papers were graded poorly, opinions were suppressed- stuff like that. Ever wonder why these claims appear in the news media? Partly, it's because cases in which right-leaning students really were mistreated are rare. They're newsworthy when they happen because they're not the norm.
In the vast majority of such purported cases, it's not that conservative students are being bullied or censored. It's that they're encountering diverse communities and people with different political views for the first time in their lives. If their opinions are to the very far right (Q-type stuff), they'll be a minority not because universities shun such students, but because those holding such extreme views are the minority.

Anyway – I just want my colleagues in Florida to know you haven’t been forgotten.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2022/04/19/desantis-signs-bill-limiting-tenure-at-florida-public-universities/

April 2, 2022

in defense (sort of) of Will Smith

I do not, in any way, condone Will Smith's decision to strike Chris Rock. At all.

Had the police gotten involved, I would not have been upset. He assaulted someone. That's a violation of the law.

It's also not my place to forgive. That's up to Chris Rock.

But in this case, I'm not going to condemn Smith for this one action. He remains, in my eyes, a great actor, and although I remain somewhat disappointed in him, I don't plan to write him off.

1. That the joke Chris Rock told about Jada Pinkett Smith didn't justify an assault goes without saying. Nevertheless - had I been Will Smith, I'd have been pissed off, and the thought of popping Chris Rock in the mouth would have crossed my mind.

My wife was the target of a focused bullying campaign at her former workplace. I've been in the room while her integrity was impugned behind her back. Although no one was hit, I certainly defended her, usually with language that would have earned the exchange an R rating. So I say all of this having been in situations similar in some respects - not all respects by any means, but some - to what Will Smith encountered.

Does this betray a level of latent toxic masculinity on my part? Maybe. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist. The animals I work on have exactly two emotions - indifferent and enraged - and they behave the same regardless. But I was also bullied very badly until midway through high school, and I react strongly when I see people being needlessly put down, as Jada Pinkett Smith was.

I've also embraced the progressive ideal of condemning jokes directed against people who are dealing with medical conditions, as Jada Pinkett Smith is. Had I been her husband, I'd at least have said something.

I've generally been a fan of Chris Rock, but frankly this particular joke was beneath his talent, and he should have apologized the moment he saw that the joke's target was offended.

It's not a matter of a man assuming women are incapable of defending themselves in situations like this. It's a matter of speaking out against an attack directed toward a loved one.

2. There are "apologies," and there are apologies. What Will Smith has said ever since the incident isn't one of those "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" non-apologies. He acknowledged what he did was wrong and that it caused harm beyond the person he hit. He hasn't shifted any of the blame to anyone else, so far as I can tell. He's taken ownership of the incident and indicated a willingness to ensure it doesn't happen again.

I've seen people try to minimize his apology. "He's only sorry he got caught" and such. Again, not a psychologist here. I cannot assess another person's mindset. But the apologies he's provided in public appear genuine, and at the very least, they're an example others who cross the line should follow when expressing contrition.

3. In general, I'm not a fan of condemning someone for one lapse of judgment. Obviously, there are exceptions. Some acts are so egregious that they cannot be so easily set aside. That, or they reveal a level of internal depravity suggesting that the lapse of judgment may not have been a one-off event.

I'm reminded of the joke about a farmer who complains about not being remembered for the barns he helped built, the leadership he showed when his community was hit with a natural disaster, the willingness he showed to help teach younger farmers, the wonderful and accomplished children he raised, or the prosperity he worked hard to make for himself. "Am I called Fred the Barn-Builder? Fred the Civic Leader? Fred the Dad? Fred the Teacher? Fred the Hard-Working Farmer? No. You fuck one goat, and...."

Like I said, what Will Smith did was wrong. But I'm not willing to set his whole body of work aside because of it.


I'd also like to make a point for those who think this really isn't a big issue worth discussion on DU. First - I, and many others, are capable of following more than one news item at a time. I've kept track of global events beyond this. Second - I'm probably not the only one here who suffered from severe and constant bullying as a kid, nor am I probably the only such bullying victim here who felt a certain level of triggering from the incident at the Oscars. For some of us, this isn't just celebrity gossip.


anyway, my opinions. They're worth exactly what you paid for them, I suppose.