John Protevi's Blog

Rereading _Political Physics_ in light of Stanley and Krakauer 2013

Here are some thoughts as to how the Stanley and Krakauer 2013 article (see here for my notes on the article) intersects my work, and the new directions it gives me in rethinking things.

---

In Ch 5 of Political Physics (2001) I talk about the inflated Platonic sense of techne as grasp of form, proved by verbal articulation of first principles, and then used to command the artisan to incarnate the form into passive matter.

I then show that this falls prey to Simondon's objection: such hylomorphism (production as incarnation of form in matter) is just the projection of the master's point of view, and ignores the "somatic knowledge and aesthetic sensitivity" (PP 124) of the artisan, who must detect the traits indicating potentials for self-organization of the matter as well as provide the apparatus by which those traits are actualized (the molds into which the clay is put and the kiln that bakes the bricks for instance).

It's true I think that my emphasis on the somatic and aesthetic teeters on the edge of falling into the false dichotomy S and K diagnose: either knowledge / skill is (Platonically) verbally articulable or it is bodily knack / habit. But I think I can rescue myself, if I'm able to expand on what "artisanship" means.

Yes, there is an element of non-articulable "aesthetic sensitivity" to the detection of traits of material self-organization (the feel of when the clay has the right consistency to be put into the oven so that its colloidal micro-structures will be expressed at the macro-level as the capacity of the brick to bear weight). But there is also considerable propositional knowledge (even if not always verbally articulable) in the construction and operation of the mold and kiln. It's true that I don't emphasize that, but I think it's implicit in "artisanal labour" (PP 124).

See the passage at PP 128, where I say the educational artisan must "choose" the right songs. If I would have expanded on that, I think I could have seen the sort of propositional even if not verbally articulable knowledge S and K require, even though Plato denigrates that as "happy gift of nature":

Here the harmonized soul is the goal of musical education; the philosopher sets forth the criterion of a harmonized soul, but it is left to the artisanal labour of craftsmen set to work under philosophic direction to choose the exact components of the musical regime that will produce the harmonious soul. 'But we must look for those craftsmen who by the happy gift of nature are capable of following the trail of true beauty and grace . . . ' (Republic 401 c). (PP 128)

I also include an analysis of what Plato says about teaching of motor skills (how to drive a chariot). Here I think I'm getting close to what S and K say about knowledge as scaffolding for development of motor acuity:

On the other hand, it is chariot driving itself that is the mark of the techne of chariot driving, so we would have to observe Nestor's driving, not his instructions, to judge his skill at chariot driving. Thus there's a double problem with Socrates' demand: techne is judged by production, not teaching, while teaching is not accomplished by commands, but by setting up a regime of somatic training.

Once again, then, in this example we see the hylomorphic emphasis on exterior command in the production of a body politic. Technical teaching is important, but it does not consist of instructions to be obeyed, but in setting up a regime of exercises in which trainees develop somatic skill. Thus the relation of teacher/student is not that of master/slave: a regime of exercises is not an order given on the spot, but an artisanal coaxing that actualizes a certain combination of the virtual potentials of the student's body. The most radical point of our analysis is that somatic skill is more complex than instructions, more precise, more refined. The challenge of contemporary anti-Platonism is to turn around logo-prejudice: it is words that are clumsy, abstract, and so on, not the somatic skills long associated with a brute and stupid 'body'. (PP 132) 

So, yes, here it's too much a simple (Dreyfusian?) inversion of Platonism, when it comes to the actual driving of the chariot, which I'm calling "somatic skill." Certainly part of that is what S and K call motor acuity. But it's true that I neglect what they call the propositional knowledge of the chariot driver (knowing what to do to initiate the action displaying the skill of chariot driving), as well as any selection of the right actions while in the chariot. But I do think that I'm close to giving the coach credit for propositional knowledge in setting up the training regime that allows the development of motor acuity (and, indeed, propositional knowledge) on the part of the driver.

I think there's also the same problem / potential in what I say about Plato's bit about nurses in the Laws. (PP 133-35). If I were to expand on that, I'd stress that the slave women had to have received lots of instruction and / or exposure in order for them to be able to discern and choose the right songs. Again, I juxtapose their intuition (which Plato calls guesswork) to the Platonic demand for verbal articulation as hallmark of techne.

In this more recent paper on the topic I say there is a "singularity of bodily rapport" at work, but I think that fits into the perceptual / motor acuity side of things: the nurses have to sense how hard the baby is crying (perceptual acuity) and then they have to perform the lullaby in the correct way (motor acuity: not too much force, not too little, etc). So while I don't emphasize the propositional knowledge components (the scaffolding as S and K put it) I don't think it's inimical to my analysis: I would just have to widen the lens a bit to include the apprenticeship of the nurses.

---

These are just a few quick reactions. I'll be keeping the Stanley and Krakauer paper in mind as I re-read other parts of my work and move ahead in future work.

Notes on Stanley and Krakauer 2013

Jason Stanley and John Krakauer, "Motor skill depends on knowledge of facts," Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (Article 503), 29 August 2013. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00503 

MY TAKE-AWAY POINTS

The authors affirm that skill requires both acuity and knowledge. Via philosophical analysis, and via analysis of HM case, the authors undermine folk distinction between practical and theoretical activity. Paper emphasizes that despite common belief, cognitive neuroscience findings do not support that distinction.

Cognitive neuroscience distinguishes declarative and procedural knowledge. While declarative knowledge is verbally articulable knowledge, "procedural knowledge" is a misnomer; it is not really knowledge, but is better termed "motor acuity" (= decrease in variability and increase in smoothness of movements). 

Many problems happen when equating these cognitive neuroscience terms with philosophical terms. It is very misleading to equate "declarative knowledge" with the philosophical term "propositional knowledge." Propositional knowledge is knowledge of facts, but that knowledge need not be verbally articulable. Furthermore, one should not equate "procedural knowledge" with "motor skill" for that leaves out the contribution of propositional knowledge to motor skill.

Propositional knowledge provides a scaffold for development of motor skills in three areas: 1) acuity of selected action components; 2) new actions (e.g., new techniques of running, jumping, etc); 3) ability to select the right action from a repertoire.

GOING THROUGH THE PAPER, SECTION BY SECTION 

INTRODUCTION

Initial dialectic. Platonism about skill: you must be able to explain principles guiding action; otherwise it is just a habit. Against this extreme position, many now think skill does not involve knowledge of rules. 

Cognitive neuroscience seems to mirror these philosophical assumptions in their concentration on experiments that show that active reflection on principles impedes performance and that retention of knowledge of facts not needed for skill (HM case). 

There are some questionable assumptions at work here involving hasty or indeed wrong identification of neuroscience categories (declarative and procedural knowledge) and mental kinds (propositional knowledge; theoretical vs practical ability). Cognitive neuroscience should not equate procedural "knowledge" (a misnomer; should be "motor acuity" or decrease in error and increase in smoothness of movement) with "motor skill" tout court. And it should not oppose procedural knowledge to declarative knowledge (= verbal articulation) The problem is that "procedural knowledge" has been applied to non-knowledge aspects of skill (motor acuity). But it doesn't follow that skills do not require knowledge of facts. Thus we have made an attribute of a component of skill (that motor acuity is non-knowledge based) into an attribute of the whole of skill.

Note that intellectual ability may involve implicit (non-intentional) abilities.

MOTOR SKILL, PERCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATION AND INTENTION

There are two necessary conditions for belonging to functional category of "skill": 1) Practice-related improvement in goal-directed action and 2) knowing what to do to initiate action manifesting the skill. To have a skill one must know what to do to initiate the action that displays the skill; this is propositional knowledge. S and K do NOT say skills ONLY require know-what to do to initiate actions. But knowledge like that of initiating an action can be injected into course of activity. So they are claiming that skills require SOME knowledge. 

PROPOSITIONAL vs DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE

For S and K, propositional knowledge includes the possession of know-what to do to initiate action displaying skill. However, this form of propositional knowledge does not require the ability to verbally articulate that knowledge (even though possession of other forms of propositional knowledge can and often are shown by verbalizing their contents). On the other hand, the cognitive neuroscience category of declarative knowledge does require ability to verbally articulate that knowledge. So the problem is the false identification of declarative knowledge and propositional knowledge.

THE LESSONS OF HM: MOTOR ACUITY, ACTION SELECTION AND KNOWLEDGE

The HM case shows multiple memory systems in brain. This is very important, but has been harmful in that it allowed false mapping of true cog NS distinction of declarative vs procedural "knowledge" onto bad folk distinctions of knowledge vs skill and theory vs practice. 

HM cases show dissociation btw improved motor performance and ability to recall task aspect. However, HM required explicit instruction each day, so the idea that HM had an entirely procedural motor skill is undermined. If you really have a skill, you don't need instruction to start over every day. What is being learned each day is not skill but only a part of skill, motor acuity.

Displaying both propositional knowledge and motor skill involves both propositional knowledge and perceptual / motor acuity, so there is no good distinction between theoretical and practical activity.

CONCLUSIONS

For Dreyfus, skill moves you from guidance by knowledge-based decisions to perception of right action, so that expert performance is a species of perceptual acuity. Further, for Dreyfus, expertise is automatic or habitual and knowledge drops away. But for S and K, the expert uses knowledge of activity to dictate to non-knowledge components, so it is combination of knowledge and acuity that leads to skilled performance. Thus even if initial scaffolding for basic components drops away that doesn't mean you don't need new knowledge to continue refinement of skill and to add new non-knowledge components.

Take ownership of your physical well-being

You can overdo the Fordism to neoliberalism shift (I know I have forced some things into that rubric!), but this seems a good example.

1) Fordism = "everyone must take PE to graduate from college"

2) Neoliberalism = "new courses are "placing a greater degree of the onus for wellness on the shoulders of individual students" by encouraging them to take "ownership of their physical well-being." "

3) A new approach here, moving beyond the purely physical? Perhaps we can call it "neuro-power":

"Darla M. Castelli ... studies the connection between exercise and brain health. Her studies and others show that regular exercise allows people to process information more accurately, allocate more working memory to a given task, and improve attention span—even among people in their cognitive peak years, from age 21 to 27." 

--- 

H/T Jason Read for catching the "ownership" line

Kathryn Gines wins Joyce Mitchell Cook Award at the APA

One of the highlights of the APA Eastern for me was when, upon being presented with the first Joyce Mitchell Cook Award by the Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers for her book, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question, Kathryn Gines of the Penn State Philosophy Department paid tribute to Joyce Mitchell Cook by reading parts of her correspondence with Cook in preparation for the first meeting of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers, where Cook was honored. 

A brief biography of Dr. Cook from Adrian Piper's website:

Dr. Cook was the first African American woman to have been graduated from a professional philosophy program in the United States, and the first to receive a Ph.D. in Philosophy. She received a B.A. With Distinction in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in 1955; a B.A. (1957) and M.A. (1961) in Philosophy and Psychology from St. Hilda’s College, Oxford; and was in residence at Yale University from 1957 to 1961, where she did a dissertation in the theory of value and received her Ph.D. in 1965.

While at Yale, she was the first woman graduate student to be appointed as a teaching assistant, and was Managing Editor of the Review of Metaphysics. In that capacity she published frequent short reviews of recent philosophy books. Her commentaries remain models of clarity and philosophical acuity.

After teaching at Howard University for many years and working in the White House as a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, she retired early to pursue her scholarly interests more fully. Her general areas of expertise were Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy.

At the time of her death on 6 June 2014, she had been working on a manuscript on the concept of the black experience, which promised to be a major contribution to the field. Dr. Cook is interviewed in George Yancy, Ed. African-American Philosophers: 17 Conversations (New York: Routledge, 1998), pages 263-286.

Professor Gines was presented the Award by Charles Mills and George Yancy. 

What I think happened, should have happened, and might happen in the McAdams case

WHAT I THINK HAPPENED IN THE CLASSROOM (based on study of the relevant and available documents and accounts). [Slight updates for clarification, in brackets, 21 January 2015; I also recommend people read this blog post by Cheryl Abbate detailing the misogynist hate mail she received as a result of McAdams's action.].

1) During the class there was never a discussion about gay marriage. The point of the class was just to get a basic idea of some contemporary social policies that would violate Rawls’s equal liberty principle ["Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all"]. One student pointed out that a ban on gay marriage would violate Rawls's equal liberty principle [it would deprive a group of people of equal basic liberties] and since Abbate judged this as true and there were more nuanced examples to focus on, she moved on to the next example of a policy that would violate this principle.

2) Another student approached Abbate after class and asked why there was not more discussion of gay marriage.  

3) In a move that has been approved by the vast majority of professional philosophers — and here the disciplinary difference between philosophers and political scientists is I think important to note — Abbate told the student that discussion of gay marriage in a class devoted to Rawls’s equal liberty principle would not be relevant as in her judgment [allowing] gay marriage does not violate the principle [allowing gay marriage does not deprive anyone of a basic liberty compatible with a system of liberties for all]. This is a professional judgment call and McAdams does not have the training or standing to challenge this initial point. 

4) The student then claimed that there is research that shows children who have gay parents “do a lot worse in life." 

5) Abbate pointed out that this was a non-sequitur as gay marriage and child-rearing are not necessarily connected, and further that she would question the research he was referring to, because years of research says otherwise. She also invited him to send her the "research" he was referring to (and Abbate has informed me that he never did this).

6) The student then said “Regardless of why I’m against gay marriage, it’s still wrong for the teacher to completely discredit one person’s opinion when they may have different opinions.’ ”

7) Abbate then said that "SOME comments are not appropriate and are offensive." At this point, she was informing the student that he did not have an absolute right to say whatever he wanted in an ethics class. She then explained that examples of inappropriate / offensive comments would be sexist, racist, and homophobic comments. Thus she DID NOT equate ALL criticism of gay marriage with homophobia.

 

WHAT I THINK SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED

1) I think the McAdams should not have published his attack on a graduate student at all.

2) If he was unable to restrain himself, he should not have published his attack on a graduate student until he had communicated with Abbate, the Chair of the Philosophy Department, the Dean, the Provost, and the President of the university.

3) In the face of McAdams's attack, the MU administration should have quickly issued a public support of Abbate and a public rebuke of McAdams for violating Abbate's reasonable expectation of mentorship rather than attack from a tenured professor. 

 

WHAT I THINK MIGHT HAPPEN

These remarks attempt to consider three factors: 1) the conventional rights of academic freedom of McAdams, 2) the legal rights under Title VII and IX of students and employees of Marquette to be free of hostile work and educational environments, and 3) Marquette’s legal obligations under Title VII and IX to provide such environments.

Given an assumption that university administrations act mostly in terms of risk management — but that their risks are multiple and sometime orthogonal to each other — I wonder what role their estimation of their risk of reprimand relative to their legal obligations under Title VII and IX is playing in their actions. McAdams has an (academic freedom) right to be cantankerous, but he doesn’t have the (legal) right to harass, and MU is obligated to ensure that he doesn't harass with impunity. That’s the crunch point.

Now, should defenders of academic freedom be worried about the wording and case law and OCR guidance around Title VII and IX? Yes, absolutely. (We should be horrified at the Garcetti lineage of cases too!) But I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water and junk my legal protections against workplace harassment either. McAdams being clever enough to play the edges doesn’t mean I should have to put up with a stalker.

Will MU’s case pass academic critical muster against McAdams, balancing academic freedom qua (conventional) rights of professors and the (legal) Title VII and IX rights of students and colleagues? We’ll see.

As for the purely legal side of things, as MU is a private university there are no First Amendment implications and so McAdams will have to fight his fight purely as a contract law matter; as much as he can claim academic freedom in the court of public and academic opinion, he can’t claim “free speech” in the FA sense of the term.

Marquette's desire to uphold Catholic values is going to be important: I don’t know if McAdams has the contractual right to act in the way he does AND to be employed at a Jesuit university whose basic value is “care for the person.” It would be ironic indeed if he loses because of religious freedom of the institution to enforce its code of values. (I don’t know what he thinks about the Hobby Lobby and such decisions; I imagine he liked them at the time, but that he might not like it at the end of his trial.)

Further contributions to the intellectual history of the PGR

Ben Alpers has opened a discussion of the PGR in terms of intellectual history (see also this post at Daily Nous). This comment from Cathy Kemp about the PGR's origins deserves a signal boost as a good contribution. Originally from here, it is reprinted with permission, with slight editing. 

----

Perhaps some context is helpful here. As is well-known, Brian wrote a dissertation on Nietzche at the University of Michigan in the 90s and he brought philosophy to law faculties in California and Texas in the same decade (the Yale stint aside). In both contexts he was working, surely, in an underrepresented sub-field for that context, with most colleagues generally unfamiliar with his subject matters. He was writing papers on Heidegger, objectivity, and legal indeterminacy when I knew him in Texas, at the law school. Legal theory was going through a milder version of literary theory’s upheaval over postmodernism (as they understood it, variously), with legal positivism à la Raz and Coleman the primary *philosophical* counterweight. When I first encountered the “Gourmet Report in 1995, as a photocopy, in Courier, handed to me by its author, I found my PhD-granting institution listed in the “Continental Underground”. In the ensuing discussion it emerged that the the classification, along with the we-do-it-better claim, was no casual addendum to the “Report”.

At the time I formed an impression–-I put it no higher than that–-that Brian had 

1. carved out a vantage of relative safety for his own work inside a traditional Anglo-American analytic department, 
2. distinguished it by favorable comparison with that done at institutions outside the mainstream, 
3. opened a franchise in the defense of legal positivism with the ostensible credibility of someone working on the very figures championed by the postmodern tradition, and then
4. turned around to draw a picture of the philosophical world in which these distinctions and valuations made sense, all from the institutional vantage of a law faculty,
5. to the glory of positivism and its exponents.

My memory of the early years of the PGR, before it became useful to enough people and departments and entered the broader prestige market, is that there were slight idiosyncrasies of valuation and ranking that reflected that picture and its autobiographical origins as well as aspirations. Others may remember it differently, of course.

Which is to say, in effect and with some trepidation for the consequences, that this was always personal as well as professional, though far from simple. I vehemently disagreed with Brian over the rankings, the reification of the historical marginalization of classical American and European scholars and departments, and especially over the we-do-it-better claim.

(This, even as I had my own reservations about the too-familiar provinciality of some of the work done in his “Continental Underground” and its deleterious effects on those departments).

In the same year, his first and my last, I and another philosophy PhD in the same law school class at Texas toasted Brian after he returned from defending his dissertation. He, in turn, was genial and *very* supportive when I was going on the philosophy job market for the first time that fall. He kept his cool at an APA meeting when I introduced him to a close friend who argued forcefully and at length (more than an hour) against the PGR’s methodological claims.

Over the years I have read the blog with alternating exasperation (at the familiar prejudices and their limitations), gratitude (at the calling-out of bad behavior in academia esp. in philosophy, including new and improved corruption and mediocrity at the “Underground” schools), and increasing distress (at the more recent, untenable, and at times appalling, lashings-out).

Throughout I wished we could, as a profession, overcome the tendencies to provinciality–of tradition, institution, race, sex/identity, ability, rank, employment status-that seem endemic to the culture no matter particular persuasions. The “Underground” suffers terribly from the lack of sunlight; that Brian has aided, even as he has called out, those growths, is something that warrants thinking on as we go through this.

One would wish there had been a gentler, more sociable way of transforming the Leiter franchise into something that preserved its usefulness (philosophy newsfeed and information clearinghouse, for example) and started to unwind its harmful effect on the profession, a way less costly in personal terms to its owner as well as to the people injured along the way.

An appeal from Macedonian colleagues

I am very poorly informed about the situation described in this appeal, which I received via an intermediary, but I would welcome discussion of the issues and links to more information. Here is a link to the website of the Embassy of the Republic of Macedonia in the United States.

[UPDATE: a news story on the demonstrations. Another story.]

----

Skopje, December 19, 2014

Deeply troubled by the ongoing abolition of the autonomy of the universities in the Republic of Macedonia, and faced with Government officials who have   been consistently turning a deaf ear to all appeals from the students and professors, we have decided to address you as prominent members of the international academia and to ask for your support.

Namely, over a course of a few years, the Government has imposed legal reforms without any substantial dialogue with the stakeholders in the academia. Each of these reforms has been diminishing our autonomy and has transformed the universities into political instruments rather than educational institutions. The latest draft amendments to the Law on Higher Education will increase the direct interference of the State, i.e. the Ministry of Education and Science, in curricula planning, examining and grading at the Universities, depriving them, finally, of their right to grant diplomas (literally). What is more, it introduces the idea of a compulsory state exam for each and every course taken by the student, one in the second year of the studies and another in the fourth, the organisation and execution of which is to be carried out by appointees selected by the Ministry. The state exam is foreseen for all cycles of university education: graduate, master and doctoral studies. It is a precedent to be found nowhere in the world. In sum, this latest reform will practically strip universities of their right to issue diplomas unless students successfully pass the examinations before the completion of the study cycle.

In less than a month, the student movement Student Plenum, supported by numerous university professors, has organised a number of activities and gone to great lights to make authorities hear their voice. To no avail! Macedonia has witnessed two massive rallies attended by at least ten thousand students and professors. In spite of the protests and the almost unanimous rejection of the proposal by the academic community, the Government has recently unscrupulously moved to swiftly adopt the proposed bill. In the absence of any meaningful opposition in the Parliament, the bill will indeed be passed automatically.

In view of bigger protests and the likelihood of a general strike by the students and the professors, we ask you to support us by any means you find appropriate. You could address your state officials and ask them to appeal and/or exert pressure on the Macedonian Government to cease its brutal final blow on whatever remains of academia in our country. Finally, we would highly appreciate your personal statement of support in reply to this message, one we would like to publicize as part of our campaign which is one of the elements of the overall resistance primarily carried out in the form of protests and appeals to dialogue with the government. 

Signed,

On behalf of the Student Plenum (#СтудентскиПленум), Darko Malinovski and Arben Hajrullahi

and Prof. Katerina Kolozova

 

Prof. Biljana Vankovska

Prof. Igor Jovanoski

Prof. Gordana Popsimonova

Assistant Lecturer Ognen Cemerski

Further points on the McAdams case

[UPDATE: See this post by Cheryl Abbate; compare its directness, clarity, and honesty with the misdirection, obfuscation, and mendacity of McAdams's posts.]

This Volokh Conspiracy post leads to these further points on the McAdams case.

As I understand it, Abbate said that she would not tolerate homophobic comments in class. She did not, however, on my reading of the documents, including her statements here at Daily Nous (which I wish Volokh would have cited in laying out the base facts of the original incident) equate any and all criticism of gay marriage with intolerable homophobia, only certain statements in that regard. This is an important distinction in my eyes, and one that puts McAdams in the position of spreading a falsehood when he says or insinuates that she banned all criticism of gay marriage on the basis of its supposed homophobia.

A second point about the Volokh piece is its erasure of the duty of mentorship to a graduate student in Volokh's account. It becomes criticism of one colleague by another. But this flattens out the professor / student relation between McAdams and Abbate.  

As to the proper response by Marquette, in my Open Letters I called for Marquette to publicly support Abbate (which they have only indirectly and belatedly) for university officials to try to reason with McAdams:

As for the behavior of Professor McAdams, I hope that members of your administration, such as Dean Holz or Interim Provost Callahan, will find the time to discuss with him what obligations a decent respect for the trust placed in us as faculty members entails with regard to mentoring graduate students, rather than using them callously and carelessly as a pawn in his political fulminating.  

As to Marquette's current course of action, I find it troubling, but I would hazard a guess as to their motivations, based on the assumption that university administrations use a risk management rationality: MU may think that their risk of losing a Title IX suit or OCR complaint claiming that they did nothing when a student was subject to the creation of a hostile work or education environment was greater than the risk of their losing a wrongful discipline case by McAdams, as well as the cost to their reputation if people cast this as an academic freedom issue and the cost to their donor base by alums who take McAdams's side.

The above is an explanation, not a justification. The university's risk management calculations might converge with normative values if one feels that a claim of academic freedom does not excuse the creation of a hostile environment for a student.

Finally, there is the question of what we are to make of McAdams's role in the hate mail that Abbate received? Can McAdams just say "hey, I didn't write that hate mail"? This seems a recipe for enabling harassment by proxy, for clearly none of the vile creatures harassing Abbate would ever have heard of her if it weren't for McAdams.

7 points with regard to John McAdams of Marquette

1) McAdams violated Abbate's academic freedom (which involves teaching / class management).

2) He violated Abbate's right to mentorship by professors. 

3) He should have realized Abbate would get hate mail; he’s a professor of political science who lists “public opinion” as a speciality, so he should have known that the foreseeable effects of his actions would be hate mail directed to Abbate.

4) The Open Letters did not ask that MU sanction him, only that MU officials publicly support Abbate, and that they talk with McAdams to explain professional ethics. Quoting the second one:

As for the behavior of Professor McAdams, I hope that members of your administration, such as Dean Holz or Interim Provost Callahan, will find the time to discuss with him what obligations a decent respect for the trust placed in us as faculty members entails with regard to mentoring graduate students, rather than using them callously and carelessly as a pawn in his political fulminating.

5) If McAdams feels his academic freedom is being impinged upon by MU’s actions, then he should contact the AAUP. 

6) His claiming academic freedom for his blogging entails the freedom of members of the academic community (in this case the 415 signatories of the first Open Letter) to condemn his actions.

7) I wish Cheryl Abbate all the best in the rest of her studies and in her professional career.

Professor Strangelove, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Corporate University

University Board Chair Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what John Dewey once said about universities?

Department Chair Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no.

Jack D. Ripper: He said universities were too important to be left to the administrators. When he said that, 100 years ago, he might have been right. But today, universities are too important to be left to the faculty. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow faculty infiltration, faculty indoctrination, faculty subversion and the international faculty conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious capital accumulation and strategic synergistic disruptive innovation fluids....

----

Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to allow faculty to give grades? Grades, Mandrake, students' grades.

Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.

Jack D. Ripper: You know when faculty grading first began?

Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.

Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war faculty conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious diploma purchasing system without the control of the individual student. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core faculty works.

Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen... tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?

Jack D. Ripper: [somewhat embarassed] Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of strike-breaking.

Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.

Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of grading control.

Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.

Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Faculty, uh... faculty sense my power and they seek grading control. I, uh... I do not avoid faculty, Mandrake.

Lionel Mandrake: No.

Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them grading control.

---

Inspired by recent events.

Open Letter on the University of Oregon graduate union strike

I am really proud to co-sign this Open Letter by Mark Alfano on the University of Oregon Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation strike. (See here at Lawyers Guns and Money and here at Daily Nous for background. Also here for a GTFF cease-and-desist letter on the threat to international graduate students.) Others can co-sign by commenting below. 

=== 

President Scott Coltrane [email protected]
Provost Frances Bronet [email protected]
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Doug Blandy [email protected]

Dear Interim President Coltrane, Interim Provost Bronet, and Vice Provost Blandy: 

I write to express my concern for the state of academic integrity at the University of Oregon. In recent days, I have been troubled to learn that the university administration has undertaken a series of actions related to the strike by the local graduate student union (GTFF 3544) that are potentially illegal and obviously immoral. These include intimidating undergraduate students regarding their federal financial aid, diluting academic standards by issuing final grades based on work that was done before the strike started (in some cases less than 50% of graded assignments), threatening the visa status of striking international graduate students, and making final examinations and end-of-term assignments optional in multiple departments (including, to my knowledge, philosophy, linguistics, and ethnic studies).

Such scorched-earth policies are myopic and nihilistic. And in light of Dr. Coltrane’s own published work on the importance of paid parental leave, the administration’s behavior towards its own graduate students who are striking because they want two weeks of parental leave per year is deeply and shockingly ironic.

I urge you to give the graduate students what they’re asking for, cease the morally repugnant behavior, and manifest a little integrity.

Mark Alfano
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
University of Oregon

John Protevi
Phyllis M Taylor Professor of French Studies
Professor of Philosophy
Louisiana State University

Affiliation provided for identification purposes only and does not imply speaking on behalf of our respective institutions.

Open Letter to Dr Michael Lovell, President of Marquette University (updated)

UPDATE: Sat 22 Nov 6pm. President Lovell has released a Letter to the MU community. Although it doesn't name names, it is nonetheless a good sign to see this:

We are dedicated to uphold academic freedom and to maintain an environment in which the dignity and worth of each member of our community is respected, especially students. We deplore hatred and abuse directed at a member of our community in any format. Please know that we listen to any member of the campus community who expresses concerns alleging inappropriate behavior. As stated in our harassment policy, the university will not tolerate personal attacks or harassment of or by students, faculty and staff. To be clear, we will take action to address those concerns. ​

Let's thank President Lovell, while adding that we hope clear action is soon forthcoming.

-----

Dr Michael Lovell
President, Marquette University

Dear President Lovell,

I write you today with a matter of some urgency. According to the 6th update to this story, http://dailynous.com/2014/11/18/philosophy-grad-student-target-of-political-smear-campaign/#comments, Cheryl Abbate, a philosophy graduate student at Marquette, has begun receiving hate mail as a result of this Fox News story: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/11/21/teacher-to-student-if-dont-support-gay-marriage-drop-my-class/. 

The harassment Ms Abbate is receiving in inimical to the values not only of American universities in general, but of the Jesuit tradition in particular (speaking as a Loyola University of Chicago graduate), and I ask you to take immediate action in the form of a public statement deploring this harassment and affirming Marquette’s commitment to the welfare of its graduate students. 

As you may be aware, these threats can be traced to the unprofessional behavior of Professor John McAdams of the Political Science department at MU, who, in connivance with a student who provoked a confrontation with Ms Abbate after class, while both surreptitiously taping the conversation and lying about that fact, betrayed a basic commitment to mentorship and guidance of students by blasting Ms Abbate on his blog: http://mu-warrior.blogspot.in/2014/11/marquette-philosophy-instructor-gay.html. 

If I may, I would direct your attention to these comments on an Open Letter I authored on the situation, which has garnered over 200 signatures in a few short days: http://proteviblog.typepad.com/protevi/2014/11/open-letter-in-support-of-cheryl-abbate.html

"Please add my name to this. Even if everything printed were true and the grad student said and did everything attributed to her ( which I do not grant) this response -- public calling out, exposure to public condemnation, political labeling,-- by a faculty member violates every expectation of graduate training and collegiality. It is a betrayal of the trust invested in faculty to mentor and guide students, not to make of them casualties in larger battles whether inside or outside their institutions. Bonnie Honig, Professor of Political Science, Brown University."

"I support this letter and am so pleased to see how widespread the response has been. Ms. Abbate deserves no less than any instructor, tenured or otherwise, deserves: due process, a resistance to trying a case in the court of public opinion, respect for her expertise, and the professionalism of her colleagues. The kind of news-baiting in which Professor McAdams has engaged is a disservice to students and faculty alike. I suspect he would not enjoy anyone vilifying him without first attempting to gather the facts in the case. In addition, the student who recorded a conversation without Ms. Abbate's consent, and who denied he was doing so, should be apprised of the law, as well as of general principles of ethics. I am a graduate of a Jesuit institution (Fordham University) and have studied Jesuit history. This developing situation is absolutely not in keeping with rational interpretation of the _Constitutions_ or later interpretations of "Our Way of Proceeding." Kathleen M. Comerford, Department of History, Georgia Southern University” 

As for the behavior of Professor McAdams, I hope that members of your administration, such as Dean Holz or Interim Provost Callahan, will find the time to discuss with him what obligations a decent respect for the trust placed in us as faculty members entails with regard to mentoring graduate students, rather than using them callously and carelessly as a pawn in his political fulminating.

Yours respectfully, 

John Protevi (PhD, Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago, 1990)
Chair, Department of French Studies
Phyllis M Taylor Professor of French Studies
Professor of Philosophy
416 Hodges Hall
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge LA 70803 USA

In which I correct an obvious error by Professor John McAdams and wish him many fruitful conversations

In this recent blog post Professor John McAdams makes a blunder, which I correct in a comment left at his place, reproduced here:

---

Professor McAdams, the sentences you attribute to me were instead made by Justin Weinberg, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina, and author of this post at his blog, Daily Nous: 

That you make such an elementary mistake does not lead one to confidence in the care with which you compose your writings on this issue.

I am however the author of this Open Letter, which now has over 200 signatories: 

I direct your attention to the first comment, by Bonnie Honig, Professor of Political Science at Brown University:

Please add my name to this. Even if everything printed were true and the grad student said and did everything attributed to her ( which I do not grant) this response -- public calling out, exposure to public condemnation, political labeling,-- by a faculty member violates every expectation of graduate training and collegiality. It is a betrayal of the trust invested in faculty to mentor and guide students, not to make of them casualties in larger battles whether inside or outside their institutions.

I found this comment instructive as well:

I support this letter and am so pleased to see how widespread the response has been. Ms. Abbate deserves no less than any instructor, tenured or otherwise, deserves: due process, a resistance to trying a case in the court of public opinion, respect for her expertise, and the professionalism of her colleagues. The kind of news-baiting in which Professor McAdams has engaged is a disservice to students and faculty alike. I suspect he would not enjoy anyone vilifying him without first attempting to gather the facts in the case. In addition, the student who recorded a conversation without Ms. Abbate's consent, and who denied he was doing so, should be apprised of the law, as well as of general principles of ethics. I am a graduate of a Jesuit institution (Fordham University) and have studied Jesuit history. This developing situation is absolutely not in keeping with rational interpretation of the _Constitutions_ or later interpretations of "Our Way of Proceeding."

Kathleen M. Comerford, Department of History, Georgia Southern University

----

Finally, I do not wish you to "shut up"; I hope you continue talking, and wish you a very pleasant conversation with the Dean, Provost, and perhaps even President of Marquette.

UPDATE 1: Th 20 Nov, 9:48pm: McAdams has corrected his blogpost, though without noting the original error, nor approving the rest of my comment. If the former is only mildly problematic -- though a respect for blog tradition would recommend noting the original mistake along with the correction -- the second is more troubling. I will give him the benefit of the doubt however so I've left another comment with the substantive claim, adding something to the effect of the following: 

Professor McAdams cherry-picks some extreme correspondence and then claims they reveal the "id of the politically correct." I counter by citing the calm and reasoned criticisms of Honig and Comerford. I invite Professor McAdams to engage their claims to avoid the appearance of cherry-picking his opponents, a mild form of straw man.

UPDATE 2, Friday 21 November, 7:25am: In this new post, Professor McAdams indulges yet again his penchant for cherry-picking the words or actions of graduate students he doesn't like. Yet he has not approved my comment on the previous post, sent to him well before he authored this one, in which I ask him to engage the arguments of professors. We'll see if he ever approves any more of my comments.

UPDATE 3, Friday 21 November, 1:07pm: Professor McAdams has approved my comments. I thank him for that and hope that he will accept the invitation to engage substantively with the criticisms of Honig and Comerford. 

Open Letter in Support of Cheryl Abbate

Dean of the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, Marquette University, Dr. Richard C. Holz, [email protected]

Interim Provost, Marquette University, Dr. Margaret Faut Callahan, margaret.callahan@marquette.edu.

Dear Dean Holz and Provost Callahan:

I write to express my deep concern about the behavior of Professor McAdams and to offer my support to Ms Abbate over the events reported here: http://dailynous.com/…/philosophy-grad-student-target-of-p…/

The one-sided public attack on a graduate student by a professor over classroom behavior is a threat to academic freedom. It does not appear to me, from reading the blog post of Professor McAdams, that he made any attempt to get Abbate’s side of the story. Instead he took up the motivated report of a student and based an attack on Abbate solely on that student’s testimony. http://mu-warrior.blogspot.in/…/marquette-philosophy-instru…

I hope that you will offer your support to Ms Abbate and take steps to ensure that Professor McAdams learns the rudiments of professional behavior in the future.

Yours respectfully,

John Protevi (PhD, Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago 1990)
Chair, Department of French Studies
Phyllis M Taylor Professor of French Studies
Professor of Philosophy
416 Hodges Hall
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge LA 70803 USA

----

UPDATE: You may co-sign this letter if you wish by commenting to that effect. 

Playing the SPEP card

The Great Leiter, who once bestrode the philosophy blogosphere as a Colossus, now reduced to SPEP-bashing to deflect from his crumbling mainstream support. Some points: 

1. Many of the most trenchant critics of the PGR, such as Bharath Vallabha, Jessica Wilson, Brian Weatherson, Gregory Wheeler, David Velleman, Zachary Ernst, and Richard Heck have never been SPEP members. 

2. Unless I'm mistaken, neither are Jonathan Schaffer, David Chalmers, Susanna Siegel, Jason Stanley and the other 26 members of the PGR Advisory Board who asked Leiter to step down. 

3. So what we see here is a desperate attempt at wagon-circling: "When in trouble with my base, bash SPEP."

4. This is not to deny that I am a SPEP member or that I have previously called Leiter out on his puerile vendetta against SPEP, as here, where he flails about before taking refuge where many a sophomore has before him, in his Right To An Opinion (tm).

4. See also.

5. Here too. 

6. Okay, last one, for now.

On the Salaita case, once again

1. On the proper interpretation of the AAUP's statements (following the lead of John K Wilson):

The AAUP’s 1940 “Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure” explicitly states that when faculty “speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship." The continuation of that sentence in the 1940 Statement ("but their special position in the community imposes special obligations") cannot be used to justify firing (or "un-hiring") a professor but instead expresses moral ideals for professors rather than conditions enabling disciplinary action, especially unilateral administration action without faculty consultation.

Furthermore, the AAUP's 1970 Interpretive Comments declare that the “obligations” section of the 1940 Statement must be interpreted by incorporating the 1964 Statement on Extramural Utterances, which holds that any extramural utterance, to be punishable, “clearly demonstrates the faculty member’s unfitness” for the position and also take into account the professor’s “entire record as a teacher and scholar."

Proper respect for faculty governance entails that it is the faculty who are best positioned to judge a professor's "entire record as a teacher and scholar," not the administration or Board alone.

This is consistent with the AAUP's 29 August 2014 letter, recommending that Salaita be suspended with pay pending formal disciplinary hearings with proper faculty input. 

Further, I think the most an administration should be allowed to do, absent formal hearings with faculty input, is produce the common response: "We disagree with the content of Professor X's speech, and remind people that he does not speak for the University." This is codified in the UI Statutes as follows: "If, in the president’s judgment, a faculty member exercises freedom of expression as a citizen and fails to heed the admonitions of Article X, Section 2b, the president may publicly disassociate the Board of Trustees and the University from and express their disapproval of such objectionable expressions."

2. On the matter of Salaita's status at UIUC

It is not the case that Salaita misinterpreted the UIUC's actions; it is rather the case that UIUC acted in numerous concrete ways toward Salaita as an employee, thus forming the basis of the "promissory estoppel" claim many legal experts (e.g., Dorf at Cornell and Leiter at Chicago) find Salaita to have.

Following proper procedures, a written offer of employment was issued on October 3, 2013 to Professor Steven Salaita for an appointment, with tenure, as Associate Professor. This offer followed all the standard procedures of a national search and internal approvals from relevant academic units at UIUC, from department to College Dean, to Provost, and up through the office of the Chancellor in the person of Reginald Alston, Associate Chancellor. 

Furthermore, subsequent to Professor Salaita's acceptance of the offer, UIUC scheduled him to teach classes, paid moving expenses, entered him into the payroll system, sent the IT people to inquire as to his computer needs, and invited to the Chancellor's new faculty reception.  In addition, these were also actions UIUC took with all the entering members of the new faculty cohort in 2014 and preceding years, all prior to final Board approval, which, by the actions of the University, have to be considered pro forma.

3. On the question of the "civility" standard

The objectionable nature of the introduction of the civility standard is two-fold: a) that it is much weaker than that of "hate speech" and b) that it is given to the administration alone to judge "civility."

With regard to a) I isolated "civility" from the fog of the statements by the Board and by Wise, because it is the dangerous part of what they say. When an administration effects a power grab by lowering the standards enabling their unilateral action, it makes no sense to waste time talking about the standards that are already accepted; the danger lies in the lowering of the standards. 

With regard to b), the unilateral nature of the administration's judgment of civility conflicts with faculty governance.

4. On the exploitation of a loophole by the UIUC administration

I propose a thought experiment. Suppose it were the case that the LSU Board made a miscalculation and that there was no quorum at the meeting in which my tenure was approved. Suppose further that my political enemies then presented a case, based on my extramural speech, for my unfitness as a teacher, and then pressured the Board to summarily dismiss me, claiming my tenure rights to be non-existent because of the recently discovered procedural error. Suppose further that the Board bought that argument and dismissed me, without possibility of internal appeal, leaving me only with recourse to the legal system.  

I think it fair to say that in such a scenario I would expect support from my colleagues, decrying the crass and petty legalisms of the maneuver of my enemies and the cowardice of the administration, and that my colleagues would demand an internal university procedure with adequate faculty representation as to the question of my fitness to teach. This is, again, the AAUP's 29 August 2014 position: Salaita should be suspended with pay and an internal university procedure be convened.

5. On the larger question of academic freedom

The courts allow universities to offer academic freedom to their employees, over and above our First Amendment rights, as incentives for recruitment and retention. That is to say, universities can, but need not, offer immunity from summary dismissal and other forms of unilaterally imposed economic sanction to their employees for their extramural speech, save in the case of an properly run disciplinary procedure with adequate faculty representation.

Thus defending academic freedom falls to the faculty; it is our obligation, should we wish to maintain the consensus among administrators that academic freedom is indeed a valued benefit to us – and to the society at large -- to fight any and all violations of it, no matter the content of the speech. And I think this holds especially for those cases in which administrations seek, by means of petty legalistic loopholes, to cut faculty out of our rightful place as a necessary component in any procedure aimed at judging the fitness of a colleague on the basis of that colleague's "entire record as a teacher and scholar."

Three critiques of the PGR

Attempt at a non-exhaustive typology: in the recent discussions of the PGR, I think we can find two main critiques (excerpts and comments below the fold):

1) the closed ecosystem critique (exemplified by Bharath Vallabha's piece; and

2) the restriction on method or "premature dogmatism" critique (exemplified by Jessica Wilson's piece).

I'd like to propose a third critique: 

3) the class structure or "Moneyball" critique

A hypothesis: what the PGR has done is alert students with undergrad degrees from traditionally prestigious schools (Harvard, Yale ... those with a correlation but not guarantee of high SES for their students) to graduate school market opportunities undervalued by the traditional prestige markers (NYU, Rutgers ... -- this is the "Moneyball" angle). This is open to empirical testing, but I would guess that the UG prestige-school percentage of grad students at NYU, Rutgers and other non-traditionally prestigious but high-performing PGR schools does not resemble today what it was in the pre-PGR days.

Now of course there is co-evolution here: the faculty and friendly admins at those benefitting from the PGR's rankings could leverage that into more hires of those likely to further increase PGR ranking, and so on. Still, the above would be the outlines of the class structure / Moneyball critique.

On the ranking of multiplicities

Adapted from this talk at the 2013 Eastern APA on conference organizing; I'm here addressing the question of ranking philosophy departments. I think this would hold even for specialty rankings, and if it does there, it would hold a fortiori for overall rankings.

---

A one-dimensional "merit" measure used to rank-order departments runs into two problems at least.

First, it sets us up for implicit bias via schemas of "what a good philosophy department looks like"; this reliance on familiar looks then reinforces the replication across time of the over-representation of certain philosophical areas and methods in our profession, what Jessica Wilson calls "premature dogmatism."

Second, merit ranking seems to me to involve a questionable metaphysics in which "merit" is seen as a property inherent in individuals that can be discerned, extracted, and then compared to others on a single scale. You could simply express this as an attribution error: you're making network position into a property of an indvidiual department.

That is, there are complex relations among departments – position in hiring and citation networks and so on – that account for perception of merit, and it's a mistake to make those positions into properties of individuals. What my wife says about hiring holds for ranking: "You can't take rejection personally; there are too many variables at work. [Wait two beats.] In fact, you can't even take acceptance personally!"

We could express the same point in Deleuzean language and talk about multiplicities and individuations. That is to say, there is a multi-dimensional matrix of philosophical qualities that each person and each department individuates. A "multiplicity" is a Deleuzean technical term that I'm loosely adopting here; let's say that here it refers to the multiple dimensions of philosophical quality each of us and each of our departments condenses in teaching, talks, essays, books, and so on. For instance,

1. Rigor, clarity, elegance, and innovation of expression;
2. Breadth and depth of the field coverage;
3. Historical awareness of predecessors / analogues;
4. Originality of conceptual innovation;
5. Originality of the problematic: is one attempting to refine  slices of an established field or to establish a new field?
6. Etc …

Okay, why the ellipses? This is what Judith Butler, at the end of Gender Trouble, calls "the embarrassed 'etc' ": it indicates the inability to ever completely list the dimensions of a multiplicity. 

For now, let me offer an image whose benefits – and limits – show why I think a one-dimensional ranking is bound to do violence to the irreducible plurality or real multiplicity of philosophical quality.

Imagine philosophical quality is like a multi-faceted prism: turn it one way and look down one axis of sight and you'll see all the other dimensions seen from the perspective of that aspect; turn it another way and you'll see the other dimensions from that perspective. (If I knew music better, I could probably come up with a musical analogue here, something about a tune in multiple keys, maybe.)

Before anyone objects about holograms being exactly that which produces a single image condensing multiple perspectives, the limit of the prism image for our purposes here is that a hologram will put equal weight on each perspective [I think! I'm no expert on holography, so bear with me if the details are off], whereas there's no way to turn "scores" along all the dimensions of philosophical quality into a single ranking without making some judgment as to the importance of each dimension, and that's going to stack the deck for the ranking.

Who is the competition for TT jobs?

I ran this post in 2011 and 2012 over at New APPS. The comments over there are well worth reading or re-reading. Here is the main body of the post again, as it's that time of the year.

(The intro to the 2012 update includes some good links: "[Please read, at Leiter Reports] a post by Amy Ferrer, the Executive Director of the APA. By the way, all of Ferrer's posts at LR deserve reading.")

----

The past month (September 2011) we've had a series of interesting and informative posts on preparing graduate students to enter what is commonly called "the job market." The presupposition here is that the job market in philosophy begins post-PhD. 

I don't want to criticize the content of the posts; as far as I can tell, the advice has been excellent. But I do want to suggest that we change our frame of reference on these matters, and specify that we have been discussing only a small segment of the complete system of employment for philosophy instruction in institutions of higher education. So I'd like to suggest we call the analysis of the complete system "the political economy of philosophy instruction." 

When we change the frame of reference like that, we see the context for the (post-PhD) job market includes post-BA labor of graduate assistants (either as TAs in charge of sections, or in charge of discussion groups, or as graders of essays) as well as part-time and full-time instructors with BA, MA, or PhD, and post-docs with teaching duties. To put it in a formula: the real job market for philosophy teachers begins post-BA, so that PhDs are not just competing against other PhDs but also against anyone else who teaches philosophy, holders of the BA and MA included. [UPDATE: and now with MOOCS we have to factor (or at least increasingly factor) in undergraduate labor as providing "calibrated peer review." (For another post on MOOCs, see here.)]

When our frame of reference is the "political economy of philosophy instruction" we can explicitly talk about several factors that are only implicit in the discussion of the (post-PhD) "job market."

First, we can see the role of university administrators, who are, after all, responsible for the shifts in employment patterns in philosophy instruction. (It is hard to find stats just on philosophy, but some stats on overall university patterns are here and here.) To an administrator, a section of Logic or Intro to Phil or Intro to Ethics or ... taught by a BA or MA is a section taught, and taught at low cost. This focus on adminstrators enables us to connect "job market" discourse with the analyses of the "corporate university," the "privatization of the university," and like matters.

Second, we can see the connection to other issues in political economy, such as long-term employment trends toward precarious labor in other industries. We can also see the connection to constantly increasing health care costs in the US system in which employment has been a traditional avenue to health care insurance; precarious labor does not require the long-term commitment to offering health insurance that (current?) TT jobs do. And we also see the connection of the current (post-PhD) job market to "austerity" programs in response to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. 

To conclude: an excellent resource for further study of these issues is Marc Bousquet's blog, How the University Works. One of his excellent columns is here. A post discussing Bousquet from my old blog is here.

Accelerate the neoliberal / biopower nexus

http://www.wired.com/2014/02/elizabeth-holmes-theranos/

Part I: Accelerate:

What are you doing to ensure the accuracy of your testing?

The key is minimizing the variability that traditionally contributes to error in the lab process. Ninety-three percent of error is associated with what’s called pre-analytic processing — generally the part of the process where humans do things.

Such as?

Manually centrifuging a sample or how much time elapses before you test the sample, which brings its decay rate into play.

So how do you avoid these potential errors?

There’s no manual handling of the sample, no one is trying to pipette into a Nanotainer, no one is manually processing it. The blood is collected and put into a box that keeps it cold. The very next thing that happens is lab processing, and that’s done with automated devices at our centralized facility with no manual intervention or operation.

Part II: the neoliberal / biopower nexus

Will people become more used to gathering and examining their own health data?

No one thinks of the lab-testing experience as positive. It should be! One way to create that is to help people engage with the data once their physicians release it. You can’t do that if you don’t really understand why you’re getting certain tests done and when you don’t know what the results mean when you get them back.

It drives me crazy when people talk about the scale as an indicator of health, because your weight doesn’t tell you what’s going on at a biochemical level. What’s really exciting is when you can begin to see changes in your lifestyle appear in your blood data. With some diseases, like type 2 diabetes, if people get alerted early they can take steps to avert getting sick. By testing, you can start to understand your body, understand yourself, change your diet, change your lifestyle, and begin to change your life.

I am not "complaining" about this; I am pointing out the individualism of it, the inducement to become a healthy subject, and the concomitant lack of attention to the socio-political-economic structures that lead to the population-level phenomenon of Type-2 diabetes, for instance. That's the neoliberal / biopower nexus: you take a population level phenomenon and render it tractable at the individual level.

My complaint is more with the "interviewer" for lobbing such softball questions. This is basically a press release rather than an interview. Especially since the interviewee brought up the health care system, some questions about the *system* would have helped instead of the gee-whiz technophilia on display. Of course, "forget it, Jake, it's Wired" is another way to say all that.

So, on the whole, "not that there's anything wrong with that," but, also, "nothing is bad, everything is dangerous."