In 21st century America, institutional racism and sexism remain great twin evils to be eradicated on our long journey to the wonderful world where, at last, all are equal.
What are we to make, then, of a profession that rewards workers with fame and fortune, yet discriminates ruthlessly against women; an institution where Hispanics and Asians, 20 percent of the U.S. population, are neither sought after nor widely seen.
In this profession, white males, a third of the population, retain a third of the jobs. But black males, 6.5 percent of the U.S. population, have 67 percent of the coveted positions—10 times their fair share.
We are talking of the NFL.
In figures reported by columnist Walter Williams, not only are black males 77 percent of the National Basketball Association, they are 67 percent of the players in the NFL.
Yet no one objects that women are not permitted to compete in the NFL. Nor do many object to the paucity of Asian and Mexicans, or the over-representation of blacks, even as white males dominate the National Hockey League and the PGA.
When it comes to sports—high school, collegiate or professional—Americans are intolerant of lectures about diversity and inclusiveness. They want the best—the best in the NFL, the best in the NBA, the best at Augusta, the best at Wimbledon, the best in the Olympics, the best in the All-Star Game, the World Series, the Super Bowl.
When it comes to artistic ability, musical ability, acting ability, athletic ability, Americans accept the reality of inequality. We are not all born equal, other than in our God-given and constitutional rights.
We are not all equally gifted. There are prodigies like pianist Van Cliburn, chess wizard Bobby Fischer, actress Shirley Temple. Every kid halfway through first grade knows who can spell and sing and who cannot, and who is bright and talented and athletic, and who is not.
What most Americans seek is a level playing field on which all compete equally, for what we ultimately seek is excellence, not equality.
Why, then, cannot our elites accept that, be it by nature, nurture, attitude or aptitude, we are not all equal in academic ability?
What raises this issue is the anguish evident in New York over the latest state test scores of public school students, which reveal that the ballyhooed progress in closing the racial achievement gap never happened.
Showing posts with label academics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academics. Show all posts
Friday, August 27, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Amity Shlaes asks why Glenn Beck so infuriates the professoriate
Drive them crazy. That's what Glenn Beck seems to specialize in doing, whether the "them" at issue is fellow radio hosts, fellow tv hosts, or, now, professors at universities. This last group is opening its own front in the war against the television king. An associate professor, Joseph Palermo of California State/Sacramento, took to the Huffington Post to mock the broadcaster as "Glenn Beck, Ph.D." I personally noticed this since Professor Palermo mentioned me by name, in tandem with author Jonah Goldberg, as an effort to "misinform" the gullible.
The rage at first seems odd, coming from professors. Why should these serene Yodas care what a man on television bellows? Yet they are on the warpath. The academic fury is at first directed at interpretation. Mr. Beck's explanation of how the Framers viewed religion, Mr. Beck's depiction of how Franklin Roosevelt's policy affected the Great Depression; Mr. Beck's argument that regulation is currently curtailing liberty in general -- all fall short in academic eyes. Prof. Palermo, for example, calls Mr. Beck's views as "stupid and false." But the real issue, the reason professors are on the attack, is not specific content. It is rather the professional and, in the end, economic, threat that Mr. Beck represents. To academics, Mr. Beck is more dangerous than any other radio show host, and they know it.
To understand the nature of the Beck challenge, you have to recall that our system of higher education is a throwback to medieval economics: a guild. As in the classic guild, members require a lengthy period of training, with formal stages. To be in any way authoritative, a writer must have a Ph.D., a guild seal. Members of this guild have enormous discretion when it comes to the conferring of the seal - also typical. In the humanities and social sciences, Ph.D.s. and, it goes without saying, tenure-track posts -- are usually awarded to those not hostile to the master professors' views. For many decades top universities have been especially rigorous in this practice, with the result that it is difficult to find non-progressives with top credentials in the humanities. The guild demands much from its apprentices, graduate students, including dull work in obscure texts. Indeed it is proud of that obscurity, for it distinguishes academic work from, say, the easy popular histories on bookstore shelves or tv.
In the field of history, the guild also maintains a monopoly on education by generating curricula, syllabi, and, of course, a canon, a set list of texts for each period of the past. Of course the academic guild, generally on the progressive side, has made many concessions to conservatives or classical liberals. Professors have assigned the odd conservative book; they mentioned the opponents' arguments. But such offerings have generally been presented as an afterthought, secondary, less authoritative. Looking back at their education many adults saw through this pretense of fairness. They resented the guild monolith. Something was missing.
Enter Mr. Beck.
The rage at first seems odd, coming from professors. Why should these serene Yodas care what a man on television bellows? Yet they are on the warpath. The academic fury is at first directed at interpretation. Mr. Beck's explanation of how the Framers viewed religion, Mr. Beck's depiction of how Franklin Roosevelt's policy affected the Great Depression; Mr. Beck's argument that regulation is currently curtailing liberty in general -- all fall short in academic eyes. Prof. Palermo, for example, calls Mr. Beck's views as "stupid and false." But the real issue, the reason professors are on the attack, is not specific content. It is rather the professional and, in the end, economic, threat that Mr. Beck represents. To academics, Mr. Beck is more dangerous than any other radio show host, and they know it.
To understand the nature of the Beck challenge, you have to recall that our system of higher education is a throwback to medieval economics: a guild. As in the classic guild, members require a lengthy period of training, with formal stages. To be in any way authoritative, a writer must have a Ph.D., a guild seal. Members of this guild have enormous discretion when it comes to the conferring of the seal - also typical. In the humanities and social sciences, Ph.D.s. and, it goes without saying, tenure-track posts -- are usually awarded to those not hostile to the master professors' views. For many decades top universities have been especially rigorous in this practice, with the result that it is difficult to find non-progressives with top credentials in the humanities. The guild demands much from its apprentices, graduate students, including dull work in obscure texts. Indeed it is proud of that obscurity, for it distinguishes academic work from, say, the easy popular histories on bookstore shelves or tv.
In the field of history, the guild also maintains a monopoly on education by generating curricula, syllabi, and, of course, a canon, a set list of texts for each period of the past. Of course the academic guild, generally on the progressive side, has made many concessions to conservatives or classical liberals. Professors have assigned the odd conservative book; they mentioned the opponents' arguments. But such offerings have generally been presented as an afterthought, secondary, less authoritative. Looking back at their education many adults saw through this pretense of fairness. They resented the guild monolith. Something was missing.
Enter Mr. Beck.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Browner, Salazar, Chu, Napolitano, Obama - a team tailor-made for navel gazing, not for remediating industrial chaos at sea
Yesterday, the White House director of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Carol Browner, assured "Fox and Friends" host Gretchen Carlson that the Obama administration was "making decisions in real time" regarding the Gulf of Mexico oil leak. Browner further appeased Carlson by insisting that Team Obama had been on the leak "since day one" and that any complaints of government beadledom were unfounded. "There is no bureaucracy here," said Browner.
The Energy Czarina went on to highlight two names from the "best minds in America" club that we keep hearing about in reference to stopping the British Petroleum (BP) gusher: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
Contrary to Browner's insistence, the government players involved in the Gulf oil crisis have no track record of making real-time decisions, have been thoroughly taken to task for not being on the case since day one, and have been mired in mind-numbing bureaucracy. This is because the White House and its West Wing are packed to the rafters with lawyers, politicians, and academics. These are the type of people associated with paper-shuffling, assembling blue-ribbon committees, holding hearings, and filing lawsuits -- not getting things done in "real time."
Just for confirmation, let's check the Curriculum Vitae of some of the honchos running field ops for Team Obama.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar worked as a private attorney for a few years before going to work for Colorado Governor Roy Romer in 1986. Salazar has been in government work ever since, first as Colorado's Attorney General, then as a U.S. congressman, and now as head of Interior. Not the kind of resume that would imply the ability to commandeer the stoppage of a 5,000-barrel-a-day oil leak in real time.
Next we have Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Without question, Dr. Chu is a brilliant academic, and a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. However, academicians like Chu aren't beholden by real time, either. They crave mental environments laden with deep theory and void of the stresses involved in bringing products to market. Even though Secretary Chu has had some personal interaction with British Petroleum via a grant proposal he once submitted to the oil giant (while at the University of California-Berkeley, he received the winning bid for a $500-million grant funded by BP), folks in the know tell me grant-writing works on a Gregorian calendar -- not in "real time."
We can't forget Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security. She began her career as an attorney in private practice and first came on the national scene as a lawyer for Anita Hill, who claimed to have been sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Napolitano went on to become a U.S. attorney during the Clinton administration, and then Governor of Arizona. We all pray that as Secretary of Homeland Security, she is capable of real-time decision-making, but given recent breaches of security, some might say she is getting by on more luck than executive real-time resolve.
And then there is Carol Browner. She too is a lawyer who has either been on a government or not-for-profit payroll most of her life, including managing Senator Al Gore's legislative staff in the eighties and administering the Environmental Protection Agency in the nineties. Her brush with real-time decision-making may be limited to her partnership in the Albright Group consulting firm, which was the central figure in the 2006 attempt by Dubai Ports (based in the United Arab Emirates) to purchase key businesses located at U.S. ports. In that case, a real-time decision was made by a House panel to block the highly controversial deal from going through.
Finally, there's the man at the top of the government food chain: President Obama. Other than a brief stint as a private attorney, he's never known anything but not-for-profits, academia, and government work. And in keeping with that bureaucratic mindset, Mr. O came out yesterday vowing a "full and vigorous accounting" of the causes of the oil spill and unveiling a new commission he created that will pursue the trail of blame without limits.
The Energy Czarina went on to highlight two names from the "best minds in America" club that we keep hearing about in reference to stopping the British Petroleum (BP) gusher: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
Contrary to Browner's insistence, the government players involved in the Gulf oil crisis have no track record of making real-time decisions, have been thoroughly taken to task for not being on the case since day one, and have been mired in mind-numbing bureaucracy. This is because the White House and its West Wing are packed to the rafters with lawyers, politicians, and academics. These are the type of people associated with paper-shuffling, assembling blue-ribbon committees, holding hearings, and filing lawsuits -- not getting things done in "real time."
Just for confirmation, let's check the Curriculum Vitae of some of the honchos running field ops for Team Obama.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar worked as a private attorney for a few years before going to work for Colorado Governor Roy Romer in 1986. Salazar has been in government work ever since, first as Colorado's Attorney General, then as a U.S. congressman, and now as head of Interior. Not the kind of resume that would imply the ability to commandeer the stoppage of a 5,000-barrel-a-day oil leak in real time.
Next we have Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Without question, Dr. Chu is a brilliant academic, and a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. However, academicians like Chu aren't beholden by real time, either. They crave mental environments laden with deep theory and void of the stresses involved in bringing products to market. Even though Secretary Chu has had some personal interaction with British Petroleum via a grant proposal he once submitted to the oil giant (while at the University of California-Berkeley, he received the winning bid for a $500-million grant funded by BP), folks in the know tell me grant-writing works on a Gregorian calendar -- not in "real time."
We can't forget Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security. She began her career as an attorney in private practice and first came on the national scene as a lawyer for Anita Hill, who claimed to have been sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Napolitano went on to become a U.S. attorney during the Clinton administration, and then Governor of Arizona. We all pray that as Secretary of Homeland Security, she is capable of real-time decision-making, but given recent breaches of security, some might say she is getting by on more luck than executive real-time resolve.
And then there is Carol Browner. She too is a lawyer who has either been on a government or not-for-profit payroll most of her life, including managing Senator Al Gore's legislative staff in the eighties and administering the Environmental Protection Agency in the nineties. Her brush with real-time decision-making may be limited to her partnership in the Albright Group consulting firm, which was the central figure in the 2006 attempt by Dubai Ports (based in the United Arab Emirates) to purchase key businesses located at U.S. ports. In that case, a real-time decision was made by a House panel to block the highly controversial deal from going through.
Finally, there's the man at the top of the government food chain: President Obama. Other than a brief stint as a private attorney, he's never known anything but not-for-profits, academia, and government work. And in keeping with that bureaucratic mindset, Mr. O came out yesterday vowing a "full and vigorous accounting" of the causes of the oil spill and unveiling a new commission he created that will pursue the trail of blame without limits.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Ignorance is a big reason the media and political elites can’t think straight about medical care
"Sheer ignorance is a big reason the media and political elites can’t think straight about medical care. They just don’t understand even the basics. There are no scientists, no engineers, and few physicians in Congress.
We live in an amazingly arrogant age, at least in politics and the more self-indulgent fields of academia.
Obama is a product of the non-scientific academic world, where Marxist pseudo-philosophy is popular, as long as the colleges themselves can live off the fat of the (capitalist) land. Our academics are revolutionaries who never take a personal risk, just like our Democrats. That’s why the philosophy behind Obama’s Marxoid takeover of our health care seems to be:
Who cares if we do harm? We’ll fix it later! If it’s politically convenient! Whatever we do cannot hurt the apparatchiks, the ruling elite, who will have their own medical system.
Congress and federal bureaucrats will keep their current insurance plans. Academics will keep their tenure and their soft lifestyle at the expense of taxpayers. It’ll be a two-layered system straight out of Soviet Moscow: the nomenklatura versus the workers.
ObamaCare is really, really cheap compared to that one billion dollars for testing a single drug. The cost of testing and developing HR 3200, the current and ever-changing plan for ObamaCare, is zero dollars — because no testing and development has ever been done on more than 1,000 complicated pages. The bill has been thrown together in back-room deals between lobbyists and staffers in Congress. It’s like a hugely complex computer program that’s never been tested to see if it will run."
We live in an amazingly arrogant age, at least in politics and the more self-indulgent fields of academia.
Obama is a product of the non-scientific academic world, where Marxist pseudo-philosophy is popular, as long as the colleges themselves can live off the fat of the (capitalist) land. Our academics are revolutionaries who never take a personal risk, just like our Democrats. That’s why the philosophy behind Obama’s Marxoid takeover of our health care seems to be:
Who cares if we do harm? We’ll fix it later! If it’s politically convenient! Whatever we do cannot hurt the apparatchiks, the ruling elite, who will have their own medical system.
Congress and federal bureaucrats will keep their current insurance plans. Academics will keep their tenure and their soft lifestyle at the expense of taxpayers. It’ll be a two-layered system straight out of Soviet Moscow: the nomenklatura versus the workers.
ObamaCare is really, really cheap compared to that one billion dollars for testing a single drug. The cost of testing and developing HR 3200, the current and ever-changing plan for ObamaCare, is zero dollars — because no testing and development has ever been done on more than 1,000 complicated pages. The bill has been thrown together in back-room deals between lobbyists and staffers in Congress. It’s like a hugely complex computer program that’s never been tested to see if it will run."
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