Month: July 2019

True Story:  According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “scholars across the country have signed an open letter to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum asking that it retract its June 24 statement condemning all analogies to the Holocaust.”

Sorry, scholars.  Too little, too late. 

The Museum’s condemnation of analogies has prompted a flurry of similar actions by other organizations around the nation.  Here are the most recent ones:

—  On July 3rd Major League Baseball sued the President of Colby College for his claim that the school had “hit a big league home run” in hiring a new Provost with credentials from the prestigious University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. 

According to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, “there is no evidence that Colby’s President, or any member of its Board of Trustees, has ever played professional baseball, much less hit a home run in a game.  His assertion demeans the achievements of every Major League player in history who has launched a four-bagger.  For the love of God, stop using such language, especially in praising someone who comes from a country that believes cricket is actually a sport.”

—  Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Richard V. Spencer called out the Chancellor of the University of Tennessee on July 10th for her comment that the school “was waging an all-out war against budget cuts to higher education by the state legislature.” 

Speaking at a hastily called press conference, Spencer maintained that “the draft-dodging faculty at this ivory-tower cupcake of a university wouldn’t know how to mount a strategic military initiative if the Pentagon gave them an instruction manual using nothing but one-syllable words.  In war, Dear Chancellor, people get shot, they bleed, and they die.  They live in trenches and foxholes for weeks at a time, stink to high heaven, and eat beef jerky for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  When’s the last time you did anything like that?  The day you’re prepared to drop the Big One on the state capitol building while the legislature is in session, you can talk to me about waging war.  Until then, stand down and shut up!”

—  Finally, there is the beyond-embarrassing episode at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where the UNLV President characterized a recent 3-hour meeting of the Faculty Senate as a “clusterf**k in which absolutely nothing worthwhile was accomplished.” 

In a July 15th letter to the President, the Executive Director of the Nevada Association of Brothel Owners (NABO) indicated that “we are deeply offended  by your use of the term in question to describe a dysfunctional faculty gathering.  NABO takes pride in furnishing its customers with reasonably priced activities bearing the name that you trashed.  Indeed, these services at our facilities consistently receive yelp ratings that average 4.85 or higher on a 5-point scale.  You have taken a perfectly good word and smeared it.  If you want to criticize the way your faculty run their meetings, by all means do so, but not at our expense.  Thank you.”

A point well taken. 

Things got a bit embarrassing for Naomi Wolf a couple of months ago when an interviewer informed her, during a live radio broadcast, of a substantive error in Outrages, her most recent book.  

As distressing as this episode was for Ms. Wolf, it pales in comparison with what a number of other authors have experienced when confronted with mistakes in their research.  A sampling:

— Duncan Fife-Prell, a professor at Middlebury College, claimed that Liechtenstein, not Germany, was the primary aggressor during World War II in his two-volume work, Tiny Terror: Liechtenstein and the Quest for World Domination.  Fife-Prell learned of his blunder when he attended a book signing at VFW Post No. 782 in Burlington, Vermont and was punched in the face by a veteran whose parents had emigrated to the United States from the small principality in 1910.  The author later acknowledged that he had been doing “serious amounts of cocaine” while working on the book. 

—  In Munch, his 2018 history of snack foods, Rutgers University Culinary Science professor Seth Halogen asserted that Slim Jims pre-dated Twizzlers.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Twizzlers were first produced in 1845, while Slim Jims did not appear until 1929, over 80 years later.

Halogen’s mistake was revealed on the PBS Newshour by anchor Judy Woodruff during a segment on “Chewing and Identity Politics.”  Dr. Halogen has not been seen since the show aired on June 26th, but his car was discovered three days later.  It was parked next to a Häagen-Dazs production facility in Bayonne, New Jersey that contained industrial vats of molten dark chocolate.  A sneaker was found floating in Vat No. 7.  There was no note. 

—  Finally, there is the case of Millicent Frittata, unauthorized biographer of the rich and famous.  In her 2019 book, You Don’t Know Jack!, she maintains that movie star Jack Lemmon was transgender.  As it turns out, Ms. Frittata had seen the raucous 1959 comedy “Some Like It Hot,” where Mr. Lemmon is often dressed as a woman, and thought the film was a documentary.  When questioned by a Washington Post reporter, she offered a half-hearted apology: “Okay, okay, but I still think there may be something going on there.”

Authors, take note: Fact-checking never goes out of style.  

 

The title of a recent Inside Higher Ed article asked, “Who’s doing the heavy lifting in terms of diversity and inclusion work?”  The unsurprising answer is that faculty members who engage the most in this arena are likely to be non-white, non-male, or first-generation college attendees. 

Some schools are now attempting to distribute the lifting more evenly.  Unfortunately, not everyone is equally prepared to hoist.

Consider what happened at the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI), which is located in northern Maine near the Canadian border. 

According to a UMPI administrator who wishes to remain anonymous, the University wanted to establish a cadre of white professors who could serve as mentors to the small number of black students on campus.  A multiple-choice test was developed to assess the professors’ fundamental knowledge of black history.  Of the 52 faculty members who took the test, only 3 passed, and 2 of those individuals were later found to have cheated.  

Here is the test in its entirety:

1.  Who founded Motown Records?

A.  Berry Gordy

B.  Halle Berry

C.  Boysen Berry

2.  Which of the following does not belong?

A.  Count Basie

B.  Duke Ellington

C.  King Tut

3.  A seminal jazz album recorded by Miles Davis is:

A.  Kind of Blue

B.  Sort of Green

C.  Somewhere between Teal and Turquoise

4.  James Baldwin and Alec Baldwin are:

A.  brothers.

B.  father and son.

C.  probably not related.  

5.  Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech was written and delivered by:

A.  Carol King

B.  Martin Luther King

C.  Martin Luther

6.  Harriet Tubman is best known for her work with:

A.  the Underground Railroad.

B.  the Velvet Underground, an iconic 1960’s rock band.

C.  Amtrak, which she founded. 

7.  Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel:

A.  Fifty Shades of Grey.

B.  Beloved.

C.  Star Wars.

8.  Neil deGrasse Tyson is:

A.  an astrophysicist.

B.  a point guard for the Miami Heat.

C.  Trick question:  There is no person named Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

“What is particularly embarrassing is that you only needed to get five questions right to pass the test and become a mentor,” says the UMPI source.  “This result is simply unacceptable.  These are the same professors who can identify an L. L. Bean Duck Boot from over 200 yards away…at night…in the fog!  Give me a break!”

On a more positive note, in May 2019 the UMPI Martial Arts Squad (nicknamed The Wakandans, although 6 of its 7 members are white) defeated student teams from Bryn Mawr College and Oberlin College in the Aroostook County Moose-Wrestling Invitational, an annual competition between the three schools.  UMPI has won this event for the past 12 years.  During that time, no moose has ever been successfully pinned by a Bryn Mawr or Oberlin team member.  

Moral of the Story?  Play to your strengths, UMPI, play to your strengths.