This person is illustrative of a large and intractable problem in colleges and universities across the country, that positions in much of the humanities, such as English departments, have become little more than cover jobs for political demagogues.
These political activists get to use the resources of tax and tuition dollars to fund their salaries and, since they claim that what are really political activities are encompassed by the scope of their academic areas, to fund much of their political activities as well.
The root of the problem is insufficient accountability; these people have burrowed into a self-perpetuating institution that is too far removed from those paying their expenses -- the taxpayers and parents who, if they had a more direct say in the matter, would by and large NOT willingly pay the way for these left-wing radicals to spread their message like a cancer in society.
Your comment = my thoughts exactly.
Why the need to invoke all manner of symbolism and hand wringing? As far as I am concerned, the Duke guys should be damn well able to hire a hooker (oh sorry, a "single mother") as easily as ordering a pizza. If she didn't want to strip for them, she could have declined, end of story. That she apparently fulfilled her contract with them and, I suppose (but do not know) they paid her. End of story. That they did is perhaps tawdry but it's orders of magnitude less tawdry than the economic destruction visited upon those kids and their families by Nifong.
Dear Ms. Davidson: Your essay, 'In the Aftermath of a Social Disaster', epitomizes a big part of what is wrong with today’s academia. It is wordy, boring and unfocussed. I tried valiantly to read it, only to realize I could have written a shorter, punchier and far more engaging essay saying the same thing in half or possibly a third as many words. Your thinking, as displayed in this piece, is murky, meandering and self-serving. In case you hadn’t noticed, the esteem in which Americans hold academics is plummeting. Your inability to express yourself clearly, succinctly and interestingly is one of the factors contributing to the slide. Your best hope of clarifying and sharpening both your logic and writing skills would be to engage in more serious, respectful debate with those who hold views different from your own. Much of academia today is more interested in curtailing opposing views than in engaging them in an open, honest way. So long as that remains the case, academics’ thinking will remain muddy, immature and dull.
Sincerely
That "poverty line", of course, being some 20 times higher than the median income of the entire planet.
If you're doing better than half the world's population, "disaster" is rather overstating the issue.
Nothing new here. Blind leading the blind. All men are
sinners. Ship of fools. Just the history of mankind in replay
mode.
Next social disaster please.
Wonder when the riots, "teach-ins", drive-bys, and the college
level class, on "gender, race, sex, badboys, and the Duke
experience" starts...
When will the miniTV series, or movie come out?...I want
Lil Kim as the stripper, Kutcher, and Dicaprio as the
lacross badboys, Taylor Hicks as the DA, Brad pitt, and
Eva Longoria as the coach and his longsuffering wife,
and Cathy Davidson as the crusading journalist who unearths
the sordid details of this incredible event to the wondering
masses of the world.
I have heard it rumored that the main qualification for teaching in the Duke Political Science Dept is one must be a Marxist. I am not kidding, just seeking confirmation. Anyone know?
This is a bald-faced lie. "Similar" jobs include an engineer and a secretary working for the same company. Of course the engineer makes more - as would a female engineer make more than a male secretary.
There are many jobs now where women make MORE than men - University presidents is one, librarians is another.
Most jobs are paid by the job - the sex of the person filling the job has nothing to do with it.
These studies claim that since a secretary's job is "just as important" as the engineers job - she should make the same as the engineer.
That's like saying that a janitor at a hospital should make as much as the chief of surgery because the janitor's job is "just as important".
Not how these studies never say the "same" job - but only "similar" jobs.
Similarity is relative.
Liberals eat this stuff up.
Interesting, The left always use the play "The Crucible" to show how the "innocent" was targeted in the House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings of the 1950's.
Unlike then when the accused turned out to be guilty the Duke case is more like the frenzy of the Salem Witch Hunts.
Bovine excrement. The players had requested white or hispanic strippers, IIRC. Therefore, the fact that the "performers" were black becomes irrelevant, except to the race baiting crowd. If the team had requested black strippers - then race may be a factor on part of the players scenario that played out ONLY in the false accuser's mind.
Why doesn't she come out and say that it is really, really bad that people levy false charges and prosecutors run with them for cynical political reasons?
"Their aim is to make academics and liberals look ridiculous and uncaring."
You beat us to that when you signed that ad - Liberal!
Whine on, and show the world how a Marxist faculty member will try to rationalize anything.
Show us the true breadth and depth of your academentia.
There is a social disaster just not the one she thinks there is.
Academics and liberals look ridiculous and uncaring without any help from bloggers. All the bloggers do is let others know the nonsense that the liberal kooks spew.
What would be the effect on the 18 percent below the poverty line if the 20 to 30 million illegal aliens were kicked out? That would open up jobs and raise wages.
The stealing of our country by illegals is a social disaster in and of itself, and it contributing to the other "social disasters" this author is whining about.
bump
Blog hooligans??
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh my....
An excerpt from 'The Chronicle of Higher Education'
From the issue dated February 13, 2004
"A Manifesto for the Humanities in a Technological Age" By CATHY N. DAVIDSON and DAVID THEO GOLDBERG
Diversity is important. The humanities have been the principal (and for the most part the principled) site of diversity and diversification in the academy, both demographically and intellectually. Engineering, the sciences, the social sciences, and, to a lesser extent, the business schools now may be playing catch-up, recruiting increasingly diverse student and faculty populations; but the humanities are still way ahead in facing up to the challenge of understanding diversity in complex and paradigm-changing ways (just consider the contributions of ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, and other identity-based programs).
There are thousands of these nitwits all across the nation and they are provoking social disasters throughout.