Category Archives: civil wrongs

February 14, 2013, 1:36 pm

Why Tenured “Radical”? And Other Political Confessions

It appeared that my ability to join the collective hinged on my agreement with all the criticisms of my past political thinking and work, and not just a willingness to consider them….The criticism indicated that I was inferior to other members of the collective, and I wanted the opportunity to prove that I had a substantial history of work and ideas, and that I should be considered an equal. So I agreed with the criticisms in general, and said I would rethink things in light of the criticism. I thought to myself, I could always change my mind.

Cathy Wilkerson, Flying Too Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman (2010)

A central theme in several autobiographies of former radical antiwar activists is the role that criticism sessions played in persuading people to adopt a new world view, one that ran counter to attitudes they might previously have valued as members of …

January 27, 2013, 10:34 am

Want Helicopter Parents Gone? Teach Your Students To Fly

By Claire Potter

In today’s New York Times KJ Dell’Antonia weighs in on helicopter parenting, speculating that one outcome of articles like his is to give some parents the warm and fuzzies. After having read about how other people’s kids wander clueless through their educations, “most readers get to give themselves a pat on the back. They would never do such crazy stuff! Therefore, they are not helicopter parents. Case closed — off to drive the kid to hockey practice as soon as I pack up his bag.”

Dell’Antonia missed the second audience for this article. College teachers and university administrators will be re-posting it to Facebook, with hair-raising stories about the heli-relllies who have been camped out in the President’s waiting room, grimly awaiting action on last semester’s Epic Fail. Parents intervening on behalf of young people who have screwed up in some dismal way or another is a fact …

September 1, 2012, 10:23 am

Tenured Radical’s New Media Adventures

By Claire Potter

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in a new Huffington Post feature called HuffPost Live. My segment — on marriage equality — was hosted by Janet Varney, who once had a part on one of my all-time favorite shows, Entourage (2004-2011).

I can’t figure out how to embed the video (perhaps because it is unembeddable?) but you can access Tenured Radical discussing the question of whether the government ought to get out of the business of marriage altogether here.

As you can see if you click on the link, it’s a web broadcast with a live chat feature on the right. There is a central studio in Los Angeles, where they sometimes have sit down guests: our feature was done via a Google+ Hangout, a video chat feature that allows up to nine people to join a conversation.

One obvious feature of doing a digital media event — aside from the fact that it is fun — is that in a …

June 13, 2012, 3:45 pm

Why Would We Want A Less Educated Nation? Defending the PhD

By Claire Potter

Clark Kent wouldn't really give up. He would DO something.

You who are beginning doctoral programs in the humanities and social sciences in the fall: listen up.

In September, you may have an experience similar to the one Nate Kreuter, now an assistant professor of English at Western Carolina State University, described last fall at Inside Higher Ed (November 21 2011.)

Kreuter’s “cohort was led into an auditorium….After the typical messages of welcome and run-downs of various logistical need-to-know, the graduate director delivered a very somber warning.” Of the cohort of more than thirty, “only perhaps 40 percent of us would complete our degrees and secure academic appointments. That 40 percent, he warned, would be lucky to find any sort of academic job, even off the tenure track, and even fewer …

January 27, 2012, 12:18 pm

What a Real Education Policy Would Look Like

By Claire Potter

Photo Credit: Associated Press

I have repeatedly complained in this blog that the Obama administration has no education policy. Part of what is horrible about the Republican presidential field turning into a political version of the Human Centipede is that Barack Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Democratic party will not be challenged on four years of education non-policy. They are operating under No Child Left Behind with a policy nip here and an administrative tuck there. And now they want to extend this non-policy to higher education. (more…)

December 3, 2011, 12:24 pm

Friday Night Fights: Protecting Football At Every Level, Any Cost

By Claire Potter

Questions about why college football programs breed scandal and off the field violence might want to look at high school football for clues. Today’s New York Times has a story about Wayne Hills High School in New Jersey, which will take the field against Old Tappan in the state sectional championship game tonight minus nine players. The nine were suspended from playing only this week following aggravated assault charges filed well over a month ago: “The nine players, all but one of whom are minors,” Harvey Araton writes, “are accused of beating two students from the district’s other high school, Wayne Valley, after an earlier confrontation at a house party. One of the victims was said to have been left unconscious in the street.” The second victim, although not beaten until he was unconscious, was kicked and stomped after having been knocked to the ground.

No sport but…

October 17, 2011, 2:29 pm

What Constitutes Resistance? Occupying A Small Place

By Claire Potter

On Saturday, the Radical interrupted what might charitably be called a seven day grade-a-palooza to attend one of the 1500 events that have spun off around the globe from Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park. Earlier in the week, our neighborhood Blockwatch (which tends to focus its efforts on baking cookies for our “friends” the police and reminds us to watch out for African-American people who, organizers imagine, live elsewhere and drop by to steal white people’s $hit) sent out a portentous message that the demo was expected to be massive. The po-po, they warned, would be using our neighborhood as a “staging area” and we should avoid downtown. (more…)

March 26, 2011, 11:44 am

Because We Are All Bill Cronon: An Open Letter To Our Colleague In Madison

By Claire Potter

Where is this clause in the constitution?

Dear Bill:

Welcome to the blogosphere! I like the design of Scholar as Citizen, and frankly, I’m also happy to have another age peer in the house. Although I’ve never had a whole political party go after me (very impressive, dude!), I did suffer an attack from a fellow historian and his followers that had its hair-raising moments.

I didn’t get the death threats on my voice mail that an untenured colleague at a prestigious flagship received from the Sunshine Band. However, I got plenty of hate mail, as well as copies of numerous emails sent to Zenith’s president, members of the history department, and the board of trustees. These various communications, and numerous letters, all called for my termination — something that was, of course, impossible, since I already had tenure. It wasn’t covered in the national media, but it was ugly all the same…

January 24, 2011, 10:48 am

It Gets Worse: Queer People “Volunteer” To Help To Ease The Tax Burden For Straight Families

By Claire Potter

Remember in my last post when I said it doesn’t always get better? A little bird down the street at Yale –erp, I mean, Oligarch University twigged me last week to a payroll error, because of which 61 employees will see a paycheck reduction of 33% or more for January and the subsequent two months. Right before winter break, LGBT employees who had taken advantage of Connecticut’s new freedom to gay marry received a letter telling them of a payroll error: the university had ceased withholding taxes on the benefits received for domestic partners who had become spouses under state law — but not federal law. The upshot, for those of you who suffer temporary black out when taxes are mentioned, gay married people get to pay two years of taxes in one.

Homos are just more patriotic, that’s all. Photo Credit.

In many ways, this falls under the category of discriminatory behavior that allows…

March 26, 2010, 1:56 pm

On Political Violence: Vandalism And Mortal Threats In The Wake Of The Wake Of The Health Care Vote

By Claire Potter

If you actually go to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, rather than simply believe what you have heard in the media, you can evaluate for yourself whether the twenty Democratic congressional seats she is urging the Republicans to take back in November are, or are not, marked with rifle cross hairs. I’m voting for not, although I haven’t looked through a rifle sight in decades, so I am no authority.

I think the notion that Palin is inviting political assassins to, as we now say in the political arena, “bring it on” (I guess if you are a Republican you say “let’s roll”) takes an act of imagination. In order to imagine that one was being summoned by Palin to harm a sitting Congressman as part of a rebellion against tyranny, one would have to disregard what the former Governor of Alaska (or the person who maintains the site for her) actually says in the note attached to the map. “We’re…