Category Archives: the Radical testifies

March 26, 2011, 11:44 am

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

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…

March 14, 2011, 3:27 pm

A Casualty Of The Archives: Put Me On Research Injured Reserve, Please

By Claire Potter

You did it again, Charlie Brown.

Two days ago I woke up with a slightly sore back. I did what I normally do with back pain (other than worry that my advancing age is causing my arthritis flareups to accelerate): pop two Advil and flex in the shower while hot water pounds on my lower spine.

It got worse.

Four hours later, I got up from my computer and was seized with paralyzing pain extending in a band around my spine. Such pain, at that central location of the body, causes involuntary gasps that sound like this: “$hi-hi-hi-hi-hitte!”

I couldn’t think what I had done to cause this problem. I haven’t been rowing (the recent flooding blew away our club dock, and you can’t erg on the road.) The only exercise I have had during and after my travels has been my normal regime of weight lifting and a daily, sedate turn on the Exercycle.

I took two more Advil. And a Valium. No dice.

I’ll spare you…

October 11, 2010, 1:22 am

What is Our Work? Towards A Feminist Future in Education

By Claire Potter

Ellie Smeal and Alan Alda, ERA rally
June 30, 1981. Photo credit

This concludes a three part series on feminist education: you may want to read Part I and Part II first.

Gender inequality occurs in educational, and subsequently professional, atmospheres in which we have substantial evidence that men and women are equally able. The gender gap in math testing is shrinking rapidly, and at the top levels, it is insignificant. But as New York Times reporter Tamar Lewin noted in her commentary on “Why So Few,” a lack of faith in women’s abilities on the part of those who should be welcoming them to the next level of achievement may also reduce the confidence of even the top young female mathematicians. Hence, as Lewin concluded, “girls’ lesser belief in their own skills may partly explain why fewer women go into scientific careers.”

So returning to the question I asked in a…

September 14, 2010, 7:13 pm

A Very Sad Day

By Claire Potter

Once again a student has died violently at Zenith, this time by her own hand. She was found yesterday, badly burned, and she passed on today at Bridgeport Hospital.

You never, ever, get used to it. Ever.

August 23, 2010, 12:56 pm

The Annals of Anxiety: Constructing Velcro Parents As A “Problem” For Higher Education

By Claire Potter

This morning I have been thinking about what kinds of criticisms are attached to warnings about cultural decline, and why. For example, our friend Historiann asks today why older people are always so critical of the young. Yeah, why is that? Particularly given the fact that generation after generation, young people seem to grow up into functional workers, consumers, artists, writers and financiers, no matter how much Facebook they do; how many video games they play; and how much/little they read.

Historiann’s emphasis on why cultural critique dominates, at the expense of a more relational view of cultural change and material outcomes, is an interesting corollary to William Julius Wilson’s 2009 reassessment of a sociological school of thought, of which he is a prominent architect, that highlights cultural explanations for Black poverty at the expense of structural analysis. In More…

August 16, 2010, 12:15 pm

Department of All The News That Fits, We Print

By Claire Potter

Your favorite Radical has an opinion piece in the web version of the New York Times today.

August 12, 2010, 3:17 pm

What’s the Answer to Higher Education, Gertrude?” “Alice, What Is The Question?*

By Claire Potter

Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, Higher Education: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids – And What We Can Do About It. New York: Times Books, 2010). 271 pp., index; $26.00 hardcover.

For those of you have aspirations to publish for a popular market, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus’s contribution to the contemporary national debate about higher education does a lot of things right. The title poses a question and answers it – enticing you into a text that proposes to tell you the details that link the two. It has been cannily released in what is normally a slack summer book season (in other words, after the Summer Reading List issues of the Nation, the New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker; and right before these same publications announce what should be on your agenda for the fall.) Best of all, it is designed to freak out a…

August 3, 2010, 2:01 pm

The Seductions Of Sedan Delivery; Or, Writing Your Own Academic Job Description

By Claire Potter

May 15, 2010, 6:21 pm

The Radical Did Not Go Out With Elena Kagan, But Other Ivy League Grads Did: This Week On The Elitist Supreme Court

By Claire Potter

Last night when Jim Lehrer asked David Brooks and Mark Shields, “How do you see the Elena Kagan nomination now? It’s over a week,” this Radical moved to the edge of her seat. Which commenter was going to say the L word first?

No, no, not liberal.

Instead, after the normal reassurances that Kagan will be confirmed, just try to find something wrong with her, she was a good dean, she has no opinions about anything, blah, blah, blah, suddenly Shields and Brooks went on a tirade about SCOTUS being an elitist institution. (What, you thought it was a good thing that the highest court in the land was peopled with the best legal minds in the land? Think again, mister. Or sister.)

From the transcript:

MARK SHIELDS: I have to tell you, I mean, I am so tired of Ivy Leaguers. I really am. I want somebody who went to a state university, who didn’t grow up in the Eastern time zone, who worked nights, …

May 14, 2010, 12:19 pm

Ova There! Ova There! Send The Word, Send The Word, Ova There!

By Claire Potter

After reading a critical piece in the New York Times about the booming market in Ivy League ova earlier in the week, Radical Correspondent Oklahoma Annie writes that she was “incensed” by it:

What’s going on, in summary, is this: Agencies who traffic in human ova are seeking the highest achieving young women from top universities as donors, and are offering them upwards of $10,000 to donate their eggs.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, which set the $10,000 cap on payments in its guidelines, is now “concerned” that young women may be lured by excessively high payments to become donors “against their own best interests.”

Now, excuse me, but we’re talking about the top percentile, crème de la crème of American elite universities, and we’re afraid they won’t be able to make informed decisions about their own health and finances?

Well, OK, so we’re also…