Do I feel like less of a person for it? No… I’m a perfectly happy and fulfilled individual.”

When a friend posted this on my Facebook wall, one of those really uncomfortable conversations began where I ended up sounding like your conservative grandmother about gay people: maybe it’s just a phase, that’s wrong, people really should leave that as their own private shame.

I hate myself for having this response because if there is one thing I know for sure, it is that human sexuality is messy and not easily locked down into neat little boxes to be checked off on a survey. Why can’t some people be happily asexual? Why can’t some couples be happily asexual?

Apparently  15-20 percent of people are in no-sex or low-sex relationships. And some research shows that about 1 percent of the population in the United Kingdom and slightly lower in the United States are asexual. In the United States, more men than women fall into the asexual category, that is, having no sexual attraction to men, women, or anything else for that matter.

According to the Asexual Visibility and Education Network Web site, an asexual is “a person who does not experience sexual attraction,” but the identity category seems to extend to those who do have sexual feelings but do not act on them with another person. Also according the AVEN Web site, asexuality is an identity, like gay or straight, not a choice, like celibacy.

This notion of asexuality as an identity relies on some of the most dominant beliefs about homosexuality: that one is born that way and that it is not the result of a life history, but of some innate genetic predisposition possibly located in the hypothalamus. The search for “asexual essentialism,” like the search for “the gay gene,” has led one scientist to suggest that we

gather a group of willing, self-identified asexuals and, systematically and under controlled conditions, expose them to an array of erotic stimuli while measuring their physical arousal (penile erection or vaginal lubrication).

I will leave it to the scientists to search for the supposed genetic basis of asexuality as well as tie themselves into knots to explain it all in terms of evolutionary biology. Instead, I will propose a different approach à la Foucault: When was the asexual born as a species and what historical, economic, cultural, and political forces swirl around this new sexual species?

I am going to date the asexual as a sexual identity to the past 10 years, to the widespread use of the Internet and online communities, and the intensification of biologistic explanations for everything we want or do, from eating a chocolate-chip cookie to being gay. I am also going to posit that the asexual as an identity probably has a particular racial and class formation (although gender seems less important than I might have guessed, since the embrace by white middle-class women of asexuality would have signaled an earlier “lady-like” asexuality that signified racial purity). I am also guessing that the asexual identity—perhaps like the homosexual identity during the heady days of gay liberation—signals resistance to the dominant culture. In other words, asexuality is an “alternative lifestyle” for those who can afford both a lifestyle and an alternative one at that.

There are a million reasons why a thinking person might want to resist the hyper-sexualization of everyday life in the United States and why this resistance can sink down into our very bones so that it becomes “natural” and “unchangeable.” After all, the sedimentation of homosexuality and heterosexuality are similar. One is not born a particular sexuality; one becomes one. Regardless of what the essentialists want to believe, sexuality requires culture, and culture changes over time. Our culture now offers us a plethora of sexual-identity positions, from hetero to homo to poly to a.

And Timm Gunn is now the proud spokesman of asexuals. Perhaps this godfather of fashion understands that he is riding the wave of the newest sexual species to arrive on the American scene. But probably he is just expressing his inner truth, a truth that is not a biological fact, but rather a historical one.

Bon Appetit! (Wiki photo)

There are no culinary tours to Costa Rica, and for good reason. So far as I can tell, this small tropical country has nothing special to offer in the way of gustatory delights. Let’s face it, you can’t eat phenomenal biodiversity, mist-shrouded volcanoes, cloud forests, rain forests, pristine beaches complete with warm water, spectacular surfing, and leatherback turtles, a thoroughly nonmilitarized society (when flocks of pelicans conduct their regular flybys, we note that the Costa Rican air force is out on maneuvers), a long and proud history of social democracy, and the world’s happiest people whose national motto is somewhere between “tranquilo” and “pura vida.” But I digress. Now that Frank Bruni is writing (admirably!) about politics for The New York Times, I sense an opening and so: Today I’m writing about food.

Not fancy food, mind you, but beans and rice.

What I’ve noticed, aside from the fact that Tico food is notably boring, is that there are few obese people here, just as, despite the fact that Costa Rica is a relatively poor country, there also appears to be essentially no hunger or malnutrition. Basic food here is basic indeed. As in much of Latin America, a typical day’s diet consists of beans and rice (plus some corn tortillas). Repeat as needed,  not uncommonly three times per day. Add the vitamin D that is synthesized inevitably as a result of spending time outdoors, plus some vitamin C (from the abundant pineapples, lemons, mangoes, papayas, and so forth), and the average Tico consumes a highly nutritious, remarkably inexpensive diet, containing all the essential amino acids and vitamins.

Years ago, I noticed a similar pattern in Nepal, another developing or “third world” country characterized by low incomes yet paradoxically good nutrition. The national Nepali meal is “dal bhat,” consisting of rice, lentils (often both black and yellow), and some sort of green or orange curried vegetable, depending on local agricultural preferences. (Very rarely, a bit of chicken is added.) Nepalis, like Ticos, don’t value culinary diversity; dal bhat is often consumed three times per day, but with great enthusiasm.

I’m not one to idealize other cultures simply because they’re “other.” But I’m also open to learning from others, specifically because they are other. And I can’t help noting that it’s unfortunate—maybe even tragic—that the United States, for example, doesn’t have an equivalent of rice and beans or dal bhat: a basic, healthy, inexpensive, easy-to-prepare default meal. Instead, we have “Happy Meals” that are nutritionally miserable, or variants on Coca Cola, Doritos, and cheeseburgers: high in salt, fat, sugar and, ironically, cost as well.

Seems to me that a chef, celebrity or otherwise, with a soupςon of originality plus a dash of social conscience and a generous helping of comestible insight could do this overweight, undernourished country of ours a lot of good.

Wellerism, from Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick’s servant (in Pickwick Papers), meaning making fun of clichés often by taking them literally. For example (when serving lunch): “Now, gen’l'm’n, ‘fall on, as the English said to the French when they fixed bagginets.”

Fagin, from the receiver of stolen goods (in Oliver Twist), meaning an adult who instructs children in crime. Fagin is trying to turn Oliver into a thief. Dickens got the name from a friend when he was working in the blacking factory, but the character is based on the real-life fence Ikey Solomon. I suspect most of us today would feel uncomfortable using the term because of the anti-Semitic undertones (not very “under” in the David Lean film, with Alec Guinness as Fagin).

Gamp, from Mrs. Gamp’s brolly in Martin Chuzzlewit.

Gradgrind, from the headmaster in Hard Times, meaning someone who is coldly after the facts and nothing else.

Scrooge—I will leave that as an exercise for the reader!

To this list I would add:

Pickwickian, meaning using a word in a very odd way (probably quite contrary to its normal use), from Pickwick Papers. Working from memory, I think it was two characters in the Pickwick Club who had called each other “fellow,” and harmony was restored by agreeing that the term was meant in a Pickwickian sense.

Pecksniffian, from Martin Chuzzlewit, referring to Mr. Pecksniff, an unctuous hypocrite, and meaning just that.

Do readers have any other names to offer?

Incidentally, picking up on some of the comments on what I wrote, I would certainly put Martin Chuzzlewit high on my list of beloved Dickens novels, if not as high as some. I confess that I completely forgot A Tale of Two Cities, which in itself perhaps says something. My recollection is that it is a good yarn but not a great book; but I could be wrong and this is a spur to look again. I did not much care for Hard Times, but it may be because, being short, it was rather turned into the “Dickens set book” for courses. Perhaps also the social stuff attracted teachers if not students. Risking the wrath of many, I rather think of Hard Times along with the novels of George Eliot—a bit too earnest for my taste. (I love Trollope, perhaps because he is not preachy.)

And what about the lower-rank Dickens novels? Although there are great bits, I would put Old Curiosity Shop and Nicholas Nickleby in this group. It is a while since I read Barnaby Rudge, and I do remember enjoying it. Time to get at it again. Indeed, in this Dickens year it seems that I have a lot of homework to do, and being the swot that I am, that suits me just fine.

As part of my employment at this Catholic institution, I am offered health insurance. That’s the American way, right? After all, we have come up with the wonderful system—the envy of the world—whereby we individuals mostly obtain health insurance through individual employers.

Up until now, most employers’ insurance plans have covered birth control as part of their plans, mostly with no co-pay required of its employees. But this will change if the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which overtly loathes birth control, and Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who overtly loathes President Obama, have their way.

The female Protestant employee, if she wishes to keep her job, can say goodbye to the normal medical care she would expect to obtain through her employer—namely, a health-insurance plan that includes full coverage for artificial birth control (again, in many cases, this means birth control without a co-pay).

While Catholics and Boehner cry foul at the Obama administration’s recent ruling that Catholic-affiliated institutions (not actual churches, mind you) must abide by the same health-insurance rules that the rest of the employer world abides by (citing “religious freedom”), non-Catholic women like me cry foul even louder. We cite the need for women’s healthcare without the interference of religious ideas. I’ll grant that Catholic institutions would have a case were they never receiving any federal dollars. But that is not the case.

How is it, I ask, that Catholic institutions get to suck at the federal trough and then, when certain table manners are required, turn around and cry “religious freedom”? There are many, I know, who will say, “Well, your Protestant woman need not apply to work at a Catholic institution.” Fine. Then your Catholic institution need not accept my Protestant woman’s tax dollars—which come in the form of your grants and subsidies.

Note that nothing in the Obama administration’s plan forces Catholics to use birth control. It simply says that when it comes to women’s health-insurance plans, all employers must play by the same rules.

For a long time, those of us who support planned parenthood (that’s “planned parenthood” with lower case letters, indicating “the modern idea that men and women have the right to use artificial means of birth control) have argued that this includes artificial methods of birth control. The rhythm method just doesn’t cut it. We believe that by letting men and women who want to plan the number and spacing of their children do just that through artificial birth control, we let them exercise their freedom. We who believe this do not force birth control on anyone. (That doesn’t keep us from believing that women who end up as brood sows are a sad and sorry sight.)

Many who are opposed to abortion rights are, it turns out (surprise surprise) also opposed to contraception. It’s hard to fathom, but we are truly going backwards in history.

Happy birthday, ol' chum! (Charles Dickens portrait by Matthew Brady, U.S. National Archives via Flickr Commons)

Which are your favorite novels by Charles Dickens? For me, there are what I call the Big Four: Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend. I am not trying to justify this list or claim that these are the best (although I would think any list ordering merit would put them high), simply to say that these are the novels that have given and continue to give me the most pleasure.

I suspect that if one were to be dropped from the list of the best, many people would opt for Pickwick Papers. It is a funny sort of novel, appearing in 1836, harking back more to the 18th century than forward into the Victorian Era. (The Queen came to the throne in 1837). It is rather shaggy at first, because it was intended merely to give a story to a series of pictures; but then with the appearance of Mr. Pickwick’s servant Sam Weller it takes off and never looks back. My absolute favorite bit is when Sam is in the witness box in the trial of Mr. Pickwick on a charge of breach of promise, and the trouble he causes for the other side. But Sam having supper with the posh servants of Bath is a pretty close second. Dodson and Fogg, the shifty lawyers, are pretty good too, as are the drunken medical students.

David Copperfield, is – well what does one say? It is certainly one of the most powerful depictions of childhood that has ever been written, and – writing now as one who lost a beloved mother when I was 13 and who thinks about her daily – I am simply in awe of the superhuman powers Dickens shows in writing about loss and grief by children who have lost parents. There is of course the wonderful Mr. Micawber and the great villain Uriah Heep – damp hands, rather curved spine, dank red hair. No prizes for guessing his besetting vice. All of that vital bodily fluid flowing out because of disgusting nocturnal habits. I am also staggered how Dickens gets away with describing the relationship between David and Steerforth. Although as adults they are unambiguously heterosexual, the earlier homosexual vibes between the two are described so openly.

Bleak House is perhaps the greatest. (OK, I am breaking my intent not to judge.) The novel was turned around for me when I read an analysis I think by Humphrey House. Like many (including the person who wrote the introduction to the book in my much-loved Oxford collection of the novels), I thought that the narrator Esther Summerson was another of Dickens’s rather drippy females – another Agnes from David Copperfield. Esther is always going on about being good and so forth – how everybody loves her. Then it was pointed out that Dickens was doing all of this deliberately, showing the insecurities of someone unloved in childhood and compensating. As soon as you see this, all falls into place and the author’s sheer brilliance is plain to see.

I am not quite sure why I am so fond of Our Mutual Friend, and, balancing this, rather less so of Little Dorrit. Let me just say that when I first met my wife, I was captivated by the fact that she was called “Lizzie” rather than “Liz” or “Betty” or some other form of Elizabeth. At once I said: “Oh just like Lizzie Hexam in Our Mutual Friend!” It says much for my good luck that she didn’t walk out on such a pretentious twit right then and there. (I cannot remember precisely, but I bet I compounded it by saying: “And Lizzie Eustace and Lizzie Borden.”) I might add, in praise of Little Dorrit, that I just love the character who thinks she can talk to foreigners by speaking loudly and in baby language. My late father used to go all over the continent doing just this, convinced he was fluent in about 10 languages.

There are some lesser novels of which I am incredibly fond, Dombey and Son and Oliver Twist in particular. I love the bit when Mr. Bumble has married the matron of the workhouse, is now under her thumb, and (being accused of a crime) told that in law even though his wife may have been the main party he is the one responsible. Most people know the first line but miss the far funnier last lines.

“It was all Mrs. Bumble. She would do it,” urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the room.

“That is no excuse,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and indeed are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.”

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass — a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.”

Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr. Bumble fixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his pockets, followed his helpmate down stairs.

And then there is Great Expectations. I had always viewed this through the lens of David Lean’s fantastic film adaptation – surely the best ever of a Dickens novel. That incredible opening scene across the marshes and down into the churchyard. But rereading the novel recently, I realized how much obviously had to be cut, but how also Lean had given the story an optimism that I don’t see in the book. I think it an incredibly dark tale of how a frustrated and unhappy woman, Miss Havisham, sets out successfully to destroy the happiness of two young people, Pip and Estella. I know that one version of the ending has the two come together again, but truly it is a story of destroyed hopes and love. Very powerful and I would say quite equal to anything in Dostoevsky, who is the great novelist I think of in a context like this.

As this week we celebrate Dickens’s 200th anniversary, I just want to say how lucky I am to have had Dickens as part of my life. And I haven’t even mentioned that I spent last Christmas Eve in tears as I reread a Christmas Carol and I am in tears now as I think of the death of David’s mother.

Even doggerel  should have its day, and we believe its day is February 14th.

For example, one of my brother’s best friends in the world is having surgery on Valentine’s Day. There’s no card for that. There’s nothing you can get where, let’s say, a unicorn is removing somebody’s gallbladder or a teddy-bear is inserting drug-releasing stents below the knee; there’s really nothing for that particular occasion, not even in your fancier stationary stores. So, being the poet he’s always been (under that JD and MBA), he wrote a series of what I believe to be well-crafted poems in celebration of his friend’s impending experience:

—-

Let’s be friends
Until you die
Which might be today
In Mount Sinai.
—
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
You’re under the knife,
Anesthetized, too!

—
Valentine, valentine,
Red, white and blue
I’ll sign your health proxy
If you’ll sign mine, too.
—-
Five little words
I’ll say to you,
“I won’t pull the plug”
Unless you’re quite through.

Acting as both inspiration and prompt, my students and I have decided to come up with a few ditties of our own to be used by, as one young woman insisted we call it, “Those Having Issues on Feb. 14th.” We wanted to cover our bases, however off-base they seemed.

(There’s a whole other post to be written about when the word “issues” became a noun covering everything loathsome, deviant, or merely unspeakably complicated, as in: “They can’t come to the party because they’re having ‘issues’”; “She would have been offered the job, but even the hiring committee could see she had ‘issues.’” When did “issues” replace “problems” and why?)

Okay, back to greeting-card pop-poetry produced for the Valentine’s Days of the Damned!

—

You’re single? You’re married?
It doesn’t much matter
You’re still in my bed
whether former or latter.

—

Come live with me and be my love
and we will all the pleasures prove
until the apartment becomes too small
but you’re too cheap to move.

—
You might be well read
and like your cinema blue
but you can’t scare me off
I’m a Terry Southern fan, too.

—-

Willy had a naughty streak
he chased girls around the Globe
he caught one behind the arras
and disheveled her wardrobe–
Which I would like to do with you,
my very own Juliet,
except I’d leave your arras intact
and focus on your bouncing doublet.

—

I’ll be alone on Valentine’s Day
although I’ll be thinking of you
I’ll be alone on Valentine’s night
since my &#@&ing term paper is due.

—

Adjunct

Teacher, teacher, do you know
I am in love with you?
Teacher, teacher, can’t  you see?
I love you through and through.

Pupil, pupil, don’t you know
I have one semester before I go;
Pupil, pupil, can’t you see
The fact of my contingency?

—

Surely you can come up with some to rival, or–dare I say?–best these. C’mon, folks. Valentine’s Day for if not for the creation of strange assemblages, especially if they rhyme?

(Still from "Nacho Libre" at Movies Online)

A number of years ago, a university public-relations official approached me with an invitation. Her office was coordinating a series of columns called “Health Talk and You,” which were published in about 50 newspapers around the state. The columns were short, simple, and straightforward – about 500 words, she said. Would I be interested in taking part? Without giving the question much thought, I said yes.

Then I read her email more carefully. I had initially thought I was being asked to write an article. In fact, however, I was being asked to lend my name to an article which the public relations office would ghostwrite, but which would be published under my byline. A reporter would interview me on the topic of my choice and write an article based on the interview. When I called the public relations officer back, I explained that it seemed deceptive to take credit for an article that I didn’t actually write. She bristled; the conversation turned chilly; and by the time we hung up, we had both agreed that I would make a very poor “author.”

Given how badly that brief conversation went, it was probably best that I didn’t mention my other reservation about the article. What bothered me was not just the deception. I was also afraid someone might think I had actually written the kind of embarrassing propaganda and mindless fluff typically generated by a public-relations office. Seeing that column appear in a newspaper under my name would have been like watching myself recite the prepared text in a hostage video.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem with fakery, given the right circumstances. I can read a ghosted celebrity autobiography with the same pleasurable suspension of disbelief with which I watch professional wrestlers. It’s just that I never really thought of the university as the aesthetic equivalent of the World Wrestling Federation.

Of course, it is possible that I overreacted. After all, the ghosted columns had been appearing for years, presumably under the names of other faculty members. Maybe my colleagues simply put the columns in the same category as the throwaway newsletters, promotional flyers, annual reports and spam email generated by administrative offices all over the university. Nobody even reads that material, much less worries about its provenance. Or maybe they thought the columns were like speeches delivered by university presidents or high-ranking deans, which most of us simply assume to be written by a ghostwriter. “Bureaucratic plagiarism” is the term used by Gavin Moodie to describe this kind of fuzziness around authorship, and as he points out, it raises an uncomfortable question. If we don’t allow university students to hire ghostwriters, why do we allow it for university administrators?

When plagiarism lands an administrator in trouble, it is usually plagiarism of the more familiar variety. Last summer, for example, Philip Baker, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta, delivered a convocation speech that was lifted — word for word, according to medical students following on their smartphones — from a Stanford University commencement address by Harvard surgeon and New Yorker staff writer, Atul Gawande. Baker was eventually forced to resign.

Simply employing a ghostwriter, however, is often not seen as a problem — unless the ghostwriter is also a plagiarist. In 2007, for example, when several newspaper columns published by William Meehan, the president of Jacksonville State University, were found to contain material plagiarized from various websites, his excuse was that the columns had actually been ghosted by the director of the university news bureau. (Meehan was later accused, apparently with credible evidence, of having plagiarized parts of his doctoral dissertation.) Similarly, when the president of Wesley College, Scott D. Miller, was accused of plagiarizing sections of a speech written by the president of Connecticut College, he told reporters that he had “a number of people who do some drafting for me.” Miller said, “I don’t remember the specifics of who wrote it.”

Of course, paying a ghost to write your speeches is not like paying a ghost to write your doctoral dissertation or your academic articles. Neither is rubber-stamping an administrative document produced by an assistant. As Brian Martin has pointed out, bureaucratic plagiarism (or what he calls “institutionalized plagiarism”) is standard practice in many large, hierarchical organizations, where well-paid, high-status leaders take credit for written material produced by others who rank below them on the organizational ladder. University administrators sometimes compare themselves to corporate executives, who are not generally criticized for having ghostwriters on staff. But administrators, of course, are not executives. Most of them are tenured members of the faculty. Should they be judged by the norms and standards of corporations? Or should they be judged by the standards usually applied to faculty and students?

Of course, administrators could not really be expected to produce such a vast amount of written material without a small army of “communications professionals.” Yet, as Benjamin Ginsberg argues in his excellent book, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University, all this written material is subsidized by student tuition, which continues to rise dramatically. Wouldn’t the budget for university-subsidized ghostwriters be a good place to start cutting? Also, paying ghosts to write for senior administrators seems unfair to the rest of us. As Ginsberg says, “faculty members who plagiarize must do so at their own expense.”

What words can be said and what can’t remains a thorny legal and cultural issue and Super Bowl Sunday clearly brought this to the surface. By now, everyone knows that MIA shot up her middle finger while dancing to Madonna’s “Give Me All Your Luvin’.” According to a BBC article,

The middle finger is documented to have expressed insult and belittlement for more than two millennia.

Apparently a phallic gesture, a sign of wagging one’s penis/phallus that possibly derives from the behavior of male squirrel monkeys, the middle finger is a gesture weighted with history, but it is also something that most people encounter on a fairly regular basis. Someone cuts you off at an intersection? You flip them the bird.  The middle finger appears at football games around the world, among sisters fighting in their homes, even, occasionally directed at a computer screen in response to a blogger with whom you vehemently disagree.

MIA’s naughty gesture resulted in an apology; some naughty words by CNN commentator Roland Martin may result in a firing. Martin apparently tweeted during the Super Bowl a variety of rude words that smacked of fag-bashing (another offensive term, but one I will use anyway). Responding to a David Beckham ad, Martin tweeted that he should ”smack the ish out” of anyone who liked it and he also referred to a Patriot in a pink jumpsuit as needing a visit from “#teamwhipdatass.” Now GLAAD, the gay/lesbian anti-defamation group, is calling for his firing.

GLAAD… tweeted a response to Martin, saying that “advocates of gay bashing have no place at @CNN.” The activist group went even further and has now called for CNN to fire Martin. GLAAD’s letter states that “Martin’s tweets today advocating violence against gay people weren’t an accident — they are a part of a larger pattern for Martin. Anti-gay violence in America is a serious problem facing millions of Americans. It’s no joke. CNN should fire Roland Martin.

Meanwhile what you can and cannot say or do on air remains as unclear as it is in my own home. Although a case before the Supreme Court right now asks the justices to clarify the FCC rules (arguing that they are unconstitutionally unclear), it will be as difficult for the justices to grapple with what is okay and what is not as it is for me with my own family. There are some clear signals that the justices will come down on the side of no bad words for “the protection of children.” As Justice John Roberts pleaded during the case:

All we are asking for, what the government is asking for, is a few channels where … they are not going to hear the S-word, the F-word, they are not going to see nudity.

Of course, my kids and most kids have something called the Internet and believe me, they have heard the S word, the F word, the R word, and the N word, not to mention the B word, the S word, the C word and more.  They hear them in the music they listen to, on the YouTube videos that go viral, and, as for nudity, grinding, and other forms of sexual content, see above.

I really don’t see a way out of any of this. There is no way to stop some words and gestures from being unacceptable even as which words are and which words aren’t changes over time and context. I can say “that’s so gay” but my straight friends can’t. Obviously the N word is used among some African-Americans. But can men call women bitches and hos? Can I use the R word when, despite what some of you think, I am clearly not developmentally delayed?  Whatever the answer, these questions can never be fully regulated by authority, whether the state or the parent. Bad words and naughty gestures will  always pop up and induce the shock and anxiety that MIA’s middle finger did on Sunday.

Perhaps the fact that half of these philanthropists did not simply write big checks to their alma maters (though they’re probably doing that as well) is a good sign. Maybe donors are looking more at the quality of the school and the worthiness of its programs than simply giving out of nostalgia because they had a good time at the football games or because that’s where they met their future wives.

Last week, there was more heartening news on this front. Judge Richard Bray, the CEO of the Beazley Foundation, decided to suspend its giving to Virginia’s institutions of higher education. Beazley, which has given over $70-million to these schools so far, cites several factors leading it to this decision in its press release:

• The cost of tuition and fees totals more than 40 percent of Virginians’ median household income at almost half of the schools studied.
• At most campuses, spending on administration is rising faster than spending on instruction.
• Less than half of the 39 Virginia colleges and universities studied graduate a majority of their students in four years, and less than half meet the national average of 57.4 percent for a six-year graduation.
• Only two private and two public institutions graduate over 80 percent of their students within four years.
• Even as Virginia emphasizes STEM education, over a third of the institutions studied don’t require a single course in college-level math. Not one requires economics.
• In the state where Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and James Madison served as college trustees, only two universities out of 39 require a foundational course in American history or government.
• At most campuses, classrooms are in use far less than the expected 40 hours per week, suggesting inefficiency that will block progress toward educating more students.

Much of this information was provided by a report from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which has for years tried to bring attention to what is often the wastefulness and emptiness of college education. One could wonder why it took Beazley so long to realize that it was pouring money down a sinkhole. But why quibble? A big foundation has finally woken up.

College development officers won’t be too worried, though. In fact they have reason to be pleased with their performance after last year–and not just because of the size of the gifts. Many of these top-50 gifts were unrestricted ones. A $26-million gift from Jack and Barbara Bovender to Duke University’s nursing, business, and liberal-arts schools was greeted happily: “Flexible gifts like these make a critical difference in our ability to invest in the kinds of innovative programs that set the educational experience at Duke apart,” said Laurie Patton, dean of Arts & Sciences. William Dietrich’s gift of $265-million to Carnegie Mellon was met with a similar reaction. The Chronicle reported that one administrator praised the gift as “a rare opportunity for discretionary spending that ‘can be directed toward whatever the university thinks is the most important.’” Unrestricted giving sure is a big win for development officers, but donors often come out unhappy.

It would be nice if more donors were paying better attention. One final heartening story comes from John Malone, a telecom CEO and another one of the top 50. He recalls an amusing exchange he had with Yale President Richard Levin when Levin asked him to fund a business school. Malone asked: “How can you have a business school if you don’t believe in capitalism?” Malone subsequently gave to the engineering school, the kind of education that, he believes, creates jobs and businesses.

Mommy's baby, Daddy's maybe; only DNA testing can determine (from Wikipedia)

An interesting thing has been happening in Costa Rica, something that points to a social policy which, believe it or not, both liberals and conservatives might endorse. This week, as the local school year begins, there are 12,800 fewer students enrolled than previously, and this despite a continuing influx of Nicaraguans. What’s particularly interesting is the likely reason for this decline: An innovative national law, the “Ley de Paternidad Responsable” (Responsible Fatherhood Act), which took effect in Costa Rica in 2001.

This law, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, identifies paternal obligations in terms of the right of children to know their fathers and to be supported by them and, in so doing, also removes some of the stigma for children born out of wedlock. The landmark legislation established an entitlement procedure whereby single mothers could identify the father of their children, who would then bear his last name on their birth record, with each father held legally responsible for contributing to his offspring’s medical costs and child care until the child is 18 years old or 25 if the child is still in school.

Costa Rica’s Responsible Fatherhood Act further mandates genetic testing if the purported father denies paternity, with the courts required to abide by the results. (The DNA tests are done, free of charge, by the Laboratorio de Paternidad Responsable de la Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social, or CCSS, which was also established by the law.)

Costa Rica’s enlightened Responsible Fatherhood Act appears to have been the main factor behind a dramatic drop in the number of children who were unrecognized by their fathers, from 29.3 per cent in 1999 to 7.8 per cent in 2003. The law also calls for sensitization campaigns and the establishment of a national policy on the promotion of responsible fatherhood. American politicians like to complain about “deadbeat dads.” Costa Rica has actually been doing something about them, and on a national level.

This law neither obligates nor punishes a woman who elects not to identify the child’s father. Moreover, the father, for his part, can apply the same law if he wants to exercise his paternal rights, while a child, upon reaching the age of 15, is guaranteed a paternity test if requested.

Of special interest—to me at least—is the impact the Responsible Fatherhood Act has had on Costa Rican birthrates, and why: Immediately after its passage, there was a prompt and sustained increase in sales of condoms! Faced with the  prospect of being held legally and financially responsible for their paternity, potential fathers immediately became more responsible in their own sexual behavior. Costa Rican birthrates plummeted in 2002 compared with 2001. Can you guess why?

Demographers worried about overpopulation point to the “demographic transition” (the predictable tendency for family size to decrease in association with increases in maternal income and education level) as offering at least one source of optimism. Now, we have a second: The prospect that insofar as they are confronted with legally mandated socio-economic consequences of their behavior, the results of which can at last be biologically confirmed, men are likely to behave more responsibly.

I’m currently on leave during UW’s winter quarter, finishing two books and keeping tabs on toucans and howler monkeys in Costa Rica. There are many things that intrigue me about this country, not least its stupendous biodiversity, the remarkably high percentage of its area preserved in national parks and other reserves, its long, proud history of political democracy and progressive social policies, the fact that it alone among all truly independent countries has abolished its military (there is no Costa Rican army, navy, or air force, despite ferocious arm-twisting by the Reagan Administration during the 1980s), and—not coincidentally—the remarkable reality that this small tropical country outranks the U.S. in average longevity and infant survivorship, and is counted among the happiest, if not the happiest population in the world. It might also possess the world’s most forward-looking paternity policy, something we might learn from.

Lefties are sometimes (and legitimately) criticized for favoring policies that privilege societal over personal responsibility, in the process letting individuals off the hook for what should be the consequences of their own behavior. And the mirror-image critique also has some legitimacy: Conservatives’ emphasis on personal responsibility gives insufficient attention to the appropriate role of society. In this regard, the Costa Rica experience has much to recommend itself, speaking to the value of combined responsibility, societal and personal. Sometimes, we need society to step up, responsibly, and mandate that individuals step up as well, and accept responsibility for their actions. In this regard, the good news out of Costa Rica is that such a win-win policy can be agreed upon and implemented.