Revolution or Evolution? Social Technologies and Change in Higher Education

The techno revolutionaries need a reality check. Universities are the last medieval institutions in the United States of America (outside the Catholic Church, of course). The universities are designed to change slowly and are inherently conservative. A storm the barricades approach to introducing technology will only result in one step forwards and two steps backwards. If pushed too hard and too fast, the changes will succeed in the short run and founder over the long run. Evolutionary change is the only way to ensure that technology and social media become effective tools in improving student learning outcomes.

The reasons are pretty straightforward.

First, you cannot tell faculty how or what to teach; they will rebel and throw sand in the gears. Eliminate that autonomy and all you will have are trainers, instead of teachers.

Second, university professors see technology as a way to make their skills redundant. The administration at my institution sees distance learning, e-learning and technology as a panacea for improving student learning. The faculty see the e-learning initiatives as heaping more work on their shoulders. And so while Twitter or ning are seperate tools, and different from say Blackboard and teaching on-line sections, Faculty who are unfamiliar with social media will tend to lump them together and see them as an imposition that threatens their jobs.

Third, even when faculty like technology and adopt it or experiment with it, there is not always a clear benefit. The one thing technological evangelists can do is to publish studies that show concrete benefits in student learning outcomes. Why should I change what I am doing if it works? Why should I learn a new skill or implement technology if its potential to improve student learning outcomes is insignificant or undocumented? I have better things to do than implement a technological fix for something that isn’t broken.

I say this as someone who enjoys exploring new technology and trying to find ways to improve his teaching. I think that these technologies have great potential, if introduced in a non-threatening way. If the techno revolutionaries want to dismiss their critics as “too old” or techno-phobes, they do so at their peril. Don’t try to steamroll your colleagues.

Great idea and article. This conversation needs to happen.

All due respect to matt_l, but I don’t think it’s a matter of choice for faculty. Technology is here and a very real and present tool in education. You can debate it’s effectiveness with all the assessment tools at your disposal, but you cannot deny that it’s an integral part of the current educational environment.

At some point, faculty needs to open their eyes in the lecture hall and realize the effectiveness and relevancy of their old ways.

I’m just saying…

The post conflates “using technology” with “improving teaching.”

The evidence is clear that tech can help learning, when used appropriately. But tech is just a tool, a means to an end.

Most faculty (including me) are amateurs, when it comes to teaching. We do not study learning theory. We don’t study empirical evidence about the effectiveness of various practices.

Worse, some of us don’t even do the most basic, obvious things. For example, in my department, we don’t even talk with each other about course goals.

At my school, there are no systematic work processes that try to improve learning. The recent report that students learn little in college? No surprise.

Want to see tech used to improve learning? Start with the “improving learning” part. Look at the theory and the evidence. Then use whatever tech – from chalk to virtual reality – works best in each particular situation.

Kieran

The key issue is still the lack of empirical research on how emerging technologies enhance learning outcomes. Faculty have good reason to be skeptical without these studies.

Great conversation re: using technology [effectively] so to create a student-centered teaching model. My frustration is in the fact we are still having this conversation! ;-)

Reference the book “Nine Shift” (Draves & Coates, http://www.nineshift.com/) to discover the evidence that three major shifts are taking place in our society: 1. how we live, 2. how we work, 3. how we learn.

And yet we academics are still having the conversation. Ideally, no one wants to steam-roll the tenured faculty, but they are dug in deep (like the labor unions) and have been empowered for way too long to decide for everyone else. Unless the professor has a personal interest in technology, forget it. Face to face traditionalists do not adjust to online instruction and yet the college leadership continues to insist these are the folks that need to teach the online student and make all the calls. Academic freedom is their platform, but there is a key difference between telling a faculty member what to teach versus suggesting to them how/where/when to teach re: the online model.

And as fun and exciting as you try to make it, the old culture and perspective continues to insist on measuring online “anything” against the traditional f2f model. In their mind, it just cannot be done as well. Since when did one model fit all? Differentiation is the key. Once this is accepted, then you design the classroom using all the known best practices for that particular learning environment…and then put instructors at the helm that really embrace that classroom model.

Like pkamm said, “I’m just saying…”

We need gifted educators who are willing to see the shift taking place in how we learn in America, and then are willing to come to the aid of the students who need us to impart knowledge using all the tools available in the 21st century.

For me, course differentiation, done well, is the key.

Hey, I’m just saying… ;-)

Revolutions require ubiquity. When most/all students are, for example, Twitter users, Twitter has a chance of becoming a common pedagogical tool. Hardware is the same — blackboards are ubiquitous today. Lectern PCs with Internet connectivity are becoming ubiquitous. Smartphones and tablets may. (Time to ubiquity is probably dropping).

For a bit more, see:
http://cis471.blogspot.com/2011/01/tablet-pcs-will-impact-education-but-it.html

Thanks for an interesting article. About some of the topics for discussion:

“Do you feel that higher education needs a revolution in order to stay relevant? Or will evolutionary change be enough?”

This depends on how one defines “revolution” and “evolution.” Some use “revolution” to mean rapid change, but I would argue for a more meaningful definition: a process in which one quickly destroys an old model and fills the void thus created with something novel. Key to revolution is the destructive part. Do we need to tear down the “Industrial Model”? I would argue that many aspects of the traditional model have evolved for good reasons and should not be thrown away without careful consideration. Why are no focus groups convened to generate lists of what we have been doing right?

I do not mean to argue against the adoption of more instructional technology; I support it and am doing it. Faster change should be beneficial, but only if it’s done for valid reasons. Helping to facilitate a quicker process of evolution, in which new pedagogical methods are tested and adopted if and when they are proven to be more effective than older methods, seems a lot more prudent than throwing out the old just because it’s old and adopting the new just because it’s new.

“Do you agree with the barriers to change listed above? If not, what barriers do you see?”

Although different barriers are no doubt present at different institutions, I’ve seen many of those mentioned in the list of 59. I’d like to add another which is present at my state-supported school and certainly many others: Administrative pressure to adopt instructional technology not to improve teaching, but to save money (especially by increasing the student/faculty ratio). When administrators pressure or force faculty to change from teaching a room of 40 students in person to remotely managing an online section of 100 or more with no additional resources, it’s hardly surprising that there is resistance.

I like the question that the title of this article poses, “Revolution or Evolution”? As a graduate student considering a career as a faculty member, I can see that a revolution would have to involve a drastic shift in the way doctoral students are trained. My program focuses solely on content knowledge, and the instructional method is still heavily skewed toward lecturing. Fortunately, my institution offers a “preparing future faculty” program, where I am being exposed to the issues put forth in this article.
As someone who is changing careers, I am on the upper end of the age spectrum in most of my classes. In some ways, the technology that makes these revolutionary innovations in learning possible is a little scary to me. I wonder how it will be possible for future faculty to learn not only the content, but also the myriad ways in which to facilitate learning in future students. It seems like an overwhelming responsibility.

Unfortunately, even in liberal arts colleges, those who promote and hire do not value effective teaching as much as research and publishing. Until faculty teaching is a higher priority for academic institutions, faculty who choose to invest their time in improving pedagogy will not be rewarded as much as faculty who could not care less about their teaching but do publish a great deal. Change the tenure review process and I imagine faculty would jump at the chance to master new technologies to improve their teaching.

Point well taken, burgoynes5. I trimmed that section. I was trying to indicate that the conference had this markedly innovative, quirky side. But you’re right, that wasn’t the right context. Tx for reading Arts & Academe.

Or like Obama…

I further note that Deacon’s citations stop in 2005 except for references to his own work  (which seems strange for a book published at the end of 2011) and that Deacon and Juarrero were both keynotes at a 2007 conference in Cancun where Deacon was observed attending Juarrero’s talk.

Senior academics have a responsibility to properly cite the works of others and to be aware of the efforts of others whose research and writing addresses their own.  The example Deacon sets is that negligence, sloppiness, and perhaps deliberate ignorance are proper scholarship.  UC Berkeley should be ashamed of setting such an example.

For a picture of Deacon and Juarrero sitting together at a conference in Cancun see
http://isce.edu/speakers-at-ctns-stars-mtg-jan-2007.jpg

it is “a detailed spreadsheet of apparent similarities between the structure of the arguments in the two books and the examples used to make those arguments.”  It is NOT a list of “quotes”.  In the aggregate the similarities of argument demand recognition. See the McGinn piece http://emergence.org/NYRBARTICLE.pdf     Only the commenter ipso-facto has used the “p” word.

“…a conference in Cancun“. Gotta love it. 

 munibond:  I am wondering what your investment in this article is (or, more accurately, your stake in the various pieces of literature and/or ideas); up to this point you have contributed nearly 40% of the posts.

Suppedisne?

The character and honesty of perhaps the next president is of great relevance, far more than the petty stakes brought up in this blog.The answer to your question would be “lying,” that is the connection
between my comment and the blog. I didn’t realize this fluff forum had
a “dress code” requiring relevancy. Do you read these comments often? I did not find the blog of much
interest in the first place, it is an academic pissing contest of no
relevance outside the egos of those involved.

Interesting….you decry ad hominem attacks but then engage in the same acts yourself. So I guess you have a self-inflicted rhetorical wound, sounds painful. Is there a latin phrase for that?

And you respond to people asking why they have contributed 40% of the posts (you calculated?) and that is meant to be a “substantive comment” on the topic at hand? Ignoratio Elenchi, yourself, you will be using it a lot in the CHE.

Sorry but I don’t care much about the mutual  arguments over what seems to be pretty much inconsequential matters but I love the name of your institute for the “Study of Coherence and Emergence”.   How are emergence and coherence linked to human experience?  Or do they just pertain to botany?  Please forgive my ignorance, I’m just a mere semiotician looking at signs as standing for something…. 

Well, this is a difficult one. To begin with it seems that most of the comments come from people who are either  totally uninformed or deeply partisan. I’m not an expert in the field, but I have read both and Deacon’s and Juarerro’s books and I have no axe to grind (honest!). 

Part of problem, I think, comes from the promotional jacket of Incomplete Nature, which promises – as they all seem to these days – a revolutionary and original synthesis of ideas etc etc. and a bunch of testimonials from respected academics in complexity, such as Stuart Kauffman . But here’s the problem: it’s not. Really. That’s not to say it isn’t a really good synthesis, because it is. It collects a lot of ideas from complexity theory, and from other places as well (ahem, I think the ideas of Mary Midgely were also apparent early in the piece, but they weren’t credited either) and brings them together as a beautifully presented argument.

If you read one book after the other, which I did, then it is pretty clear to me that one of them is a tentative, difficult to read exploration into uncharted waters which breaks new ground, while the other is a reflective overview of those same ideas. 

I hate to say this, because Deacon’s thought, his writing, and his erudition all shine forth in his prose, and his book is a far more considered and balanced piece of work than the one it resembles so much. It fleshes out Juarerro’s ideas, extends them, and places them into a wider context. But, at its core, this is not an original book at all. Take away Midgely and Juarerro (and perhaps others I’m not aware of) and there isn’t much left that hasn’t been said many times before by various philosophers. 

It could be a coincidence of course, but the sheer – and almost brutal  - originality of Juarerro’s ideas indicates that this is unlikely to be the case.

So Incomplete Nature is a pop science book, a really good one, that should have made its sources of inspiration clearer, giving credit where it is due. 

Without having read any of these books, can I ask if any of them cite Douglas Hofstader’s work on how mind emerges from matter? I will quote a brief Wikipedia entry below. I mention this because of two things: (1.) In some fields, I have been reading widely enough for so long that I may myself no longer remember when or if I first thought of an idea, as opposed to running across it somewhere in the work of someone else — there can be a genuine failure to recall the source of an idea [And are there really any new ideas?]. (2.) Is it Carl Becker who spoke of “climates of opinion” in history? I seem to recall my late father talking about that growing up, and this debate over originality and authorship could reflect a climate of opinion in related fields where instant Internet information makes the spread of ideas becoming memes. It may not excuse an incomplete literature search, but given the editorial delays between submitting a MS and getting the book out, there may be an explanation for that as well. :
“I Am a Strange Loop is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a strange loop originally developed in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.

“
In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.
”

Some ideas only become possible when a larger structure is available to support them. This concept was first proposed (as far as I know) in the twenties by Vygotsky as Theory Scaffolding. Since then, it’s been adapted to biology and culture with the Adjacent Possible hypothesis, which came about when people noticed how many inventions  and discoveries appeared simultaneously from independent researchers around the world. Basically, according to this theory, as soon as the pre-requisites exist, biological and conceptual innovations (such as flight or differential calculus) spontaneously emerge from the recombination of previous structures or ideas. Ironically, this is concept deeply related to complexity theory, which is the concern of Deacon’s book (and Hoefstaeder’s too). 

While this nicely explains how scientific progress is really dependent on the academic community and not just the trail blazers, it doesn’t, in my opinion, get Deacon off the hook. When it coes to really new concepts, it seems to me that something really special happens, over and above the inevitable recombination of old ideas. Sometimes our conceptual understanding becomes static and unable to proceed, and only someone who can innovate in a truly idiosyncratic manner is able to show the way forward. Hofstaeder certainly did this in GEB, Juarerro did it again in Dynamics in Action. While their ideas are related, they are both truly original (and that goes for Strange Loops too). Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Terence Deacon.

I return to my original suggestion (made in January) of how to make this “mess” better:

Berkeley needs to hold a symposium where Deacon, Juarrero, and  Thompson (and perhaps Graves and Murphy) are all given opportunities to present and then they have a roundtable

the event would be a very fruitful discussion of commonalities and differences and a properly cited academic monograph can result

we all would be much better off from the resulting dialogue and learning and this “mess” can go down as “an unfortunate but seemingly necessary” step along the research path

so Berkeley when can we have such an event?

Right after a session on the obvious plagiarism in Martin Luther King’s dissertation.

I’ve preferred to allow a close reading of the two books and the spreadsheet to speak for themselves, but since speakersbenefit lays out this challenge, I’ll be the first to answer it. Two books I should have been aware of when I wrote Dynamics in Action: Robert Rosen’s Anticipatory Systems and especially Scott Kelso’s Dynamic Patterns. Mea culpa again to Scott (I told him as much in person in Antwerp many years ago).

Jerry Fodor chimes in via the London Review of Books see http://emergence.org/Fodor-Deacon-LRB.pdf

my roomate’s ex-wife got paid $15158 the prior week. she is making an income on th e laptop and got a $584800 home. All she did was get fortunate and set to work the advice shown on this web site ===>> ⇛⇛⇛⇛► http://hiringfreelancers.blogspot.com

my buddy’s mother go t paid $21508 the previous week. she is making money on the internet and bought a $386500 house. All she did was get fortunate and put into work the instructions explained on this web site===>> ⇛⇛⇛⇛► http://seekingguru.blogspot.com

Or as Charles Fort said, long before “the Adjacent Possible,” “it’s steam engines when it’s steam engine time.” 

I better understood the emotion behind each of his posts; to some degree
giving him greater merit and in other areas less so.  His postings also
helped expand the details that were not shared in the blog.http://www.newerade.com/kappe-nhl-c-52.html” rel=”nofollow”>kappe
NHL

Deacon seems to think it is personal rather than a matter of academic integrity.  His inability or unwillingness to actually discuss what he believes to be differences between his work and that of Juarrero and Thompson unfortunately speaks volumes.  I am sure the academic community would welcome such a discussion (Juarrero says X, I say Y, Thompson says Z, I say A).  Instead we get the following:

On 5/22/12 4:48 AM, “deacon@berkeley.edu” wrote:
> Dear colleagues,>> You are one of hundreds who have received emails about me and my work> from Michael Lissack. I have compiled this long list of emails from only one> of his many broadcast emails to anyone he believes might be susceptible to> his game of slander. I do not know if you have received other defaming emails> from him, but if you have, you have probably guessed that he has> decided to do everything he can to defame me to you my many colleagues> throughout the world and to use his ill-gotten millions to both attack my> scholarship and my character in a very public and vicious way.>> As for the reviews of my book that he selects to broadcast, I do not mind> that some  people consider my new book threatening enough to want to critique> it. Indeed, such intellectual heat suggests to me that I have struck a> nerve. I think that it is becoming obvious that they do protest too much.> And this I hope will get people to read it and judge for themselves. I> have no doubt that my work will stand the test of time, for its> originality, scholarship, and significance. So I welcome serious> comparison and criticism.>> But I write for another reason.> Mr. Lissack is engaging in a ruthless campaign of character assassination.> If this is the first email you have received from him, it almost certainly> won’t be the last. Now that he has your email on his list I have little> doubt that he will continue to send you whatever he can find to defame me> in your eyes. Besides sending emails to hundreds of recipients like yourself> that he hopes will innocently spread his accusations without checking, he> has influenced the publication of scathing reviews and has spread rumors> of scandal to many sites and journal editors. He is savvy and without> scruples and he has very deep pockets.>> Those of you who know me will see this for what it is – a form of> intellectual slander – and I hope will not let it pass. But for those who> don’t know me I urge you to not let this kind of thing go unchallenged. If> we let the likes of people like Lissack succeed in infiltrating the world> of scholarship with this kind of personal vendetta masquerading as> intellectual dispute it will open the door to a very ugly future. Will> careful analysis and serious debate over ideas be replaced by character> attacks, scandalous inuendos, and disinformation in an effort to discredit> the work of others? We have come to accept this dishonesty in our> politics. I hope that we will reject it in the the pursuit of knowledge.> You don’t have to know me or know my work to stand against this. This use> of the electronic media to spread disinformation and invent scandal in> order to destroy one’s opponents is a growing danger that we dare not> ignore. I am the target today, but … Please do not be complicit by your> silence.>> Thank you.> Sincerely, Terry Deacon>

Sure, sometimes great minds think alike with respect to exciting, new ideas. Newton and Leibniz on the calculus, and Darwin and Wallace on natural selection. Note, though, that Darwin DID refer to Wallace in The Origin of Species. Darwin came up with the crucial ideas first BUT once he knew that someone else had arrived at a similar set of notions, he publicly acknowledged as much. Let’s suppose that Professor Deacon was not much influenced by others in formulating the main ideas in his new book. Still, once it was brought to his attention that others had written along similar lines, he ought to have acknowledged that fact and explained how his own views, while resembling these other theories in some respects, differed from them, too.

Deacon posted the following at:
http://joyuscrynoid.hubpages.com/hub/DeaconIncompleteNature-Review.

Terrence Deacon 17 hours agoDear Joyous Crynoid,Though I generally avoid interacting in blog forums, I feel the need to do so here. You have done an excellent job of reviewing my book. One of the best that I’ve read so far. Thank you for working so hard to accurately summarize my reasoning and to make the effort to try to understand the motivations behind this approach. And I also appreciate your divulging your own theoretical bias as well. I think that the interesting contrasts and parallels you draw are illuminating, even though they are unlikely to alter our divergent metaphysical commitments.But I am mostly writing because I wish you had applied same level of careful analysis to the highly charged claims and pseudo-evidence sent to you by Lissack and Juarrero before including it at the end of your review. I wish you had actually read her book and done the comparison for yourself rather than just accepting it a face value. Unfortunately, by following up your careful and detailed review by merely parroting their claims and passing on their suggested URLs without a similarly careful comparison I feel that you have done me and your readers a disservice.Though I had not read her book prior to finishing my book, I have been reading her work since. She has indeed done excellent work synthesizing Kant, dynamical systems theory, and issues of consciousness. It is now clear that she recognized some of these connections well before me. But it will not take a very detailed reading to notice that our assumptions, arguments, and purposes are ultimately quite different. I don’t harbor the illusion that my ideas have never been entertained before by others. Indeed, I suspect that intellectual synchronicity is the rule not the exception, though the stronger claims of identity are easy to refute if one reads the books.Having done such a careful job explaining exactly how my analysis demonstrates the inadequacy of the dynamical systems approach, you wii easily be able to recognize a critical difference. Juarrero ultimately believes that dynamical systems thinking is sufficient. Her work relies heavily on ideas that are quite opposite from those that are at the heart of my work — Ideas like Wholes being more that the sum of their parts, wholes constraining their parts, top-down causality, and her assumption that autocatalysis (=autopoiesis) exemplifies the basic logic behind life and mind. Thus the morphodynamic / teleodynamic distinction which is so central to my theory is not even recognized in her work. So whereas I argue that we need to go beyond the dynamical systems paradigm if we are to make progress toward understanding the distinctiveness of life and mind, she does not.There are, of course, a great many other problems that I struggle with that are not discussed in her book, and many philosophical issues that concern her but do not interest me. Perhaps some of the differences in focus can be traced to the difference between a scientific and a philosophical approach, and even our difference in philosophical commitments are likely relevant — her’s with Kant, mine with Peirce.I have no problem admitting that there are a large number of thinkers pursuing similar paths that I have overlooked in my preparations (some of which you also identify). At some point one needs to decide when to stop reading and get something down on paper. The relevant literature is vast when you consider the scope of my book — from emergence theory to thermodynamics to systems theory to origins of life and DNA to work to reformulating information theory to grounding semiotics to speculating about the nature of mind — and I believe that my citations and references reflect a serious effort to do this vast sweep of topics justice. Inevitably I did not read or cite many relevant books and papers that a more encyclopedic work might have. Since the publication of the book I have been been trying to follow up on these many suggestions of parallel theories and competing paradigms, and I am indeed finding this to be a rich field, though sadly more in philosophy than in the sciences. I notice for example that recently many quite notable philosophers of science have struggled with the comparison between Kant’s notion of self-organization and the modern dynamical systems view — as does Juarrero — however the majority seem to have also overlooked her work as I have. So I agree that her work deserves better attention than it has received.Despite this effort to attack my academic integrity, I will treat Juarrero’s work with the intellectual respect it deserves. For example, I have recently submitted a paper (already accepted for publication) in which I explore some of the similarities and differences between our theories as well as discussing how both approaches compare with a few others whose work was not discussed in my book (e.g. Thompson). Perhaps this reflects my naive trust in the old ideal of published intellectual discourse, focused on ideas, pursued in academic venues.In the mean time I reiterate my request: please take the time do the comparison yourself, and with the same care that you have exhibited in this review of my book. Yes there are similarities, but I am certain that with similar attention to detail your appraisal of the independence and originality of my work will not suffer by such a comparison. And it may even provide an interesting subject for a future blog ;-)Thank you.Sincerely, Terry Deacon

The latest to and from Berkeley.

Professor Broughton
 
We are indeed alleging the intentional misappropriation of the writings of others.  While my email to Prof. Deacon of Jan 27 suggested that the word plagiarism was too strong (where I take plagiarism in its literal sense to be the use of exact langauge) the idea chains and overlaps with Juarrero Thompson etc are too strong to have been mere coincidence.
 
My January 27th email was written in attempt to arrive at an acceptable compromise.  Professor Deacon has rejected that compromise.  My investigations subsequent to January 27th lead me to the inescapable conclusion that Deacons’ actions were either intentional or grossly negligent.  To claim originality and uniqueness in the face of overwhelming evidence that neither is the case is simply DISHONEST.  If it is your (and thus the University’s) policy to consider violations of intellectual honesty to not include continual repetition of claims of originality which are incorrect and fail to make proper attribution then it is a sad day for academic integrity.  Integrity includes apologizing for negligence.
 
We at ISCE are firmly of the belief that Terrence Deacon has violated any reasonable standard of academic integrity and has INTENTIONALLY misappropriated the works of others which he has then claimed as his own without attribution.  Your Code of Conduct includes the following standards which we believe Professor Deacon has violated “Professors make every reasonable effort to foster honest academic conduct. They accept the obligation to exercise critical self-discipline and judgment in using, extending, and transmitting knowledge. They practice intellectual honesty.”
We are of the opinion Terrence Deacon has NOT been intellectually honest.  The University may desire to avoid dealing with this issue for political and budgetary reasons.  That quite frankly is its own violation of intellectual honesty
 
Once again I implore you to actually read the works in question.  The overlap and appropriation will be obvious (as they were to Thompson, McGinn, Fodor, Juarrero and James Coffman).
 
please acknowledge receipt of the above and please confirm that you understand that indeed we are formally accusing Terrence Deacon of intentional misappropriation.
 
as one of my research fellows stated “In my estimation, Terrence Deacon, whom I have never met, is a liar and a thief who stole from the work of others, including me, thinking that    he could get away with it.  Now that he has been caught, he is playing the victim, frantically backpedaling in a desperate effort to save his reputation.”
 
please note further that your tentative decision below may be of legal standing as far as UC Berkeley goes but that we will continue to do what we can to get this matter of academic integrity addressed, the University can play whatever role it likes in that effort, but the effort will continue until the matter has been corrected with or without the University’s cooperation
 
I feel a need to copy this note rather broadly.

On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Janet Broughton wrote:

Dear Mr. Lissack,

This responds to your various communications regarding Professor Terrence Deacon and his book /Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter./After careful review of the material you provided, I have concluded that the information available to me does not warrant appointment of an Investigative Officer under our campus faculty disciplinary procedures.The conduct you have alleged would not constitute a violation of the University of California’s Faculty Code of Conduct.

The Code defines unacceptable conduct in the realm of scholarship to include “[v]iolations of canons of intellectual honesty, such as research misconduct and/or intentional misappropriation of the writings, research, and findings of others.”UC Berkeley policy defines “research misconduct” as “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism.” You have not alleged fabrication or falsification; thus an allegation of either plagiarism or intentional misappropriation of writings, research, or findings of others would be required to constitute a basis for appointment of an Investigative Officer.In the communications you have sent me, however, you have expressly disclaimed making allegations of plagiarism or intentional misappropriation.For example, in your January 27, 2012 e-mail to Professor Deacon you wrote that “use of ‘plagiarism’ was much too strong a word.I regret the pain which my use of the word must have caused you.The way forward here is NOT to evoke that word.”In the same email, you stated: “I do believe (and have from the beginning) that you have not done anything here with nefarious intent.”

You have proposed that Professor Deacon should publicly acknowledge certain contributions of other scholars and should participate in seminars with those scholars.Please be aware that if Professor Deacon should decline to take these steps, this would not subject him to disciplinary action.

Finally, your May 22, 2012 email states that the Institute for Study of Coherence and Emergence “is making this complaint as the copyright holder.”In your May 23 email you state that “we at ISCE believe this to be a matter of ethics and integrity more than a matter of law.”My understanding is thus that ISCE is not raising a legal claim of copyright infringement.If I am wrong about that, please let me know, and I will ask the University’s lawyers to respond.

Sincerely yours,

Janet BroughtonVice Provost for the Faculty