On Dana Cloud: I understand that ethnomusicology is enough to make the right scream, but is there really a vastly dispreferred ethnomusicologist? I hope I don't sound like I, too, don't take ethnomusicology seriously, but I just don't see how it has enough bleed into the mainstream to attract the attention of the steadfast guardians of the republic. Maybe she publishes her vagenda in popular journals and I just don't know, but she seems like a weird choice from Texas.
Good to see my university well represented! I still voted for Berube some twenty times, though. As stupid as this contest is, it's probably better that it be completely derailed.
One of the nominees is Warren Haffar of Arcadia University, which used to be Beaver College.
Prior to his appointment at Arcadia University, Dr. Haffar served as a program officer at the Project on Ethnic Relations, an NGO that conducts programs of high-level intervention and serves as a neutral mediator to prevent ethnic conflict in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union! This paper develops a model using content analysis of chronological event texts to measure third party activity and their impact on outcomes from three case studies of international conflict! Nooooo! He's e-vil!
At risk of being faintly serious, a tad of googling shows that Emma Perez has made some fairly dopey assertions (On Ward Churchill: "There are faculty who have problems with his being American Indian" [yeah, like that he isn't one, and actual American Indians have often objected]; "This is a fight to make history.")
I love Eve Sedgwick (who doesn't, ATM?), and consider her a national treasure, but that book about her therapist did suck. Also, I once heard her speak, and she was mostly incredibly shy and inaudible, except for one oddly loud line about how some people consider their relationships with their cats to be of a sexual nature.
I voted for Todd Gitlin. He had only ten votes, and I've gotten a lot out of his books and writing since I was around 12.
But, jeez, poor Tom Hayden has only 8 votes. Have people no memories? Does he not still, at least, have Jane Fonda cooties, even though you'd think he gave her Tom Hayden cooties in the first place?
In the name of Port Huron, how can this stand?
And H. Bruce Franklin has been writing about socialism and political issues in science fiction for decades. Okay, lots of it is wrongheaded and dopey, but that's no reason he should have only 2 votes!
Look at how many people on that list have only 2 votes. How embarassing for them.
Seriously, guys. I urge you to vote for Berube. Repeatedly. As insane and stupid as Horowitz and this contest are, this sort of crap actually does reverberate. I'm friends with a professor who didn't get a tenure-level offer because of a Horowitz-camp public denunciation. Berube is ready and willing to fight this shit. Let him do it.
(Sedgwick is a terrible speaker, though, I agree.)
Also, I can't decide if it's a charming implicit critique of the star system, or mere muddle-headedness, that leads to the site both reinforcing the star system ("vote for the worst professor") and undermining it by listing people in alphabetical order by university affiliation, rather than last name.
Wow, when I went back to vote more for Berube, he was getting about four votes every time I clicked through. Then the site broke for me.
I also looked up John Bellamy Foster (sorry: ignorance), and he's got tenure, a 29-page CV, a gigantic publication record, and a demonstrated willingness to mix it up on unpopular public topics. It wouldn't be a disaster if he won. But he's in the 8000s to Berube's 11000s at this point.
Eric Foner, professor of American History, specializing in the period of Reconstruction. He made a very brave address about the political uses and abuses of history to the professional association of American Historians in 2001 that caught him some flak. I saw it rebroadcast later and was very very nervous for him. His books are great: informed by theory but totally accessible, clearly written, well-researched... He's on the left but *so* not a frothing radical or abstruse theorist.
That would be Berube, who's on the record--with time-stamps--as begging his fans to vote for him and has made a speciality out of opposing Horowitz's agenda and minions.
(Sorry for being so humor-impaired about this. My university has been something of a battleground for years. It's made a lot of us kinda tense. I'll stop now.)
That and other things; that was the worst and highest profile, certainly. Youve got the acronym right, but *shush*! I'm trying to keep a low profile here.
6: Yeah, I googled the professor's name and saw that page before posting. So I'm not completely unaware of the methodology, to dignify it by that name, involved. It's just that, like the rantings of that student, it's bullshit.
A lot of the hostility to Foner is hostility to some of his relatives and, along with the address JM cites I've seen him attacked for a short essay he wrote about visiting the Soviet Union and lecturing on US history in 1990 or 91 (I don't remember the date).
Okay, okay, I'm not a historian. I take back everything I may have said or implied about the relationship between Foner's work and theory. I just meant...wait, never mind.
Don't worry about the M-L-C ref, LB. I doubt that would be the demasking reference.
All right, Ben. Now, while I can't edit my own comments, or those of other commenters generally, I can edit Farber's. Only Farber's.
Seriously, is the site acting up inexplicably, or are you messing around with stuff? (Which, if you are, go ahead -- I just feel like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight)
Never knew there were two movies. A friend's ex-husband directed and starred in a production of Angel Street while they were married - did a spectacular job playing a heavy Victorian villian.
Well, that's strange. It should be that you can only edit stuff on your own posts now. (This was part of my campaign to get Innocence under control.) Whatever! I guess I should make things as they were.
Never mind, I understand. I can edit anyone's comments to my own posts, not comments I've made to other people's posts. Drat. I liked being able to fix typos.
I ended up searching around a little on Foner, trying to figure out how the heck he ended up 2nd behind Berube (in the 11,000s last I looked). Early in February, the Columbia student paper, The Spectator, published a weird profile of Foner that suggested that he was raking in the cash from his public-intellectualness. The author said Foner was the uncle of Jake G. Foner wrote back to the paper, pointing out that Jake was the son of his ex (and that he'd repeatedly tried to correct the mistake).
Then a couple of days ago, the hackerific New York Sun published an article about those dangerous Columbia professors, which remains their top-emailed article. My favorite parts: the professors' snappy replies (and I do think Foner did pretty well), and the hilarious appended correction. The Sun is a menace, btw, and being delivered totally unsolicited all over the damned city.
I voted for Berube, and he was pretty far ahead of the pack wit 79295 votes. At number 2 was John Foster of the Uiversity o Oregon with only 25,220 votes, and Eric Foner had 13,471.
I think it would be great to have Berube win. I could see him getting on the Daily Show for it, and he'd be an awesome guest.
I've been pretty impressed with the way Foner's held up against all the attacks on him over the years. Hopefully the internet won't be the last straw (mostly I've seen him responding to stuff in print).
(But if he has to start responding to Chinese menus, watch out.)
Dana Cloud?? WTF?
And where's Ward Churchill? I question the methodology.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 11:47 AM
My beloved Professor Bell only has three votes -- what's up with that?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 11:52 AM
I question the methodology.
One of those in the running, from the University of Rhode Island, is a sweet, mild-mannered professor of Library Science. Radical.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 11:55 AM
On Dana Cloud: I understand that ethnomusicology is enough to make the right scream, but is there really a vastly dispreferred ethnomusicologist? I hope I don't sound like I, too, don't take ethnomusicology seriously, but I just don't see how it has enough bleed into the mainstream to attract the attention of the steadfast guardians of the republic. Maybe she publishes her vagenda in popular journals and I just don't know, but she seems like a weird choice from Texas.
Now Bob Jensen, on the other hand, well.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 11:55 AM
Michael Warner opposes gay marriage. He may do so because he believes in sexual freedom, but still.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:02 PM
One of those in the running, from the University of Rhode Island, is a sweet, mild-mannered professor of Library Science. Radical.
"My name is Michael Vocino and I like dick."
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:06 PM
JL, you got served!
Not really.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:08 PM
Dammit, I'm trying to remain pseudonymous!
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:09 PM
You can vote multiple times, two clicks per vote. I voted about 30-40 times for Victor Navasky, who was languishing at 2 votes.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:18 PM
Good to see my university well represented! I still voted for Berube some twenty times, though. As stupid as this contest is, it's probably better that it be completely derailed.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:19 PM
Hey, I found out about two professors right here in Boulder that I've never heard of before. I'm going to crank-call them right now.
And then I'm going to go slip notes under their office doors and run away!
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:25 PM
One of the nominees is Warren Haffar of Arcadia University, which used to be Beaver College.
Prior to his appointment at Arcadia University, Dr. Haffar served as a program officer at the Project on Ethnic Relations, an NGO that conducts programs of high-level intervention and serves as a neutral mediator to prevent ethnic conflict in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union! This paper develops a model using content analysis of chronological event texts to measure third party activity and their impact on outcomes from three case studies of international conflict! Nooooo! He's e-vil!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:30 PM
At risk of being faintly serious, a tad of googling shows that Emma Perez has made some fairly dopey assertions (On Ward Churchill: "There are faculty who have problems with his being American Indian" [yeah, like that he isn't one, and actual American Indians have often objected]; "This is a fight to make history.")
Alison Jaggar's crime, though, seems to be being a feminist. Worse, she advocates Socialist Feminism. The mind reels in horror.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:32 PM
I voted for Todd Gitlin. He had only ten votes, and I've gotten a lot out of his books and writing since I was around 12.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:35 PM
I love Eve Sedgwick (who doesn't, ATM?), and consider her a national treasure, but that book about her therapist did suck. Also, I once heard her speak, and she was mostly incredibly shy and inaudible, except for one oddly loud line about how some people consider their relationships with their cats to be of a sexual nature.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:37 PM
I voted for Todd Gitlin. He had only ten votes, and I've gotten a lot out of his books and writing since I was around 12.
But, jeez, poor Tom Hayden has only 8 votes. Have people no memories? Does he not still, at least, have Jane Fonda cooties, even though you'd think he gave her Tom Hayden cooties in the first place?
In the name of Port Huron, how can this stand?
And H. Bruce Franklin has been writing about socialism and political issues in science fiction for decades. Okay, lots of it is wrongheaded and dopey, but that's no reason he should have only 2 votes!
Look at how many people on that list have only 2 votes. How embarassing for them.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:38 PM
I wish there were more posts here about the world of academia.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:39 PM
The young are heartless, Gary. I did my part for Navasky.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:40 PM
Seriously, guys. I urge you to vote for Berube. Repeatedly. As insane and stupid as Horowitz and this contest are, this sort of crap actually does reverberate. I'm friends with a professor who didn't get a tenure-level offer because of a Horowitz-camp public denunciation. Berube is ready and willing to fight this shit. Let him do it.
(Sedgwick is a terrible speaker, though, I agree.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:54 PM
Fine, JM-- I added about ten votes to Berube's total. What an America-hating bastard.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 12:59 PM
Yay! Down with chainsaw-wielding cultural theorists!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:05 PM
It's okay that I pulled Prof. Bell up out of the basement, right? He is such an excellent teacher, I hated to see him condemned to non-dangerousness.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:09 PM
Just don't do it again. As penitence, go vote for Berube twenty times.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:11 PM
not one nod to the kremlin on the crum??
swarthmore wuz robbed!
Posted by matty | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:11 PM
When I voted for Berube just now, I noticed that Sedgwick and Warner are pretty much his closest competition.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:12 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:13 PM
Berube, as everyone knows, is a VRWC plant. But go ahead, sheeple.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:16 PM
Doesn't everyone know better than to trust hockey players?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:18 PM
I'm pretty disappointed in the poor showings by Zinn and Chomsky. Kids today. No respect for the classics.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:24 PM
John Foster seems to be rapidly gaining, every time I reload the page his totals go up by 5 or 10 votes. Berube has a challenger.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 1:36 PM
Who the hell is Bell Hooks?
Also, I can't decide if it's a charming implicit critique of the star system, or mere muddle-headedness, that leads to the site both reinforcing the star system ("vote for the worst professor") and undermining it by listing people in alphabetical order by university affiliation, rather than last name.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:01 PM
Who the hell is Bell Hooks?
Is that a joke?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:03 PM
A complaint about the capitalization of her name, I'd surmise.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:04 PM
Got it.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:08 PM
Hey! Foster's surged, and is way, way ahead.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:12 PM
Is there any point complaining one is not on the list? Weiner isn't. Are you, Labs? Is bphd?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:13 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:14 PM
36: Weiner isn't even the worst professor in Lubbock.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:17 PM
Anyway, I forgot Labs is in Australia.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:20 PM
Berube pulls ahead!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:29 PM
Next maybe we could throw dollar bills out onto the floor of the Cato Institute.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:31 PM
University of California, Berkelyl
Can Horowitz not spell, or am I missing something?
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:34 PM
Wow, when I went back to vote more for Berube, he was getting about four votes every time I clicked through. Then the site broke for me.
I also looked up John Bellamy Foster (sorry: ignorance), and he's got tenure, a 29-page CV, a gigantic publication record, and a demonstrated willingness to mix it up on unpopular public topics. It wouldn't be a disaster if he won. But he's in the 8000s to Berube's 11000s at this point.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:49 PM
I've got Navasky up to #12, ahead of Foner, Aptheker, and Ward Churchill.
However, the results are invalid, because he has the professors ins the "Schools" column and the schools in the "professors" column.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:49 PM
I'm pretty outraged that Foner is on the list at all.
(I know, I know.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:52 PM
Oy, that Conservative Tees model in the upper right--eevvvillllicious!
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:53 PM
Ok, Berube is going up by 20 every time I reload. Either a bigwig linked to it, or someone wrote a script.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 2:58 PM
38: After today, I have my doubts. I suck.
(I am definitely not the professor in Lubbock who is most likely to make enemies lists.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:01 PM
I've got Navasky ahead of Chomsky. Someone seems to be helping. Someone's doing Gayle Rubin right now too.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:05 PM
36: Yeah, I am actually bell hooks. You've found me out.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:12 PM
Foner is surging.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:18 PM
At this rate Foner may catch Sedgewick. That isn't JM, is it?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:20 PM
No, I'm not voting for Foner. God, it would be ludicrous if Foner were to win this, though. Self-evidently ludicrous.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:25 PM
Who's Foner?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:29 PM
Foner has passed Sedgewick and is challenging Foster.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:37 PM
Eric Foner, professor of American History, specializing in the period of Reconstruction. He made a very brave address about the political uses and abuses of history to the professional association of American Historians in 2001 that caught him some flak. I saw it rebroadcast later and was very very nervous for him. His books are great: informed by theory but totally accessible, clearly written, well-researched... He's on the left but *so* not a frothing radical or abstruse theorist.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:41 PM
So that'd be an excellent win, then. Whatever makes the contest look stupidest.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:43 PM
56 is all correct, but I think more relevant here is that he is a red-diaper baby who unlike some others we could mention has not become a neocon.
Well, I don't know how theoretical Foner is, but anyway.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:49 PM
That would be Berube, who's on the record--with time-stamps--as begging his fans to vote for him and has made a speciality out of opposing Horowitz's agenda and minions.
(Sorry for being so humor-impaired about this. My university has been something of a battleground for years. It's made a lot of us kinda tense. I'll stop now.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 3:52 PM
The whole MEALAC (do I have the acronym right?) thing?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 4:16 PM
That and other things; that was the worst and highest profile, certainly. Youve got the acronym right, but *shush*! I'm trying to keep a low profile here.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 4:22 PM
Sorry, I'd edit but I can't seem to -- is someone else changing permissions on the site?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 4:35 PM
6: Yeah, I googled the professor's name and saw that page before posting. So I'm not completely unaware of the methodology, to dignify it by that name, involved. It's just that, like the rantings of that student, it's bullshit.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 4:43 PM
A lot of the hostility to Foner is hostility to some of his relatives and, along with the address JM cites I've seen him attacked for a short essay he wrote about visiting the Soviet Union and lecturing on US history in 1990 or 91 (I don't remember the date).
And Foner and theory? ??? ?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:02 PM
Sorry, I'd edit but I can't seem to -- is someone else changing permissions on the site?
Certainly not!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:03 PM
Okay, okay, I'm not a historian. I take back everything I may have said or implied about the relationship between Foner's work and theory. I just meant...wait, never mind.
Don't worry about the M-L-C ref, LB. I doubt that would be the demasking reference.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:09 PM
All right, Ben. Now, while I can't edit my own comments, or those of other commenters generally, I can edit Farber's. Only Farber's.
Seriously, is the site acting up inexplicably, or are you messing around with stuff? (Which, if you are, go ahead -- I just feel like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:15 PM
Not like Diana Wynyard?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:19 PM
Never knew there were two movies. A friend's ex-husband directed and starred in a production of Angel Street while they were married - did a spectacular job playing a heavy Victorian villian.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:22 PM
Huh. I think I'm visiting REDACTED university in a little while.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:25 PM
Well, that's strange. It should be that you can only edit stuff on your own posts now. (This was part of my campaign to get Innocence under control.) Whatever! I guess I should make things as they were.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:27 PM
When, slo?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:35 PM
I can edit gswift's latest comment now, but still not mine.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:35 PM
Isn't Foner related to Maggie Gyllenhaal? I'm sure I read this somewhere.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:54 PM
Never mind, I understand. I can edit anyone's comments to my own posts, not comments I've made to other people's posts. Drat. I liked being able to fix typos.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 5:56 PM
No, that's the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Max Born you were thinking of, whose granddaughter is the Jewish singer Olivia Newton-John.
Thank you.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 6:04 PM
Re 74
Uncle , mother's ex-husband or both .
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 7:05 PM
I ended up searching around a little on Foner, trying to figure out how the heck he ended up 2nd behind Berube (in the 11,000s last I looked). Early in February, the Columbia student paper, The Spectator, published a weird profile of Foner that suggested that he was raking in the cash from his public-intellectualness. The author said Foner was the uncle of Jake G. Foner wrote back to the paper, pointing out that Jake was the son of his ex (and that he'd repeatedly tried to correct the mistake).
Then a couple of days ago, the hackerific New York Sun published an article about those dangerous Columbia professors, which remains their top-emailed article. My favorite parts: the professors' snappy replies (and I do think Foner did pretty well), and the hilarious appended correction. The Sun is a menace, btw, and being delivered totally unsolicited all over the damned city.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 8:00 PM
When, slo?
I'm giving a talk in about, oh, six weeks.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 9:00 PM
I voted for Berube, and he was pretty far ahead of the pack wit 79295 votes. At number 2 was John Foster of the Uiversity o Oregon with only 25,220 votes, and Eric Foner had 13,471.
I think it would be great to have Berube win. I could see him getting on the Daily Show for it, and he'd be an awesome guest.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 9:15 PM
Read comment #145 on Berube's post.
Posted by ogmb | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 9:21 PM
Hey, shoot me an email with your preferred softball questions, slo.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 9:42 PM
"The Sun is a menace, btw"
Dumbass, sure, but a menace? More than, say, Drudge?
"...and being delivered totally unsolicited all over the damned city."
So are a zillion Chinese restaurant menus, last I looked.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 10:03 PM
I've been pretty impressed with the way Foner's held up against all the attacks on him over the years. Hopefully the internet won't be the last straw (mostly I've seen him responding to stuff in print).
(But if he has to start responding to Chinese menus, watch out.)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02-23-06 11:29 PM
Berube is using bots - you can get a script from his site (in comments). Where can I vote for Edie Sedgwick?
Posted by chris | Link to this comment | 02-24-06 6:36 AM
Horowitz appears to have cleared all of the old votes. Chomsky is now winning with about 40 votes; Berube is down at only 3.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 3:08 PM
See! That's the problem with electronic voting!
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 3:09 PM