Critical Mass

Jonah Goldberg has an article on Townhall.com entitled "Racism by any other name," in which he asserts that "It's time to admit that 'diversity' is code for racism."  Says Mr. Goldberg:

If it makes you feel better, we can call it "nice" racism or "well-intentioned" racism or "racism that's good for you." Except that's the rub: It's racism that may be good for you if "you" are a diversity guru, a rich white liberal, a college administrator or one of sundry other types. But the question of whether diversity is good for "them" is a different question altogether, and much more difficult to answer.

If by "them" you mean minorities such as Jews, Chinese-Americans, Indian-Americans and other people of Asian descent, then the ongoing national obsession with diversity probably isn't good. Indeed, that's why Jian Li, a freshman at Yale, filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton University for rejecting him. Li had nigh-upon perfect test scores and grades, yet Princeton turned him down. He'll probably get nowhere with his complaint - he did get into Yale after all - but it shines a light on an uncomfortable reality.

The rest of the article is a good read, and shines the light of common sense on the various racial arguments in higher education around the country.  Mr. Goldberg's conclusion is one I suspect many in America agree with, even if they are too afraid to say it:

There was a time when condescension, discrimination, arrogant social engineering along racial lines and the like were dubbed racism. And, to paraphrase Shakespeare, racism by any other name still stinks.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not racist by any measure.  I think people of every "race," ie skin color and self/socially imposed subculture, should have access to higher education.  (Race is a flawed notion when applied to people.)  I think scholarships should fund just about any group or cause they want, based on their own motivations; but when the schools themselves start picking and choosing based on skin color rather than on merit, that is racism, benevolent or not. 

This is the argument of William Harman, of Texas Tech's Daily Toreador.  Last week Harman published an article titled "Hypocrisy taints U.S. past, present," in which he asserted the U.S. has carried on state sponsored terrorist activities for some time, and said:

I don't really believe it's fair for the U.S. to condemn terrorists from a moral stand point when it has been, and in all likelihood still is, highly involved in terrorist activities.

The fact is that when someone commits violence that isn't in our interest, they are considered terrorists. However, when their acts are in our interest, they are either not mentioned in the news or are portrayed as freedom fighters. If you look at the American Revolution, who were American rebels but terrorists? Our forefathers openly fought against their government and committed acts of sabotage to British interests like in the Boston Tea Party.

Moreover, Harman argues, "the stereotyped Islamic radicals in the Middle East have their own perspective. It would be a good idea for Americans to try and see it from their side in order to make better decisions when dealing with the 'terrorists' there. [. . .] it takes more than just religion to rally people to a cause."

Harman ends his column by saying:

The U.S. doesn't have any sovereignty over those states [Saudi Arabia and Iran], and we have no right to get involved in the Middle East. What would you do if the United States was occupied or subverted by foreign power? Would you rise up against that power or just sit complacently?

I think Harman may be missing the point of the U.S.'s involvement in the Middle East, which is precisely to keep it from becoming occupied or subverted by a foreign power, whether state or radically religious in nature.

Elizabeth Redden of InsideHigherEd.com today had a story on Swarthmore College, where on "the first day of Coming Out Week [the week of October 30] each fall," students catch sight of "sexually explicit messages chalked on campus sidewalks by gay student groups the night before."  Says Ms. Redden, "It is a tradition, organizers say, meant to facilitate free expression among gay students and encourage all students to question the reigning 'heteronormative' culture."  However, in the past few years questions have arisen about the appropriateness of the chalkings, as they have become increasingly explicit, ranging from combative language to graphic cartoonish depictions of sexual activities.  The pro-gay chalkings have also inspired counter-chalkings in protest, as well as ("More ominously to some") what Redden calls "localized showers" - that is, students washing the chalk off the sidewalks.

One pro-gay student, Tatiana Cozzarelli, said "many gay students were disappointed with the counter-chalking, feeling that they had one week per year to express their voices, 'not to create a dialogue of voices of people who aren’t normally silenced on top of the chalkings of people who are silenced.'"

Students who disagree cite six main reasons why, according to Redden, summed up by one student's posting on Facebook: 

that the postings assume the students reading them hold positions they do not in fact support, that the chalkings reinforce stereotypes that gay people are obsessed with sex, that the discussion surrounding Coming Out Week ignores debate about social action in favor of more intimate details, that “a sex-positive agenda” is taking precedence over discussion of gay history, identity or rights, that thinking about genitalia in public is a matter of poor taste and that it’s “shocking to see little kids” visiting campus “playing on pictures of masturbating women.”

Finally, there's this quote, I guess from Elliot Ratzman, a visiting religion professor who managed an on-campus discussion about the chalkings (the quote wasn't cited well): "Heteronormativity is on the wane here."  Somehow, I kind of doubt that, regardless of what some would like us to believe.

Tech Site Ars Technica reports that online courses are increasingly popular at universities across the nation:

More than 96 percent of schools with more than 15,000 students offer some form of online courses. About two-thirds of the very largest organizations offer complete programs online which purport to allow students to complete nearly all of their degree work remotely. These figures, which have also increased from 2004, show that online education has definitely entered the mainstream as far as higher education is concerned.

My school, JBU, offers a very small number of courses online, so I have little experience with them from that institution. However, am currently enrolled in a correspondence course through another university which allows me to submit assignments and check grades online. Once I got into the groove of a non classroom-based course, I got the hang of it. However, I'm not so sure I agree with this statement:

...college and university education leaders by and large believe that online education is as good as traditional face-to-face education, with nearly 17 percent saying that it's actually better. Of course, those same leaders are in charge of developing and ultimately marketing their own online programs, which undoubtedly leads some of them to be bullish in their assessments.

In my opinion, online courses will never adequately replace face-to-face lectures from a knowledgeable and experienced professor. Most of the important things I'm learned in college came not from reading the course materials, but from listening to the profs. CM readers, what experiences have you had with online courses?