Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Inside Higher Ed examines what seems to be becoming a "Public Comment Period" (a public that includes school alumnae) in hiring and tenure decisions at university -- and effort this blog is pleased to be a part of. (see most recently: Who's Coming Up For Tenure: Nadia Abu el-Haj and Barnard Alumnae Opposing Tenure for Anthropologist Abu El Haj)
Middle East Studies Association President Juan Cole is, unsurprisingly, not pleased with the way things have gone, preferring the closed-door method. This is supposed to guarantee a tenure or hiring decision based on scholarship and free of political factors. After all, we all know how a-political college campuses are.
The article focuses on the cases of Abu El Haj and Wadie Said, son of Edward. Input or Intrusion?
An emailer points out this response by Barnard College President, Judith Shapiro: A Message to Alumnae from President Judith Shapiro and remarks:
This is an entirely Alumnae-driven campaign. It is orchestrated by Paula (Rubenstein) Stern, Barnard, Class of 1982, A Barnard graduate now living in Israel. Shapiro can have no evidence that this is "orchestrated" by anyone other than alumnae, because it is not. It is no more being "orchestrated" by Campus Watch than it is being "orchestrated" by Inside Higher Ed, which also covered the issue.
But the basic message to alumnae is, buzz off. We want your money, not your opinions. You got your education here, but you are not sufficiently well educated to read a book and judge the caliber of its scholarship.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Keeping the mob noise out of the Ivory Tower.
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Buzz off. We want your money, not your opinions.
That truly does sum up the way coleges feel about alumni.
What I wonder is, why do alumni send money to colleges that abandon facts for ideological jihad.