Letters to the Editor
Buffalonian
Published Letters: 371 Editor's Choice: 74
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Polls
[Read the article: "You don't care what the American people think?"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You know, as much as I hate Cheney, I don't think he's wrong here. We don't elect leaders to follow polls. We elect them to lead. If they lead in a way that we don't like, it is up to us to elect someone else at the next election. If they lead in the way that is criminal, it is up to us to pressure our representatives to impeach the SOBs.
If leaders followed polls, we wouldn't have desegregated the army or enforced Brown v Board of Ed or any of a huge array of positive things.
So, while I agree Cheney is a bastard and should fuck himself on his way to hell, I think it is disingenuous to say that he is wrong for not following polls for his policy initiatives.
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60? 90? Whatever
[Read the article: Of Ph.D.s, gay lovers, slave narratives and the Ivy League]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Honestly, if the choice is between Harvard and Middle TN State and you're serious about a career in academia, then choosing TN because it has nicer weather is ludicrous. But choosing between, say 60th ranked SUNY Albany and 90th ranked University of Alabama? Take whichever is going to make you happy and not saddle you with too much debt.
Your first job will overwhelmingly be influenced by the pedigree of your degree. Your subsequent job path will be made easier if you start at the top. However, what matters in the end is your work. Publish well and you can move from a first job at a third tier undergraduate college to a second job at a mid-level research university to a third job at any school you want. Is it as easy as it would be to be given the benefit of the doubt because you have a degree from Harvard? No. Of course not. So what?
Plus, don't believe all that Ivy hype. IN history, lots of Ivy PhDs get by for a few extra years post-doc with cushy fellowships, but in the end, I don't think they have a particularly high rate of placement per se. When I was a brand new assistant professor, I was invited to give a talk at Yale. I was teaching in a small state school in NJ with a 4-4 teaching load. The doctoral students at Yale expressed horror at the thought that such slave-like conditions existed in academia. They had NEVER HEARD of a 4-4 job, which is odd, since I would guess about 85% of the jobs in the country are 4-4.
However, the funny thing is that a decade on, I've moved on to a research university on the basis of publications, and not a single one of those people from that discussion at Yale ended up in a similar 2-2 position. Some are in think tanks (connections do have their value), some have gone to law school, some are in the jobs they thought were beneath them.
I will say it again, go where you will be happy and your work will determine whether you rise or fall in the end.
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2 responses
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@ prytania:
While there's a fine line between clever and stupid, your remark illustrates that you are so far from understanding King's point that you can't even see the line.
@drgreen:
The idea that big revenue sports produce profit which gets ploughed back into the non-revenue sports is a complete and utter fabrication unsupported by any reputable study. It may be true at something like 10% of I-A football programs but not for the other 90% of IA, IAA, II, or III. Yes Michigan sells 100,000 seats 8 times a year, but they also spend millions on the their program.
And that is not counting the cost of stadium construction or weight room construction or special dining hall construction, all of which are considered "capital improvements" not "athletic department" costs.
Finally, studies for decades show that when a school does well in athletics, alumni donations go up, but only alumni donations to the athletic department. So, no one says "Yeah! UCLA won the championship. I'm going to donate to the library!" At Rutgers - my graduate alma mater-- they cut the subscriptions for 4-5,000 academic journals because the cost was excessive, even though it represented less than third of the annual RECRUITING budget for football and men's basketball.
Enjoy college sports as a guilty pleasure like porn or fluffernutter sandwiches, but don't embarrass yourself by claiming that they can be defended on any level other than entertainment value.
"A college racing stable makes as much sense as college football. The jockey could carry the college colors; the students could cheer; the alumni could bet; and the horse wouldn't have to pass a history test." — Robert Maynard Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago
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Citation
[Read the article: Fiction's a girl thing, boys heart history]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If anyone's actually interested in the development of this dynamic, they might want to start with the seminal The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice by Bonnie G. Smith (Harvard UP 2000).
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Ovarial?
[Read the article: Fiction's a girl thing, boys heart history]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Would you have preferred "ovarial"? I would have used that if this were the late 1980s and we were sitting in a Smith College "ovular" (ie, not a seminar) room.