Jack Bauer and FISA reprisal.
http://insideoutthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/05/jack-bauer-fisa-reprised.html
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Hilarious blog
I discovered a new blog, Inside-Out the Beltway, where a hilarious DC lawyer writes some of the funniest political commentary I've ever read. This is one of my favorites:
http://insideoutthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/01/general-wants-young-muslim-men-naked.html
http://insideoutthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/01/general-wants-young-muslim-men-naked.html
Friday, May 21, 2010
Bona fide Info
Here is one piece of bona fide information we found out at the Special Faculty Senate Meeting: The Faculty Senate Executive Committee did something very, I can't remember Gary Miller's word, but I think it was "professional," but the way he said it had a tinge of an association with courageous--professional as in stepped up to the plate, showed moxie, etc. Here's what they did:
They "approved" The Process. Miller did not reveal, when this approval took place. I suspect it was before his recommendation of Discontinuance for Physics and Gerontology were made public, since according to Debby Soles, the University Program Review Committee did not recommend Physics be discontinued.
Miller invoked the Executive Committee (or should I call them Executors as in executing a will, which usually accompanies death) in the "see, your own rubber stamped what I did." Now Inquiring Minds want to know--how precisely did this "approval" happen. Did the Provost ask for it, and if so, did no one among the executors think that this might not be such a good idea? Or were they too afraid to resist? And if so, maybe we need to form another mafia family that can compete with the Corleones who keep making faculty offers that they cannot refuse.
Inquiring Minds want to know about this little process that occured inside The Process.
They "approved" The Process. Miller did not reveal, when this approval took place. I suspect it was before his recommendation of Discontinuance for Physics and Gerontology were made public, since according to Debby Soles, the University Program Review Committee did not recommend Physics be discontinued.
Miller invoked the Executive Committee (or should I call them Executors as in executing a will, which usually accompanies death) in the "see, your own rubber stamped what I did." Now Inquiring Minds want to know--how precisely did this "approval" happen. Did the Provost ask for it, and if so, did no one among the executors think that this might not be such a good idea? Or were they too afraid to resist? And if so, maybe we need to form another mafia family that can compete with the Corleones who keep making faculty offers that they cannot refuse.
Inquiring Minds want to know about this little process that occured inside The Process.
Why "A Horrible Warning"?
I decided to start blogging, when I realized the other day that I would have loved to have blogged from the floor of our Special Faculty Senate Meeting (5/1710). I ended up taking notes on it as did Holger Meyer, a colleague in Physics. Meyer labeled his notes "unofficial," but he stuck pretty well to the format and facts.
My notes were wilder, because I wanted to provide a more absurdist account of the meeting, because by the time we all got into that meeting the vise that seems to be tightening around all of us--the Provost/V.P., the LAS Faculty and Dean, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, the Faculty Senate and of course the rabble, those who refuse to keep quiet about what is obviously a very strange Process leading to the Provost's recommendation to discontinue the Physics department and major and the Gerontology major. You can tell it's strange, because the term, The Process, has been repeated many times, since April, when we were suddenly informed we were in a very specific process with steps, a particular committee membership, etc. about which we were not informed.
At least not publically. At least not all of the WSU "Family." (If we're a family, somebody better call the therapist)
I'd say the Gerontology Dept. or Program, but this would be a bit of a misnomer, since it consists of one untenured woman faculty member who has been working her you-know-what-off in a completely inappropriate way. Yep. We have majors in LAS with ONE faculty member. I think you could only do that to an untenured woman, but I could be wrong on that count. What I do know is that you could only do that to an interdisciplinary major, something that in some small way breaks out of the outmoded attachment to something called The Disciplines as a smokescreen for internal competition among The Departments, many of which keep shrinking for the purpose of Our Glorious Mission--All Applied Science All the Time aka Show Us the Money Now, Because We Need It. Desparately.
The meeting was productive in that the faculty would not just sit on their hands like good boys and girls, and as a result, we got some bonafide information flowing. Prior to some of the meetings we've had, our fellow faculty who have found themselves in positions as powerbrokers started leaking as they recalibrated their accounts of "what happened." All assumptions that we were in a relationship of information debt peonage, where those with insiders' information would eke it out on what they thought was the proper time line, were met with resistance.
But the leaks were useful, because then the peons started leaking and to each other as well. We discovered other viewpoints than which we hear in the UPRC's report, or at least what we have of this report (I still don't know if LAS department chairs received excerpts or the whole enchilada re: LAS Trigger Programs; I was told by a faculty member on the committee that they were not "authorized," Who's Your Daddy?, to release this information).
I think it would be more productive for administrators, because they would produce less blowback, if they would ease up on their rather top down practices. If what Behrman's communique to the LAS faculty handed out at the LAS Faculty meeting is true, and she argues that she can back up all of her claims with documentation, (although I think that we should be able to talk to each other as faculty without having to invoke "data," since we're not engaged in research or the work of handling state secrets) I have no reason not to believe her, then a faculty member's time and efforts were wasted by central administration to cut her out at some point in WSU's negotations with a community college over course transfers.
Notice I said that the administration should, "ease up." We're not in a world of absolutes but degrees of how much supplication administrations need. Administrators don't need as much as they seem to think they do, but that requires the ability to deal with more than one kind of personality, which is something they teach you in any basic workshop on being a department chair for example--i.e. you shouldn't avoid conflict, because it doesn't work, etc. If you have a problem with what the faculty member has done, you talk directly to her about it, rather than simply say "presto, she's gone."
This degree of "top downness" is retrograde, unnecessary, and produces more trouble than it's worth. It's not necessary to create an effect that feels like ocean depths coming down on people to have "order." Administrators don't need the level of control they think they need to make their case. They don't need to threaten to discipline "LAS" by doing things akin to "gutting it." Now, that's just a rumor, and I know someone would tell me I shouldn't repeat it, but these kind of rumors are circulating wildly right now. I see nothing to be gained in carrying on any pretense that they're not.
"Leadership" today seems to be in some kind of serious crisis in terms of the way its "sovereignty" is communicated. These is too much supplication sought from others, too high a degree of behind-closed-doors manueverings in the age of the rapid response, highly interactive communcations environment in which we all sit. It's like videogaming meets Father Knows Best, and it just disorients everyone and then when they rise up, leaders then get miffed.
No wonder The Program Review Process at WSU feels more like the bumber car ride at the amusement park than orderly, professional and in which we should all bow down in gratitude with royal decorum.
Now, for the Horrible Warning title of this blog. There's a quote from a woman Catherine Aird that I used to have in my email signature, "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning." I think there are too many people being enlisted to be "good examples" of not so good processes, dynamics, etc. Thus, I choose to remain sane and say I'll just try to reflect what's going on. Albeit with my own idiosyncratic spin, since I am in the humanities and no longer believe in a nice need divide between something called "science" on the one hand and "ideology" on the other. With the possible exception of the physical sciences, I would hold to that claim. For an excellent historicist account of the term, ideology, see the British cultural critic Raymond Williams from his book, Keywords:
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/ideo8.html
Adios muchachos and muchachas.
My notes were wilder, because I wanted to provide a more absurdist account of the meeting, because by the time we all got into that meeting the vise that seems to be tightening around all of us--the Provost/V.P., the LAS Faculty and Dean, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, the Faculty Senate and of course the rabble, those who refuse to keep quiet about what is obviously a very strange Process leading to the Provost's recommendation to discontinue the Physics department and major and the Gerontology major. You can tell it's strange, because the term, The Process, has been repeated many times, since April, when we were suddenly informed we were in a very specific process with steps, a particular committee membership, etc. about which we were not informed.
At least not publically. At least not all of the WSU "Family." (If we're a family, somebody better call the therapist)
I'd say the Gerontology Dept. or Program, but this would be a bit of a misnomer, since it consists of one untenured woman faculty member who has been working her you-know-what-off in a completely inappropriate way. Yep. We have majors in LAS with ONE faculty member. I think you could only do that to an untenured woman, but I could be wrong on that count. What I do know is that you could only do that to an interdisciplinary major, something that in some small way breaks out of the outmoded attachment to something called The Disciplines as a smokescreen for internal competition among The Departments, many of which keep shrinking for the purpose of Our Glorious Mission--All Applied Science All the Time aka Show Us the Money Now, Because We Need It. Desparately.
The meeting was productive in that the faculty would not just sit on their hands like good boys and girls, and as a result, we got some bonafide information flowing. Prior to some of the meetings we've had, our fellow faculty who have found themselves in positions as powerbrokers started leaking as they recalibrated their accounts of "what happened." All assumptions that we were in a relationship of information debt peonage, where those with insiders' information would eke it out on what they thought was the proper time line, were met with resistance.
But the leaks were useful, because then the peons started leaking and to each other as well. We discovered other viewpoints than which we hear in the UPRC's report, or at least what we have of this report (I still don't know if LAS department chairs received excerpts or the whole enchilada re: LAS Trigger Programs; I was told by a faculty member on the committee that they were not "authorized," Who's Your Daddy?, to release this information).
I think it would be more productive for administrators, because they would produce less blowback, if they would ease up on their rather top down practices. If what Behrman's communique to the LAS faculty handed out at the LAS Faculty meeting is true, and she argues that she can back up all of her claims with documentation, (although I think that we should be able to talk to each other as faculty without having to invoke "data," since we're not engaged in research or the work of handling state secrets) I have no reason not to believe her, then a faculty member's time and efforts were wasted by central administration to cut her out at some point in WSU's negotations with a community college over course transfers.
Notice I said that the administration should, "ease up." We're not in a world of absolutes but degrees of how much supplication administrations need. Administrators don't need as much as they seem to think they do, but that requires the ability to deal with more than one kind of personality, which is something they teach you in any basic workshop on being a department chair for example--i.e. you shouldn't avoid conflict, because it doesn't work, etc. If you have a problem with what the faculty member has done, you talk directly to her about it, rather than simply say "presto, she's gone."
This degree of "top downness" is retrograde, unnecessary, and produces more trouble than it's worth. It's not necessary to create an effect that feels like ocean depths coming down on people to have "order." Administrators don't need the level of control they think they need to make their case. They don't need to threaten to discipline "LAS" by doing things akin to "gutting it." Now, that's just a rumor, and I know someone would tell me I shouldn't repeat it, but these kind of rumors are circulating wildly right now. I see nothing to be gained in carrying on any pretense that they're not.
"Leadership" today seems to be in some kind of serious crisis in terms of the way its "sovereignty" is communicated. These is too much supplication sought from others, too high a degree of behind-closed-doors manueverings in the age of the rapid response, highly interactive communcations environment in which we all sit. It's like videogaming meets Father Knows Best, and it just disorients everyone and then when they rise up, leaders then get miffed.
No wonder The Program Review Process at WSU feels more like the bumber car ride at the amusement park than orderly, professional and in which we should all bow down in gratitude with royal decorum.
Now, for the Horrible Warning title of this blog. There's a quote from a woman Catherine Aird that I used to have in my email signature, "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning." I think there are too many people being enlisted to be "good examples" of not so good processes, dynamics, etc. Thus, I choose to remain sane and say I'll just try to reflect what's going on. Albeit with my own idiosyncratic spin, since I am in the humanities and no longer believe in a nice need divide between something called "science" on the one hand and "ideology" on the other. With the possible exception of the physical sciences, I would hold to that claim. For an excellent historicist account of the term, ideology, see the British cultural critic Raymond Williams from his book, Keywords:
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/ideo8.html
Adios muchachos and muchachas.
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