Turns out all that tuition money Harvard kids shell out is for naught after all. Christian Flow, Harvard '10, recently wrote an article for Harvard Magazine on the university's apparent lackadaisical attitude at giving students an actual education. Based on a personal episode of academic buffoonery involving a flight back home to write a term paper in 24 hours, Flow highlights how professors at the number four douchiest college in America do everything but put their students in the time-out zone and put a hilariously inappropriate amount of effort in squeezing quality work out of their pupils.
In three years at college, I had never been slapped around like this. This was the kind of thing that happened in high school when you didn’t do your reading. Who knew that tenured professors had the time or the temperament for this species of intervention?
After the jump, it turns out Ivy League professors don't actually give a shit how you do in their class. But various forms of B usually cut down on office hour interaction.
Remember wingnut and condiment expert William Jacobson? Back in May, he wrote a post on his blog attacking President Obama for asking for "a spicy...or Dijon mustard" on his hamburger. This Harvard-educated lawyer accused Obama of elitism--because nothing's more elitist than inquiring about a product produced by Kraft. Jacobson's post sparked laughter in the entire political blogosphere, causing him to link to all the people laughing at him, resulting in more laughing and more linking until the entire internet imploded. The end.
Since "Colonel Mustard" first earned his nickname, he has continued to write more wacky posts about how Sotomayor is racist, Hillary is disappeared, Wonkette is Trig's real mother, and so on. But it is Jacobson's post from last Friday that really demonstrates the peak insane form he showed in early May. It is titled "If Palin Were President Now" and it is every bit as magical as you would expect.
By speculating what would happen if Alaska's Point Guard were the current Commander in Chief, Jacobson is operating under the assumption that John McCain won in November and died soon after. Of course John McCain is still alive in real life, meaning Sarah Palin would still be VP and have all the time she wants to shop in Georgetown. I don't know why Jacobson thinks McCain would have died in the past eight months. Maybe he's confusing him with Ed McMahon.
Because this is just speculation, Jacobson can write whatever he wants without any sort of proof or justification or logic. He can say that in her first six months as President, Sarah Palin would have fixed the economy, reduced the national deficit, sent Optimus Prime to kill Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and won the Boston Marathon--even if all of it only could have happened in Jacobson's recurring wet dream. And when people take him to task, he doesn't have to explain himself. After all, it's just speculation. Just like when TMZ claims Diana Ross is the father of Michael Jackson's kids.
William Jacobson, if you are reading this, please realize how much embarrassment you are bringing to the university that employs you. Not because of your political beliefs, but because of your failure at simple reasoning. You say that if Sarah Palin were President now, the country would be in much better shape. That is simply untrue. You failed to realize that Sarah Palin would never be President now, because she would have quit last week.
Professors in the Ivy League apparently are somewhat aware of the problems facing academia. You usually don't see them doing anything about it other than whining at conferences and writing editorial columns in the New York Times. Tenure is a great thing, sort of like being emperor of Rome while it burns down. No one's gonna stop your fiddling (or publishing).
Francis McLellan, a Brown Ph.D. and Princeton's former head Russian language instructor, evidently had a different experience as a senior lecturer than the professors did. Lecturers are to Princeton what migrant laborers are to, well, Princeton. And it seems as if four years of teaching elementary language made giving up women, possessions, and meat an attractive option for McLellan. In January he was tonsured Iosaf, a hieromonk in the Russian Orthodox Church. Now he's archimandrite of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, a city just slightly less dangerous than Cambridge. Sexy monk results after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Mitchell even noted that Obama left a $5 tip in the tip jar. But she didn't mention one arugula-like fact, and you couldn't hear it on the MSNBC video because Andrea and her correspondent Kelly O'Donnel (they needed two people to cover this story) were talking so much.
NBC's regular news reported Obama's order as follows: ""I'm going to have a basic cheddar cheese burger, medium well, with mustard," Obama said. "Do you have spicy mustard? I'll take that."
Actually, the quote was "you got a spicy mustard or something like that, or a Dijon mustard, something like that" (at 0.55 of the unedited video below without Mitchell's talkover).
Obama ordered his burger with DIJON MUSTARD! Bet he had to seek John Kerry's counsel on that.
If anyone knows elitism, it's a Harvard Law-educated Cornell professor who worked for many years as a lawyer in Rhode Island.
Economics professor Jeffrey Miron wants to buy black tar heroin, legally. Now. In a powerfully argued CNN editorial, Dr. Miron breaks down how making drugs--all drugs--legal and regulated would solve war, cancer, taxes, government corruption, racial profiling, AIDS and, presumably, difficult-to-open jars.
The last time we checked in with Crimson druglust it was just blow for the good of science. This time, the good Harvard prof is reading the blood on the wall, and he does not mince words: legalization is "the only way to reduce violence." Miron's hook is the horrifying Mexican drug wars--our thank-you gift for taking the bad jobs we need back now, please--but his real target is the U.S. government's "puritanical policies" and "draconian [...] enforcement."
Miron may be gilding your stoner ex-roommate's opinions with vocabulary and rhetoric, but he's still completely right, right? If we'd lost the war on drugs any more emphatically we'd call it Vietnam Cubed, but Congress is dedicated to bogarting our chemical fun. That said, considerable evidence suggests that, eventually, all the lame Americans who vote for lame Americans who hate weed will die (and even now, there may be hope).
After all, drugs are a personal, almost philosophical choice, and they feel totally great at the time--like cutting. The professor calls it the "victimless nature of this so-called crime." Who's worse off if The Man condones methadone Mondays, other than everyone who cares about you?
Dr. Miron says it best: "Obeying the law is for suckers."
Oh, Madonna Constantine. When will you learn? Columbia does not want you. They do not like you. And most of all, they want you to go away. For reals. And, like, not appeal shit and sue them and stuff.
According to the Associated Press, Ms. Constantine filed papers today with the state Supreme Court. She contends that her dismissal from the faculty of Teachers College was "arbitrary, irrational and unauthorized." Columbia University spokespeople have so far declined to comment.
Our only comment is to roll our eyes, snigger, and wonder why she's still trying. But, you know, maybe she felt she had nothing left to lose?
Seriously, Harvard? Seriously? You have this guy as a professor for six years and not one of you has anything to say about it on ratemyprofessors.com? My disappointment is only rivaled by Associate Professor Summers’ disappointment in the “post-pubescent children of notables� (i.e. bitterness toward his self-chosen path of academic poverty—the non-tenure track).
In a ridiculously self-masturbatory opinion piece for the Times Higher Education, John H. Summers, Harvard history professor, whines about how his wealthy students “worked exceptionally long hours, [and] were aggressive in exercising their talents.� Wait, there’s more! Summers moans, “I had to grade the students, and I had to grade them well. Everyone expected a recommendation letter.�
Wow, really? Hardworking and talented Harvard students expect good grades and recommendation letters? Madness, I tell you. Don’t do it, Professor Summers! Don’t give in to the temptation.
Well, he didn’t. Summers goes on to criticize Harvard’s grade inflation as taking away the “one instrument of power [he] wielded,â€? calling the “tacitâ€? expectation that students earn no lower than a B “a sign of corruptionâ€? that “abridges the academic freedom of the teacher.â€? Read the rest of this entry »
If you torture a dog with random electric shocks, will the dog become sad?
Such was the question millions of Americans were once frantically asking, until Penn professor and psychologist Martin Seligman decided to find out once and for all. (The answer: Yes.) However, Seligman's results, after they were first published 40 years ago, had a perhaps unintended effect. As it happened some time later, CIA torture aficionados became very interested in Seligman's work and wanted to examine the implications of this revelation for human torture. Seligman's dog studies, it turns out, were instrumental in developing techniques used at Guantanamo Bay. So say the muckraking journalists, at least. The Daily Pennsylvanian reports:
[Writer Jane} Mayer's book [The Dark Side] alleges that Seligman's research heavily influenced the psychologists that developped [sic] CIA interrogation techniques at the Guantanamo Bay military prison. But in a pre-publication review of the book's content, Harper's Magazine writer Scott Horton writes that Seligman "assisted" in the development of their interrogation techniques. This statement has since circulated on several psychology-related blogs and is a claim that Seligman unequivocally denies.
It's a truth universally acknowledged that, with the exception of, like, Bob Jones University, institutions of higher education are generally more progressive than the world outside their gates. But all the idealistic hippie students who came of age in the '60s and later became idealistic hippie professors are now retiring. The younger professors replacing them still disproportionately vote Democratic, but they are "less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate": 17.2% of the 50-64 age group define themselves as "liberal activists," versus 1.3% of professors 35 and younger. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a 31-year-old professor, told the New York Times, "My generation is not so ideologically driven" and the article credits the rise of civil discourse over fractious infighting. Read the rest of this entry »
Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine featured an interview with Columbia religion professor, Dalai Lama friend, and famous person spawner Robert Thurman. Thurman, who was the first American ordained as a Tibetan monk (and a Harvard man himself), is on university leave this year but normally teaches classes on Buddhism.
At first, the interview seems to be standard fare -- thank you, New York Times, for hard-hitting journalism along the lines of:
As a Buddhist, how do you reconcile your pacifism with the roles your daughter Uma has played in films like Quentin Tarantino’s bloody “Kill Bill”?
But then something really fascinating and bizarre emerges. Follow the jump for an image that will sear itself into your brain.
Turns out all that tuition money Harvard kids shell out is for naught after all. Christian Flow, Harvard '10, recently wrote an article for Harvard Magazine on the university's apparent lackadaisical attitude at giving students an actual education. Based on a personal episode of academic buffoonery involving a flight back home to write a term paper in 24 hours, Flow highlights how professors at the number four douchiest college in America do everything but put their students in the time-out zone and put a hilariously inappropriate amount of effort in squeezing quality work out of their pupils.
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Remember wingnut and condiment expert 
Professors in the Ivy League apparently are somewhat aware of the problems facing academia. You usually don't see them doing anything about it other than whining at conferences and 
Oh, Madonna Constantine. When will you learn? Columbia does not want you. They do not like you. And most of all, they want you to go away. For reals. And, like, not appeal shit and sue them and stuff.
Seriously, Harvard? Seriously? You have 
Such was the question millions of Americans were once frantically asking, until Penn professor and psychologist Martin Seligman decided to find out once and for all. (The answer: Yes.) However, Seligman's results, after they were first published 40 years ago, had a perhaps unintended effect. As it happened some time later, CIA torture aficionados became very interested in Seligman's work and wanted to examine the implications of this revelation for human torture. Seligman's dog studies, it turns out, were instrumental in developing techniques used at Guantanamo Bay. So say the muckraking 
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