The Case of the Paranoid President

To say that Curmie is way behind on his writing is like saying Donald Trump has a high opinion of himself. I keep a log of links to news stories that I might like to turn into blog pieces someday: my current backlog is 92 stories, just on education, from calendar year 2015 (there are almost exactly the same number of stories about topics other than education). Part of the problem is that it’s been a particularly busy summer—work-related trips to London, Kent (Ohio), and Montreal totaled well over a month away from home, plus writing a conference paper that turned out to be more work than initially suspected, preparing for a larger-than-normal production this fall… well, you get the idea. But part of the problem is simply that with so many things to write about, Curmie dithers about what topic to choose, then watches Netflix instead of writing about anything.

Today, therefore, represents an attempt, however feeble, to break out of that rut. With so many potential Curmie contenders to choose from, it’s time to just pick one—not necessarily the most egregious, but the one that interests me most today—and go with it. So today I write about a story from May (it found its way into the popular press in June).

Margaret B. Lee: A Curmie contender, and a strong one.

It seems that Oakton Community College President Margaret B. (Peg) Lee was retiring after three decades of service to the Des Plaines, IL, institution, and the college held a reception in her honor. So far, so good, right? Well, a couple of days after the April 25 “gala,” a former adjunct named Chester Kulis copied Lee on an e-mail sent to adjunct instructors. Titled “MAY DAY—The Antidote to the Peg Lee Gala,” the offending missive consisted of a single sentence: “Have a happy MAY DAY when workers across the world celebrate their struggle for union rights and remember the Haymarket riot in Chicago.” [Curmie’s note: overview of the events of the Haymarket riot here.]

Chester Kulis:
Not advocating violence.

Kulis, a long-time member of faculty unions, was miffed that Lee had not re-appointed him (and some 50 other adjuncts) after the school was hit with a $150,000 fine in the wake of a recently-adopted state law which imposes significant financial penalties on any institution which hires officially retired state employees who are paid (by that institution and any others, apparently) a total of more than 40% of their salary in their highest-paid year of employment by the state.  (A revision of the statute, which would exempt retirees receiving less than a $10,000 annual pension, has been proposed, but as far as I can tell not passed into law.)

OCC spokeswoman Janet Spector Bishop was certainly correct in arguing “We’re a public entity. We can’t be spending taxpayer dollars on financial penalties we can avoid.” Her ensuing sentence, however, is no more than equivocation: “It’s not the choice we wanted to make, but we do need to comply with the law.” No one suggested that non-compliance was an option, but there are plenty of ways of ensuring legalities without summarily firing a considerable number of presumably valuable adjunct faculty. Such solutions would require both thought and work, however, and Lee’s administration seemed uninterested in either.

So let us stipulate a few things. 1). The law was well-intentioned but had some unanticipated and negative side effects. 2). The Oakton administration’s solution was pragmatic but lazy and pedagogically silly. 3). Adjunct faculty are probably the most exploited and under-appreciated group of professionals in the country. 4). Kulis is a whiner, and copying the e-mail to Lee was a little boorish.

What it was not, however, was threatening. Nonetheless, he received an indignant case-and-desist letter from one Philip H. Gerner III, one of the college’s attorneys. He wrote: “Your reference to ‘remember the Haymarket riot’ was clearly threatening the president that you could resort to violence against the president and the college campus. Threats of violence are not First Amendment protected free speech.”

Two points: First, Lee doesn’t get off the hook. Yes, it’s the lawyers who look like buffoons, taking an OBVIOUSLY non-threatening comment which was merely copied to Lee as “clearly threatening.” BULLSHIT. But it was Lee’s own paranoid delusions that spurred the response, or the lawyers would never have heard of the e-mail to begin with.

Second, Kulis’s e-mail, read as if grammar matters (and it sure as hell does to Curmie), does not call on the recipients to “remember the Haymarket Riot” à la the Alamo or the Maine, but rather points out that May Day is traditionally associated not merely with a celebration of the labor movement, but also with a commemoration of the Haymarket riots of May 4, 1886. Of course, if you don’t believe in the Oxford comma, you might read those last six words as hortatory rather than a second predicate clause with the same subject: “workers celebrate… and remember.” But, even if that’s how you read it, so what?

It takes a particularly feverish mind to extrapolate a threat out of that phrase. Kulis is absolutely right to declare that “I would put it this way. No one who read this email, with the exception of Peg Lee and her attorneys, thought there was any violent intent.” Curmie would phrase it differently: “no sane person could read violent intent into this e-mail.”

FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), an organization that’s a little too libertarian even for Curmie’s taste but is unquestionably a net positive force, weighed in on May 22:

In declaring Kulis’s email a threat of violence and ordering him to cease and desist from sending similar messages, OCC and its attorney have ignored clear legal precedent, violated Kulis’s rights, and deeply chilled expression on campus. OCC must immediately retract the cease and desist letter and respect the First Amendment rights of faculty members who criticize the college’s administration or its policies….

Kulis’s brief email is entirely protected by the First Amendment, and the charge that it was “clearly threatening” to anyone in the OCC community is without merit and wholly detached from our legal system’s understanding of what constitutes a true threat. OCC must immediately rescind its cease and desist letter and threats of further action against Kulis—its only acceptable option as a public institution bound by the First Amendment….

FIRE asks that OCC immediately reassure Kulis that his First Amendment rights are respected on campus, rescind its cease and desist letter against him, and make clear to OCC faculty that they will not face backlash from OCC’s administration if they criticize the college, its administration, or its practices, as is their fundamental right.

This prompted a different idiot lawyer from Robbins Schwartz, this time Catherine R. Locallo, to respond rather huffily that of course President Lee’s irrational delusions were completely appropriate. The letter even bases a good deal of its rationale on the idea that Lee thought the letter was addressed to her alone, since it was sent to an “undisclosed recipient” list, cc’d to Lee. (Because if I’m sending you a private e-mail, Gentle Reader, I make sure there’s a blank list of undisclosed recipients and you’re only copied on the message intended for you alone.) Wow.

FIRE naturally jumped all over this inanity. Ari Cohn responded,

Colleges and universities are bending over backwards to label benign, constitutionally protected speech as ‘violent’ or ‘threatening.’ While sometimes administrators act out of an overabundance of caution, other times it’s clear they are playing on our basest fears to justify censoring speech with which they simply disagree. In either case, the censorship cannot stand at a public college bound by the First Amendment, nor in any environment that claims to be committed to the marketplace of ideas.

Amen to that.

This one is a slam-dunk. Lee’s administration is loath to spend public money on… you know… frivolous stuff like the best available faculty, but I’m willing to bet that high-priced Chicago law firm ran up some billable hours strutting around proclaiming that an utterly unsupportable claim was actually valid. Moreover, the cease-and-desist letter didn’t arrive until after the anniversary of the Haymarket riot, by which time Kulis’s alleged violence would, logically, have already taken place. Of course, anything approaching rationality is apparently in rather short supply both in the OCC administration building and at the headquarters of Robbins and Schwartz, whose denizens would be walking lawyer jokes, except that they aren’t funny.

The good news is that Lee will no longer be in charge of Oakton Community College. If she was ever fit for the job, she certainly isn’t now. It would be especially sad if Lee had been an outstanding leader for 30 years, only to have her legacy reduced to this sorry incident.  But that’s what happens when your lawyers are interested in their bottom line rather than your reputation (or theirs).

Flying While Islamic Is the New Driving While Black

One of the sadder legacies of 9/11 is the legitimization of cowardice in the name of prudence. True, both political parties are trying to out-macho each other with respect to foreign policy, but when it comes down to real, day-to-day existence, Americans behave like the schoolyard bully confronted with an antagonist who doesn’t just meekly hand over his lunch money.

We’ll drive way too fast for the conditions, even after having one beer too many. We’ll eat crappy “food” with levels of saturated fat, sodium, and sugar so high that just talking about them can cause heart attacks. We’ll swagger around talking about how tough we are because “we” managed to capture or kill the likes of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.

But ask us to get on a plane that might also be carrying someone named Mohammed or Abdul, and we’ll cheerfully relinquish all our Constitutional rights and meekly slink into the corner with our proverbial tail between our legs while some idiot with a TSA (which, contrary to popular opinion, does not, in fact, stand for “Terminally Stupid and Arrogant”) badge ostentatiously goes through the motions of “protecting the public.” The agency does this by invading our privacy, fondling us, proclaiming our toothpaste a potential weapon, and generally doing everything possible to instill a feeling of Exceeding Great Trepidation.

Trouble is, it’s all a charade. The system itself acknowledges that all the shoelessness and shampoo confiscations don’t mean anything: what else is a no-fly list, or a random (or not-so-random) search at the gate if not a tacit admission that any serious terrorist with an IQ above room temperature can get past the security screening without breaking a sweat? I’ve been saying this for years, of course. Here’s me in 2005:

The idea that someone who can pass through security can still remain a threat is in fact an admission that the security screenings don't work except as a cosmetic deterrent. It is difficult to go a month without the news that some test of security at some airport has demonstrated conclusively that the average TSA screener lacks the training, the intelligence, or the vigilance to actually thwart a real threat. We'd be better off hiring out of Central Casting: at least they'd look like they might be able to stop a terrorist. Of course, news reports that yet another fake bomb made it through security at a major American airport are slowly gravitating towards the back of the newspaper, because it no longer shocks us that airport security is intrusive and demeaning, but completely ineffective.

But we continue, as a nation, to pretend that the false security offered by TSA is “worth it” somehow. It is not.

Of course, our collective cravenness is really a manifestation of xenophobia more than anything else. Homeland Security and all its various permutations exist for the sole reason of feeding the populace’s quaking terror at The Other. Oh, sure, they’ll annoy the rest of us—virtually anyone who has travelled very much at all will have been subjected to some form of humiliation to distract the agents from what a pathetic job they have re-affirm the security of the nation. But it’s the spectre of actually sharing an airplane with (gasp!) a Muslim that can be counted on to legitimize the most outrageous over-reach of authority.

I remember flying home from a conference in New York several years ago. As it happened, I was seated immediately behind two men who clearly fit the profile of a “terrorist,” at least as conjured up in the fevered imaginings of a TSA agent: young, obviously middle-Eastern, male. One was bearded; the other had a thick mustache. I don’t recall their names, but they were stereotypically Arab: Ali and Farooq, or something like that. They were laughing about the difficulties they’d had in passing through security, based solely on the way they look. And, hearing them speak, I can assure you that the fear and trembling of the security folks was entirely visual: two more readily identifiable New York accents would be difficult to imagine.

But the latest victims of TSA over-reaction weren’t New Yorkers. They were students from the United Arab Emirates who were removed from a Charlotte-to-Washington flight and questioned for nearly five hours, embarrassing them (despite the fact that they had clearly not done anything to deserve this treatment) and—of course—inconveniencing every other passenger on that flight, not to mention the family, friends, and business associates of everyone who should have been in DC in time for dinner but didn’t arrive until close to midnight. And for what?

Well, according to WSOC-TV, U.S. Airways is calling it simply a “security issue” that led to the students’ being led from the plane and all their bags being re-screened. (Again, how about we screen them right the first time?) The story says that “passengers reported they heard the group talking about airplanes and the military while on board. Sources said that's when some passengers reported them.” It’s unclear exactly who initiated the process of removing the UAE students, but it appears to have been the airline, whose employees are perfectly well trained to distribute tiny packets of pretzels, but perhaps not to judge the severity or likelihood of a potential terrorist threat. Forgive me if I don’t choose to live my life based on the prognostications of the most wild-eyed, xenophobic paranoid in the room.

I do understand that a student named Yaqoob Al-Shamsi is probably a higher risk than a grandmother named Cindy Robinson would be. But there are literally hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who pose precisely zero threat. A little acknowledgment of that would not come amiss. What is troubling here is that the Islamophobia of the more ignorant members of society will eventually create a self-fulfilling prophecy. This seems to be the lesson of Guantánamo, which has apparently more than once transformed petty nuisances into card-carrying Bad Guys. And if we keep down the present path, the next Hadef Al-Dhaheri won’t simply be upset that “they treated us different than the others”; he’ll want to do something about it. It’s a delicate balancing act, and we need someone with a little more sophistication in charge of the operation.

How Not to Be a Good University Administrator: Two Case Studies

I promised two more stories that touch on education… here they are.

We turn first to an article on the Chronicle of Higher Education website about Gloria Y. Gadsden, an associate professor of sociology at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, who is now returning to the classroom after having been suspended for (OBVIOUSLY!!!) joking on Facebook about killing students. The offending status updates are as follows: "Had a good day today, didn't want to kill even one student.:-) Now Friday was a different story ..." and "Does anyone know where I can find a very discrete [sic] hitman, it's been that kind of day." Really. She got suspended for that. Or at least that was the story being spun at the time by one Marilyn Wells, interim provost and VPAA at East Stroudsburg.

My initial thought was that Dr. Wells, whose background is somewhere in the health/phys ed/recreation area, is either a). a drone or b). a moron: this response is prompted either by paranoia (“ooh… what if she really means it…[and she kills somebody and we get sued],” even though no rational human being could possibly interpret her remarks that way) or raging stupidity, the inability to tell the difference between a woman who’s had a bad day and one who is legitimately homicidal. Hmm… I suppose “c). possessed of an autistic inability to discern irony or hyperbole” would be another possibility. But I strongly suspect that “d). none of the above” is the correct answer to today’s little multiple-choice quiz.

I have an inkling that about midnight at some tech rehearsal somewhere along the line, I’ve probably told my stage manager not that I’d like to kill some actor or designer or props person, but that I was going to do so. I never followed through, though, curiously enough. I don’t recall ever posting on Facebook that I’d like to kill a student, a colleague, or a boss, but I might have… if I did I, like Prof. Gadsden, would have been careful to ensure that anyone with an IQ over room temperature would know I was joking. And I’m certain that I’ve volunteered to be the “discreet hitman” (I’d have spelled it correctly) for a friend. I was, however, never actually engaged to perform such duties. One of my favorite people, a former student, now a teacher, posted a Facebook status not long ago that suggested her desire to “beat someone to a pulp.” I even endorsed that sentiment because… wait for it… I’m not a moron, and I know—not just think, know--that she didn’t plan, literally, to commit assault. But that whole “not a moron” bit doesn’t apply as well, apparently, to Dr. Wells. I should note here that the overwhelming majority of comments on the first Chronicle article—the one after the suspension, not the one after the return—seem to think Prof. Gadsden is the guilty party. This, I must say, makes me fear for academe. Honestly, I can't decide which these people need more: a whoopee cushion or a laxative.

Here’s the official statement: “Given the climate of security concerns in academia, the university has an obligation to take all threats seriously and act accordingly.” This is, of course, symptomatic of the mindless adherence to silly policies that plagues much of society, with academia certainly at or near the top of the list. It’s the same mentality that gets high school girls suspended from school for giving a Midol to a friend, or kept a high school boy from graduating with his class a couple of years ago for wearing a bolo instead of a standard necktie under his robe. It’s easier for the lazy and feeble-minded, whether they be TSA agents or university provosts, to blindly adhere to some regulation than to think. No, I’m not suggesting that prudence isn’t a good idea, and no, gentle reader, I’m not going to go all Ayn Rand/Friedrich Nietzsche on you. But the official response to an obvious case of venting was remarkably, audaciously, cretinous. Or was it?

It turns out that Prof. Gadsden is unpopular… apparently with students and colleagues alike. And she’s bounced around from job to job a fair amount: that’s a red flag to search committees, but one which the folks at East Stroudsburg apparently ignored. She didn’t help her cause in being perceived as a good colleague by publishing an op-ed in the Chronicle that is, well, pretty whiny. In her world, confrontational students or assertions that she is “intimidating,” or “cannot teach” are unequivocally racist. While I have (obviously) never been called the n-word by a student, I’ve experienced all the rest of the allegedly racially-tinged problems she describes. Still, I have no basis for knowing whether she has a point or not… beyond my mantra that “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.” And Prof. Gadsden sure does want to tell us about her qualifications and (implicitly) her teaching. Being brilliant—as she may be—doesn’t make one a good teacher or a good colleague. The fact that fellow faculty are telling her that she’s "too sensitive" or "a little paranoid" might mean, as she suggests, that they “fail — or refuse — to understand the complexity of retaining faculty members from underrepresented groups.” Or it might mean that she’s too sensitive and a little paranoid (just like her boss…).

What I’m not saying outright (because I don’t know) but strongly suspect is that Prof. Gadsden is a thorn in the side of all and sundry at East Stroudsburg. The USA Today article suggests that she fears the incident may hurt her chances for tenure (interesting that the Chronicle piece doesn’t mention her tenure status, leaving the reader to assume—falsely, apparently—that, as an associate professor, she’s already tenured). Gee, you suppose there’s a link, there? Tell me that some little gnome isn’t whispering in the provost’s ear, “maybe if we humiliate her, she’ll just go away, because you know she’s going to sue us for racial discrimination if she doesn’t get tenure.” Ultimately, I’m reminded that Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion. If I had to guess, I’d say that proving someone can’t teach—even with reams of supporting evidence—is harder than claiming recklessness and ginning up a little fear-mongering. From where I sit, I’m glad she’s not a colleague, and I’m even happier that my provost has a brain.

The other story was released on April 1, and it’s silly enough that, if comments on the Chronicle of Higher Education article are to be believed, both the reporters and/or editors at the Chronicle and at least one person their reporter called for comment thought it was an April Fools’ joke. Alas, apparently it isn’t. No, it actually seems to be true that Loyola Law School Los Angeles has decided to retroactively raise the grades of current students and recent graduates by 1/3 of a point: a plus or minus, in other words (a B becomes a B+, a B+ becomes an A-). In the words of Elie Mystal on the Above the Law blog, “That’s not just inflation; that’s a rewriting of history.” Perhaps someone there is running for a slot on the Texas Board of Education?

You see, Loyola’s average students were being treated in the workplace as if they were average, and Dean Victor J. Gold just couldn’t stand for that: “We concluded that the grading curve was sending incorrect information about our students, and, frankly, it was putting them at an unfair competitive disadvantage in a pretty tough job market." In other words, “We have very, very special snowflakes here at Loyola. This isn’t Lake Woebegone, where all of the children are merely above average; this is Loyola, where they’re all brilliant.” The support for this absurdity comes from one Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at Duke, who argues that “There are employers that have GPA cutoffs, and by inflating grades, you increase the number of students who meet those GPA cutoffs." Can’t argue with that, can we? The most rational solution by this logic, of course, it to give everyone an A+ in everything, thereby ensuring that even the most dim-witted and lazy of our brood can move directly into senior partner positions with high-powered firms. Because the reason some of our students can't find work isn’t a tight economy or the fact that our average students really are average, it’s that we didn’t have enough grade inflation.

Give me a damn break. First off, the Dean’s claim that class rank will be unaffected is true only because—and this is so laughable I can barely type—“While most grades of A+ will receive 4.333 grade points, those A+ grades that earn 4.667 grade points will be accompanied by an asterisk. The asterisk will lead the reader to an explanation on the transcript making clear that, as a result of the change in the curve we have now implemented, there are two possible grade point values for an A+.” This phenomenon is aptly described by Mystal as “a ‘double’ A+; an A+ with a bright, shiny, happy star — just so that employers all know that these kids are the super-most-awesome kids in the bunch!” [Note: If nothing else comes of this, Mr. Mystal has a new fan.]

Secondly, if employers (including government agencies) are using a GPA limit instead of a class percentile limit, they’re idiots and you don’t want to work for them. Moreover, those limits are minimums: in this economy—hell, in any economy—you’d better exceed, not merely meet, the minimum criteria if you want to get hired, and those criteria are more than likely to include skill sets not measured by grades. Note also the lawyerly cherry-picking of statistics by Mr. Gold: a B- is what the old first-year average was. Those grades inflate over the ensuing two years, so a Loyola student with a B average isn’t even average: by Gold’s own argument, a Loyola student with a 3.17 GPA (a little closer to a B+ than to a B) is in the 25th percentile. In other words, that B average required by some agencies is already being achieved (if that’s the word) by well over three-quarters of Loyola students. Speaking as someone whose life might conceivably be affected by one of those government agencies, I really don’t think that it imposes an incredible hardship on a prospective employee to be, well, within hailing distance of mediocre.

Thirdly, any rational prospective employer is going to know something about the reputation of the various institutions from which it might draw its new employees. These are lawyers, after all: the people hiring them are likely to be lawyers, too. It’s the job of someone in charge of hiring new people into a firm or an agency to keep abreast with what programs are good where. When I was applying to PhD programs, I was looking at one school that said something like “generally, we require a 3.5 GPA in your undergraduate work.” My undergrad GPA was 3.46 or something like that; it was considerably better in my major, but I didn’t meet the stated criteria. Still, there was that word “generally” in their statement. So I called them up. Their response, paraphrased, was “You have a 3.46 from Dartmouth? Of course we’re interested in you!” That’s what Loyola students used to have going for them: the reputation that a Loyola grad, relative to alums from a different school, was better than his/her GPA. Now the entire place is—or at least ought to be—a laughing stock. Oh, what a brave new world.