Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Terry Eagleton on "The death of universities"

[c b]

In Detroit, the teachers' union is the most active and radical union there is.

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:41 PM, c b  wrote:
> I certainly didn't mean all teachers or humanties people and artists
> and philosophers are radical or liberal.   Ezra Pound, for example,
> was a fascist.  Classcists have a lot of conservative ideas, not
> surprisingly. Hell, Platoism is reactionary today, and Plato invented
> "The Academy" for which academe is named.  At least in the "sixties",
> colleges seemed to be hotbeds and more a source of peace activists
> than other segments of society.  The college sections are called
> "liberal arts", and liberal are now redbaited as socialists.
>
> Community colleges are the locus of a lot of radicalizing nowadays.
>
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Ralph Dumain
>  wrote:
>> Historically, radicals have come from the ranks of the
>> scientific-technical intelligentsia as well, as arch-reactionaries from
>> the humanities. When I was in elementary school and high school, English
>> and history teachers were the worst reactionaries. I hated these
>> subjects, loved math and science. Who knew I would turn out occupied
>> with the former rather than the latter? Thanks for nothing, schoolteachers!
>>
>> However, the business model that has overtaken universities, coupled I'm
>> guessing with financial retrenchment, is gutting various programs,
>> notably philosophy, I think in Britain, but also look out for the USA.
>>
>> Howard University plans to ax its philosophy department, which is pretty
>> small as is. In my view, there's too much Africana crap in it, but
>> Howard is conservative enough without having to eliminate one of the few
>> outlets for critical thinking in it.
>>
>> On 12/19/2010 8:45 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-ma
>>> laise-tuition-fees
>>>
>>> The Guardian
>>>   17 December 2010
>>>
>>> *The death of universities
>>>
>>> Academia has become a servant of the status quo. Its malaise runs so much
>>> deeper than tuition fees*
>>>
>>> Terry Eagleton
>>>
>>> Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question
>>> is
>>> absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear
>>> from
>>> pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without
>>> alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If
>>> history,
>>> philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their
>>> wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research
>>> institute.
>>> But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and
>>> it
>>> would be deceptive to call it one.
>>>
>>> Neither, however, can there be a university in the full sense of the word
>>> when the humanities exist in isolation from other disciplines. The
>>> quickest
>>> way of devaluing these subjects – short of disposing of them altogether –
>>> is
>>> to reduce them to an agreeable bonus. Real men study law and engineering,
>>> while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute
>>> the
>>> core of any university worth the name. The study of history and
>>> philosophy,
>>> accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for
>>> lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.
>>> If
>>> the humanities are not under such dire threat in the United States, it
>>> is,
>>> among other things, because they are seen as being an integral part of
>>> higher education as such.
>>>
>>> When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the
>>> 18th
>>> century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It
>>> was
>>> to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social
>>> order
>>> had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism
>>> were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas
>>> under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as
>>> universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This
>>> remoteness
>>> meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also
>>> allowed
>>> the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom.
>>>
>>> > From time to time, as in the late 1960s and in these last few weeks in
>>> Britain, that critique would take to the streets, confronting how we
>>> actually live with how we might live.
>>>
>>> What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as
>>> centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has
>>> been
>>> to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice,
>>> tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or
>>> alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by
>>> increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to
>>> nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on
>>> human
>

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Terry Eagleton on "The death of universities"

[c b]

I certainly didn't mean all teachers or humanties people and artists
and philosophers are radical or liberal.   Ezra Pound, for example,
was a fascist.  Classcists have a lot of conservative ideas, not
surprisingly. Hell, Platoism is reactionary today, and Plato invented
"The Academy" for which academe is named.  At least in the "sixties",
colleges seemed to be hotbeds and more a source of peace activists
than other segments of society.  The college sections are called
"liberal arts", and liberal are now redbaited as socialists.

Community colleges are the locus of a lot of radicalizing nowadays.

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Ralph Dumain
 wrote:
> Historically, radicals have come from the ranks of the
> scientific-technical intelligentsia as well, as arch-reactionaries from
> the humanities. When I was in elementary school and high school, English
> and history teachers were the worst reactionaries. I hated these
> subjects, loved math and science. Who knew I would turn out occupied
> with the former rather than the latter? Thanks for nothing, schoolteachers!
>
> However, the business model that has overtaken universities, coupled I'm
> guessing with financial retrenchment, is gutting various programs,
> notably philosophy, I think in Britain, but also look out for the USA.
>
> Howard University plans to ax its philosophy department, which is pretty
> small as is. In my view, there's too much Africana crap in it, but
> Howard is conservative enough without having to eliminate one of the few
> outlets for critical thinking in it.
>
> On 12/19/2010 8:45 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-ma
>> laise-tuition-fees
>>
>> The Guardian
>>   17 December 2010
>>
>> *The death of universities
>>
>> Academia has become a servant of the status quo. Its malaise runs so much
>> deeper than tuition fees*
>>
>> Terry Eagleton
>>
>> Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question
>> is
>> absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear
>> from
>> pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without
>> alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If
>> history,
>> philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their
>> wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research
>> institute.
>> But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and
>> it
>> would be deceptive to call it one.
>>
>> Neither, however, can there be a university in the full sense of the word
>> when the humanities exist in isolation from other disciplines. The
>> quickest
>> way of devaluing these subjects – short of disposing of them altogether –
>> is
>> to reduce them to an agreeable bonus. Real men study law and engineering,
>> while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute
>> the
>> core of any university worth the name. The study of history and
>> philosophy,
>> accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for
>> lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.
>> If
>> the humanities are not under such dire threat in the United States, it
>> is,
>> among other things, because they are seen as being an integral part of
>> higher education as such.
>>
>> When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the
>> 18th
>> century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It
>> was
>> to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social
>> order
>> had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism
>> were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas
>> under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as
>> universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This
>> remoteness
>> meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also
>> allowed
>> the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom.
>>
>> > From time to time, as in the late 1960s and in these last few weeks in
>> Britain, that critique would take to the streets, confronting how we
>> actually live with how we might live.
>>
>> What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as
>> centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has
>> been
>> to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice,
>> tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or
>> alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by
>> increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to
>> nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on
>> human
>> values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in
>> universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.
>>
>> In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how
>> indispensable they are; and th

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Terry Eagleton on "The death of universities"

[Ralph Dumain]

Historically, radicals have come from the ranks of the 
scientific-technical intelligentsia as well, as arch-reactionaries from 
the humanities. When I was in elementary school and high school, English 
and history teachers were the worst reactionaries. I hated these 
subjects, loved math and science. Who knew I would turn out occupied 
with the former rather than the latter? Thanks for nothing, schoolteachers!

However, the business model that has overtaken universities, coupled I'm 
guessing with financial retrenchment, is gutting various programs, 
notably philosophy, I think in Britain, but also look out for the USA.

Howard University plans to ax its philosophy department, which is pretty 
small as is. In my view, there's too much Africana crap in it, but 
Howard is conservative enough without having to eliminate one of the few 
outlets for critical thinking in it.

On 12/19/2010 8:45 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-ma
> laise-tuition-fees
>
> The Guardian
>   17 December 2010
>
> *The death of universities
>
> Academia has become a servant of the status quo. Its malaise runs so much
> deeper than tuition fees*
>
> Terry Eagleton
>
> Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question
> is
> absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear
> from
> pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without
> alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If
> history,
> philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their
> wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research
> institute.
> But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and
> it
> would be deceptive to call it one.
>
> Neither, however, can there be a university in the full sense of the word
> when the humanities exist in isolation from other disciplines. The
> quickest
> way of devaluing these subjects – short of disposing of them altogether –
> is
> to reduce them to an agreeable bonus. Real men study law and engineering,
> while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute
> the
> core of any university worth the name. The study of history and
> philosophy,
> accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for
> lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.
> If
> the humanities are not under such dire threat in the United States, it
> is,
> among other things, because they are seen as being an integral part of
> higher education as such.
>
> When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the
> 18th
> century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It
> was
> to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social
> order
> had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism
> were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas
> under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as
> universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This
> remoteness
> meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also
> allowed
> the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom.
>
> > From time to time, as in the late 1960s and in these last few weeks in
> Britain, that critique would take to the streets, confronting how we
> actually live with how we might live.
>
> What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as
> centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has
> been
> to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice,
> tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or
> alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by
> increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to
> nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on
> human
> values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in
> universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.
>
> In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how
> indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in
> the
> whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like
> some
> poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.
>
> How can this be achieved in practice? Financially speaking, it can't be.
> Governments are intent on shrinking the humanities, not expanding them.
>
> Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our
> economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry,
> which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally
> incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than
> the
> question of student fees.
>
>
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> www.foxymath.com
> Le

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Terry Eagleton on "The death of universities"

[c b]

I think the ruling class has not ended its counter-reform
(Thatcher-Reagan) movement, but continued to develop more attacks,
maybe.  The attack on public education in the US , especially teachers
, is going on now , too. The reform movement of the 1960's was
centered especially in colleges and schools. Teachers from higher to
lower education are a cadre of radicalizers. So, the ruling class is
targetting them all to prevent the next radical reform movement.

CB

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Jim Farmelant  wrote:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-ma
> laise-tuition-fees
>
> The Guardian
>  17 December 2010
>
> *The death of universities
>
> Academia has become a servant of the status quo. Its malaise runs so much
> deeper than tuition fees*
>
> Terry Eagleton
>
> Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question
> is
> absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear
> from
> pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without
> alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If
> history,
> philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their
> wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research
> institute.
> But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and
> it
> would be deceptive to call it one.
>
> Neither, however, can there be a university in the full sense of the word
> when the humanities exist in isolation from other disciplines. The
> quickest
> way of devaluing these subjects – short of disposing of them altogether –
> is
> to reduce them to an agreeable bonus. Real men study law and engineering,
> while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute
> the
> core of any university worth the name. The study of history and
> philosophy,
> accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for
> lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.
> If
> the humanities are not under such dire threat in the United States, it
> is,
> among other things, because they are seen as being an integral part of
> higher education as such.
>
> When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the
> 18th
> century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It
> was
> to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social
> order
> had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism
> were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas
> under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as
> universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This
> remoteness
> meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also
> allowed
> the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom.
>
> From time to time, as in the late 1960s and in these last few weeks in
> Britain, that critique would take to the streets, confronting how we
> actually live with how we might live.
>
> What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as
> centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has
> been
> to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice,
> tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or
> alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by
> increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to
> nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on
> human
> values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in
> universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.
>
> In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how
> indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in
> the
> whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like
> some
> poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.
>
> How can this be achieved in practice? Financially speaking, it can't be.
> Governments are intent on shrinking the humanities, not expanding them.
>
> Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our
> economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry,
> which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally
> incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than
> the
> question of student fees.
>
>
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> www.foxymath.com
> Learn or Review Basic Math
> 
> How to Stay Asleep
> Cambridge Researchers have developed an all natural sleep aid just for you.
> http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4d0e0cbc3b5537ba231st03vuc
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[Marxism-Thaxis] JFP 12/20: Biden: '11 drawdown won't be "token"; out in '14 "hell or high water"

[c b]

 *Just Foreign Policy News
December 20, 2010
*
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*Reporters Without Borders: WikiLeaks is Protected by First Amendment*
"Prosecuting WikiLeaks' founders and other people linked to the website
would seriously damage media freedom in the US and impede the work of
journalists who cover sensitive subjects. It would also weaken the US and
the international community efforts at protecting human rights, providing
governments with poor press freedom records a ready-made excuse to justify
censorship and retributive judicial campaigns against civil society and the
media. We believe the US credibility as a leading proponent of freedom of
expression is at stake, and that any arbitrary prosecution of WikiLeaks for
receiving and publishing sensitive documents would inevitably create a
dangerous precedent."
http://en.rsf.org/open-letter-to-president-obama-and-17-12-2010,39075.html
*
Afghanistan experts call for peace deal and exit strategy*
Afghanistan experts with decades of experience in the country call on
President Obama to change course and push for a peace settlement and exit
strategy. Signers include: Scott Atran, Michael Cohen, Gilles Dorronsoro,
Bernard Finel, Joshua Foust, Anatol Lieven, Ahmed Rashid, and Alex Strick
van Linschoten.
http://www.afghanistancalltoreason.com/

*Rap News 6 - Wikileaks' Cablegate: the truth is out there*
Latest installment from Robert Foster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl4NlA97GeQ

*Summary:*
*U.S./Top News <#12d0639702596735_December2010m1>*
1) Vice President Biden promised Sunday that the US will withdraw from
Afghanistan by 2014, "come hell or high water," the Huffington Post reports.
"We're starting it in July 2011, and we're going to be totally out of there,
come hell or high water, by 2014," Biden told Meet the Press. He also said
the 2001 drawdown "will not be a token amount."

2) Michael Moore says US diplomats made up a story that Cuba banned Michael
Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko, in an attempt to discredit the film, the
Guardian reports. A US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks claimed Cuba
banned the film because it painted such a "mythically" favorable picture of
Cuba's healthcare system that the authorities feared it could lead to a
"popular backlash".

[The Guardian originally reported the cable as fact; as of this morning, the
original Guardian story had been removed from the Guardian's website,
although one could still find it in the internet cache - JFP.]

[This episode illustrates several important things: 1) not every assertion
by U.S. government officials in the WikiLeaks cables is true; 2) according
to the claim that WikiLeaks isn't "journalism" because "journalism"
evaluates claims and facts and places them in context, the original Guardian
story wasn't "journalism"; 3) the Guardian seems to have a hard time
acknowledging error, since it simply disappeared the bogus article, rather
than correcting it; 4) an important piece of the scandal of U.S. foreign
policy as revealed by the WikiLeaks cables consists of cables which are
false, such as cases where US diplomats were sending garbage to Washington
and calling them "reports"- JFP]

3) Commentators in elite U.S. media have concluded that the WikiLeaks cables
reveal that the U.S. government conducts its foreign policy in a largely
admirable fashion, notes Fairness and Accuracy in reporting, citing many
examples from elite media. FAIR then lists many examples from the cables
that show the opposite, including: attempting to block accountability for US
torture; attempting to block the investigation of the US killing of a
journalist; lying about US airstrikes in Yemen; lying about the coup in
Honduras.

4) Leaked cables show California Republican Dana Rohrabacher undermined U.S.
policy in Honduras by telling the Lobo government to ignore US demands for a
"truth commission" to investigate Zelaya's removal, the New York Times
reports. Rohrabacher told officials of the Lobo government he was an
"emissary" of friends of the Lobo government in the US Congress, in
particular, Ileana Ros-Lehtine