The Emerging Scholars Blog

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

A typical St. Olaf classroom...featuring a gigantic blackboard build for the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man

Mike here. Tom has spent the week in an intensive theology course, so I’m tackling the Week in Review solo. This is a great opportunity to clean out my “guilt file” – articles that I’ve had bookmarked for weeks and haven’t had a chance to write about yet. Enjoy!

1. How does a Christian college remain distinctively Christian? The usual answer has to do with defining who can be a faculty member or student. At Duke Divinity’s Call & Response blog, Jason Byassee ponders St. Olaf College, which has taken a different path.

A school can make Christianity a robust possibility, but not a mandate. It can offer top-flight worship. It can ask faculty across the board to respect the historic Christian mission of the school. And in that way, it can create room for possibility, hopefully to lure, woo, entice students and faculty into more faithful Christian life.

2. Homosexuality and the Moral Failure of Higher Education (R. R. Reno, First Things, Aug. 5) Wow – some title, eh? We linked to a column by R. R. Reno last week, and we’re a little late to this one (which, as you might imagine, has generated considerable online discussion). Reno, of course, is writing about the cases of Kenneth Howell at Illinois and Jennifer Keeton at Augusta State, but Reno expands the point to cover all of higher education. It’s difficult to select or summarize a single point from Reno’s argument, though this is a good quote:

Sexual liberation seems to have become the great moral cause. It is true that American schools expect ideological homogeneity on all manner of topics, and being pro-life or a person of faith—or even a Republican—can get you in trouble. But homosexuality alone seems to call forth the full repressive power of educational institutions.

3. Is the Husband Going to Be a Problem? (NY Times, August 12) Carolyn Bicks (English, Boston College) shares the experience of her husband and herself as they faced a problem common to many academic couples: a long-distance marriage. To “normal” people, the obstacles they overcame to pursue their dream of academic careers seem both heroic and insane:

When the hiring season was over, we’d landed two good tenure-track jobs in two good cities with two airlines that flew directly between them. I dismissed the nagging concerns the process had raised for me and threw myself into divvying up the wedding platters. We pooled our moving allowances, packed up a Ryder truck in California, dropped half of our stuff in my new Midwestern city, then drove to his East Coast city and dropped off the other half. We had our car on a trailer behind the truck. This made backing up a treacherous proposition. For the whole 3,000 miles, one of us would jump out to scope the turnaround prospects whenever we were about to pull off. The literature scholar in me loved the metaphor: There was no going back.

Bicks even manages to time the birth of their first child to fit into a 10-week research break. There are still more twists (they eventually join each other in the same city, only for her husband’s tenure bid to rejected). In case you have family who wonder what the academic life is like, this could be a good essay to share.

Photo credit: John McNab via Flickr

Bad academic advising and the strange lives of 20-somethings, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Michelangelo's Jeremiah, from the Sistine Chapel, shown in his traditional pose of lament

I’ve been working through some thoughts left over from my reading of James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. This is probably my last post on this book, unless, of course, I think of something else.

In searching for a new paradigm for Christian engagement with the world, Hunter suggests Jeremiah 29, God’s word to Israel as they were about to go into exile among the Babylonians. Jeremiah 29:11 is the most often quoted verse from this chapter (“For I know the plans I have for you…”), but Hunter focuses more on God’s instructions to Israel in Jer. 29:4-7:

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

Hunter sees this passage – in which God urges Israel to work and pray for the prosperity of Babylon – as paradigmatic for our times. He draws on 1 Peter and other New Testament passages that also carry the theme of exile.

Though it is quite possible that this portrayal from Jeremiah is not applicable to Christians in all times and all places, I do believe this is a word for our time. The story of Jeremiah comports well with what we learn from St. Peter, who with so many others speaks of Christians as “exiles in the world” (1:1, 2:11) encouraging us to “live [our] lives as strangers here in reverent fear” (1:17). God is at work in our place of exile, and the welfare of those with whom we share a world is tied to our own welfare. (Hunter, 278)

Hunter further cites 2 Thessalonians 3:13, Philippians 2:4 and 4:5, and 1 Corinthians 12:7 for Paul’s directions to work for the good of people around us. Hunter uses these Biblical models to suggest the idea of the “new city commons”:

In short, commitment to the new city commons is a commitment of the community of faith to the highest ideals and practices of human flourishing in a pluralistic world. (279)

Hmm…”human flourishing” — where have I heard that before?

So, here’s my question: Is exile the best paradigm for Christians in the university?

There’s much to applaud in exilic model of Jeremiah — living faithfully in a pluralistic society, working for the common good, being a “faithful presence” while acknowledging the tensions that pull us away from faithfulness. On the other hand, I saw a recent blog post (which, overall, was so bad that I’m not going to link to it) raised a good question: considering how influential Christians have been in shaping and building American culture, how accurate or even helpful is it to call ourselves “exiles”? Isn’t it a way of denying the vast power that we hold in various cultural institutions?

What do you think? Is exile the best paradigm for considering the state of Christians in academia?

Photo credit: Missional Volunteer via Flickr

Wouldn't Kuyper have dressed like this for the World Cup?

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. Christian Philosophy, Anyone?

I spent a week in May with about fifteen other people, reading and discussing key sections of a four-volume tome with the forbidding title A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Most of those present confessed that they had great difficulty understanding the assigned passages, yet everyone agreed at the end that the week was a great success, and perhaps worth doing again. … What kind of philosophy could attract the interest of such a varied collection of intellectuals [? The answer is that it was the philosophy of the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977), whose disciplinary specialty was actually not philosophy at all, but jurisprudence. He taught for many years at the Free University of Amsterdam, the Christian university founded by Abraham Kuyper, the leader of the great revival of culturally engaged Calvinism known as neocalvinism. … — Christian Philosophy, Anyone? (Al Wolters. Comment. 6/11/2010)

2.  Free speech in a public, academic forum.  What can we learn from the on-going discussion at UC-Irvine with regard to how voices are to be heard and how they are to interact?  Any suggestions with regard to how such situations are to be addressed, in advance, during, afterward?  Comment from Tom:  The international world is on many U.S. campuses and most campuses lack the framework to engage in real, gritty cross-cultural conversation, let alone reshape perspective  on the issues, the idealism is fading.  Will shouting replace it on campus (including the administration/faculty) and the responses to incidents such as UC-Irvine?

The University of California at Irvine has suspended the campus’s Muslim Student Union for one year and placed the group on disciplinary probation after members of the group repeatedly interrupted a campus speech in February by Israel’s ambassador to the United States, according to a letter released on Monday.

The hecklers shouted down the ambassador, Michael Oren, at times calling him a “killer” and scuttling parts of the speech. Video of the event drew international attention and sparked a debate about the tactics of the protesters, who said they were angry about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. — UC-Irvine Suspends Muslim Student Group for Disrupting Speech (Josh Keller.  Chronicle of Higher Education. 14/2010)

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have a set of must reads which you believe should lie at the foundation/base of a college education (i.e., American college education), no matter the institution, e.g., Christian college/university, community college, engineering/tech school (e.g., Carnegie Mellon University or MIT), Ivy League, liberal arts college, state university?  If so, what are they and why?  Below’s a recent email from a faculty friend regarding his alma mater, Harvard.

it’s sad but the harvard faculty could never approve anything like the “great books” program…they could never have a coherent view of what education is about, now that the “veritas” of the old harvard has been removed…a cafeteria approach is all that could reach a consenus in the recent revision of the general education requirements…they couldn’t agree or approve the wonderful suggestion of requiring one course in “faith and reason”  (broad guidelines, could even be taught by an atheist)…but too many faculty fussed and worried about any courses that involved that sloppy, unscientific thing called “faith”…St. Johns is one school that does have a “great books” program as the foundation of their liberal arts curriculum…and another school “st. thomas aquinas” (i think that’s the name) also has a similar curriculum…and the conservative “hillsdale college ” in michigan has a coherent liberal arts foundation (freshman take either greek or latin)…. [Follow-up email] … columbia university’s substantial, coherent core curriculum…harvard faculty would  never approve this  old-fashioned approach…consensus is impossible with them…  http://www.college.columbia.edu/core

In The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (HarperCollins, 2005), Swarthmore Professor Barry Schwartz takes a few pages to highlight Shopping for Knowledge (pp.14-17):

1. the loss of general education requirements, in particular the capstone course which was intended to teach students how to use their college education to live a good and an ethical life, both as individuals and as members of society and 2. the purchasing of goods such as classes and degrees. … Now students are required to make choices about education that may affect them the rest of their lives. And they are forced to make these choices at a point in their intellectual development when they may lack the resources to make them intelligently.

Upon reflection, my education at Grove City College (1992-1996) began with a class to set the tone for college education but lacked a capstone course.  Furthermore, the core curriculum sought to teach values over the course of several years (6 classes, 1 per term for the first three years) drawing from compilations of readings and Building a Christian Worldview (W. Andrew Hoffecker, editor, P&R Publishing, 1986. Note:  written by a cross-disciplinary faculty team from the college).  Although there was not a focus upon the great books providing the core of College Education, the Good Book (i.e., the Bible) was given significant attention in all the classes (Note:  One of the core classes was a Bible overview).

Back to the question, do you have a set of must reads which you believe should lie at the foundation/base of a general college education (in the United States of America)?

And I guess that I have raised a second question, if must reads are not the center of a core curriculum are there certain principles at the foundation/base of a general college education (in the United States of America)?  Or is a core curriculum only possible in unique educational settings and the ability to assume a college graduate has read or considered certain materials a thing of the past (or possibly one that was only fulfilled in an ideal, distant past)?

Statue of Justice at the St. Louis U. School of Law

I’m going to try to link two current stories involving Christianity and the academy, and I’ll be the first to admit that the attempt might not work. A big disclaimer: I am not an expert on either of these, so I’m going to provide some links at the bottom of the post.

Today, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case CLS v. Martinez, in which a university and a Christian student organization disagree about who — legally speaking — has the right to belong to a student organization as a public university. Last week, Bruce Waltke left Reformed Theological Seminary after appearing in a video saying positive things about (theistic) evolution.

In the interest of readers’ attention spans, I’m going to start with my conclusion, then provide some quick summaries of the two stories and links to news and opinions articles.

Both of these incidents represent the splintered world of higher education, in which I’m not even sure it’s possible to locate a “majority position” on big issues like truth, academic freedom, religion, or sexuality; and in which it may not even be possible to establish common criteria for deciding between different positions. To millions of Americans, the correct position is obvious and self-evident — the problem is, that “correct position” isn’t the same one. For example, to one group, Waltke’s statement about evolution (below) is as controversial as saying “one plus one equals two.” To another group, it’s a sure sign that he knows nothing about the Bible or science. To one group, Waltke’s departure from an institution over public statements related to his academic discipline is as close to the “unforgivable sin” as you can get in academia. Meanwhile, another group sees RTS as taking an important stand against bad theology.

Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules, I predict incidents like these will become more and more common. Christians working within academia will have to learn how to negotiate — not two worlds of academia and the church — but multiple worlds representing almost every possible difference of opinion on “the big questions.”

Photo Credit: Statue of Justice at St. Louis University School of Law by Ann Althouse via Flickr. I think this is a great photo: most statues of Justice are so dispassionate; this Justice reminds me of the powerful images of justice in the Prophets.

The details and outcomes of these cases are very, very important, but I’ll let others to know more than I discuss them. Here’s what I think I can contribute:

• Christians will need to work harder than ever — and need the Holy Spirit to work in us more than ever — to fulfill Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20-23. I’ll just quote the end of that section:
  

  May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and loved them even as you have loved me.

• In order to be redeeming influences, Christians in the academy (such as ESN members) will need to learn how to speak the language of our fellow academicians and to sympathize with differing views on these important issues. If we can’t communicate in a way that makes sense outside of our own community, and if we can’t put ourselves in the place of “the other,” then we’ll have a much harder go of persuading others to our position.
• As hard as it may be to accept losses, Christians must always define “success” in terms of faithfulness to Christ. This was a point made by Christian Smith in a webinar hosted by Christianity Today last year. I don’t have the transcript, but Smith noted that evangelical churches have to come to grips that faithfulness is more important than numerical growth, legal victories, or other forms of “success.” I think this is doubly true for Christians in the university.

OK, enough from me. What do you think theses incidents say — if anything — about the present and future of evangelical Christians in the university?

Summaries and links after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you agree with the below quotes from News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments (Richard Perez-Pena. NY Times. 4/11/2010)?

“Anonymity is just the way things are done. It’s an accepted part of the Internet, but there’s no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments,” said Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post. “I feel that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity.”  … “There is a younger generation that doesn’t feel the same need for privacy,” Ms. Huffington said. “Many people, when you give them other choices, they choose not to be anonymous.” — News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments (Richard Perez-Pena. NY Times. 4/12/2010)

Two more questions:  Any thoughts regarding what is a helpful on-line presence for a member of the campus/university culture?  Does it vary with position/responsibility/life stage, e.g., undergraduate student, graduate student, staff, pre-tenure faculty, tenure faculty, administrator, counselor, campus minister?

On the road to listen to* Faculty & Student/Post-Doc’s at a major research university discuss Trusting in the Lord in a Secular Workplace or Job Security in Academia over lunch, description below.  If you were present for the conversation, what would you share?  Some of my thoughts later, gotta run. …

Proverbs 3:5 and Psalm 18:2 speak to the importance of trusting in the Lord in times of trial.  The recent Veritas Forum topic on truth and academia and the tragedy at the University of Alabama-Huntsville over a tenure denial bring up the important question as to whether trust in the Lord can give meaning, comfort, and contentment in the remorselessly results-driven academic profession.  Does (and should) faith make a difference while facing the zero-sum game of tenure review, funding applications, the supervision/mentoring of graduate students, and/or running a lab, particularly in a period of economic recession?

*and participate in as appropriate :-)

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to hear a professor/practitioner of family medicine share how to address errors in the medical profession.  Yes, the university hospital provides a unique environment for research, student-faculty-staff relationships, and connection with the world beyond the campus which it serves, but all members of the university community make mistakes (even sin).  Gasp!

As you journey through Lent, join me in meditating upon living out the Greatest Commandment by taking some time to

• consider how loving your neighbor fits in relationship to being/following Jesus the Christ in one’s vocation/discipline.
• acknowledge, confess, and release when/where/how you have fallen short … Note: we are not perfect.   We will err at times in our inter-personal interactions, spelling, presentations, research, articles, web posts/comments, patient care, advice, etc.  But when we purposefully hide mistakes to our own benefit, point fingers at others to avoid the consequences, or turn frustration with our self into agitation with others, we encounter sin and the evil one coming forth to destroy all it can.
• seek reconciliation in broken relationships.
• be intentional about blessing those whom you’ve been called to serve through the resurrection power of Jesus the Christ.

Would enjoy reading some comments from those outside of the Medical profession as to how you might translate these thoughts from a Medical professor to your place in higher education (Note: the below section is just an excerpt from a larger presentation which included much more material).  Also would you have any resources to recommend in addressing mistakes and/or offering apologies?  From those within the Medical profession, any points to add?

When we are at risk of committing errors

• Tired:  know your limits
• Under the influence (eg., alcohol, drugs, over the counter drugs)
• Competing demands
  • Work stresses
  • Family stresses (Note to those married:  open communication between family members is very important)
• Practicing outside the usual scope of practice/expertise or attempting a procedure after it’s been awhile since one’s regular practice of it Read the rest of this entry »

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. Why Harvard Students Should Study More Religion (Lisa Miller, Newsweek): A look at Harvard’s (lack of) religion in its undergraduate curriculum, with special attention to Louis Menand’s attempt to include a course called “Reason and Faith” in Harvard’s revised education requirements. The article quotes a couple of very interesting, and very different, points of view;

“My colleagues fear that taking religion seriously would undermine everything a great university stands for,” the Rev. Peter Gomes, Harvard’s chaplain and a professor of Christian history, told me. “I think that’s ungrounded, but there it is.”Steven Pinker says his main objection to the 2006 proposal that students be required to take a course in a Reason and Faith category was that it seemed to make reason and faith equal paths to truth. “I very, very, very much do not want to go on the record as suggesting that people should not know about religion,” he told me. “But reason and faith are not yin and yang. Faith is a phenomenon. Reason is what the university should be in the business of fostering.”

2. More religion in higher education: Inside Higher Ed featured two opinion articles about the role of religion and theology in academic disciplines – “On Teaching Christianity” by Adam Kosko, who argues that religion classes need to spend more time studying the actual theology of religious figures and movements; and “Everywhere and Nowhere” by Kevin Schultz and Paul Harvey, which takes another look at the place of religion within historical studies.

More links after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two recent articles on the profession of education worth consideration:

1. In Search of Education Leaders, by Bob Herbert, NY Times Op-Ed, December 4, 2009
2. The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, by Louis Menand, Harvard Magazine, November-December 2009.  HT: Miller.

Anyone willing to take a stab at why the educational system is so leaky and how we find/develop educational leaders which serve their department, discipline, campus, education in the United States/beyond?

Questions which come to mind with the Harvard degree program, topic of In Search of Education Leaders, “Will this program include the philosophy, purpose, and joy of education? Or are these unable to be expressed in the pragmatic, secular context of trying to keep up because we need to?”  With regard to ‘residency’ models, these already exist in education, e.g., the undergraduate student teacher model. Stronger cross-grade & inter-generational mentoring with the potential for long term relationships would profit the whole educational system.

HT:  Nick who responded to my Facebook musings by referring to Diane Rehm’s discussion of Women in Science with

1. Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, Morris Hertzein Professor of Biology and Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Blackburn was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Carol Greider and Jack W. Szostak.
2. Dr. Carol Greider, Daniel Nathans Professor of Molecular Biology & Genetics at The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Greider was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak.
3. Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and special assistant to President Obama

Yes, higher education is leaky pipeline for women in the sciences.  Any responses by those part of the system?

According to Louis Menand in The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, the educational system is leaky in quite another way for the Humanities, but with a particular internal end in mind. Can/should higher education in the Humanities add practical skills and develop a specific graduation time line?  What about those who went through the system? Will they allow such changes (Note: Reminds me of the reduction of hours in medical training)?  Will the motivation for students in the Humanities become the pursuit and exploration of knowledge for the rich or those seeking direction later in life?  Even though the article seems focused upon the Humanities, especially English, does the article apply to all (or let’s say most) of higher education?