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.

1. “Look at your grades. Now look at mine.” The Old Spice Man has gone from a series of hilarious television commercials to a full-fledged Internet meme. BYU, however, decided to parody the absurd body wash marketing campaign by marketing…libraries.

If you’re not sick and tired of him, be sure to weigh in on Culture Making’s Five Questions about Old Spice Man.

2. Bias against White Christians at Elite Universities? Ross Douthat, writing in the NY Times, thinks there is.

The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same underrepresentation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts.

In a letter to the editor, Miami University education professor Julie Park thinks Douthat might be

confound[ing] two issues: the underrepresentation of low-income white students in elite universities and the low number of white Christian students at these same institutions. This association is puzzling considering that evangelical Christianity is enjoying somewhat of a renaissance in elite institutions (see “The Holy and the Ivy,” published in Christianity Today in 2005).

On her personal blog, Julie goes into much more detail about factors that affect college admissions for lower-income white students and trends among evangelical Christians at elite universities.

3.  Confessions of a (Sometimes) Helicopter Parent (Patti K. See. Inside Higher Ed. 07/16/2010).  How are you maturing?  If you are in a classroom situation as a TA/lab aid, lecturer, professor, etc., how do you interact with students and/or their parents?  If you are a member of the faculty/administration, married and with children, how are you raising your children?  How do you understand responsibility, maturation, being a ‘lifeline’ to your children.  As I [Tom] read the article, I wondered what college prep and adulthood means in our culture today. Reminds me how I graduated last century in the midst of a shift in not only in the lines of communication (yes, I was 1 phone call a month right before the coming of high usage of the email and cell phones), but also those of adulthood (which had previously been pushed back, unless one happens to be raised in contexts which demand early adulthood, e.g., youth caring for families, youth forced to make it on their own early in life, Amish entering/leaving Rumspringa).

At a recent meeting our provost told a story about receiving a midmorning call from a mother asking if her son was in class.

“I always give my son a wakeup call,” the mother explained, “but he’s not answering.” Our provost — a dean at the time of this experience — told this concerned mother she cannot inform parents if their adult students are in class.

“Student?” the mother exclaimed. “No, he’s teaching the class.”

My colleagues and I groaned. This story could be part of “helicopter parent” legend.

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. More on Waltke: Christianity Today has published a summary of the story of Bruce Waltke’s resignation and reactions to it. If you remember, ESN posted a long summary of the situation with many links.

2. Putting Abortion on the Curriculum: In the Chronicle, Teresa J. Hornsby (a Biblical studies professor at Drury U.) writes about her experience leading an interdisciplinary working group exploring ways to deal with abortion in the classroom – not just as part of a planned curriculum, but also when it might arise unexpectedly because of the personal lives of students. As you might expect, the “culture gap” between academia and conservative Christians enters the conversation:

We tried to discuss our project with representatives of local and national pro-life organizations, which proved difficult. I wanted to gather as much information as possible, to hear all points of view, and, perhaps, identify some local representatives who could come into the classroom. But they were, in general, reluctant to speak to us; I suspect they mistrusted academics.

The article has some interesting suggestions on how to discuss controversial topics in a civil manner: finding language that everyone is comfortable with, using stories of real people, starting with more “distant” examples from other cultures or time periods before moving to contemporary issues. As a counter-example of how not to discuss abortion in the classroom, consider this 2006 incident, in which a Northern Kentucky U. faculty member used a British Lit class to encourage vandalism against an on-campus anti-abortion display.

3.  What is your identity and how do you share who you are on-line?  Is on-line reputation a greater concern for those in a public vocation such as higher education?

Reputation management has now become a defining feature of online life for many internet users, especially the young. While some internet users are careful to project themselves online in a way that suits specific audiences, other internet users embrace an open approach to sharing information about themselves and do not take steps to restrict what they share. Search engines and social media sites play a central role in building one’s reputation online, and many users are learning and refining their approach as they go — changing privacy settings on profiles, customizing who can see certain updates and deleting unwanted information about them that appears online. — Managing Your Online Profile:  How People Monitor Their Internet Identity and Search for Others Online (Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and Aaron Smith, Research Specialist, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 5/26/2010).

4.  Transitions for tenure track professors.  What would you add to, clarify, or desire to learn about on these lists of recommendations (as a follower of Christ and/or academic)?

• Open Letter to 2010-11′s Newly-Tenured Professors (Nels P. Highberg, Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/27/2010)
  • In a nutshell, I’d like to offer this final thought from a ProfHacker reader: “Remember how lucky we are, and be nice to the department’s secretary.” Good advice, indeed.
• Open Letter to 2010-11′s First-Time Tenure-Track Professors (Billie Hara, Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/20/2010)
  • If you could offer one piece of advice to an incoming faculty member, what would it be?

Lamppost at dawn, Kings College, Cambridge (Photo: Nigel Cooke via Flickr)

5.  “What place is there for religion within the University? Is there a place for God on the Quad or should we have no God on the Quad? … What is the connection between religion, intellectual diversity, and scholarship?” — If you haven’t already done such, swing by God on the Quad? (RJS) – Jesus Creed for conversation on the typologies of interaction of faith and science from Elaine Ecklund’s new book Science vs Religion: What Scientists Really Think.  Note to faculty: InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s quarterly faculty newsletter The Lamp Post provides articles of theological reflection audio downloads of speakers like Dallas Willard and Cal DeWitt, practical resources for faculty communities, updates on events (local, regional, and national), and much, much more.  You can download a sampler of The Lamp Post by clicking here.

Education for Human Flourishing, Cover

Our conversations with hundreds of Emerging Scholars at Urbana 09 precluded us from keeping up with our readings.  But don’t worry, we’ll catch up as soon as our plane lands ;-)

In its place,

1.  swing by our Facebook page to see a few pictures of Emerging Scholars at Urbana 09.  Note:  more coming.

2.  enjoy the kick-off of a series of quotes from Education for Human Flourishing:  A Christian Perspective (Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis, InterVarsity Press, 2009),* by considering an excerpt from the Christian Worldview Integration Series Preface:

The word integrate means “to form or blend into a whole,” “to unite.”  We humans naturally seek to find the unity that is behind diversity, and in fact coherence is an important mark of rationality.  There are two kinds of integration:  conceptual and personal.  In conceptual integration, our theological beliefs, especially those derived from careful study of the Bible, are blended and unified with important, reasonable ideas from our profession or college major into a coherent, intellectually satisfying Christian worldview. … In personal integration we seek to live a unified life, a life in which we are the same in public as we are in private, a life in which various aspects of our personality are consistent with each other and conducive to a life human flourishing as a follower of Jesus. — by Christian Worldview Integration Series editors Francis Beckwith and J.P. Moreland, pp. 9-10.

Questions to ponder as we begin a new year:  Why does integration matter?  How do we go about it?

*Find the title appealing?  Then check out the Preface & Precis of Book and Chapters.

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? Anything special with some time off or is there too much going on with the holiday?

As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them.  In addition, 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.  What did the Oxford University Press select as its 2009 “word of the year”? — Part of the The Higher-Ed News Quiz (Chronicle of Higher Education, December 13, 2009).  What’s your best guess?  We’ll confirm the answer when it’s posted and have some thoughts on the “word of the year.” …  Please, no cheating ;-)

2.  Pittsburgh Sets Vote on Adding Tax on Tuition (Ian Urbina, NY Times, December 15, 2009):  “The tax would be the first of its kind in the nation, and other cities are watching closely as they try to find ways to close their own budget gaps.” — Exemplifies the changing relationship and rhetoric between town & gown during an economically difficult time.  Note: Council puts tuition tax proposal on hold (Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, December 17, 2009).

3. Need another reason to pursue an academic vocation? If you’re a linguist, you might just be called upon to invent a new language. Paul Frommer of USC did just that for James Cameron’s new movie Avatar, joining J. R. R. Tolkien and Marc Orkand (inventor of Klingon) as an inspiration to budding linguists everywhere.

4. From ProfHacker.com: an End of the Semester Checklist, a very practical list to keep your courses, files, and CV in shape.

Books

Tom’s started digging into Education for Human Flourishing:  A Christian Perspective (Paul D. Spears
and Steven R. Loomis, InterVarsity Press, 2009).  If the title catches your interest, then check out the Preface, Precis of Book and Chapters, and keep your eye out for quotes from the book in the coming year.

A Faith and Culture Devotional

If you don’t already have a copy of A Faith & Culture Devotional, click here to learn how to enter a drawing for a free copy.  The first drawing is on August 31st and the second on September 7th. Whether or not you win a copy, consider starting off the new term with a copy in hand.

Thank-you to Kelly Monroe Kullberg for her work on this project and the gift of this week’s devo from John Stott, see excerpt below.  Note:  You may remember our June study Stott’s classic Your Mind Matters.

I believe that anti‐intellectualism and fullness of the Holy Spirit are mutually incompatible. And I dare to say it because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. Jesus our Lord himself referred to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth, and therefore, it is only logical to say that wherever the Holy Spirit has given his freedom, truth is bound to matter. So I have argued, and argue still, that a proper, conscientious use of our minds is an inevitable part and parcel of our Christian life. …

Would you agree or disagree with me that Christianity* is unfashionable on campus?  If so, would you go further with me to argue that Christianity is even more unfashionable on campus than in our larger culture?  Whether you agree or disagree with me that Christianity is unfashionable on campus, does Christianity need to be unfashionable on campus?  And if so, why and how? Read the rest of this entry »

When Tom Grosh and I launched the Emerging Scholars Blog last August, we had some ideas about what we wanted to write about, but very few ideas about what others would want to read or discuss. After 9 months and over 150 posts, we have a much better idea about what topics resonate with the community that is gathering around this blog. We’ve also learned the importance of consistency in blogging. We know how frustrating it can be to visit one of your favorite websites for new content and not finding any. So, today we are announcing a new editorial schedule and refined focus for the Emerging Scholars Blog. Read the rest of this entry »

What does Nicholas Wolterstorff make of Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008)?

About half-way through the review, Wolterstorff critiques Sennett’s advocacy of animal laborans’ (i.e., the laboring human being, who asks How?) ability to function separate from homo faber (i.e., the human being who asks Why? and assumes the role of guide/critic to animal laborans) or at least a conversation in community regarding the ethics of particular crafts.   In particular, Wolterstorff uses Sennett’s treatment of Robert Oppenheimer’s craftsmanship of the atomic bomb  to question whether the worker focused on producing excellent goods for their own sake will ask the question whether the good/product should be created/manufactured at all.  Wolterstorff wraps up by asserting that Sennett’s pragmatism lacks the strength to properly support his incomplete definition of craftsmanship, which finds difficulty in extending into more expansive areas such as proper/good goverance (a significant concern of Hannah Arendt, whose put down of  animal laborans served as a motivation for book): Read the rest of this entry »

Books and Culture March/April 2009

In the March/April edition of Books & Culture:  A Christian Review, Nicholas Wolterstorff’s review of Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008) raises concerns of particular relevance to Emerging Scholars.

First, Wolterstorff digs into Sennett’s critique of the lower status given to animal laborans (i.e., the laboring human being, who asks How?) in relationship to homo faber (i.e., the human being who asks Why? and assumes the role of guide/critic to animal laborans).  Some quotes from The Craftsman which particularly resonate with Wolterstorff include:

Thinking and feeling are contained within the process of making. … Western civilization has had a deep-rooted trouble in making connections between head and hand, in recognizing and encouraging the impulse of craftsmanship. — from Thinking with Your Hands, by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Books & Culture:  A Christian Review, March/April 2009, p.30. Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Crouch asks a very good question about Christian integration in economics:

David Brooks gets it just right. We are not machines, and neither is our economy. So where, oh where, are the Christian economists whose work is deeply informed by a non-mechanistic view of human nature, and the ‘faith and trust’ that economies require?’

Brooks is writing about the “empirical prison” of economics on both the right and the left. I have some thoughts, but let’s hear yours first. Who are the Christian economists we ought to be listening to? Are Brooks and Crouch on to something, or are they missing an important point?