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.

The future is almost here!

1.  The Future of Evangelicals in Academia. Who else to address this question than Mark Noll, historian and author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Lots of good material in this interview, including some of his impressions of James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World and Andy Crouch’s review of the book.   Note:  If you have thoughts to share regarding the ideas in Hunter’s book, then please comment at Micheal Hickerson’s ESN blog post Changing the World with James Davison Hunter.

The last question of the interview is “What are some of the most encouraging trends you see today in evangelical intellectual circles, be they projects or institutions or ministries?” He mentions several projects, institutions, and ministries including InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry. Thank-you for the encouragement. To God be the glory!

2. Philosophy and Faith (Gary Gutting. NY Times Opinion. 9/1/2010.)  Interested in studying philosophy at Notre Dame or tracking with some of the discussion which occurs on campus (and on-line) regarding material such as  Alvin Plantinga’s modal-logic formulation of St. Anselm’s ontological argument or William Rowe’s complex version of a probabilistic argument from evil, then visit this NY Times Opinion piece.

3.  Keeping up with the Amish? Just in case you haven’t seen one of the many articles on Amish growth, here’s a link to how it ran on NPR, APNewsBreak: Study Says Amish Expanding Westward (AP, 7/28/2010).   Thank-you to Donald Kraybill for his focused research, for more visit Elizabethtown College Amish Studies. 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.  Simon Critchley (chair of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, and part-time professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands) kicks off The Stone, a NY Times forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless with the question, What Is a Philosopher? How would you answer this question?

2.  Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill (Justin Gillis, NY Times, 5/19/2010).  “‘Our intention is to deploy every single thing we’ve got,’ Dr. Lubchenco [administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] said. ‘If it’s not in the region, we’re bringing it there.’”  But it has been difficult to access research material in order to develop an “understanding where the oil is and what its impact might be” and discern/model “what is happening in deeper water.”  Any suggestions regarding how business, environmental recovery, government, and scientific response can partner?  Sharing their gifts and resources to address the oil spill?  Or are we actually doing well, but have a blame game?

Note:  Scientists have long theorized that a shallow spill and a spill in the deep ocean — this one is a mile down — would behave quite differently. A 2003 report by the National Research Council predicted that the oil could break into fine droplets, forming plumes of oil mixed with water that would not quickly rise to the surface — Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill (Justin Gillis, NY Times, 5/19/2010).

3. The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife – Ohio State is hosting this conference in May 2011, focusing on the cultural and literary heritage of the King James Version of the Bible. Presenters already on the schedule already include Leland Ryken of Wheaton and Paul Gutjahr of Indiana U. If you are interested in presenting, statements of interest are due July 1. (HT: John Acker, who is also serving as research assistance for the conference)

4. ProfHacker’s Open Letter to New Tenure-Track Faculty – There’s some good stuff here. Just a taste:

Don’t be afraid to say no to service, even when you think you should take on the task. Pick your service load limit (using male colleagues as your standard, since they do less service and get more credit), and stick to that limit.

Make everything into research.

Get in the habit of writing regularly.

5. InterVarsity has a long history of culture making – including its own record label. The vinyl record blog recordo obscura picked up a 1969 InterVarsity record featuring Christian coffee house band Jonathan & Charles at a Cincinnati thrift store. It’s pretty groovy – if nothing else, take a few minutes to listen to “Jesus Was a Pretty Good Guy.”

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. In the last Week in Review we kicked off with highlighting Seth Godin’s take on the coming melt-down in higher education. Since then, the Chronicle of Higher Education thought Godin’s piece was worth posting. That action, along with the material from the article, has created conversation worth consideration, visit here. I [Tom] think it is helpful to note that the meltdown is “as seen by a marketer” and the “facts” are told the way a marketer tells the “facts.” Bigger questions: What is the End of Education? How are followers of Christ salt and light in higher education, even advocating, developing, and maintaining structures (not just in the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities) which truly educate to the glory of God, making the small list of redemptive outliers instead of the mass of marketers selling their wares?

2. A School Pushing Back Against Facebook (Mark Bauerlein, Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/2010) brings to mind the question of How should educators interact with Social Media and teach students to handle Social Media? I [Tom] think that phenomena such as Soical Media, e.g., Facebook and Twitter, are too much of a larger cultural issue for educators to address alone. Educators should be finding ways to dialogue with children, parents, community leaders, and Social Media advocates/leaders to wisely discern it’s proper place, use, parameters. Those in the nonprofit and ministry sector have much to offer. Note: Jon Boyd has an excellent handout on Mistakes You Can Avoid on Facebook and Twitter for people in the nonprofit and ministry sector. Read the rest of this entry »

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 :-)

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 »

James Lang's Life on the Tenure Track

I have a terrible confession to make: I’ve been giving away copies of a book that I had never read. For the past two summers, we’ve surveyed ESN members about their past year, and members who had made a recent career transition – earned a degree, started a new job, received tenure – have been offered the free book of their selection. I included among our offerings a book, James Lang’s Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year, based on the high recommendations of others, and I promptly (18 months ago) ordered my own copy. I’ve even been known to carry extra copies in my bag to give away spontaneously, yet it’s been sitting on my own “to read” shelf for well over a year.

But my shame has been lifted. This afternoon, I finished reading the final chapter. Even better: I’m glad that I’ve been giving it out.

Lang’s book is not meant to replace the myriad other advice books that are available to young and aspiring faculty. While Lang has studied the art and science of teaching, his book is primarily a memoir of his first year as an assistant professor of English at Assumption College, a Catholic liberal arts college in Worcester, Mass. The book takes the reader through the entire first year, with each month matched up with a dominant theme of academic life from that time period: teaching, grading, writing, and so on. While Lang includes general advice to new professor, he mostly focuses on his own experiences of learning how to teach a full schedule while trying to fulfill service and writing commitments, balancing his work with the needs of his young family, navigating relationships with faculty colleagues, and learning his way around a small college in an unfamiliar city. Read the rest of this entry »

Some final thoughts on The Faculty of the Future:  Leaner, Meaner, More Innovative, Less Secure (Forum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/10/2009) from a friend who offers his gifts to Christ by serving as a business professor.  Do any readers have comments on technological determinism and/or the striving for organizational efficiency in higher education?

There are a few elements of the second commentary (TIMOTHY CARMODY) which make sense – but it reads to much like standard technological determinism predictions of “changes in technology change everything”. The model of a knowledgeable teach leading inquiry into a topic by providing information/explanation, prompting questions, and recognitions/correction of participant contribution is very old and has endured through many technology shifts (the distribution of print bibles does not eliminate the value of inductive bible studies with a leader who is at least minimally trained :-)).    So while some changes will happen are not likely to be the ones this author is predicting. …

The changes described by the 4th author (JOSEPH C. HERMANOWICZ) are already happening. There is a marked difference between how my senior colleagues and my junior colleagues see their career prospects and their role in the university.   One point I would make here:  I doubt the claim that this is an less expensive way to run a university.   Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to this week’s Week in Review! If you have your own link or suggestion, please add it to the comments, or email it to Tom or Mike.

From Tom

I received a forward of the First Things online survey of religion at America’s colleges and universities. What do you think of on-line surveys?  Below’s the point of the survey First Things on-line survey.   Question: Do you have any stories to share, like the one in the comments section, i.e., Seal of approval? Presence of Moses on KU symbol gives rise to burning questions.

We’d like to come up with a list of schools that provide (1) a solid academic training, (2) a diploma that will mean something at the end of day, and (3) an environment where faith, if not actively supported, is at least approved of and not discouraged inside and outside the classroom.

The Motivated Belief of John Polkinghorne (Edward B. Davis, First Things, 7/17/2009) came to my attention after reviewing the First Things online survey of religion at America’s colleges and universities. If you’re not familiar with Polkinghorne, a world-class mathematical physicist who resigned his chair at Cambridge in mid-career to study for the Anglican ministry, Davis encourages you to swing by here. Davis summarizes Polkinghorne’s overall message as:

Science cannot provide its own metaphysical interpretation. As he says with typical precision, “Physics constrains metaphysics, but it no more determines it than the foundations of a house determine the precise form of the building erected on them.” This is especially true in a post-Newtonian world characterized by greater epistemological humility. “The twentieth-century demise of mere mechanism,” he says, provides “a salutary reminder that there is nothing absolute or incorrigible about the context of science.” Some questions lie “outside the scientific domain,” and here “theology has a right to contribute to the subsequent metascientific discourse.” Anyone familiar with the writings of such preachers of scientific atheism as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, or Christopher Hitchins will immediately appreciate the very different world in which Polkinghorne dwells. “The tendency among atheist writers to identify reason exclusively with scientific modes of thought,” he notes pointedly, “is a disastrous diminishment of our human powers of truth-seeking inquiry.”

Theology in turn has something to say to science. “Science offers an illuminating context within which much theological reflection can take place, but in its turn it needs to be considered in the wider and deeper context of intelligibility that a belief in God affords. …”

P.S.  Do you agree/disagree with Pace’s cartoon The Descent of the Modernists, see The Motivated Belief of John Polkinghorne?

While visiting Pittsburgh last week, I came across The Waffle Shop (connected with Carnegie Mellon University).  Due to it’s limited hours and my packed schedule, I wasn’t able to visit. Reading up (6/27/09 post and A Reality Show) and watching video at The Waffle Shop [Note:  Inappropriate content to a number of the clips. Viewer discretion advised], I was struck by what an environment this would be to share the Word/Life of Christ!  Do other campuses have similar experiments  …

The Waffle Shop is an experimental platform for media production and public dialogue that combines a restaurant with the production of a talk show directly on the premises.

At Waffle Shop, our customers are also our stars, as we film each night, inviting interested patrons to express their unique opinions and personalities. These recordings are streamed live through this very website during our open hours, and then produced into episodes which are broadcast publicly 24 hours a day in the windows of the storefront, and made available through our online archive.

Upcoming plans include: a changeable analog phrase system designed for the vacant billboard space above the shop, a live weekend world news show, an independent record label that produces and distributes music recorded live during our nighttime show, and a weekly radio show.

From Mike

Silicon Brains (WSJ) – I love science writing. I just can’t get enough of it.  Here’s a very interesting look at the “Blue Brain” project at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Henry Markram’s team is attempting to replicate a rat’s brain in a computer, but that’s only the beginning.

The scientists behind Blue Brain hope to have a virtual human brain functioning in ten years — a lengthy time period that underscores the scientific challenge. The human brain has 100 billion neurons that send electrical signals to each other via a network of at least 100 trillion connections, or synapses. How could this dizzying complexity ever be recreated in a virtual model?

I’m not so sure that ten years to recreate the human brain is all that “lengthy,” but that’s just me.  Many questions struck me as I read this article. How would John Sommerville’s question of the human consider this project? If Blue Brain is successful, could it be considered positronic? Could the brains of rats – though cats would be better – pilot the next generation of spacecraft? Is the beginning of reality for Ray Kurzweil’s vision?

Post-Tenure Review (Chronicle) – Kevin Brown of Lee University revisits a pseudonymous essay he’d written while preparing for tenure, both whether his expectations met reality and how the essay itself impacted his tenure review.

Science and Religion – A couple of good articles from Books & Culture about science religion.  First, “Squaring God’s Books,” a review by Timothy J. Burbery of The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science, a collection of essays that examine the change in how Christians read the Bible in the 16th and 17th centuries and how that affected (or didn’t affect) the rise of modern science. The book opens with an essay by Peter Harrison, who was mentioned in an earlier Week in Review.

From the Community

Also from Books & Culture, JTG points us to a conversation between Karl Gilberson and Francis Collins about science, religion, evolution, and other matters. Mike’s comments on the article: Very interesting reading, and a good introduction to both men, though I wish B&C had arranged a conversation between Collins and someone a little bit more removed from Collins’ inner circle. (Gilberson sits on the board of Collins’ new Biologos Foundation.) Gilberson raises the question of whether Collins has been fair to the ID movement, but Collins could have been pushed much harder on that issue.

JTG also directs us to an editorial by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post about Collins’ appointment to be Director of the NIH in which Gerson calls Collins “Obama’s Scientific Peacemaker.”

In the last Week in Review, I highlighted The Faculty of the Future:  Leaner, Meaner, More Innovative, Less Secure (Forum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/10/2009).  You may remember, I’ve asked a business professor to comment on the piece.  The faculty member graciously offered some time while writing a grant proposal, wrapping up a paper to be sent out (the 6th one of the summer), grading the exams and papers from an international class, summarizing of Business School IT/New Media innovation projects, handling some administrative issues for a conference, and briefly reflecting on how neither of us works as hard as our wives ;-)   For his thoughts on the material written by ANTHONY T. GRAFTON and PETER N. STEARNS visit Week in Review.  Next week we’ll conclude with TIMOTHY CARMODY and JOSEPH C. HERMANOWICZ.

Before turning to professor’s comments, I’d like to share that I’m not surprised that the research university model has taken us to a grant money approach (collective, entrepreneurial bureaucracy) where faculty/administrators must Show me the money.  It would seem to me that mentoring/discipling students in the ethics of securing/using such money would be of significant value and lead to the value of applying lessons learned from history, literature, philosophy, pyschology, sociology, etc.  But I went to a liberal arts college ;-)

In addition, the pressure to Show me the money is not just within the organization, but incoming students call for high job placement (undergraduate and graduate/professional schools).  Job acquisition and maintenance involves not just strong training in one’s field but also good communication skills, another humanities offering worth the investment. … All the more necessary in a difficult economic time such as we’re currently in/entering.  What do you think?  In the future, I’ll return to the history/philosophy of the research university.  But now let’s turn to a few insights offered by my faculty friend. … Read the rest of this entry »

In this week’s Week in Review, new graduates dealing with the recession, some notable reviews of N.T. Wright’s new book, Justification, a new website for Christian lawyers, some additional coverage of A. N. Wilson’s conversion, and more! If you’d like to contribute to next week’s Review, add your link(s) in the comments, or send them to Tom or Mike directly.

Reminder: We start our ESN Book Club on Your Mind Matters next Tuesday, June 9. We’ll start with the forewords and Chapter 1. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you can download next week’s selection directly from IVP’s website as a PDF. Read the rest of this entry »