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Week in Review: World Cup Edition

Lego recreation of Maradonna's Hand of God goal
Sometimes, we all need help from the "hand of God."

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. Faith and Freedom (Inside Higher Ed, June 9): Our brothers and sisters to the north are facing an interesting debate. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (the largest Canadian faculty association) has begun a campaign to “investigate” colleges and universities that require faculty to sign statements of faith, claiming that statements of faith are inherently inconsistent with academic freedom. Christian Higher Education Canada, an association of 33 Christian institutions (including Mike’s graduate alma mater) has responded with a call to discuss exactly what is meant by “academic freedom.”  CAUT’s position is clear:

“Nothing that calls itself a university should have a faith test. That’s just not acceptable.”

As we’ve seen in the CLS v. Martinez case, conflicts between secular and religious visions for education are here to stay for a while.

2.  Faculty Burnout Has Both External and Internal Sources, Scholar Says (Audrey Williams June, Chronicle, 6/9/2010).  Tom: I agree with the comment that more research is needed in this area.  I’d like to see a copy of Janie Crosmer’s paper. A short quote from her interview:

Q. What are the key things that contribute to faculty burnout?

A. Lack of time, poorly prepared students, cumbersome bureaucratic rules, high self expectations, unclear institutional expectations, and low salary. Research shows that the sources of stress have remained unchanged for 25 years. We know about the problem, but we’re not doing anything about it.

Any thoughts on whether academic burnout is unique?

Photo: Lego recreation of Diego Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” goal from the 1986 World Cup. From a series of Lego versions of famous photos by Balakov on Flickr. HT: Alan Jacobs.

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Week in Review

From Tom

‘Angels & Demons’ May Help Physicists Explain What Matters.  Question:  Do you agree with Mr. Izen? 

“Life presents just a couple of these opportunities when the public is paying attention, really paying attention to science, and in this case it’s a movie which talks about antimatter and is set at CERN,” Mr. Izen says. The film is “a chance to tell our story.” 

A Marriage Made in History, a review of Eugene D. Genovese’s Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage (ISI Books) for the Chronicle of Higher education, places this story of academics who find love and faith on my too read shelf.  Here’s a quote from Gene’s blind date with Elizabeth-Fox.  Beautiful.

“When I arrived at five p.m., Betsey looked terrible. At six or so, she wasn’t all that bad. At seven she had become sort of nice-looking. By eight, sitting across a table at Restaurant le Maître Jacques, she had blossomed into lovely. When I left her at one a.m., she was radiantly beautiful. Almost 40 years later, she was in immeasurably worse shape than when I first laid eyes on her. Physically broken and fighting for life, she was unable to get out of bed by herself; barely able to walk; wracked by relentless, searing pain. Still radiantly beautiful.”

Slump Revives Town-Gown Divide Across U.S.  Question:  How have the campuses with which you are connected tried to address these concerns? 

“As endowments everywhere sink with the economy, town-gown relationships, often carefully nurtured during the boom years as colleges and universities sought to expand, are fraying.”

The Two Sides of ‘Star Trek’  Question:  Is this how we approach higher education or do we address the big questions through our work in higher education?

“On the Starship Enterprise, men and women, blacks and whites, Americans, Russians and Asians — with names like Uhura, Chekov and Sulu — worked side by side, reflecting Mr. Roddenberry’s belief that ‘when human beings get over the silly little problems of racism and war, then we can tackle the big problems of exploring the universe,’ said David Gerrold, a writer for the original ‘Star Trek’ series.” 

When a Twittering College President Is Not Who He Seems. Question: How do we know what to trust in these new forms of communication? What mental and/or technological filters do you use? Note: I’m not going down the road of Terminator Salvation (2009) 😉

From Mike

From Inside Higher Ed — Did appearances on The O’Reilly Factor cost a Syracuse professor tenure?

Gay in the Academy — Career advice from a gay faculty member at Inside Higher Ed. I found it instructive to hear from this perspective from another minority group (for example, good advice on being yourself during the interview process) and to remind myself that Christians have it easy in many ways (I don’t think I’ve ever been told that Christians on campus gather clandestinely in a secluded bathroom). [Please note: any comments about homosexuality that aren’t on topic to this article will be deleted without exception.]

Blog-Based Peer Review — Noah Wardrip-Fruin allowed his book to be part of an experiment comparing traditional peer review with chapter-by-chapter review on his blog, Grand Text Auto. Here, he shares his experience and findings. For example, traditional peer review was better at following the overall argument of the book and comparing one section with another, but the blog comments were much more detailed and collaborative (e.g. commenters would affirm, correct, and nuance criticisms from others).