Today is the board meeting of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts, where I work. Immediately after that meeting, I will fly to Durham, NC, to begin chairing the external review of Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, which plays a somewhat similar role to Tisch College. It’s a day of thinking about strategic plans for scholarly/activist centers at fine universities.
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(Madison, WI) I am here very briefly for a meeting, having come from this morning from Urbana/Champaign. My calendar for this six month period also shows days in Ann Arbor, Indianapolis, Bloomington, Chicago, and Detroit.
I don’t think the full glory of our Midwestern state universities is sufficiently appreciated. As an academic myself, I am prone to overestimate the importance of higher education. But in my mind, this region is a prairie studded with fine research institutions, like Greek city states or walled Renaissance towns, each boasting its famous thinkers and its cosmopolitan reach, each tied to the state that sustains it (and each, unfortunately, ready to send a mercenary army into symbolic battle with the others). Champaign, IL–just for example–houses the second biggest university library in America, whose 13 million volumes put it behind only Harvard. I am reminded of what the late Tony Judt once wrote:
By far the best thing about America is its universities. Not Harvard, Yale, e tutti quanti: though marvelous, they are not distinctively American—their roots reach across the ocean to Oxford, Heidelberg, and beyond. Nowhere else in the world, however, can boast such public universities. You drive for miles across a godforsaken midwestern scrubscape, pockmarked by billboards, Motel 6s, and a military parade of food chains, when—like some pedagogical mirage dreamed up by nineteenth-century English gentlemen—there appears…a library! And not just any library: at Bloomington, the University of Indiana boasts a 7.8-million-volume collection in more than nine hundred languages, housed in a magnificent double-towered mausoleum of Indiana limestone.
I am not as critical as Judt of the “scrubscape” and its people. But I agree that there’s something miraculous about these huge intellectual conglomerates rising from the fruited plain at the command of their state legislatures. Hopping around the region on commuter planes, you see professorial types with the New York Review spread on their knees and kids in college hoodies. I know that the universities’ funding is now mostly private and their students come increasingly from a global elite. I know they can be ivory towers or tools of Monsanto or the NSA. And yet, when people assess our era centuries from now, I think the great Midwestern public universities will warrant respect.
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(Charlottesville, VA) From Mr Jefferson’s University, here are some thoughts about free speech in academia.
This may seem a simple topic: students and faculty should be able to express themselves freely. But I think it is quite complicated, for two reasons.
First, the university is all about adjudicating and rewarding quality, which conflicts with freedom. Every admissions letter, grade on a paper or a class discussion, decision about hiring or promotion, peer-review, invitation to give a lecture, or choice to acquire a book for the library is a decision about quality. The First Amendment gives you the right to say what you like. But if you write a weak argument for a paper, or express yourself on an irrelevant topic, you will get a lower grade. An institution thoroughly dedicated to making high-stakes assessments cannot also be a free-speech zone.
Second, educators and students both have claims to freedom of speech, and those claims may conflict. Duke Provost Peter Lange was once presented with this scenario:
In the Jan. 25 issue of the Chronicle, a Duke student complained about what he perceived as propagandizing in one of his classes: “One of the most insulting moments of my Duke education occurred in an ancient Chinese history class in spring 2003, when the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq. Our teacher took a break from Confucius and the Han Dynasty to stage a puzzling “teach-in” about Iraq in conjunction with some national organization. During this supposedly neutral discussion, she regaled us with facts and assertions suggesting that the Iraq war was scandalous, foolish and doomed to fail …”
Of course, the Iraq war was scandalous, foolish and doomed to fail. But the teach-in, if accurately described, sounds improper to me. This kind of complaint leads to the provision in the “Academic Bill of Rights” that “Faculty will not use their courses for the purpose of political, ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination.” But that clearly trades off against a different provision in the same document: “Academic freedom consists in protecting the intellectual independence of professors …” An intellectually independent professor could choose to indoctrinate (or could speak in a way perceived as indoctrination by students who disagree). As Lange said, to ban that kind of expression limits the professor’s freedom of speech.
Perhaps professors have no valid claim freedom within their classrooms. Let them talk freely on their own time; when on the job, their purpose is to educate the students in their charge. That argument presumes that the value of free speech accrues to the speaker alone–it is about protecting her liberty, dignity, or sheer preference. But free speech also benefits the listeners, including listeners who sharply disagree. As J.S. Mill argued, you cannot test an idea unless you can hear it forcefully expressed by someone who actually believes it. To prevent professors from expressing their own ideas is to take those ideas off the table. In a famous statement from 1894, the University of Wisconsin Regents claimed that professorial freedom would lead toward truth:
We cannot for a moment believe that knowledge has reached its final goal, or that the present condition of society is perfect. … In all lines of academic investigation it is of the utmost importance that the investigator should be absolutely free to follow the indications of truth wherever they may lead. Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere we believe the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.
That is an eloquent expression of one side of the debate, but we should not ignore the other side: the rights of the students. A professor has the power to set the agenda and can assign grades for what students say and write. Untrammeled liberty by professors can definitely “chill” the freedom of expression of their students. I think the evidence that professors actually indoctrinate on any substantial scale is weak.* But it could happen.
To make things even more complicated, educators talk to educators; and students, to students. They should all be able to express themselves freely, and yet one’s expression can hamper another’s freedom and flourishing. That is especially true when the balance of power among them is unequal: for instance, when one side outranks or outnumbers the other or has more social clout. “Microaggressions” are exercises of speech that suppress the welfare–and perhaps the liberty–of others. To those who are wholeheartedly committed to confronting microaggressions, I would recall the importance of the speakers’ freedom. Unless people are permitted and even encouraged to say what they think, their ideas cannot be debated, and we can pursue the truth. On the other hand, to those who see the language of “microaggression” as oppressive political correctness, I would argue that some statements really do undermine the standing of our peers and are incompatible with the demanding norms of speech in a university. That doesn’t mean that rules against demeaning speech are wise, but we should be able to denounce a verbal aggression when it occurs.
Since I am here as the guest of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, among other sponsors, I will end by quoting Jefferson: “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.” But he was also the author of the Senate’s “Manual of Parliamentary Practice,” with its elaborate rules to promote civility and mutual respect. That balance is difficult but crucial.
*(As I noted in a previous post, Yates and Youniss find that a powerful dose of Catholic social doctrine does not convert predominantly Protestant African American students, but provokes them to reflect on their own values. McDevitt and colleagues (in a series of papers including this one), find that political debates in school stimulate critical discussions in the home. Colby et al. find that interactive political courses at the college level, although taught by liberal professors, do not move the students in a liberal direction but deepen their understanding of diverse perspectives. Evidence of the effects of college ideological climates is ambiguous because of students’ self-selection into friendly environments.)
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At the Midwest Political Science Association meeting over the weekend in Chicago, the distinguished political scientists Arthur Lupia, Jeffrey Isaac, Marc Lynch, Rogers M. Smith, and Lynn Vavreck discussed “Political Science and The Public: It’s Time for More Effective Engagement.” As the program promised, the panel was “about what we are, and can be, doing right now to increase the public relevance of political science.”
Lupia began the panel with a forceful argument that the problem is not with the public. People are overwhelmed with data and opinion; the competition for their attention is fierce. The problem is with us if we fail to communicate effectively. Several panelists noted that we now have many venues for doing so, and political scientists are using them. Lynch, for example, is one of the leaders of The Monkey Cage, the Washington Post’s blog for political scientists; Vavreck is often on TV.
Everyone acknowledged pitfalls and challenges. Writing for the public may not help get tenure; it takes time; and it can seduce you into trading scholarly rigor for public attention. I think the general view was that scientific expertise adds value to public debates. As Vavreck said, there is a difference between data and anecdotes. Political scientists should contribute reliable data (as well as sensitive readings of texts) and not abuse their professional standing by merely opining or making empirical claims outside their expertise. “Stay in your lane” and “Don’t write about the Red Sox” were suggestions made from the podium.
I see important truth in all of this and tried to address similar issues in my Knight Foundation/Aspen Institute White Paper on Civic Engagement and Community Information. But I think Isaac hinted at difficult issues regarding expertise. A simplistic fact/value distinction would encourage political scientists to write about facts for public audiences and leave the public to draw their own value distinctions. That would be a neat division of labor. Unfortunately …
Research programs are always deeply imbued with values. That’s easiest to see when one objects to the values. Plenty of critics have complained that neoclassical economics makes assumptions about social welfare, choice, individualism, etc. that should be controversial. But to say that a research program makes normative assumptions is not to undermine it. Good research programs have good values. For instance, I know and admire the work of Smith and Vavreck, each of whom (in different ways) helps to expand the exercise of political power in the US. That is a good thing to do. But political science, as a science, cannot tell us whether or why it is good.
Further, research is always aimed at some kind of audience and has effects on that audience, whether anticipated or not. Neoclassical economics gives corporate lobbyists arguments to use when they influence voters and policymakers. Sociological research on community organizing should assist community organizers. Choosing an audience is a political act. Expertise cannot distinguish whether that act is good or bad.
One way in which experts affect audiences is by influencing their sense of what is known, what is knowable, and who can know what. For instance, the Monkey Cage announces, “H.L. Mencken said ‘Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.’ Here at The Monkey Cage, we talk about political science research and use it to make some sense of the circus that is politics.” That implies that a person who knows political science can make more sense of the democratic system than someone who doesn’t. I don’t disagree, but the implications are complex. Should people who don’t know political science not participate in politics? In 1914, the APSA’s Committee of Seven argued that citizens “should learn humility in the face of expertise.” Nobody would say that now, but why not? If there is expertise, and some lack it, shouldn’t they be humble in its face?
In short, as Isaac said, there is not one political science and one American public. Fairly diverse political scientists hold a range of normative positions and use a range of tools to various ends; and Americans belong to whole set of competing publics. Asserting that political scientists should communicate facts to the public overlooks complex political and normative issues: Which political scientists? (And who gets to be one in the first place?) Which publics? What kinds of facts? To what end?
Political science, as an empirical research program, can contribute to addressing these meta-questions. For example, it can help us to know which forms of communication are likely to affect which audiences by changing their minds on the issue or by raising or lowering their estimation of their own capacity. But it cannot tell us whether these results are good or bad.
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Yesterday, the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts (where I work) held a Symposium on Service and Leadership with retired General Stanley McChrystal, who commanded US forces in Afghanistan and who turns out to be gifted and engaging speaker. At the Symposium, “Tufts 1+4″ was announced. This will be a program to encourage incoming undergraduates to spend a year doing full-time service (domestic or international) before they come to campus.
Some students already do this. We heard inspiring stories from two current Tufts undergrads who had served, respectively, in the South Bronx and in Ecuador before their first years here. They both testified that their work in disadvantaged communities made them hungry to learn about social issues in college. The idea is to make a service “bridge year” much more common and more equitable. Tufts will address financial need. Making the program selective and prestigious should remove any stigma that might accompany a decision to delay college.
For General McChrystal and the Aspen Institute’s Franklin Project (which the General chairs), Tufts 1+4 is an important demonstration project. They are trying to make serious, voluntary national service an expected right of passage. They don’t think that the federal government will pay for all the service slots any time soon, so they want to construct an array of service opportunities through federal and state programs, colleges, and nonprofits. I have long argued for that kind of bottom-up, relatively incremental approach because I think quality is essential. If the government suddenly created millions of service positions, they would be filled by eager young adults (there is plenty of demand), but the quality of the experience would be mixed. Our responsibility is to do Tufts 1+4 well so that it can spread.
For Tufts, another motivation is to recruit a diverse group of incoming undergraduates who are more seasoned–and better prepared to consider social issues in the classroom–thanks to their intense service experiences. In that sense, Tufts 1+4 is an educational reform and an effort to strengthen the campus intellectual climate.
I am especially pleased that the Franklin Project is putting its emphasis on service as a learning opportunity for the people who serve. I have been involved in discussions of “service” since my undergraduate days. In fact, when I was in student government, we launched a program that paid students for summer service if they reported to their local alumni clubs. I have always argued that the service must address real problems or it won’t be valuable for those who serve, yet the main rationale is to enhance the civic skills, job and life skills, and social ethics of those who serve. We shouldn’t see service programs as a way to plant trees or tutor children, but as a powerful form of civic education. The main beneficiaries are those who enroll, which is why the experiences must be well designed and supported. Gen. McChrystal made the same argument rather explicitly yesterday at Tufts.
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Gary King, director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, has written a manifesto entitled Restructuring the Social Sciences. I have mixed feelings about it, but it’s a useful statement of influential trends in academia. King begins:
The social sciences are in the midst of an historic change, with large parts moving from the humanities to the sciences in terms of research style, infrastructural needs, data availability, empirical methods, substantive understanding, and the ability to make swift and dramatic progress.
King is highly enthusiastic about these trends, asserting that “the social sciences are undergoing a dramatic transformation from studying problems to solving them.” Solving problems certainly sounds like a good thing. One important reason is that social scientists are moving from statistical models based on samples (for instance, surveys) to the analysis of comprehensive datasets, such as all the job announcements posted in a set of newspapers over many years, or all the votes cast in the 2012 election. Social science thus merges with the kind of research conducted by firms like Google and Facebook, government agencies like the NSA, and political campaigns. Disciplinary boundaries are blurred, as some of the most interesting basic research on society now comes from computer science and business rather than the liberal arts.
In practical terms, King advocates the creation of centers like his own that can provide a shared infrastructure and a meeting place for diverse social scientists who use the new techniques. He claims that qualitative methods will retain an important role, because the masses of data that ethnographers and interviewers collect can also be mined by data analysts.
He suggests that centers for social science can become dramatically more efficient and effective if they apply their findings about organizational psychology to their own operations. For instance, they need lots of IT support, and they can provide that in ways that mimic the best-practices of IT firms. Finally, King would make a place for theorists, arguing that their insights can be helpful. “Moreover, theorists don’t cost anything! They require some seminars, maybe a pencil and pad, and some computer assistance.”
I am left with several questions:
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(Providence, RI) According to a new paper by David Figlio, Morton Schapiro, and Kevin Soter,* if you take a class with a non-tenure track (contingent) professor, you are more likely to choose to take another class in the same subject and you will get a higher grade on that next class than if you studied with a tenured professor or someone on the tenure track. You are especially likely to benefit from having a contingent professor if you scored relatively low on academic measures before the course.
The measures of success seem reasonably persuasive, and the method seems tight. (The authors compare first-semester students, who generally don’t pick their instructors, and they look at changes in the same students’ grades over time.) The main limitation is that the study only involves Northwestern University, which is certainly not typical of American higher education and could have quirks other than just being highly selective and well-resourced.
It’s also possible that the tenure-track and contingent faculty differ in other ways than their tenure status. I would like to see the results adjusted for the age of professor. I don’t want to be ageist, but that could be a factor, and given the ban on mandatory retirements and the demographics of the tenured professoriate today, it could just turn out that the contingent faculty are younger.
This study is not an argument against tenure, which has other benefits–notably, academic freedom. But it is a cautionary note. It certainly reminds us of the enormous skill and dedication of the many young scholars who are working as adjuncts today. Many would have easily gotten tenure 30 years ago and are now working for $3,000 a course. On the other hand, there is nothing completely new here. As Max Weber said in his lecture “Science as a Vocation” (1917):
According to German tradition, the universities shall do justice to the demands both of research and of instruction. Whether the abilities for both are found together in a man is a matter of absolute chance. Hence academic life is a mad hazard. If the young scholar asks for my advice with regard to habilitation [getting the most advanced degree], the responsibility of encouraging him can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says lasciate ogni speranza [abandon all hope]. But one must ask every other man: Do you in all conscience believe that you can stand seeing mediocrity after mediocrity, year after year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without coming to grief? Naturally, one always receives the answer: ‘Of course, I live only for my “calling.”‘ Yet, I have found that only a few men could endure this situation without coming to grief.
*See Figlio, D. N., Schapiro, M. O., & Soter, K. B. (2013). Are tenure track professors better teachers? (NBER Working Paper 19406). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19406
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I’ve written a chapter for a forthcoming book edited by Harry Boyte (Democracy’s Education: A Symposium on Power, Public Work, and the Meaning of Citizenship, Vanderbilt University Press) in which I summarize evidence that colleges and universities can improve the economy by teaching their students civic skills and by being good institutional citizens, participating in local networks for community development.
I think the evidence is reasonably strong. But, like all empirical claims, it has exceptions and caveats. And even if civic education and engagement really do pay economic dividends, something else could work even better: for example, distance-learning, educational video games, or installing surveillance cameras in schools.
Thus we must be careful about how we generate, interpret and use empirical findings. This is where the emerging idea of Civic Studies provides guidance.
Often, social scientists presume that their job is to study a real-world practice that is already fully developed to learn whether—and why—it “works.” Usually they define success in terms of the objectives of the practitioners or their funders. In this case, we would ask whether college-level civic education and engagement generate what politicians demand: jobs.
But nothing simply “works.” Success always requires experimentation, assessment, adjustment, reflection, and new experimentation, in an iterative cycle. By the same token, many things can work if they are developed properly. One could start with civic engagement or with surveillance cameras in schools and improve either one until it enhanced students’ employment prospects.
In the best cases, the researchers who study a given practice are part of the reason that it works. They contribute to its development by offering their data and insights. They choose to work on this practice rather than something else because of a more fundamental commitment. I, for example, have studied deliberation. I want deliberation to work and I hope that the research that I produce will contribute to its success. I have no such commitment to surveillance cameras. I would not study them or strive to improve their impact.
The reason for my hope in deliberation is fundamentally moral. I think a world in which people reason and work together is better than one in which they achieve the same levels of security, income, or welfare without freely collaborating. Deeper down, I believe in a theory that the good life is a life of freedom, reflection, and mutual commitment.
Thus I hope that civic education and civic engagement boost employment because I am fundamentally committed to civic values. My colleagues and I seek evidence of economic benefit to persuade policymakers to support what they should support anyway. If the economic evidence is favorable, we will use it strategically to expand support. If not, our values and commitments should encourage us to improve civic education until it enhances democracy and also produces jobs. Regardless of the empirical results we find, we owe a public explanation of our core values.
A public defense of our values also yields criteria by which to assess the practices that we have been studying empirically. For instance, my chapter for Harry Boyte’s book is about college-level civic engagement (an input) and jobs (an output). I discuss the empirical link between the input and the output, as they exist today. But both are subject to criticism and change.
Today, many civic programs basically take the form of volunteering. But civic education can be reconceived so that it is less about volunteer service than about working on public concerns, where “working” implies serious commitment and accountability for results. “Public work,” in the phrase championed by Boyte and colleagues, means work that is done in public, by diverse citizens, on common issues. Reconfiguring civic education at the college level to look more like public work would satisfy core values that Boyte and colleagues have defended well. It might also strengthen the impact of civic education on jobs and careers. Students would be more likely to learn skills useful for employment if their civic experiences in college were more like paid work.
Meanwhile, jobs could become more public. A given job might serve only the interests of the employer and deny the worker any scope to address community problems in public with diverse other citizens. But even if the employer is a for-profit firm, the job can promote and encourage public work. For example, I presume that the corporate executives, government officials, and labor leaders who attended meetings of the Lehigh University board contributed insights from their daily work to the conversations about Lehigh and Allentown. They then brought ideas from those discussions back to their jobs. If that is true, they were doing “public work” in the Lehigh boardroom and in their own offices. Public work is obviously harder for low-paid service workers and low-ranking bureaucrats, but within many industries and professions, a struggle is underway to recover their public and democratic traditions.
If we made civic education into public work and also created jobs of greater public value, then the alignment between civic education and employment would be stronger and we would find more impressive evidence of economic impact. The data would then satisfy governors and presidents who want to see colleges produce jobs. More importantly, we would be building a better society and the educational system to support it.
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These are some notes for a presentation I will make later today at the New England Association of Schools & Colleges conference. NEASC is one of the six regional accrediting associations in the US. It works by “developing and applying standards, assessing the educational effectiveness of pre-school, elementary, middle, secondary, and postsecondary educational institutions.”
As measurement and accountability have become more important at all levels of education (from pre-K to graduate school), the measurement of civic outcomes has generally been forgotten. It is not clear that civic education has been dropped as a result. All states still have some kind of civic education requirement at the k-12 level. Most colleges still have programs that emphasize service or activism. However, levels of attention, innovation, and investment have clearly suffered because we do not measure civics very seriously.
Measuring anything valuable and complicated is a challenge, and trying to improve any form of education by imposing measures from the outside is always somewhat problematic. But measuring civic education raises special challenges:
I think it’s essential to measure civic education in an era of assessment and accountability–if only so that educators and students can track their own progress. Assessments must be interactive, not private and individual. Evaluation must consider ethics and values; it is not enough to act or to affect the world–you have to make it better. The question of what to measure is somewhat controversial because it relates to questions about what kind of society we should have. But there is a lot of common ground and room for compromise. In any event, we should decide what makes a good citizen not by asking what skills pay off in the marketplace or what civic activities boost students’ welfare. We must start with a theory of the good democratic society and then ask what skills, values, knowledge, and commitments we need from the next generation of citizens.
In my recent book, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, I argue that citizenship fundamentally means: (1) deliberating with other citizens about what should be done, (2) actually working with other people to address problems and reflecting on the results, and (3) forming relationships of loyalty and trust. That theory derives from my study of politics, not primarily from a theory of education or youth development. I argue that the US political system depends on these three aspects of citizenship, all of which are in decline for deep, structural reasons. If I am right, these are the attainments that we should try to teach, and our measures should capture whether people can (1) deliberate, (2) collaborate, and (3) form civic relationships. If I am wrong, the counterargument should be a different theory of what our society needs from its people.
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This is from a Connected Planet article in 1997:
Ah, spring – the time of year when students decide to skip classes en masse and sit outside enjoying the sun and fresh air. For the students of the University of Phoenix Online Campus, however, that ritual loses something in the translation: To duck their professors, all they have to do is turn off their PCs and unhook their modems.
But it’s a tradeoff that they’re willing to make in order to earn their undergraduate and graduate degrees on a part-time basis from the comfort of their own homes. The University of Phoenix opened its doors to its first 12 on-line students in 1989, and it now boasts 2500 students, 250 faculty members and eight degree program. …
However, one education industry analyst wonders how much credibility an on-line degree really has in the marketplace. “I would imagine there would be a bias against on-line degrees of any kind,” said Rick Hesel, principal at Art & Science Group. “Face-to-face contact with the faculty is considered to be a mark of quality, and because this program doesn’t have that, I think both employers and prospective students would be wary.”
But that could change soon, as the big names in education get into the on-line arena, Hesel said.
“Once you see Harvard or other prestigious MBA programs getting into it, all bets are off,” he said.
And Hesel believes that will be sooner rather than later.
Contrast that with the talk of a “MOOC Revolution” in (for instance) this 2103 Tom Friedman article. Friedman, like many others, presumes that MOOCs (massive open online courses) are very new, rapidly spreading, highly promising, originating in institutions like Stanford and Harvard with distinguished educators like Michael Sandel, and motivated by the goals of better and more accessible education. But, as Aaron Bady argues in Liberal Education, even the word “MOOC” is now almost six years old, and the basic practice dates to 1989. Even then, students were assigned to online discussion groups and showed videos of lectures. MOOCs did not originate at luminous, global intellectual powerhouses but at the University of Phoenix, which is now rapidly shrinking and faces widespread criticism for achieving a loan default rate higher than its graduation rate. Dispersion of the MOOC model has been slow and halting due to poor reputation and questionable impact. The prediction that “Harvard and other prestigious MBA programs” would soon adopt MOOCs turned out to be 16 years premature.
As Bady argues, there is no reason to rush to adopt MOOCs. We are not going through a “MOOC revolution.” Rather, we have extensive experience and it is not encouraging. To be sure, online courses have educational potential; a CIRCLE paper outlines some advantages. But we must avoid the hype. If college administrators were asked whether they wanted to implement the University of Phoenix’s 1989 model instead of Stanford’s latest MOOC, I doubt they would feel as excited.
(I take this overall argument from Bady, but I found the 1997 article quoted above.)
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