Re: No, I am the worst professor in America!

1

Dana Cloud?? WTF?

And where's Ward Churchill? I question the methodology.

horizontal rule
2

My beloved Professor Bell only has three votes -- what's up with that?

horizontal rule
3

I question the methodology.

One of those in the running, from the University of Rhode Island, is a sweet, mild-mannered professor of Library Science. Radical.

horizontal rule
4

On Dana Cloud: I understand that ethnomusicology is enough to make the right scream, but is there really a vastly dispreferred ethnomusicologist? I hope I don't sound like I, too, don't take ethnomusicology seriously, but I just don't see how it has enough bleed into the mainstream to attract the attention of the steadfast guardians of the republic. Maybe she publishes her vagenda in popular journals and I just don't know, but she seems like a weird choice from Texas.

Now Bob Jensen, on the other hand, well.

horizontal rule
5

Michael Warner opposes gay marriage. He may do so because he believes in sexual freedom, but still.

horizontal rule
6

One of those in the running, from the University of Rhode Island, is a sweet, mild-mannered professor of Library Science. Radical.

"My name is Michael Vocino and I like dick."

horizontal rule
7

JL, you got served!

Not really.

horizontal rule
8

Dammit, I'm trying to remain pseudonymous!

horizontal rule
9

You can vote multiple times, two clicks per vote. I voted about 30-40 times for Victor Navasky, who was languishing at 2 votes.

horizontal rule
10

Good to see my university well represented! I still voted for Berube some twenty times, though. As stupid as this contest is, it's probably better that it be completely derailed.

horizontal rule
11

Hey, I found out about two professors right here in Boulder that I've never heard of before. I'm going to crank-call them right now.

And then I'm going to go slip notes under their office doors and run away!

horizontal rule
12

One of the nominees is Warren Haffar of Arcadia University, which used to be Beaver College.

Prior to his appointment at Arcadia University, Dr. Haffar served as a program officer at the Project on Ethnic Relations, an NGO that conducts programs of high-level intervention and serves as a neutral mediator to prevent ethnic conflict in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union! This paper develops a model using content analysis of chronological event texts to measure third party activity and their impact on outcomes from three case studies of international conflict! Nooooo! He's e-vil!

horizontal rule
13

At risk of being faintly serious, a tad of googling shows that Emma Perez has made some fairly dopey assertions (On Ward Churchill: "There are faculty who have problems with his being American Indian" [yeah, like that he isn't one, and actual American Indians have often objected]; "This is a fight to make history.")

Alison Jaggar's crime, though, seems to be being a feminist. Worse, she advocates Socialist Feminism. The mind reels in horror.

horizontal rule
14

I voted for Todd Gitlin. He had only ten votes, and I've gotten a lot out of his books and writing since I was around 12.

horizontal rule
15

I love Eve Sedgwick (who doesn't, ATM?), and consider her a national treasure, but that book about her therapist did suck. Also, I once heard her speak, and she was mostly incredibly shy and inaudible, except for one oddly loud line about how some people consider their relationships with their cats to be of a sexual nature.

horizontal rule
16

I voted for Todd Gitlin. He had only ten votes, and I've gotten a lot out of his books and writing since I was around 12.

But, jeez, poor Tom Hayden has only 8 votes. Have people no memories? Does he not still, at least, have Jane Fonda cooties, even though you'd think he gave her Tom Hayden cooties in the first place?

In the name of Port Huron, how can this stand?

And H. Bruce Franklin has been writing about socialism and political issues in science fiction for decades. Okay, lots of it is wrongheaded and dopey, but that's no reason he should have only 2 votes!

Look at how many people on that list have only 2 votes. How embarassing for them.

horizontal rule
17

I wish there were more posts here about the world of academia.

horizontal rule
18

The young are heartless, Gary. I did my part for Navasky.

horizontal rule
19

Seriously, guys. I urge you to vote for Berube. Repeatedly. As insane and stupid as Horowitz and this contest are, this sort of crap actually does reverberate. I'm friends with a professor who didn't get a tenure-level offer because of a Horowitz-camp public denunciation. Berube is ready and willing to fight this shit. Let him do it.

(Sedgwick is a terrible speaker, though, I agree.)

horizontal rule
20

Fine, JM-- I added about ten votes to Berube's total. What an America-hating bastard.

horizontal rule
21

Yay! Down with chainsaw-wielding cultural theorists!

horizontal rule
22

It's okay that I pulled Prof. Bell up out of the basement, right? He is such an excellent teacher, I hated to see him condemned to non-dangerousness.

horizontal rule
23

Just don't do it again. As penitence, go vote for Berube twenty times.

horizontal rule
24

not one nod to the kremlin on the crum??

swarthmore wuz robbed!

horizontal rule
25

When I voted for Berube just now, I noticed that Sedgwick and Warner are pretty much his closest competition.

horizontal rule
26

[redacted]

horizontal rule
27

Berube, as everyone knows, is a VRWC plant. But go ahead, sheeple.

horizontal rule
28

Doesn't everyone know better than to trust hockey players?

horizontal rule
29

I'm pretty disappointed in the poor showings by Zinn and Chomsky. Kids today. No respect for the classics.

horizontal rule
30

John Foster seems to be rapidly gaining, every time I reload the page his totals go up by 5 or 10 votes. Berube has a challenger.

horizontal rule
31

Who the hell is Bell Hooks?

Also, I can't decide if it's a charming implicit critique of the star system, or mere muddle-headedness, that leads to the site both reinforcing the star system ("vote for the worst professor") and undermining it by listing people in alphabetical order by university affiliation, rather than last name.

horizontal rule
32

Who the hell is Bell Hooks?

Is that a joke?

horizontal rule
33

A complaint about the capitalization of her name, I'd surmise.

horizontal rule
34

Got it.

horizontal rule
35

Hey! Foster's surged, and is way, way ahead.

horizontal rule
36

Is there any point complaining one is not on the list? Weiner isn't. Are you, Labs? Is bphd?

horizontal rule
37

[redacted]

horizontal rule
38

36: Weiner isn't even the worst professor in Lubbock.

horizontal rule
39

Anyway, I forgot Labs is in Australia.

horizontal rule
40

Berube pulls ahead!

horizontal rule
41

Next maybe we could throw dollar bills out onto the floor of the Cato Institute.

horizontal rule
42

University of California, Berkelyl

Can Horowitz not spell, or am I missing something?

horizontal rule
43

Wow, when I went back to vote more for Berube, he was getting about four votes every time I clicked through. Then the site broke for me.

I also looked up John Bellamy Foster (sorry: ignorance), and he's got tenure, a 29-page CV, a gigantic publication record, and a demonstrated willingness to mix it up on unpopular public topics. It wouldn't be a disaster if he won. But he's in the 8000s to Berube's 11000s at this point.

horizontal rule
44

I've got Navasky up to #12, ahead of Foner, Aptheker, and Ward Churchill.

However, the results are invalid, because he has the professors ins the "Schools" column and the schools in the "professors" column.

horizontal rule
45

I'm pretty outraged that Foner is on the list at all.

(I know, I know.)

horizontal rule
46

Oy, that Conservative Tees model in the upper right--eevvvillllicious!

horizontal rule
47

Ok, Berube is going up by 20 every time I reload. Either a bigwig linked to it, or someone wrote a script.

horizontal rule
48

38: After today, I have my doubts. I suck.

(I am definitely not the professor in Lubbock who is most likely to make enemies lists.)

horizontal rule
49

I've got Navasky ahead of Chomsky. Someone seems to be helping. Someone's doing Gayle Rubin right now too.

horizontal rule
50

36: Yeah, I am actually bell hooks. You've found me out.

horizontal rule
51

Foner is surging.

horizontal rule
52

At this rate Foner may catch Sedgewick. That isn't JM, is it?

horizontal rule
53

No, I'm not voting for Foner. God, it would be ludicrous if Foner were to win this, though. Self-evidently ludicrous.

horizontal rule
54

Who's Foner?

horizontal rule
55

Foner has passed Sedgewick and is challenging Foster.

horizontal rule
56

Eric Foner, professor of American History, specializing in the period of Reconstruction. He made a very brave address about the political uses and abuses of history to the professional association of American Historians in 2001 that caught him some flak. I saw it rebroadcast later and was very very nervous for him. His books are great: informed by theory but totally accessible, clearly written, well-researched... He's on the left but *so* not a frothing radical or abstruse theorist.

horizontal rule
57

So that'd be an excellent win, then. Whatever makes the contest look stupidest.

horizontal rule
58

56 is all correct, but I think more relevant here is that he is a red-diaper baby who unlike some others we could mention has not become a neocon.

Well, I don't know how theoretical Foner is, but anyway.

horizontal rule
59

That would be Berube, who's on the record--with time-stamps--as begging his fans to vote for him and has made a speciality out of opposing Horowitz's agenda and minions.

(Sorry for being so humor-impaired about this. My university has been something of a battleground for years. It's made a lot of us kinda tense. I'll stop now.)

horizontal rule
60

The whole MEALAC (do I have the acronym right?) thing?

horizontal rule
61

That and other things; that was the worst and highest profile, certainly. Youve got the acronym right, but *shush*! I'm trying to keep a low profile here.

horizontal rule
62

Sorry, I'd edit but I can't seem to -- is someone else changing permissions on the site?

horizontal rule
63

6: Yeah, I googled the professor's name and saw that page before posting. So I'm not completely unaware of the methodology, to dignify it by that name, involved. It's just that, like the rantings of that student, it's bullshit.

horizontal rule
64

A lot of the hostility to Foner is hostility to some of his relatives and, along with the address JM cites I've seen him attacked for a short essay he wrote about visiting the Soviet Union and lecturing on US history in 1990 or 91 (I don't remember the date).

And Foner and theory? ??? ?

horizontal rule
65

Sorry, I'd edit but I can't seem to -- is someone else changing permissions on the site?

Certainly not!

horizontal rule
66

Okay, okay, I'm not a historian. I take back everything I may have said or implied about the relationship between Foner's work and theory. I just meant...wait, never mind.

Don't worry about the M-L-C ref, LB. I doubt that would be the demasking reference.

horizontal rule
67

All right, Ben. Now, while I can't edit my own comments, or those of other commenters generally, I can edit Farber's. Only Farber's.

Seriously, is the site acting up inexplicably, or are you messing around with stuff? (Which, if you are, go ahead -- I just feel like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight)

horizontal rule
68

Not like Diana Wynyard?

horizontal rule
69

Never knew there were two movies. A friend's ex-husband directed and starred in a production of Angel Street while they were married - did a spectacular job playing a heavy Victorian villian.

horizontal rule
70

Huh. I think I'm visiting REDACTED university in a little while.

horizontal rule
71

Well, that's strange. It should be that you can only edit stuff on your own posts now. (This was part of my campaign to get Innocence under control.) Whatever! I guess I should make things as they were.

horizontal rule
72

When, slo?

horizontal rule
73

I can edit gswift's latest comment now, but still not mine.

horizontal rule
74

Isn't Foner related to Maggie Gyllenhaal? I'm sure I read this somewhere.

horizontal rule
75

Never mind, I understand. I can edit anyone's comments to my own posts, not comments I've made to other people's posts. Drat. I liked being able to fix typos.

horizontal rule
76

No, that's the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Max Born you were thinking of, whose granddaughter is the Jewish singer Olivia Newton-John.

Thank you.

horizontal rule
77

Re 74

Uncle , mother's ex-husband or both .

horizontal rule
78

I ended up searching around a little on Foner, trying to figure out how the heck he ended up 2nd behind Berube (in the 11,000s last I looked). Early in February, the Columbia student paper, The Spectator, published a weird profile of Foner that suggested that he was raking in the cash from his public-intellectualness. The author said Foner was the uncle of Jake G. Foner wrote back to the paper, pointing out that Jake was the son of his ex (and that he'd repeatedly tried to correct the mistake).

Then a couple of days ago, the hackerific New York Sun published an article about those dangerous Columbia professors, which remains their top-emailed article. My favorite parts: the professors' snappy replies (and I do think Foner did pretty well), and the hilarious appended correction. The Sun is a menace, btw, and being delivered totally unsolicited all over the damned city.

horizontal rule
79

When, slo?

I'm giving a talk in about, oh, six weeks.

horizontal rule
80

I voted for Berube, and he was pretty far ahead of the pack wit 79295 votes. At number 2 was John Foster of the Uiversity o Oregon with only 25,220 votes, and Eric Foner had 13,471.

I think it would be great to have Berube win. I could see him getting on the Daily Show for it, and he'd be an awesome guest.

horizontal rule
81

Read comment #145 on Berube's post.

horizontal rule
82

Hey, shoot me an email with your preferred softball questions, slo.

horizontal rule
83

"The Sun is a menace, btw"

Dumbass, sure, but a menace? More than, say, Drudge?

"...and being delivered totally unsolicited all over the damned city."

So are a zillion Chinese restaurant menus, last I looked.

horizontal rule
84

I've been pretty impressed with the way Foner's held up against all the attacks on him over the years. Hopefully the internet won't be the last straw (mostly I've seen him responding to stuff in print).

(But if he has to start responding to Chinese menus, watch out.)

horizontal rule
85

Berube is using bots - you can get a script from his site (in comments). Where can I vote for Edie Sedgwick?

horizontal rule
86

Horowitz appears to have cleared all of the old votes. Chomsky is now winning with about 40 votes; Berube is down at only 3.

horizontal rule
87

See! That's the problem with electronic voting!

horizontal rule