Re: Is my CS instructor nuts?

In article <1150512401.001665.25450@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx says...
Gerry Quinn wrote:

Your post, as far as I can see, is a wordy rewrite of what is claimed
on that website by an interested party, but with assertions of fact
replacing things that were only implied. Have you independently
checked any assumptios you have made regarding the specific terms and
legal status of agreements etc?

Yes. Furthermore, it is untenable to always assume that labor unions
lie when the Enron case establishes that management lies bigger.

I doubt whether you checked anything of significance. Nor did I assume
that labour unions always lie - I assumed that labour unions attempting
to enlist the aid of other parties spin their words in a case suited to
their endes. Enron was not, as far as I know, involved in this case.

The adjuncts for their part rely upon contract renewal to plan their
lives.

As restauranteurs rely on customers who like their food. But they
can't force them to choose their establishment.

Gee, news fa lash. The employee is not a customer.

There's certainly a case for permitting a certain amount of cartel
behaviour in the form of trade unions, in preference to a pure free
market, given that those on one side may have less freedom of
independent action on balance. Nevertheless, the point still applies -
the reliance of the restauranteur on those using his services is as
great and indeed greater than that of the employees of an institution.

For this reason, the adjuncts thought they had a deal in which an
adjunct would not receive a letter saying "we will not rehire" UNLESS
Roosevelt followed procedures including mentoring and written warnings.
Instead of this, the chair phoned Giles and verbally ordered him not to
teach Zionism as a term: he refused the order: the letter was sent.

The site ( www.rafo.com )describes the sequence differently.

You are lying. End of discussion on this subthread, because you are
using the strategy of an unsupported lie to waste my fucking time.

Your blustering doesn't alter the fact that you are lying. The
sequence, as described by the site, was:

"During the review, the supervisor had two telephone conversations with
the adjunct about the case. [...] The supervisor copied the adjunct on
an e-mail memo to the student, saying that the adjunct had been told
not to introduce political content in a world religions class.

After the adjunct had requested a class for Spring 2006, he soon
received a letter of non-rehire."

There is no indication that Giles refused the order, though he may have
done for all I know. However it is clear that the letter was sent, not
after any such refusal, but when he applied to be hired again for
another semester.

In that session Giles was informed that Palestinians, who use the word
"Zionism" to describe Israel's policies, are "animals" in a way that
clearly communicated that in place of collegiality, Roosevelt's goal is
to offer pseudo-classes conducted like corporate training sessions by
instructors who will mechanically obey unwritten and written rules,
including a rule not to criticise Israel in any way.

Here you are quite explicitly putting your own spin on what is already
a one-sided account.

Yes, I am. Note that the biggest liars in the media, like Bill
O'Reilly, are the people who claim no spin. Note that Aristotle allows
"spin". It's called rhetoric.

So you claim here is that you are lying, but you are not the biggest
liar in the world, who is apparently someone called O'Reilly. That
doesn't alter the fact that you are lying.

What's this got to do with anything? And the question is not about
whether you would approve or disapprove, but whether if you disapproved
you had the right not to re-hire him when he came looking for another
job.

You have been so brutalized by computer "consulting" that you expect
other professions to make themselves over into a collection of
terrified dweebs. You might reflect that college professors have more
dignity.

There's not much dignity in demanding to be hired by an employer who
doesn't require your services.

Giles had the moral high ground. He wanted the relatively logically
weak ability to open one door in discussion, the door labeled
"Zionism". Whereas the chair wanted to lock that door.

Then he should get his own door.

The myth of entrepreneurship. Hey, as I asked earlier, just how well is
that working out for you, Ger?

My business is none of your business.

If a university education has any meaning beyond pre-wealth business
studies, then Giles should be hired and the chair fired. This sounds
like and is not "rhetoric" because once you deny it, there's no reason
to go to university at all; all you need to do his train
spear-chuckers, water carriers and dancing girls for service to an
elite.

Garbage. No conclusion of such a nature can be drawn from a trivial
spat over the issue of whether a particular politically-charged subject
should form part of a particular course. Would you feel the same if
Giles had attempted to introduce an exploration of racial and gender
differences in physical and intellectual capacities into a course on
human biology?

At the school where I teach the approved textbook does exactly this. It
explores the scientific basis for a belief in innate differences and
shows it to be nonexistent.

Then it is written by liars to teach fools, since the existence of such
differences is entirely obvious, and well-supported in the scientific
literature. The only remotely controversial one of the four is whether
there exist racial differences in intellectual capacity, and the main
arguments against that seem to be that it's hard to prove, and anyway
people who are interested in it are awful. What is the name of this
laughable textbook?

I suppose you'd prefer no exploration, and produce students
overeducated in sciences who in the humanities and in politics are
Fascist barbarians, as some scientists have been.

Scientists have a variety of politics - a synthesis of Fascism and
barbarism would be unusual, but each to his own. I would guess that
scientists on masse tend towards the centre-left. I merely pointed out
that it may be a good idea to avoid certain excessively contentious
subjects when teaching a course.

I presume Giles willingly acceded to whatever regime he was emplyed
under, which in the case of this particular contract appears to be
that. There is a lot to be said for the notion of applying such
contracts more widely in academia.

Is there? They've been widespread in the sense that one of the reasons
for using adjuncts is that many adjuncts are terrified dweebs who
accept at-will termination, and the result is student alienation,
passivity and drug use over the past 20 years.

I doubt whether the impact on the students of the adjunct's job
concerns is so severe.

Do you expect the university willingly to acceed to some regime where
when you hire someone to teach one course, you're stuck with him as
long as he wants to remain?

No. The collective bargaining agreement, however, recognizes that the
REAL employment relationship is one-many in the sense that there is a
common interest in one adjunct becoming more experienced in delivering
a survey class.

This MEANS that the university may NOT apply at-will without going
through the collectively bargained procedure. Roosevelt did not do so.

Yet they seem to be standing theire ground, suggesting that they feel
they are in the right. Perhaps it is time both sides thrashed out a
new agreement that will be acceptable to all, and covering the
seemingly unaddressed issue of what adjuncts may insert into particular
courses.

Grow up. You've been brutalized by the theory of at-will employment in
which termination from computer positions is so capricious that it has,
in my direct experience over thirty years, infantilized computer
professionals to the extent that few can actually write code, and many
spend their entire working lives AVOIDING situations in which their
growing incompetence might be exposed.

The very idea that in another profession, a man might actually seek
solidarity with other men and women scares the *** out of you.

On the contrary, I have little interest in Professor Giles; I posted to
correct a deliberate lie on your part, viz. "Recently, an instructor at
Roosevelt University in Chicago was fired...for allowing students to
discuss Zionism in a World Religions class."

Had you posted that he was involved in an industrial dispute concerning
his rehiring, probably as an indirect consequence of introducing
questions on Zionism into an examination on World Religions, I doubt
whether I would have responded at all.

- Gerry Quinn



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