The University of Wisconsin: now with less truth seeking, more “workforce needs”

February 5, 2015 • 10:00 am

by Greg Mayer

The University of Wisconsin—including the great “public ivy” research campus in Madison, the second doctoral campus in Milwaukee, and eleven comprehensive baccalaureate-masters campuses around the state—has long been inspired by the “Wisconsin Idea“, the notion that higher education exists to serve the public, improve the human condition, and seek the truth. This idea was long ago enshrined by the legislature in the stated mission of the University. But no more. In his latest budget proposal, Governor Scott Walker proposes removing “public service”, improving the “human condition”, and “the search for truth” from the mission of the University, and to make the primary purpose of the University to be meeting “the state’s workforce needs”.

Here’s the proposal from Wisconsin Senate bill 21 (p. 546):

SECTION 1111. 36.01 (2) of the statutes is amended to read:

36.01 (2) The mission of the system is to develop human resources to meet the state’s workforce needs, to discover and disseminate knowledge, to extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and to serve and stimulate society by developing develop in students heightened intellectual, cultural, and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise, and a sense of purpose. Inherent in this broad mission are methods of instruction, research, extended training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition. Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.

Here is fearless “sifting and winnowing” in the search for truth proclaimed by the University’s Board of Regents in 1894:

“Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great State University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth may be found.”

Although it’s enshrined in plaques on each UW campus, this slogan is to be abandoned in favor of what Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago long ago derided:

The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens. …

The present primacy of public relations in the management of universities, the view that they must ingratiate themselves with the public, and in particular with the most wealthy and influential portions of it, the doctrine that a university may properly frame its policies in order to get money and that it may properly teach or study whatever it can get financed — these notions are ruinous to a university in any rational conception of it. [From here and here (also this).]

The proposal even repeals the legislative finding that the University is established in the “public interest”, and replaces it with a grudging acquiescence to a constitutional mandate (p. 545):

SECTION 1110. 36.01 (1) of the statutes is amended to read:

36.01 (1) The legislature finds it in the public interest to provide In recognition of the constitutional obligation to provide by law for the establishment of a state university at or near the seat of state government, and for connecting with the same, from time to time, such colleges in different parts of the state as the interests of education may require, there is hereby created a state system of higher education…

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

R.I.P.?
R.I.P.?

A note on buying The Albatross outside of the U.S. and Canada

February 5, 2015 • 9:15 am

I’ve received both emails and comments about my post from two days ago flogging Faith Versus Fact and telling you how to order it. Readers in places like New Zealand, the UK, and Australia wanted to know how they could order the hardcover, which comes out May 19.

First, a correction: I gave a number of ordering links, one of which, it turned out, was an error, though not on my part. Although Amazon UK does list the book on its site, it is not allowed to do so, as English-language rights were sold for publication and distribution only in the U.S. and Canada. That meant that you could order it only from sites in those countries. The Amazon UK link will shortly be taken down (temporarily), so don’t pre-order from them—yet. If you have, check with them.

But, in view of what seems to be an appreciable number of non-U.S. and non-Canadian anglophone readers who would like the book, yesterday I transferred all English-language rights to Viking/Penguin Random House. That means that they can distribute it far more widely, and the book will, I hope, soon be available for order or pre-order in a lot more places outside north America. Here’s what I heard from the sales division of my publisher:

International readers will be able to buy the print book from all the major international online retailers (so all the international Amazon sites, plus online retailers in the UK, Europe, Australia, South Africa, India and Asia).

They will also be able to order the book from local booksellers.

The ebook will be available on all Amazon sites, Apple iTunes, Kobo, Google, as well as from smaller digital retailers (those that are serviced by the digital aggregators).

So, especially if you want an e-book, it will be dead easy to get. The deal with be implemented very soon, so be patient. You can check your local online retailer and see if and when when the book is listed.

As before, I’m asking readers to pre-order the book, for all advance sales count towards first-week sales, which are the most important ones. (If you haven’t done so already, and live in Canada or the U.S., go here for to preorder.) I’m told that Amazon doesn’t charge you until the book is shipped, so you’ve nothing to lose. I

‘ll also ask ask my local bookstore to stock signed copies, so you might be able to order autographed copies from them (no extra charge, but cat drawings will not available on those). More about that later.

Thanks for your indulgence.

Readers’ wildlife photographs

February 5, 2015 • 7:50 am

I’m broadening the wildlife category to include landscapes, travel and people photos, and so on. I wouldn’t want to leave out good readers’ pictures that don’t include animals or plants.

Today we have a diverse array from reader Ken Phelps; his notes are indented:

Since you seem to be suffering the aggravations associated with wintery weather, here’s a memory of spring. Fading spring, I suppose, since the tulip is starting to shed its petals.

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Some Spring and some Fall from around Nanaimo Lakes [British Columbia]:

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A summer sunrise in Ladysmith harbor.

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Sculpture on the waterfront in Reykjavik. Late April, freezing cold wind:

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 A couple different people in Havana. Sitting on the sea wall:

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Sitting in a market:

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A dead moth floating in a tidal pool near Port Renfrew on the west coast of Vancouver Island:

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Juan de Fuca trail in same area. Taken with 24mm tilt lens, hence the odd focal plane going horizontally down the trail and deep into the photo.

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And Chicago at night, April 2011:

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Snow train

February 5, 2015 • 7:09 am

If you live in the northern bits of North America now, you may wonder what happens to trains when there’s a lot of snow. Well, many are stopped, but some indefatigable trains plow on. Here’s one of them: a freight train identified as “CN train 406 West at Salisbury, NB [New Brunswick], February 3, 2015”. It’s Canadian, of course!

I’m surprised that they don’t have some kind of windshield wiper to clean the snow from the engine; at one point the train is chugging on when the engineer can’t see.

h/t: Matthew Cobb, from a tw**t by Space Shuttle commander Chris Hadfield.

Hili dialogue

February 5, 2015 • 4:52 am

Happy Thursday!  As you see, Hili is making tentative forays into the murky hinterlands of feline religious philosophy. Now I’m not sure what the Ontological Argument for Fleas is, unless it’s the claim that a cat with fleas is the greatest cat that one can conceive of—greater than a cat without fleas—and therefore cats with fleas exist. But I may be wrong. Still, as with the Ontological Argument for God, it fails because of its lack of empirical content.

Hili: I’m thinking about ontological proof for the existence of fleas.
A: We have real proofs, we do not need bad philosophy.
Hili: Yes, but I’m entertaining my mind.

P1020195
In Polish:
Hili: Zastanawiam się nad dowodem ontologicznym na istnienie pcheł.
Ja: Mamy prawdziwe dowody, nie potrzebujemy złej filozofii.
Hili: Tak, ale zabawiam mój umysł.

Peyton on Futuyma

February 4, 2015 • 5:30 pm

by Greg Mayer

Today was the first day of class for Biological Sciences 314 Evolutionary Biology, and already last night Peyton, the Philosophickal Cat, was well into her reading of Doug Futuyma‘s Evolution.

Peyton reading Futuyma

Here, she’s boning up on the evolutionary developmental biology of wing and bristle morphology in insects. To her right is a list of historically prominent evolutionary biologists, along with some notes on the lecture sequence.

Dennis Markuze to be sentenced for online harassment

February 4, 2015 • 3:55 pm

According to the Montreal Gazette, a figure known to many of us, Dennis Markuze, (aka “David Mabus”) is to be sentenced Thursday for violating his probation, which involved a conviction for making violent threats against many atheist writers and bloggers. I wasn’t Markuze’s biggest target, but I got the threats often enough to be a tad discomfited. Apparently, after being sentenced to probation and a stricture to stay off social media, Markuze not only ignored the order, but even threatened the cop who arrested him:

Last spring, Markuze pleaded guilty to all three of the charges and replied in the affirmative to all of Judge Jean-Pierre Boyer’s questions concerning the plea. A summary of facts was read into the court record during the hearing, including a quote of what Markuze said to the female investigator who arrested him: “You bitch. The same thing will happen to you like what happened to the (World Trade Center) twin towers in 9/11.” Markuze expressed no objections to the summary.

Markuze’s convictions stem largely from the work of Tim Farley, who besides being an atheist is a computer security expert, and managed to track Markuze down and keep the heat on the RCMP to arrest him.  Markuze almost certainly suffers from mental illness and may also be an abuser of cocaine and alcohol, so it’s nor clear what the best treatment is. As the paper reports:

You know I don’t want him in jail if he’s mentally ill,” Farley said. “I just want him to leave me alone and stop posting things with my name and my picture on it.”

1122 city Markuze
(Caption from the Gazette): Dennis Markuze at the provincial courthouse in Montreal, Friday November 21, 2014. He has pleaded guilty to posting threats on social networks against people who question the existence of God. Photo: Phil Carpenter / Montreal Gazette

 

Dilbert on free will

February 4, 2015 • 3:07 pm

More than a few readers sent me today’s Dilbert strip by artist Scott Adams:

Dilbert free will

Well, I’m with Dilbert (the guy in the red shirt). But one reader added this:

I must say Wally [the bald guy] expresses a conclusion that I also reach… that if humans have no free will there is no argument against manipulating or reengineering their behaviours in any way one might please… “A Clockwork Orange” world indeed…..

My response: of course there’s an argument against manipulating or re-engineering behaviors to control people. Just because it’s possible in theory to do that—and if think you can’t do it, at least in principle, you’re a dualist—doesn’t mean that “everything is permitted.” The argument against it is that manipulating behavior erodes people’s sense of agency, a feeling that is real, and could in that and other ways be harmful to society and well being. So not only is that an argument against it, but such arguments can be effective, for they can dissuade people from doing bad stuff. (Some people also think that if there is no free will, it’s useless to try to convince others.)

Statements like the one from the reader above—a reader who was kind enough to send me the cartoon—sometimes makes me think that many people who argue in favor of free will don’t really grasp the issues it raises.