Marxists Obituarized Admiringly: Andrew Glyn

(April 30--revised, see below) From National Review:

Andrew Glyn is not a household name, and until I read his obituary yesterday in The Times of London I had never heard of him. But what an illuminating document that obituary proves to be, a perfect little insight into the age. The opening sentence informs that Glyn “was one of Britain's most prominent Marxist economists who produced searching critiques of capitalism,” going on to salute him as “one of the finest of Oxford dons.”... Think of the abuse of privilege. Think of the false pretences. Think of the damage he did spouting rubbish year after year to students who would be expected to parrot it back to him. To one student, he is supposed to have said, “the three greatest men who ever lived were Lenin, Trotsky and Charlie Parker,” - a sentence that the obituary writer hilariously links to “his depth of knowledge.” Some of the unfortunate students will have recovered freedom to think for themselves, but some will be permanently damaged. The obituary writer does in the end concede that Glyn “will to some extent be deemed to have backed the wrong ideological horse” — that “to some extent” is a qualification that goes so far beyond hilarious that it is almost majestic.

Dr. Stern writes in an AER article:

This is dedicated to my close friend, distinctive and distinguished economist and fine man, Andrew Glyn, who died on December 22, 2007, and whose funeral took place in Oxford, UK, on the same day as the Ely Lecture, January 4, 2008.

I decided to delete my strong comments on Dr. Glyn. I don't believe in De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but I don't know why he was divorced. I am skeptical, though, of how good and kind a person is if I then discover that he is divorced. Lots of people are charming when being charming has low cost and aids their social position, but cheat on their wives, molest their children, and neglect their parents.

I also think it is important not to praise someone as a good teacher when he teaches pernicious rubbish, even if he teaches it persuasively. A person can be nice and still be a Leninist, just as he can be nice and still be a Nazi. The comparison is by no means too strong. In fact, there is much more excuse for someone who was a Nazi in the 1930s than a Leninist in the 1980s. In the 1930's the Nazis were thuggish and autocratic, but the horrors of WW 2 and the Holocaust were still to come. By now the excesses of Communism-- not just the political murders, but the millions killed by collectivization-- are well known. In fact, even by 1922 the crimes of Lenin and Trotsky were well known. I can understand why Communists would praise Dr. Glyn, but those of us who fall into one of the categories of people his heroes liked to kill shouldn't praise him.

Organizing Conferences

This blog post will collect ideas on how to run conferences. It is adapted from an old post on my old blogsite.

I should remember to send this to the organizer of every conference I attend, well in advance. There is a lot of personal potential benefit from doing that.

1. The conference website should have maps showing the location of the conference buildings and hotels, as well as airports, highways, and the relevant exits. This this should be provided to participants *before* they arrive, since that is when it is useful.

2. The conference website should post all papers as submitted and then allow authors to make updates. This will both ensure that participants can view the papers in advance and prevent authors from submitting work that is too unfinished.

3. Get wireless computer access for anyone who wants it. I find that this is much more common at motels than at universities, for guests.

4. There should be second-tier sessions of successive 5-minute presentations for papers that weren’t good enough to get in the first-tier sessions.

5. A day before the conference, the organizers should email participants telling them the temperature and humidity.

6. There should always be a coffee urn near the session rooms. Coffee is especially useful *before an 8 a.m session*--- not as a coffee break in the late morning.

7. Each building should have a big swinging sign outside and one inside with arrows towards the various rooms. The conference program should be on it, taped open to the appropriate page. Each session room door should have a list of the sessions inside.

8. A lot of these items take some time for the organizer. Think of hte economies of scale, though. It is better to spend 30 minutes of organizer time than 100*6 = 600 minutes of participant time trying to find rooms, buy coffee, figure out the weather report, etc.

9. Make sure there are good spaces for standing around in talking, and a good place to congregate (with chairs and tables and blackboards) for people who are skipping sessions.

10. Email each participant a one-page list of tips on how to give a good presentation. I'll write such a list later and link this to it. It should have things such as "Have a handout".

11. Have a way that participants can do last-minute xeroxing of handouts and scanning in of handwritten diagrams. One way to do this would be to have a box for such requests with folders, a form to fill out requesting the service, and a person to accept money. The payment should be simple so as not to require change-- say, minimum 1 dollar that will xerox 5 copies or scan 5 pages, then 5 dollars for up to 25 copies and 25 pages.

12. Have a list of all participants give out IN ADVANCE so participants can be warned of who is coming that they should know but whose face they might have forgotten. Even better, have this on the web and link to every participant's homepage. This will take care of giving out a list of all email addresses, which should be done if the homepage-link idea is not adopted.

13. Have a box lunch at the end, so people who need to catch planes can take it with them.

14. Each session chair should have a big, cheap, battery-powered clock to put in the room. Again: the cost of the hardware is small relative to the value of the time saved. He shouldn't have to use his attention to make hand gestures or raise signs to the speaker. He should just cut him off at some point, even if that humiliates the speaker.

15. Have long extension cords for electric power for laptops, trailing into the center of the room. Again: the cost of the hardware is small relative to the value of the time saved.

16. For each paper, next time, have the abstract up on the Web, so listeners can cut-and-paste them into their notes.

17. Send out presentation tips to all speakers.

18 Putting one's name as a footer to slides is a good idea for young people, as advertisement.

Are There Any Law Professors Who Do Pro-Death Penalty Scholarship?

Orin Kerr asks:

Who are the legal scholars who write on the death penalty on a regular or semi-regular basis but who do not write from the perspective of opposition to the death penalty? Stuart Banner might be one: I've only skimmed his book on the death penalty, but it struck me as largely neutral in tone. Are there others? I realize that most legal scholars who write on the death penalty are against it; I'm just curious about who the outliers are....

Paul Cassell): In my pro-con book of the deasth penalty [mentioned above], I had a hard time tracking down pro-death penalty scholars from the legal academy. We ended up using Louis P. Pojman,a professor of philosophy at the U.S. Military Academy for one of the pieces. 3.30.2009 5:59pm

OrinKerr: Thanks, Paul. Yes, I'm reminded of the panel at the AALS mid-year meeting 2 years ago on how you could bring a diversity of different views of the death penalty to enrich the debate. The panel was made up only of death penalty critics, who had their own different takes on how to oppose the death penalty (using statistics, history, etc.).

Teaching Business Ethics: A Practical Approach

In the shower this morning I thought of a way to teach business ethics to our undergrads (and MBA students too maybe). I actually like the idea of teaching it as all or part of a course. But what is far more important is to stop any student from getting into the habit of cheating, and to teach them all that any cheater gets into big big trouble.

We have an honor code already, which is a good start. But what we really ought to do is to list any cheating incidents on the student's official transcript, a moral grade to go with the intellectual grade. Or, if you like, an "asterisk" of the same kind that casts doubt on a baseball player's batting average if he is found to have used steroids. If I were hiring a student, such information would be as important to me as his grades. It might even be more important, since I could give the student an interview or a test to see how smart he is, but I won't know before hiring him how honest he is.

Such a plan has about a .002 chance of being adopted by the university as a whole. Administrators don't, I think, care that much about cheating, but they do care a lot about having more record-keeping work to do and about exposure to litigation.

At IU, however, the business-school has higher standards than the rest of the university, and maybe we could do it. We have that Honor Code, after all. I don't think we can require students to sign onto it,but they all do. We could do something like this:

Any student may voluntarily agree on becoming a Business major that any disciplinary actions against him will be publicly available (or, perhaps, available to anyone to whom he releases his transcript, or to any registered recruiter). If he does not agree, a note to that effect will be put in his records. Recruiters will be notified of the possibility of getting the disciplinary records, and of the optional nature of the release.

I have not had any trouble with cheating in any of my classes of business majors at Indiana (I did have some trouble at UCLA with MBA students). I had a lot of cheating in a large business prerequisite course I taught, though, including from students who clearly were or were likely to become majors. I think a new release policy would have a substantial effect on instilling ethical behavior in our students, and that might be as important as any of the coursework we teach-- not just morally, but as a contribution to the economy.

Miss Gay Indiana University

This page collects links relevant to Miss Gay Indiana University.

1. Past honorees: India Black and MySpace.com Blogs - Anger, Disdain, and Kittens - Della Licious...The Lish MySpace Blog and YouTube - Della Licious performing at Mixie's and MySpace.com - Miss Gay Indiana University 2008 - 29 - Female - Indianapolis, Indiana - www.myspace.com/msbritneytaylor

2. Indiana University OUT

3. Shabby to fabby Colin Dugdale Indiana Daily Student, Apr. 19, 2007

4. The Pace Resolution (Jan. 29 version) and links to other materials about it.

5. "Christians should not be forced to fund a celebration of sin," blog post by Scott Tibbs

Do You Need a College Degree

Someone at the NR blog notes that the military hires people without college degrees and gives them harder, more technical jobs than the private sector gives to college graduates.

Personal Attacks on ID Proponent

Bradley Monton recounts an amazing unfair attack on him by another philosophy professor, Robert Pennock, for supporting intelligent design. Monton has lots of links and sounds as if he's not lying. This is additional evidence of the emotional and anti-intellectual response of many scholars to the idea of intelligent design.

See also this discussion of an ad hominem counter-lecture to a lecture on ID he gave.

Homosexual Orientation versus Homosexual Behavior

Here's a comment I posted at Prosblogion:

The distinction between "sexual orientation" and "sexual behavior" is absolutely crucial, and I was thinking on blogging on this myself, so I read this with interest. I see that the lawyer quoted above didn't understand the distinction. I too would like to know if city regulations do.

Someone commented:

"If I owned a business, I'd discriminate in my hiring practices, quite reasonably I think, against non-sober alcoholics. The view of those who are supporting the original petition appears to be (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this) that I would thereby discriminate against an alcoholic who has been sober for ten years. Isn't this just absurd?"

That's right. I'm sure Christian colleges are happy to hire people with homosexual orientation who are strongly opposed to homosexual behavior. The former alcoholic is the best crusader against drink, and it is common to encounter reformed homosexual pastors who specialize in work with homosexuals. If anybody finds a case where a strong advocate of anti-sodomy laws is denied a job because he used to practice sodomy, please let us know.

In fact, orthodox Christian belief is that everyone has a "sin orientation"; it is just that some of us control our outward behavior better than others do. This is really the same as the idea that we are all potential criminals--- murderers and thieves, for example--- but some of us, including most people with college degrees, are better at restraining themselves in light of their material incentives and the chance of getting caught.

There is something I don't think any other commentor has mentioned: the "legislative history" of anti-discrimination rules. If a judge were to rule on whether the rule were literally against homosexual orientation or were against orientation and behavior, he would first look at the text. The text is clear--- it's just orientation--- but commonly even a fair-minded judge wouldn't stop there. He would go on to look at intent and at whether the words had a broader meaning in the particular context. A big part of that is to look at legislative history. If *everyone* in the debate over enactment-- both proponents and opponents--- talked as if the words included behavior, then it would be reasonable to read the words that way. If everyone just talked about orientation, or, even better, proponents explicitly said that the rule was written purposely to allow discrimination based on sexual behavior, then the words ought to be read literally. (If the legislative history is mixed, then it isn't much use.)

I could be wrong, but I bet most anti-discrimination rules were enacted by means of arguments based on orientation, not behavior. If so, it's not fair to switch the meaning afterwards to include behavior. An argument such as "we shouldn't allow discrimination on the grounds of characteristics a person can't alter" argues for a rule against orientation, but implicitly concedes that discrimination on behavior is okay.

To be sure, forbidding sodomy hurts people who are tempted by sodomy more than those who are not, and in that sense discriminates on the basis of orientation. But that is a false sense. It is equivalent to saying that forbidding sexual harassment, or even rape, discriminates against men, and so a university should not punish it if they have a policy against sex discrimination.

In the courts, the "disparate impact" argument is treated in complicated ways, and in ways that are different depending on the type of discrimination. Race effects are scrutinized much more closely than gender effects, for example.

I'll repeat what earlier comments said: If anyone knows what courts have said on whether the term "sexual orientation" includes "sexual behavior" please let us know.

Liberals at a Conservative College

The Baylyblog found out that even a very conservative Presbyterian denomination's college has many liberal faculty. (For those of you who say, "So what?", keep in mind that there are far more Democrats at this college, which explicitly has a religion requirement for faculty, than there are Republicans at any Big Ten university.)

... thirty-five percent of Covenant's faculty members say they're likely to vote for Senator Obama. That's one third of the faculty supporting the presidential candidacy of the most radically pro-baby slaughter politician in Washington D.C.

... Covenant's faculty was asked to rate "issues for their importance in selecting a (presidential) candidate," and among those listed were "campaign finance reform," "education," "global warming," "health care," and "social justice." And yes, "abortion" was there, but no mention of sodomy or sodomite marriage.

Interestingly, only half the faculty members considered "abortion" to be "Very important" in their selection in their anticipated vote for a presidential candidate. This means half of the faculty members made a conscious decision to respond that abortion was not "Very important." What got a higher rating than abortion?

"Social justice." Abortion had a rating average of 3.23 whereas "Social justice" won with 3.40. (Ten faculty members responded that abortion was either "Not important" (2) or only "Somewhat important" (8), but only one faculty member responded that social justice was "Not important" and just two that it was only "Somewhat important."

For the top rating, "Very important," three issues tied in the faculty's vote: "Abortion," "Health care," and "Social justice," with "Social justice" taking the honors.

My Co-Authors

After going to Ian Ayres's excellent 50th Birthday Co-Authors Conference I decided to count up my own co-authors. Stars indicate that what we've written is not yet published (and maybe never will be). I don't include co-editors.

1. Michael Alexeev
2. *Maria Arbatskaya
3. Ian Ayres
4. F. H. Buckley
5. *Luis Fernandez
6. *Barick Chung
7. *Christopher Connell
8. Kenneth Dau-Schmidt
9. *Richmond Harbaugh
10. David Hirshleifer
11. Jack Hirshleifer
12. Maarten Janssen
13. Thomas P. Lyon
14. Richard McAdams
15. * Kaushik Mukhopadhaya
16. Robert Heidt
17. Emmanuel Petrakis
18. Ivan Png
19. Richard Posner
20. Manu Raghav
21. J. Mark Ramseyer
22. Timothy Perri
23. Minoru Nakazato
24. Santanu Roy
25. Jeffrey Stake
26. John Wiley
27. *David Myatt
28. *Young-Ro Yoon
29. Todd Zenger
30. Mark Zupan

Ian is up to 51, I think, with about 30 at the conference and 15 presenting papers there.

Brad DeLong Calls for Colleague To Be Fired

Brad DeLong has posted a shocking letter calling for Professor Yoo of Berkeley Law to be fired for his work in the White House-- the "torture memo". I'd thought reputable economists wouldn't write that kind of letter. It should be a warning to us all--- the Left *does* want to criminalize conservatism. Liberals, you watch out--- the Mensheviks come next.

High Pay for Administrators in Undemanding Jobs

It looks as if it would be worth looking for corruption in the adminstration of the UC system. This reminds me of Michelle Obama's high-paid job for the University of Chicago, a different UC.

UC Berkeley officials have acknowledged misleading the public in the controversial case of a high-paid executive aide who left her job at the university's headquarters and the next day began a new job on the Cal campus - qualifying for a $100,202 severance check along the way.

Pace Resolution Wrap-Up

I should have been prepared to blog on the Pace Resolution, but I wasn't, and I have to prepare for a presentation practice with my grad students in two hours. So I'll revise this post later. For now:

The Bloomington Faculty Council passed the Pace resolution criticizing the business school for inviting a general who (a) said homosexuality was immoral, and (b) enforced the military's don't ask/don't tell policy. The vote was 19 to 15, with many present not voting. I heard on the radio that a motion to table was rejected 14 to 21. The minutes of the February 17 meeting, which transcribe all the speeches of that day, are here. I see that 41 members were present, 3 were absent but had alternates present, and 20 were absent. Thus, of 64 members, 19 voted for the resolution, 15 were against, 10 voters present did not vote, and 20 members were absent.

I see this as a good outcome, if not the best. People are on record as being for or against university departments being able to invite speakers with conservative opinions. I was afraid that someone would make a motion to table the resolution, or just ask to withdraw it, and that professors torn between principle, politics, and timidity would welcome the chance to get out of the situation.

The February 4 meeting tentative BFC minutes have some of the arguments made. My November weblog post has lots more, from the first reading in that month. My Feb. 4 post has the first and second drafts of the resolution.

I should add my own letter to the BFC and the Kelley's school's letter later today. They talk about the substance of the resolution.

UPDATE My own opinions on the substance of the Pace resolution are in a letter I sent to the BFC on February 4. The Kelley School Academic Council sent a strong letter to the BFC on December 1, 2008

UPDATE: My own opinions on the substance of the Pace resolution are in a letter I sent to the BFC on February 4. The Kelley School Academic Council sent a strong letter to the BFC on December 1, 2008

Pace Resolution

Here is an excerpt from the tentative draft of the BFC minutes from February 4 on the Pace Resolution.

University Policies (The Pace Resolution)

A great quote from our b-school dean, Daniel Smith:

Some faculty members voiced concern with the precedent the resolution would set and the scrutiny future chairs or guests would face.

“This isn’t a policy,” Tanford said. “It says nothing about future cases. We’re saying this one, we thought, was not handled well.”

Smith said he would abide by such a policy if one existed.

“If the university is going to adopt a formal policy that requires administrators to, number one, screen all candidates for endowed chairs on their personal beliefs and, number two, submit that data to groups on campus for approval, then we would certainly abide by that.”

Some info:

BFC Membership, 2009.

The Pace resolution: Drafts of November 18, 2008 and January 29 2009.

Some past Poling Chairs: Dollens, Evan Bayh, Skinner,

Brandeis University is selling its $350 million art collection. One interesting thing about this is that there exists a bad law saying that universities can't spend the principal of their endowments. Cushioning bad times should be a major (maybe the only) reason for endowments. Precautionary saving is an excellent idea; merely piling up golden ducats is not.

Brandeis's endowment had plunged to $540 million at the end of 2008 from $712 million as of June 30 of that year, and it was earning significantly less than the 8%-plus annual return on investment it had posted on June 30. Some of Brandeis's trustees are believed to have lost money from Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, limiting their ability to make up the difference. The school, which by law spends only its gains and not the principal of the endowment, reduced expenditures by $10 million and instituted various budget-freezing measures, but "we couldn't do any more belt-tightening without fundamentally changing the character of the university," said Peter French, Brandeis's chief operating officer and executive vice president. He noted that, as the trustees looked ahead at the next four or five years, they could see operating deficits of $10 million to $20 million a year and little likelihood of Brandeis regaining its $700 million endowment and 8% interest income until 2015.

What they could do instead is to pawn the art collection and redeem it when the endowment income is flowing again. Or, someone ought to come up with a self-liquidating security which pays out dividends until none of it is left. There's some kind of Treasury security like that-- is that what a Strip is?

Martin Luther King

Theologica has a good post on Martin Luther King's plagiarism, adultery, and non-Christian religious beliefs. Samuel Francis has an even more negative essay that I haven't read all the way through. In a quick look I couldn't find a good listing of MLK's accomplishments. He did some good things, I seem to remember, but Google gives me trivial lists and general praise.

Here is an excerpt from a paper that King wrote in 1949 while he was an assistant pastor and taking seminary classes. He contrasts the liberal with the "fundamentalist", to the disadvantage of the "fundamentalist". It's interesting that he acknowledges that what he means by "fundamentalist" is the Christian doctrine of Luther, Calvin, and the pre-1900 church in general.

These men argued that there could be no compromise on the unchanging fundamentals of the Christian faith. To gain support for their stand, the fundamentalist claimed that they were reaffirming the faith as Luther, Calvin, Knox, and Wesley held it. Of course, in that claim they were undoubtedly correct. It was the Protestant Reformation which enunciated the doctrines which are now called "fundamentalist."...

Others doctrines such as a supernatural plan of salvation, the Trinity, the substitutionary theory of the atonement, and the second coming of Christ are all quite prominant in fundamentalist thinking. Such are the views of the fundamentalist and they reveal that he is oppose to theological adaptation to social and cultural change. He sees a progressive scientific age as a retrogressive spiritual age. Amid change all around he was {is} willing to preserve certain ancient ideas even though they are contrary to science.

Accomplishments: One King accomplishment is the "I Have a Dream" speech, which is certainly a bigger deal in itself than anything I have done in my life.

The BFC's Proposed Resolution Criticizing the Business School's Invitation of General Pace

The Bloomington Faculty Council has been having some discussions of interest to those concerned about homosexuality and free speech. All boldfacings below are by me.

Here are excerpts from the resolution ( November 18 text):

WHEREAS in a March 12, 2007 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Gen. Pace said, "I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral... I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is okay to be immoral in any way... As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy."

WHEREAS on March 13, 2007, Pace released a statement reading, "In expressing my support for the current policy, I also offered some personal opinions about moral conduct. I should have focused more on my support of the policy and less on my personal moral views." He declined to apologize or to retract his statement equating homosexuality with immorality....

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that although we fully endorse the concept that speakers representing all viewpoints should be invited to campus, when speakers representing controversial viewpoints are invited, effort must be made to facilitate open discussion and the exchange of ideas. We therefore believe that during General Peter Pace’s visits to campus this year, the Kelley School should facilitate opportunities for Gen. Pace to be interviewed by the press and to appear at forums in which members of the community are welcome and may ask questions, and to invite a speaker of equivalent stature who holds contrary views concerning homosexuality. Efforts to date are not sufficient.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that it was inappropriate to award Gen. Pace a university honor, the Poling Chair in Business and Government, when his views on homosexuality are so offensive to university policy and many members of the university community, without any advance guarantee that he would participate in an open and meaningful dialogue about his views.

From the November 18 Bloomington Faculty Council Minutes:

Brian Horne, Music:

HORNE: Personally I’m bothered by this. I mean there are many details, you know, with which I sympathize but at the heart of the matter it seems to me what trying to punish somebody for something they believe.

To me at the heart of the matter, I understand why people would be offended, but what we’re saying is ‘you have to believe what we believe or we’re going to make it hard on you.’ That’s not what we should be doing, and we certainly shouldn’t be saying ‘we’re a university, we’re open to all, we’re open to diversity, but if you don’t believe what we believe we’re going to make it hard on you to come here or to get an honor from us or to do anything else.’

James Biles, Geography:

BILES: ... Yes, you know a diversity of views is appreciated, but I think morally and ethically, you know, there’s no requirement to tolerate intolerance and these views are intolerant. Personally, I’d like to see him dishonorably discharged from his, you know, appointment, but I guess that’s not going to happen.

Bryan McCormick, HPER:

MCCORMICK: Well, I’m just curious that this strikes me that we’re making as a campus body a dictate to that unit without inclusion, discussion, you know. I would be concerned in my school if I learned from the BFC something that we are being told we had to do without even knowing it was coming.

Brian Horne, Music, and Alex Tanford, Law:

HORNE: I’m sorry, one other question and I recognize this is stretching it quite a bit. Certainly in the School of Music we have people that are just world renowned musicians all the time some of which are given titles and some of whom just come and give masters classes, things like that. We don’t know their views on this issue or any other, because they were never in such a prominent, you know, position, but why is it different that it just happens that we know this issue. This issue is not what drove his appointment or what gave him this honor. It just happened that his previous appointment called upon him to answer questions regarding this. If Leonard Slatkin, you know, the world famous conductor is coming to join our faculty, we don’t know what he thinks about anything, and we don’t need to know. ...

TANFORD: I don’t really have a response to your point, but certainly there are people who are highly distinguished in the music field, now many of them very elderly, if they’re still alive at all, who had an active association at one point with Nazi Germany, where their views would be clearly known. And I guess we saw this as the equivalent of giving one of them a distinguished honor which would be hugely offensive to the Jewish community or that was the way we saw this.

Lucas Fields, IUSA President, student, and Alex Tanford, Law:

FIELDS: I actually had a chance to speak with the general, and one of the things I asked him about was his recommendation to authorize force in Iraq, which he also did as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and I guess what I’m perhaps concerned about with this body is there a line that’s being drawn, that there are certain things that the faculty are willing to be concerned about but not others? Is his view on that war, which is controversial in a different light, something that should also be addressed? And are we singling something out versus a whole host of things I think could be found to be controversial on this campus?

TANFORD: We are singling this out. We are the Diversity and Affirmative Action Committee, concerned about protecting the rights of minorities who are historically and currently, presently discriminated against and the gay and lesbian community is number one on that list. And that’s the reason. This is like race a generation ago.

Patrick Harbison, Music, and Alex Tanford, Law:

HARBISON: Will the School of Music have to stop programming Wagner?
TANFORD: Only if – no. (laughter)
HARBISON: I mean you see what I’m saying!
TANFORD: Are you planning on giving Wagner a distinguished university honor?
HARBISON: No, but I would say that a performance at the MAC is a fairly distinguished honor.
TANFORD: But that’s the essence of the distinction. A performance at the MAC is an ordinary participation in the university process. If it is accompanied by Gwyn Richards coming out and giving the person a distinguished award, then it moves into a different level of symbolism and it is that second level that we are concerned about, not the first.

Daniel Sloat, IUSA Vice President, student:

SLOAT: I just wanted to say first as a Kelley student I felt that the school did a very good job in distancing themselves. I felt that they were in no way in the wrong. They made very clear that they did not support his personal beliefs, and most importantly to keep in mind he was invited to and subsequently awarded for his leadership experience. He was not brought as a controversial speaker, not as someone who has a certain view. If that had been the case, then it would certainly be encouraged and, I think, appropriate to bring someone with an alternative view. So being someone extensive leadership experience, I don’t think it’s fair to put him in the same kind of light that calls for ‘where’s the other viewpoint?’ because being brought as a person with leadership experience the other viewpoint would be someone without leadership experience.

Padraic Kenney, History, and Alex Tanford, Law:

...KENNEY: …Yeah, I know, but I feel like some of your responses have really come down, you know, to his personal views…
TANFORD: No, no.
KENNEY: … some rest more on professional and maybe clarifying the difference between the two…
TANFORD: There is no…
KENNEY: …and taking a stand based on one or the other.
TANFORD: He was the one who attempts to characterize these as merely personal views, and that’s why to try to put in his version of it and put some balance is why those statements are in there.
KENNEY: Well then let me draw attention to the last line in the fourth paragraph on the first page, “General Pace’s beliefs regarding homosexuality, which are grounded in his religious faith, reveal an inherent bias against homosexuality.” Why are we bringing in his religious faith? I’m looking at the quotes that are above there and while I don’t doubt that elsewhere in that interview he talks about his religious faith, he doesn’t in what has been quoted here. And so now we’re saying ‘well, actually this has to do with religious faith,’ but maybe they’re excusing, that, you know, you have to understand this is religious faith or it maybe a complicating or whatever factor, but I’m not quite sure, you know, how do you put that in there. That’s essentially saying ‘we are interested in his beliefs.’
TANFORD: I would say the committee was persuaded by an argument made by some members of the committee that one could make a case that holding fairly extreme antihomosexual views based on a particularly narrow interpretation of religion is itself a minority viewpoint…
KENNEY: But how is that relevant here?
TANFORD: …and therefore needed to be mentioned in terms of the balance since we’re the Diversity and Affirmative Action Committee and that we are concerned about religious discrimination as much as we are about discrimination against homosexuality.

Nick Clark, GPSO - Political Science, graduate student:

CLARK:... it’s a discussion I’ve been a part of in several different committees on how to best recruit minorities to come here and increase the diversity of the campus and I have to think that this is relevant to that, in that if we include minorities that we want to recruit as gay and lesbian students, the fact that we bestow honors on someone that makes these statements, whether they’re right, whether they’re wrong, whether it’s the place of the Faculty Council or the university to take positions on it, but that we’re bestowing honors on it from a very pragmatic point of view I would think that that could deter certain gay and lesbian students from attending this university which is the exact opposite of what the campus seems to want to do in its recruiting initiatives. And I think that’s got to be at least, you know, minimally relevant to an issue like this.

Herbert Terry, BFC President, Telecommunications:

TERRY: Okay, I wasn’t on the (inaudible) subcommittee, but I hope you will consult with the faculty governance body of the School of Business. When we take this up again I would like to know what role they played in it, if any, and what their recommendations to the Dean were, what they think of it. The second thing is borrowing from my own experience in telecommunications, the Federal Communications Commission for a long time tried to enforce a kind of a fairness doctrine requiring that opposing views on controversial issues be presented by broadcasters. It eventually concluded that that backfired.

The BFC membership list is here in case you'd like to check which professors and students vote on this. A footnote:

Americans interviewed in Gallup's 2008 Values and Beliefs poll are evenly divided over the morality of homosexual relations, with 48% considering them morally acceptable and 48% saying they are morally wrong.

The BFC will not be voting on the resolution on January 20, since the committee is trying to redraft it. Presumably it will come up in the February meeting.

SAT Won't Report Low Scores

National Review's blog reports that the SAT is changing so that only a student's MAXIMUM score out of all the times he takes the test will be reported to colleges. What amazing favoritism to rich, stupid, applicants!

Or maybe not so amazing. This will be a bonanza for the SAT company, since their tests will be taken so many more times. This is especially true nowadays, when many colleges have merit-based scholarships and your $45 retest fee might have a 1/10 chance of yielding you $1000 extra in tuition breaks.

It also raises an interesting mathematical question. Suppose everyone ends up taking the test exactly 8 times. This will cost a lot more, of course, but will it yield more accurate evaluation of the applicants? Which provides more useful information:

1. A single test score.

2. The maximum of 8 test scores.

The answer depends on the distribution of an individual's test scores for his given talent. If someone with ability X scores X on the test with probability .9 and X-y with probability .1, the Maximum is a better measure (in fact, then it is even better than the average of 8 test scores).

If someone with ability X scores X on the test with probability .8, X-y with probability .1, and X+y with probability .1, which is better? The maximum still, I think. In almost every case, person i will end up with a maximum of Xi+y, and we can simply subtract y and get a person's ability.

If someone with ability X scores X on the test with probability .999 and X+y with probability .001, then I think , the Single reported score is better. It is right with probability .999, whereas the Maximum will frequently be X+y (with probability 1-.999^8) so it will be right with only probability .992. (I haven't phrased that carefully-- what we care about is not the percentage of "right" answers but the variance of the measure minus the true ability, but in this special case the two criteria give the same answer.)

What if the distribution of test scores around ability has a normal distribution? I don't know. The answer might depend on the variance. I'll ask our job candidate at lunch. He's a couple of years out of grad school already, so he shouldn't freak out at the question.

GRE Scores in Various Disciplines

From Mark Perry:

Physicists are clearly the smartest, at a combined GRE score of 1899, then math at 1877, and then computer science and econ at 1862 and 1855. Chemistry and biology are down quite a ways. Philosophy is in the top league, with 1803. I'm surprised economists are so smart. It actually seems like a waste of talent.

January 3. I just realized an implication of these numbers. Graduate students in pretty much any science are better with words than graduate students in English. Even engineering grad students are-- though industrial and civil engineers are slightly worse. My chemistry/German double major roommate AJ would like to hear this. Also: going back to the original source, it seems these are Means, and that source has more info, including the actual number of students in the top 3% of each test score category in each discipline (which matters because some fields have many more students than others).