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May 22, 2007

Quick Takes: A Commencement Speech Takes Aim at Spellings, UC and Derrida Family Settle, New Alumni Group for Mississippi U. for Women, $10B for Middle East Education, No Charges Against CC Athletes, Prisons vs. Colleges

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  • Daniel F. Sullivan, president of St. Lawrence University, used his commencement speech Saturday to strongly denounce Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, calling the report issued by the commission she appointed to study higher education “a national embarrassment.” While the commission has been unpopular with many academics, especially at private colleges, Sullivan’s criticism was notably direct, especially in a commencement address. “Almost every day we read in the newspaper of efforts by Spellings to dumb down the education for life we seek to provide at St. Lawrence and substitute something that is woefully inferior.”
  • The University of California at Irvine and the family of Jacques Derrida have formally ended their bitter dispute over control of the late professor’s papers, which both sides had claimed, the Los Angeles Times reports. In a settlement announced Monday, the university will keep the papers it already has but relinquish its claims to the rest, and the institution will pay about $16,000 in legal fees accumulated by Derrida’s widow.
  • Mississippi University for Women, where senior administrators have been fighting with the alumni association, has received state permission to recognize a new alumni group, the Associated Press reported.
  • The leader of Dubai announced over the weekend that he would spend $10 billion of his own funds to create a fund to bolster the quality of education in the Arab world, the Globe and Mail of Toronto reported. In a speech at the World Economic Forum of the Middle East, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, acknowledged the gap that separates the quality of education in much of his region from that of the West and Asia, and said that Arab leaders must bridge that gap. He said he would use his vast personal funds to create research centers and institutes and finance scholarships at leading universities, among other things.
  • Prosecutors in California’s Santa Clara County said Monday that they would not file charges against a group of De Anza College baseball players who were suspended in March amid accusations that they had participated in an alleged sexual assault at a party, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
  • California is fast approaching a state spending milestone: Appropriations for prisons will soon top those for higher education, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Current projections call for the spending shift to be reached in five years.

— Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman

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Comments

How Ironic

I couldn’t help but notice that the story discussing Daniel Sullivan’s comments, which included the line that Spellings is trying to dumb down higher education, is immediately followed by a story about Jacques Derrida. Derrida, as the founding father of deconstruction, did more to harm higher education than Spellings ever could in a thousand years. I just found the irony in the juxtaposition of the two stories too much to ignore.

thomassowellfan, at 8:35 am EDT on May 22, 2007

Another Knee Jerk Defense

Daniel F. Sullivan’s remarks appear to be yet another knee jerk defense of the status quo. It is too bad that he used an otherwise joyous event to engage in protecting turf. Higher education’s leadership needs present reasoned remedies rather than the too common—We are right and anyone who questions the way we continue to do things are mean sprited idiots.

William P. Leonare, at 8:40 am EDT on May 22, 2007

Point of order

About St. Lawrence — what empirical evidence does it have that shows its approach to undergraduate education is superior to, say, the Wharton BBA program? The Princeton BSEE program? Or, for that matter, any other?

Is this whole thing, a bit jejune?

L.L., at 10:45 am EDT on May 22, 2007

Counterpoint of Order

As a graduate of St. Lawrence, I expect L.L. will see my riposte as both jejune and unempirical. That aside, in Sullivan’s commencement address (full text at http://www.stlawu.edu/president/commence07.html), he makes no claims, empirical or otherwise, that an SLU education is superior to that available at any other school. Rather, he rightly challenges the Education Secretary’s attempts to dumb-down a system of “accreditation where performance is measured against each college or university’s mission, goals and objectives.” Of course he’s going to beat the drum for liberal education; that’s where he lives and advances a particular mission. Don’t fault him for what he doesn’t claim. That would be an instance of the fuzzy reasoning that the liberal arts aim at scrutinizing and eliminating—and which Spelling and her apologists continue to practice.

Philoctetes, at 3:02 pm EDT on May 22, 2007

The real world ain’t fuzzy

” .. he rightly challenges the Education Secretary’s attempts to dumb-down ..”

Right — the president of the costly private college lectures the teeming masses toiling in public colleges. Where instructors suspect some mothers of doing their child’s term papers because the child’s in-class quizzes are at the 9th-grade level. Where up to 50% of students don’t graduate within six years, leaving them heavily indebted without degrees.

GWB ought to be tougher. But he’s trying keep Barbara, Jr., viable for 2035. So he’s compassionate.

If SLU is so aggrieved — go totally private like Hillsdale. Show GWB how brave SLU is. Can’t wait to see that press release.

L.L., at 8:20 pm EDT on May 22, 2007

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