Acting just like a vicious human (some notes on Free Will)

A peculiarity of our language—or of our thinking—is that, when we find someone’s behavior to be especially heinous, we often call him or her an animal. “He’s no more than an animal,” we’ll say. Or he’s a “beast” or a “brute”—more words meaning “animal.”

Usually, the “beastly” behavior we are condemning cannot be found among animals—i.e., among nonhuman animals, for, obviously, humans are animals too. Isn’t it clear that human beings do terrible things that are never done by animals? Think of torture, genocide, parking one's car on the lawn.

How come we don’t accuse Dick Cheney of behaving like some kind of goddam human?

Another peculiarity is our tendency to speak of “vicious” animal attacks. Well, the one thing that an animal attack cannot be is vicious. My Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “vicious” as “having the nature or quality of vice or immorality….” The word “vicious,” of course, comes from the word “vice.”

Consider the case of a cougar attacking a hiker. In the cougar’s mind, the hiker invaded her territory. So she attacked the invader. Was the cougar behaving immorally? Did the cougar exhibit vice?

Of course not. She did not do these things because cougars are not (as we say in philosophy) moral agents. That is, they are not beings who are capable of moral or immoral behavior. For one thing, they have no understanding of right and wrong.

Human infants are not moral agents either. They matter morally—it would be murder to kill an infant. But they are not moral agents, for they are incapable of right or wrong actions.

I know a man who routinely attributes moral agency to nonhuman animals. For thirty years, he has carried on a war with gophers on his land. He hates the little buggers. Sometimes, he’ll explain how a gopher could have dug in direction A, but instead he dug in direction B, evidently for the sole purpose of antagonizing him. He oozes contempt for these gophers. Do you know such people?

Sometimes I kid him. I say, "Well, those gophers were here before you were. If an all-out war breaks out here, I'm sorry, but I've gotta take the gophers' side."

There seem to be many TV programs devoted to describing animal attacks on humans. Invariably, the victim of the attack will at some point explain, “I don’t blame the bear (or weasel or jackalope). She was just protecting her young.”

But what if the bear was just hungry? I guess they’d condemn the bear in that case. “Goddam bear.”

But to do so is to engage in anthropomorphism, “the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object” (according to my Mac’s dictionary). Bears know no morality. They are not the kinds of beings who can be immoral or blameworthy. If a bear eats someone because she’s hungry, she isn’t vicious. She’s just doing what bears do because they’re built that way.

I recall an episode of a TV legal drama in which a gentle man becomes violent and starts to hurt people. He’s arrested. Eventually, doctors discover that he has a brain tumor that has somehow altered his personality and caused him to be violent and erratic. I thought, “yes, I get it. This tumor changed the guy into someone who could not help having uncontrollable violent impulses.” And so he was violent.

I figured, “great, they’ll just remove the tumor and send him home.” But no. In this drama, the case became a real puzzler. People debated the man’s responsibility for his attacks. In the end, a judge decided to convict the man of his crimes and send him to prison. As I recall, she said something like, “if we don’t hold this man responsible for his actions, how can we hold others responsible for theirs?”

To me, this just seems confused. In the story, we were led to believe that anyone who had such a tumor would be caused to do what this man did. Suppose that’s true. Then it wasn’t the man but the tumor that accounted for his violent behavior. Indeed, in the story, the man had a long history of being moral and nonviolent. So, if we need to subtract the tumor from the man, we can do that, and when we do, we have a man, a moral agent, who is not violent or immoral.

It seems to me that many people refuse to reflect about when people are or are not responsible for their actions. Often, they seem to gravitate to a very simple picture: you have a man and you have his action. He is responsible for his action. End of story.

I’m amazed that such people don’t regard gophers and bears and infants in the same light.

Maybe they do. Good Lord.

"Goddam brat!"

• • • •

I have never understood the concept of free will. I want to understand it. I want to believe in it. But what sort of thing is it supposed to be?

Among those who believe that we humans are "free agents" and that we possess a will that is free, some will insist that their conscious decisions are the occasion and the phenomena of freedom.

If so, then a recent study should give them something to fret about. Several months ago, the journal Nature Neuroscience published a German study that involved people performing actions while hooked up to some kind of MRI. The study seems to show that, several seconds before subjects make a conscious decision, the "brain" has already made one.

From the Boston Globe (Free will? Not as much as you think):

"It seems that your brain starts to trigger your decision before you make up your mind," said the study's lead author, John-Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute ... in Germany. "We can't rule out free will, but I think it's very implausible. The question is, can we still decide against the decision our brain has made?"
...
Employing both functional magnetic resonance imaging and pattern recognition statistical techniques, the researchers were able to predict which button people would choose before they made their conscious decisions—as much as 10 seconds early, "an eternity," Haynes said.

Haynes believes that delay suggests the absence of free will as most people define it.

The physical brain apparently starts shaping the decision long before the conscious mind does. He speculated that the frontopolar cortex encodes the decision, while a section of the parietal cortex stores it and coordinates the decision's timing.

The study does not settle the issue of whether there is free will. But, for those who suppose that their conscious decisions are the captain of their ship, things aren't looking very good right now.

• • • •

If Haynes is right, then conscious decisions are epiphenomena—that is, each is "a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process" (as my Mac dictionary would have it).

Think of a futuristic robot (Ralph) that seems and behaves exactly like a human being. Ralph is a deterministic mechanism—that is, like my Mac (more or less), Ralph is a system in which nothing happens by chance; everything is programed and caused.

Ralph is not, however, sentient (i.e., he has no mental life).

Suppose that a clever engineer finds a way to modify Ralph so that he does have a mental life. Thus, now, he no longer only seems to think and feel; he really does think and feel.

But Ralph's new feature amounts to a series of epiphenomena. That is, the thoughts and feelings and decisions of Ralph's "mind" do not cause anything. In fact, the older mechanism within Ralph causes his thoughts. And so Ralph imagines that his decision to lift his hand caused him to lift his hand, when, in fact, his mechanism caused both the lifting of his hand and his "decision" to do so.

Does Ralph have a free will?

Blade Runner: "I've seen things"


Aristotle argued that we are responsible for our character because our character forms through habit. A young person who continually "does as the courageous person does" will grow accustomed to behaving in that way; he will develop a firm disposition to stand his ground. But it works for vice, too. A young person who is allowed to (and allows himself to) run away whenever something fearful arises will form a disposition to run away. His cowardice—his disposition to run away—will be of his own making.

As far as it goes, this makes a great deal of sense and is, I think, insightful.

For those who are inclined to press the question of how it is that a person is responsible for his actions, this account promises some answers. If John runs away like a coward, we can attribute that to his cowardice (his disposition to run away), and since he chose the actions that, repeatedly performed (owing to his choices), led to the formation of that disposition, he is responsible for his cowardice.

But this does seem to raise a puzzle. We have asked, why is John responsible for his cowardice? The answer: he chose the actions that led to his cowardly character.

OK. But what is the nature of the "self"—the John—who chose those actions that are now at the bottom of our explanatory scheme? We cannot refer to character, since we've already appealed to these actions to explain character.

So just what is this self then? Isn't it something that reveals character by its choices (of actions)? How could it be otherwise? But now we're just going in circles, for we are appealing to character to explain actions that explain character.

Suppose that one ends one's efforts to explain moral responsibility there. If so, then I suppose that one must regards the "self" that makes the choices (that develop the character that issue in actions for which one is responsible) as a kind of "character" that just comes into being: a given, a brute fact. The self is not responsible for the "character" of this original self. It just is what it is.

Does it make sense to view responsibility in this stark way? If someone is born bad, does it make sense to hold him responsible for being bad? (Surely not, unless we have an account of how this entity that is born is the way it is because of some process that occurred previously [now we're getting metaphysical!] that includes some way that the self is responsible for how he ends up being. We seem to be in an infinite regress here.)

We do seem to think in that stark way sometimes. We are told that child molesters are almost always the product of child molestation. When I hear this, a part of me thinks: it is not at all clear to me that we can hold someone responsible for their pedophilia if that aspect of their personality is virtually guaranteed by their having been molested as a child.

And yet we seem not in the slightest bit reserved about condemning and loathing pedophiles.

Same goes for sociopaths. If they are born that way (as we seem to be told), how are they responsible for their sociopathic ways? How does this work exactly?

And if we are willing to hold Dexter responsible for just arriving in this world a sociopath, why not hold animals responsible for what they are and what they do? And infants?

(Compare with G. Strawson: Living without ultimate moral responsibility.)
'

Human folly is so very entertaining

After many years as a teacher of “critical thinking” (I hate that phrase, but what are you gonna do?), if one thing is clear to me, it is that it’s easy to make mistakes when judging about causation, i.e., X causing Y.

Most people grossly underestimate these difficulties.

Not long ago, I spoke with a highly intelligent colleague (known for being sharp) who explained to me that he takes his horses to a chiropractor. I gave him a look. He said, “No, really. I’ve taken horses to this guy and the adjustments really work.”

If there were a course called “Causation 101,” among its targets would be the old “it works for me” (or “it works for Trigger”) rationale. No doubt it would be discussed along with the famous “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (after this, thus because of this) fallacy.

Just because A happens (Trigger gets tweaked), then B happens (Trigger eats more hay), doesn’t mean that A caused B. Right?

Yeah, but there’s a pattern. A then B, A then B. What about that!

I won’t launch into the whole lecture. I just want to make the point that, unless you study the fallacies concerning causation carefully, you’re very liable to commit them.

The truth is that the history of humanity is a history of people coming to believe things—ideas about causation included—on poor or nonexistent grounds. Example: two hundred years ago, doctors purged and bled patients. In fact, they were killing them. But this didn’t lead to much skepticism about purging and bleeding.

History (including the present) is littered with examples of poor causal thinking and unfortunate and erroneous causal believing.

But here’s the kicker. It’s not as though someone has gone through society with some kind of anti-virus program, spotting and fixing all the causal goof-ups. We are tempted, I think, to view society as a place in which, more or less, reason rules, and glaring folly has largely been identified and discarded. But nothing could be further from the truth. I often tell my students, “Go anywhere and point in any direction. It would be amazing if you were not to find yourself pointing at some instance of routine foolishness.”

In a way, journalism amazes me by how bland it usually is. It seems to me that one need only enter some random building and one will find something absurd or alarming.

Imagine that we point at the world of sports and athleticism. There, one hears endlessly about the importance of “stretching.” We listen to this and think, “Guess so. They’re the experts.”

But if people can find a way to puke and bleed themselves to death while supposing they’re on the road to health, then they sure as hell are capable of believing just about anything about stretching. I mean, it’s not as though anybody’s really studied the matter.

In yesterday’s New York Times, Filip Kwiatkowski asks Is Stretching All It’s Cracked Up to Be?

Kwiatkowski first notes that trainers (et al.) are very passionate about the issue of stretching. That is, they are very sure that stretching is important—something you'd better get right.

But, in fact, advice about stretching is remarkably different around the world: “In Norway, people stretched after they exercised; in Australia, they stretched before exercise.” Further, the nature and purpose of stretching differs. In some parts of the world, athletes stretch to prevent soreness, but that’s not why people stretch in this country.

But it sure is important.

Something doesn’t add up here. If stretching is so all-fired important, how come people don’t agree on when to stretch and how to stretch and why to stretch? Tell me that!

Well, two large studies have been launched to try to get to the bottom of this. You can read about them in the Times.

I have my doubts about these studies. I don’t think this “stretching” business will get cleared up right away—not based only on two studies, even if they are large (they are). One hopes that further studies will be done and results compared. In time, the truth will emerge.

In the meantime, think of all the fallacies that will be committed, all the conclusions jumped to, all the misconceptions and passions generated.

Humanity is so very entertaining.

Gotta go. I need to take a quick walk. It's good for the digestion. Everybody knows that.
'

The lives of moral soldiers

Here in Orange County, our newspapers are dying. The Orange County Register is resorting to desperate measures, including cute dog and baby contests.

Naturally, lately, they’ve been yappin’ about our local Olympic athletes—we have quite a few—including a young swimmer named Amanda Beard. Evidently, Beard has done some posters for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Well, good for her, I say.

Today, the Reg has suddenly turned on Beard, breaking the BIG STORY that her volunteer work for PETA maybe isn’t so impressive after all (Can Amanda Beard have her leather and eat it, too?). It's a new low for the Reg.

The breathless reporter asks: “Did Amanda Beard, the raised-in-Irvine Olympic swimmer whose unclothed curves flesh out a new animal-rights advertisement, pull a 180?”

You can see the poster above. (These kids today.)

Like other PETAphiles, Beard has expressed her disinclination to wrap the coats of dead animals around her. She opposes “fur.”

So here’s the breaking story: “as recently as last September, interviews reveal, Beard expressed an undying affinity for clothing made from cowhide.” Also, evidently, 18 months ago, she told someone that she plans to be buried in her favorite leather sandals.

• • • •

If you’re a vegetarian or an animal rights person, then you are familiar with this phenomenon. For some reason, otherwise pleasant and reasonable people suddenly turn into yelping jackals—er, yelping Hannities—when they think they’ve detected some sort of inconsistency or hypocrisy in an animal welfare advocate.

What’s the matter with them? Were they born in a barn?

Worse, sometimes, they’ll openly ridicule those of us who refrain from eating animals out of concern for their welfare. They’ll grab a cold cut, hold it high, and shout, “oh, the baby pig, the poor baby pig! Watch me now!” They’ll gobble it down and laugh.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this. I weary of it.

Let’s get back to this swimmer. I know nothing about her, of course.

She’s pretty young—26 years old. Recently, someone’s explained to her just what is done to animals to produce fur, and she’s horrified by that. (I’m just supposing.) But, of course, she may assume that other animal products, including leather, are produced more humanely, which is why she singles out fur. For many animal products, that is probably correct. For others, not so much.

And so, for all that we know, she is not hypocritical at all.

Further, she may think (I don’t know) that she is on a long road toward living a life that better harmonizes with her values, including her humaneness. The truth is that one cannot suddenly arrive at the end of that road overnight. Those who attempt that usually fail. And so, possibly, she is starting down her road by condemning a particularly gruesome form of inhumaneness—the fur industry—while, say, attempting some sort of semi-vegetarianism. You’ve got to start somewhere.

I’ve known many people who have viewed themselves as being on this road. If they stay on it for any length of time, they'll come to understand that they can never entirely disconnect their lives from animal exploitation and abuse (or, for that matter, from human exploitation and abuse). That is a hopeless goal.

They may even realize along the way that one's concern for animals is a concern for them, not a concern for one's own moral purity. It is really an immature thought, the thought that being humane means having no personal connection with inhumaneness. To care about the pain and suffering of beings is not about oneself. It is about those beings. One who attains some sort of causal purity with regard to animal exploitation and inhumaneness may suppose that he has attained the moral heights. No. He is a soldier in a solitary foxhole, disconnected from the war.

Suppose instead he or she has made an effort over time to get others to think about these issues; she has persisted in efforts to pass and popularize legislation that helps animals. Slowly, progress is made. (In fact, that is occurring.)

Such a person might spend much less time on moral purity. Hell, she might not even be a complete vegetarian.

She might even wear leather shoes.

But, relative to the cause—that is, relative to improving the lives of animals—she is the more valued soldier.

I know nothing about this Amanda Beard (aside from the photo above!). But I will be very impressed if, twenty years from now, we can look back at her continuous and intelligent involvement in the larger effort to lessen the horrors we perpetrate on non-human animals.

If, when we look down at her feet, we are surprised to find on them those silly leather sandals, we can shrug and smile and briefly note the complexities and ironies of the lives of moral soldiers.
'

Administrator bans classroom discussion of the war!

It’s been five years since the sorry episode described below. In subsequent years, VPI Dennis White, the villain of our tale, proved to be essentially a good guy, even if he is an abject fool-born muttonbean. (He was let go a year or two ago.)

I found the Shakespearean insults on one of the many sites devoted to such things.

This piece (somewhat edited) is from Dissent, April 14, 2003. It was originally entitled

“How many pinheads can dance at the head of a college?”

March 27, 2003:

OK, so there I was in the lounge, fixin’ to go to the Irvine Valley College Academic Senate meeting, when Rebel Girl slips me a copy of a memo that had been sent to deans earlier that day by one Dennis White, our Vice President of Instruction.

I read it. It said:

It has come to my attention that several faculty members have been discussing the current war within … their classrooms. We need to be sure that faculty do not explore this activity within … their classroom unless it can be demonstrated, to the satisfaction of this office, that such discussions are directly related to the approved instructional requirements … associated with those classes … College personnel are … encouraged to explore their views … outside … the classroom. Again, however, the exploration of those reviews [sic] within … the classroom is professionally inappropriate…

“Good Lord!” I said. “This memo is sayin’ that we can’t talk about the war in class unless we clear it with Dennis Freakin' White!”

The memo instructed deans to “advise…faculty and staff members of the position of this office.” That sounded pretty official.

Wow. We hadn’t seen anything like this since April of ’98, when then-President Raghu Mathur forbade discussion of district politics in the classroom!

Meanwhile, down the street at UC Irvine (my alma mater), the Chancellor was urging students and faculty to discuss the war in class and elsewhere. But of course! College administrators around the country were encouraging polite and peaceful discussion of the war in class.

Not at IVC. Nope.

Thou beslubbering dismal-dreaming ratsbane!

Who is this “Dennis White” anyway? Why, he’s our dapper new VP of Instruction. I recall first meeting Dennis, last November, outside Saddleback’s Library 104, on the night of his appointment. He seemed like a nice guy, so I filled him in on the recent history of our district.

When I finished, he paused; he thunk; he assured me that he wouldn’t do anything indecent or illegal.

I said: “I hate to break it to you, but if you’re a decent guy, you’ll be gone within a year.”

A coupla weeks later, I saw White again at a Humanities department meeting, at which time he answered someone’s question by telling a story. To this largely feminist audience, he explained that, as a young man, he dropped out of high school and joined the military, whereupon he discovered the difference between officers and enlisted men, namely, the officers’ cars were better and the officers’ wives were “prettier.”

Eyebrows arched skyward.

White realized, he said, that the officers had sheepskins (“That’s the ticket!”), and so he decided then and there to further his education. After his military stint, White, that seeker of spiffy cars and pretty women, snagged an A.A., then a B.A., then an M.A.

Maybe White noticed some community college administrators and their “wives and cars.” So he went out an’ snagged some Education degrees, including a doctorate.

* * * * *

In early January, White showed up to his first IVC Academic Senate meeting, launching his practice of standin’ and speechifyin’. He referred to the turmoil that has beset our district. All that stuff, he said, amounted to mere “politics.”

Now, one can describe our district’s infamous disquietude in many ways. But White, standing before a group of faculty, chose to describe it as faculty “antagonizing” administrators and the board.

That such remarks plummeted to earth entirely escaped the little fellow’s consciousness. He closed by asking faculty to send him, via email, their “dreams.”

A few minutes later, I emailed the fellow my dream that faculty be accorded their appropriate role in college and district governance. I outlined the unfortunate facts, shared governance-wise, about our district. I noted that our “turmoil” concerned substantive issues. I suggested that the culprits, turmoil-wise, were, not the faculty, but administrators and trustees.

In an email, White responded by warmly thanking me for my note and then accusing me of foully trying to draw him into my beef with administrators. He closed by alluding to his success at every institution where he has served.

Where’s that? Why, until January of this year, White has spent his administrative life at Antelope Valley College, in beauteous Lancaster, California, where, as Dean of Fine & Performing Arts, he presided over about 16 full-time instructors and some cactus.

Thou impertinent fen-sucked horn-beast!

March 27: Immediately after my encounter with Rebel Girl, I headed for the Senate meeting—with Wendy, another senator and a close friend. Along the way, I described White’s memo. She laughed. She asked if I was joking.

During the meeting, which White attended, the Senate Prez bemoaned the failure of junior faculty to participate in governance, owing to fear. He sought ways to overcome the problem. Some senators suggested that the fears are reasonable. Wendy then cited White’s memo as the latest in a series of threats to faculty.

White defended his memo. His point, he said, was that faculty, except in some areas, shouldn’t be expressing their opinions about the war in the classroom.

Ted, a PE coach and Vietnam War vet, explained how discussions of the Iraq war can arise even in his courses. Others made reference to our “academic freedom.” That sounded pretty reasonable, but White was unmoved.

He commenced lecturing us about “history.” According to White, the Supreme Court has considered whether faculty have a right to academic freedom. According to the Supremes, said White, they don’t.

Thou puking dismal-dreaming dewberry!

Friday morning, I contacted my pal Marla Jo at the OC Register. “What’s up?” she asked.

On Saturday morning, an article appeared in that paper entitled, “Irvine Valley bans talk of war.” According to the article, “Faculty members at Irvine Valley College were banned this week from discussing the Iraqi war in classrooms, unless their course touches directly on the conflict….” According to the article, White says that he was responding to “student complaints.” He says he wanted to “protect” students from the “personal opinions” of faculty. He suggests that, in class, faculty should stick to their subjects.

Naturally, editors at the L.A. Times were plenty steamed that the lowly Reg had beaten them to this sexy bannage story, so, on Sunday, they scrambled to out-do their rival, interviewing just about everybody in Orange County.

That night, over a plate of GB’s wondrously excessive pasta, me ‘n’ Wendy made predictions. “They’re gonna dig in their heels; you watch,” said Wendy.

“Nope,” said I. “They’re not that stupid. They’ll back off.”

“Wanna bet?”

* * * * *

The Times article appeared the next morning. It covered the same ground as the Reg piece, but it also sported IVC Prez Glenn Roquemore’s seemingly equivocal attempts at damage control:

…[C]ollege President Glenn Roquemore said the memo was “not a ban” and that the college respects the faculty’s academic-freedom rights. Though Roquemore didn’t rule out any disciplinary action [!], the memo “doesn’t say you’re going to be disciplined and thrown out of your job,” he said. “The memo has little effect, it’s certainly not official, and it’s subject to further debate.”

Not official? Little effect? Academic-freedom rights? Having read that, I figured I’d won the bet.

But Rocky went on to explain—and apparently to endorse—what White “meant” to say:

“I believe [White’s] memo was really meant to say, ‘Please talk to me before you enter into a conversation with your students, unless it’s in the context of a political science class’”….

D’oh! According to Rocky, therefore, unless an instructor teaches Political Science, he IS obliged to run things past White before talkin’ about the war.

To be fair, Rocky did throw in the word “please.”

The Times also quoted staunch Mathurian apologist, and Accred report bowdlerizer extraordinaire, Ray Chandos, who sought to minimize the problem. Chandos “thought the memo was a case of ‘an administrator who received a complaint from a student, wrote a memo and hoped the situation would go away.’”

* * * * *

Also on that Monday, Reuters, the news service, ran a story entitled “California college war talk ban stirs debate.” There, White explains that the limits he imposed on discussion and opining in the classroom are “attempting not to limit academic freedom or limit discussion but to define a framework for the discussion….” Oh.

White went on to say:

War is very different to the people who are fighting and the people who are at home. I was just trying to make sure our faculty are sensitive to the type of students we have.’’

Which “type of students” do we have? The ones at home, right?

I don’t get it.

Perhaps White’s point is that the studentry comprise diverse groups, and we ought not to reason in class in a manner that offends one or some of these groups.

Does this mean we should avoid discussing natural selection and the problem of evil, abortion and the Big Freakin’ Bang?

White adds “that students at the community college, many of whom have relatives fighting in Iraq or families trapped there by Saddam Hussein, should not become a ‘captive audience’ to teachers.” He means, I suppose, that students should not be forced to listen to teachers’ opinions when those opinions offend them.

But aren’t there importantly different kinds of opinions? Some opinions are mere opinions, but others, including some that offend, are much more than that.

Isn’t that obvious?

* * * * *
According to the Reuters article, the American Association of University Professors “has had several reports of incidents across the country in which state officials or communities tried to curb war talk….” In each case, says an AAUP spokesman in the article, “administrators resisted public pressure to limit campus speech….”

In each case, that is, except ours.

The phenomenon of community pressures to limit professors’ speech about the war on campuses even made the front page of the New York Times (“Professors protest as students debate,” 4/5/03).

There, IVC gets a brief dishonorable mention. But of course!

Thou villainous rump-fed lout!

The Reg, Times, and Reuters articles incited a media frenzy-ette. By Monday afternoon, the TV people—Fox, KCBS, KMEX, etc.—descended upon our little college, spillin’ wires and has-been reporters all over the lawn. Faculty were invited onto radio talk shows (KABC’s Al Rantel). Al Jazeerah’s website (jazeerah.infoNews) ran the Times article under the title: “Neo-McCarthyism.” Saudi Arabia’s decidedly anti-Bush Arab News ran the article.

Meanwhile, NEAR (Network for Education and Academic Rights) weighed in, and the AAUP formed a special committee to monitor IVC. Academics from near and far (U of Redlands, Cal Arts, Riverside Community College, etc.) wrote to condemn White’s memo.

An administrator at Glendale Community College sent the Times article to faculty, adding that “banning classroom discussions of the war and other controversial topics is not the way” to approach the phenomenon of students who are upset by discussions of the war.

* * * * *

Amidst all this, Dennis White issued a 2nd memo (uh-oh), in which he explains that he “strongly support[s] the concept of academic freedom.”

But what about his claim, made just four days earlier, that the Supremes say there ain’t no Academic Freedom?

And how exactly does his “strong support” for Academic Freedom square with his muzzling of faculty?

According to White, a “faculty member had spoken his personal views on the war effort,” and this resulted in student tears. In an effort to “recognize” the “diversity of the student body,” which includes students of “Middle Eastern backgrounds,” White “issued guidelines,” he says, that attempt to “define the proper context of” discussions of the war.

How does a policy that muzzles speech recognize student diversity? What does the poor fellow mean?

What many of us at IVC wanted to know, of course, was whether White’s “guidelines” obliged us to secure White’s approval before discussing the war! We wanted clarification about this pre-approval business, and memo #2 sheds no light on that at all.

On the other hand, in the Times, Rocky seems to endorse pre-approval. Despite his guff about the memo not bein’ “official” an’ all, Rocky was, in truth, endorsing bannage and muzzlage.

Thou froward fat-kidneyed joithead!

In the article that appeared in Tuesday’s Chronicle of Higher Education online, Roquemore again denies that the memo is “a new official policy.” “This college certainly approves of discussions about war by faculty and their students,” he is quoted as saying.

He’s saying, of course, that faculty get to discuss the war all right, but not in the classroom.

According to the Chronicle article, White “stands by” his memo. He explains that it would be appropriate to discuss the war in a political science or a cultural anthropology class, but not in a mathematics class.

Now, what does it mean when a guy like Dennis White says he stands by his memo? That’s hard to say. Maybe he’s sayin’ that he’s hungry or that his feet hurt.

In the Chronicle article, White steps deeper into dictatorial doo-doo. According to White, even in “courses where the war is a reasonable topic for discussion, professors should refrain from stating their personal views.” Further, White’s concerns aren’t “limited to the war.” For instance, it would be “problematic,” he says, for a criminal-justice instructor to express his opinion about the death penalty.

In other words, in the classroom, opining in general is verboten.

Thou fobbing fool-born skainsmate!

To my amazement, the Times editorial that appeared on Tuesday largely supported White:

[A]t Irvine Valley College…, the administration issued a heavy-handed warning to professors to avoid spouting their views on the war during class and to stick to their approved lesson plans. [Lesson plans? This is college, Bub, we don't need no stinkin’ lesson plans!] Here, common sense largely favors the college’s administration. Faculty members can be forgiven for overreacting to the memo; the Coast Community College District [sic] has a miserable record on free speech [that’s about me mostly, but also the students, who got fitted for a muzzle by Mathur]…Into a campus thus primed for a free-speech battle, …Dennis White dropped a poorly worded memo…The document…provoked immediate faculty cries to protect academic freedom. This time, though, campus administrators are within their rights.

On Thursday, the Irvine World News expressed a similar view, though it suggested that administrators and students over-reacted.

Meanwhile, at least one paper called White’s edict “un-American” (The Bakersfield Californian, 3/31/03).

OK, Bakersfield doesn’t count.

Thou errant half-faced nut-hook!

In an article appearing in the Irvine World News on Thursday, Roquemore suggests that the notion that White “banned all discussion about the war” resulted from “misinterpretations” of his memo. Contrary to critics, he suggests, faculty at IVC are free to express their opinions all over campus. It’s only in class, when they are teaching, that they gotta clam up about the war.

Rocky assumes, of course, that faculty interpret White’s memo as a ban on discussions of the war anywhere on campus. But no one interprets it that way. The faculty complaint is that the memo bans discussion of the war in class.

It is true, of course, that the media keep referring to White’s “ban on war talk.” But the reason that they do not bother to add “in the classroom” is that, when you think college, you think classroom.

Duh!

According to President Rocky, even when discussion of an issue is related to course content, “teachers have an obligation to present the various sides in a balanced manner….”

Does this mean that, in class, I may not suggest that the Holocaust occurred unless I also refer to the contrary view and arguments of Holocaust deniers? That’s absurd. Well-trained academics know that some “sides” are not worth presenting. Sometimes, from a logical point of view, only one “side” (e.g., “the Holocaust occurred,” “the earth is round”) is worth presenting.

Roquemore goes on to offer a sophistical understanding of opining. Offering an opinion, he suggests, is tantamount to “disseminating one’s personal sense of truth.”

Really? If a biology instructor offers her assessment of, say, punctuated equilibrium, she is offering an opinion. But only a lout and a ratsbane would suppose that she is thereby merely disseminating her personal sense of truth!

Perhaps Rocky and his friends are thinking of the merest sort of opining—opining unencumbered by reasons. Or perhaps they object to opinions that are mere whims or matters of taste.

Is that what one intends when one judges a war to be right or wrong—the expression of one’s tastes or whims? Obviously not, Mr. Pumpkinhead.

Or perhaps the Rockettes object, not to opining, but to forceful opining that muzzles disagreement.

If that is what they mean, then they should express their view more clearly. They ought not to say that “discussions of the war” and “opinions” are inappropriate in the classroom.

Thou jarring guts-griping pignut!

On Thursday, in yet another memo (yikes!), Rocky attempted a clarification of White’s original ban. Here, he repeats White’s theme of the need for “sensitivity” to some students (those from the Middle East and those who have family serving in the military). According to Rocky, White’s purpose in the memo was only to “encourage faculty to use professional discretion in discussing the war in order to protect the integrity of the curricula and the students’ right to a course-related education.”

Upon reading this memo, GB unearthed a nicely framed photograph of Richard Nixon and handed it to me, saying, “You’ve clearly won the bet; you’ve won the Nixon.”

I said, “I want this Nixon. I do. But I don’t get it. Haven’t I lost?”

Meanwhile, in his column for the Times, columnist Dana Parsons came down firmly on the side of academic freedom.

What better place than a [college] to discuss something as vital as war and its inevitable global consequences?…Is there anything more important nowadays than the war in the Middle East? Its potential to affect so many aspects of American life…cuts across all disciplines. With the war on TV 24 hours a day, it’s unrealistic to expect students not to have it on their minds. Does that mean a week’s worth of chemistry lectures should be shelved to talk Iraq? Obviously not, but let’s trust our college instructors…to know how much is too much. Inevitably, some teachers will…rant and rave…but the students will survive it. At day’s end, they’ll at least have had their minds challenged, if not their patience…[T]hey’ll realize down the road that they were part of a great debate of the modern age. Those discussions aren’t likely to happen with Mom and Dad, and they’re not likely to happen on Friday night dates…At a time of war, the classroom is a great place to be.

That pretty much nails it. And Parsons almost never nails anything.

Thou rank dread-bolted wagtail!

April 10: There I was at yet another Senate meeting, along with VPI Dennis White. Item 10 was White’s “bannage” memo.

When we got to that item, I spoke first. Addressing my comments to White, I noted that one can glean a philosophy about faculty classroom speech from White and Roquemore’s various memos and media interviews. I identified its elements.

I asked White if this philosophy has any standing in the operations of his office.

I then noted that the President had said that he was “investigating” cases in which faculty discussed the war in class, producing tears and whatnot. (I should have also mentioned that Roquemore “didn’t rule out any disciplinary action” in those cases.) I asked whether these faculty were being called in by administrators and whether the philosophy was being applied in their cases.

White answered that he could not talk about meetings between administrators and faculty regarding this issue, owing to confidentiality. He noted, however, that he was “satisified” with those meetings.

Regarding the status of his bannage philosophy, White said that there had been enough talk about it—it had been discussed all over the country—and he was not going to comment on it further.

To some, White’s remarks were unsatisfactory. One instructor suggested that it is “hogwash” to suppose that only Poli Sci instructors have occasion to discuss the war. Others also explained how reference to the war naturally occurs in their classes.

One instructor reported that White’s memo had a “chilling” effect on some instructors, who said they were now afraid to refer to the war in class at all. Another instructor suggested that Roquemore was trying to have it both ways: he seemed to agree with the memo and yet he also seemed to disown it.

Someone motioned that the Senate seek clarification about the administration’s policy regarding academic freedom, about faculty opining, and about discussion of the war in particular.

White then suggested that, if faculty ask for clarification, they might not like what they get.

Good Lord. That freakin’ Dennis White doesn’t have a brain in his head. Naturally, his remark raised eyebrows. Some senators viewed White’s remark as a threat, they later explained.

One instructor suggested that, as things stand, for all that she had been told, the bannage philosophy could be wielded against faculty now. It is better, she said, to be clear about the rules than to wonder whether one is somehow violating them.

The motion failed by one vote.

Thou yeasty boil-brained fustilarian!

On the 6th, the Times printed my response to their unfortunate editorial. A former student—he was a Marine at the time, he said—read it and then emailed me to express his anger and his support of Dennis White. According to this former student, I have chosen to defend “anti-American” professors who are “Saddam enablers.” He based this assessment of the professors on the fact that they are criticizing our President and the war. Evidently, in his mind, professors ought not to do that in the classroom.

I also heard from a UCI professor who included a quotation by Teddy Roosevelt that I rather like:

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Bully! —RB (CW)

The issue eventually faded away without resolution. Still, the atmosphere at the college has much improved, and I don't think that faculty believe that White's "ban" is in effect. These days, faculty and Roquemore are more or less on the same page. The locus of difficulty is the Chancellor's office.
'

Why morals cannot be rooted in religion

Many people assume that morals are rooted in religion, that, somehow, God authors morality. We hear this sort of thing from some theologians. We hear it, too, from popular figures such as Dennis Prager (if I understand him correctly). In any case, in the public forum, speakers feel unburdened by the need to defend the idea.

Meanwhile, ever since Plato, philosophers have been aware of a great difficulty encountered by any view that regards morality as somehow authored by God.

The problem might be described as follows. Suppose that we say that “stealing is wrong” because God forbids stealing. Our point is a philosophical one: we are saying that the answer to the question “Why is stealing wrong?” is simply that God forbids stealing. (Similarly, “charity is right” because God commands it.) This view is supposed to reveal the true and ultimate nature of morality, or at least this particular part of it.

A theist no less than a scientist (or philosopher) seeks to maximize the coherence (and truth, etc.) of his or her views. (That’s why scientists are disinclined to take, say, homeopathy seriously, since it describes phenomena—dilution making a medicine stronger—that run contrary to empirical evidence.) He or she would be irrational to do otherwise. Now, theists within the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions understand the universe as a creation of God. In general, God is the author and creator; he is subservient to nothing. If so, then, naturally, God is the author of morality.

Not so fast. Again, suppose that stealing is wrong and that God forbids stealing. And suppose that one now insists that the nature of the wrongness of stealing is simply God’s forbidding stealing. That is, as with all “values,” God is the author of the wrongness of stealing. Of course! It is not as though God had to consult a book or fact outside of Himself to understand this! He is subservient to nothing!

Let’s go with this. One implication of this view is that, had God forbidden, say, kindness, then being kind would be morally wrong. As it happens, God does not forbid kindness, but had He done so, then kindness would be wrong. That is, kindness easily could have been wrong, but, as it turns out, it is not wrong, since God does not forbid it.

This point is often expressed by saying that, if God is the author of morality, then what is moral or immoral is arbitrary—it only happens to be what it is; it could have been far otherwise.

Essentially, Plato made this point 2,400 years ago in his dialogue Euthyphro.

But wait! (you will say). God would never have forbidden kindness (or commanded cruelty), for God is good. Indeed, he is perfectly good.

Perhaps so, but one who embraces the view that morality is “whatever is commanded by God” is not entitled to make that point. Again, as thinkers, we must seek, among other things, a coherent set of beliefs. And if one contemplates the matter for a moment, one will realize that, if “rightness” is simply obedience to God’s commands, then goodness (i.e., consistently doing what is right) must boil down to consistently obeying God’s commands. Thus (given the “divine command” theory), to say that God is good is simply to say that God consistently lives by his own commands.

If so, then God’s goodness is pretty unimpressive. After all, even a genocidal murderer might consistently live in accordance with his commands. To be resolute is not impressive or admirable per se.

Note also that, if one says that God would never demand cruelty (or forbid kindness), one is portraying a universe in which there exists some standard outside of God that God adheres to. But the whole point of the divine command theory is to answer the question “What is the nature of morality?” If, now, we say that God is adhering to some standard outside of Himself (according to which he would never demand cruelty), then we have abandoned our theory in favor of its alternative: that morality is a standard that exists outside of God.

But, of course, the idea that morality is this kind of extra-Divine standard rubs hard against the notion of God as the Creator, as subservient to nothing.

The theist has a big problem. And so he/she might take refuge in the embrace of the divine command theory. But if he does that, then he embraces a conception of the universe according to which morality is arbitrary. It is what it is, but it could easily have been something utterly different, including something that would appall us. In an important sense, on the DC theory, morality is meaningless.

(Oh, Dennis, you blowhard, you!)

I often tell my students the tale of a society that embraces a morality that is carved upon impressive stone tablets long ago discovered in the “sacred forest”—tablets that now stand erect at the center of the Great City. (This is a Republican society.)

One day, some explorers who are wandering through that forest make a terrible discovery: they find another set of impressive tablets, then another, then another. They are very old. They seem to date back to the time of THE ancient tablets in the city center.

The problem is that each set of tablets contains an utterly different set of imperatives. For instance, one set commands that we be cruel at all times.

To understand the horror of this discovery—the terrible aspect of unhingement that it casts upon "our values"—is to understand the problem, for the theist, in embracing the divine command theory.

Some theists respond to this problem by simply embracing it. They do so at a great price, for, now, they embrace a world view according to which morality is arbitrary and God should be honored, not because He is good (remember: God’s goodness is mere self-consistency) but because—what? Because he can punish or reward us? Might makes right?

Understandably, some theists plunge themselves onto the other horn of the dilemma, rejecting the divine command theory. (They must now explain morality in some other way. For instance, following Immanuel Kant, they might argue that the commands of morality are actually the commands of reason. They might take the emotivists’ route, etc.) They do this at the price of diminishing the traditional notion that God is the Creator who is subservient to nothing.

That’s pretty bad, but what is the alternative?

In my view, for over two thousands years, the burden of proof is on the theist to explain his apparently groundless notions that both (1) morality is “what is commanded by God” and (2) morality is not merely “might makes right”; it is compelling in a way that allows it to be worthy of respect.

Good luck, my friends.

In the meantime, let's not tolerate the peculiar assumption that to be moral one must be religious.
'

My 15 minutes, part 2

December, 1998:

(Again, this is a tale (part of a much larger saga) about corrupt politicians and corrupt faculty.)

During yesterday’s episode, our hero (moi), the author of a satirical newsletter (Dissent) that criticized Irvine Valley College President Mathur, our district’s corrupt union, and the district trustee board majority, was informed that, via distribution of said newsletter, he was violating the district’s “workplace violence” and it’s “anti-discrimination” policies. Further, he was ordered to receive anger management counseling!

This was communicated to me in letter and in person by Chancellor Cedric Sampson, but the material and ideas behind all of this came from IVC’s president, Raghu Mathur—who, of course, was the board majority’s darling toady.

By then, despite his staunch Republicanism, Raghu already had a long history of playin’ the “race” card, when convenient. At various times, dating back to long before my entrance into district politics, Mathur claimed to receive threatening and racist email, voicemail, and snail mail. (It is worth noting, however, that, during a 1999 deposition, he acknowledged his inability to document any of these alleged “threats.” I’m certain that he never received a one.)

The notion that I was tormenting Christians stemmed from Mathur and Co.’s amazing ignorance. When later deposed, Mathur and Sampson acknowledged unfamiliarity with Pat Robertson’s right-wing political organization “Christian Coalition.” So, since I have never criticized Christians or Christianity (in the newsletters or anywhere else), I could only surmise that the Ignorami Twins had mistaken Dissent’s one or two snide references to this right-wing political organization for a criticism of Christianity and Christians.

My so-called racist term for Mathur was “Mr. Goo,” which, according to me, was an allusion to the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, but, according to Sampson, was a reference to the racist term “gook.”

Mathur hails from India where Hindi is spoken. It turns out that, in Hindi, “guh” (or “goo”) means “excrement,” a fact that, months later, district lawyers gleefully seized upon. It was news to me.

In the lawyers’ view, I guess, if you call a guy “Mr. Shit,” you’re a racist. I don’t get it.

El Ced’s (i.e., Sampson’s) disciplinary action was based specifically on six newsletter elements, the most celebrated of which appeared in a piece about a 1998 trustee candidates’ debate:

[The political debate] started with a reading of a prepared statement by [the absent Nancy] Padberg in which she offered the usual bland campaign promises … Padberg also spoke—er, wrote—of the need to bridge the “gap” between the warring sides in the district. Evidently, she believes that the sides can come together and be pals again—perhaps by means of a carefully planned Halloween party. I don’t think so. I, for one, have etched the name of [union president] Sherry “Realpolitik” Miller-White and others of her ilk on my permanent shit list, a two-ton slate of polished granite, which I hope someday to drop on Raghu Mathur’s head. (Dissent, 11/2/98)

I figured that was funny, not threatening. Another element was some laughably lurid “crime fiction” artwork, depicting a hatchet murderer and sporting the words: “Crime: Tales of the Back Door Gooster”—i.e., tales of Mathur’s crimes. Another was the acronym MAIM (“Mathur-Milosevic Academic Integrity Matrix”), used by Dissent contributor Red Emma to liken Mathur to the Yugoslavian dictator. Yet another was a still from an old science-fiction movie concerning “downsizers.” This, said Ced, was evidence of my “obsession with weaponry.”

The Chancellor ordered me to meet with him in his office, where he informed me of my “violations.” (The letters were already in my file, contrary to district policy.)

After the meeting, my then-lawyer, Bill S., who had accompanied me, was stunned by El Ced’s stupidity and unreasonableness. Bill wasn’t sure what I should do. He looked at me and asked, “Would you be willing to go to the counselor?” I looked skeptical. He added: “Don’t be buyin’ a Ferrari or anything. Save your money.”

So I got help from Carol Sobel, a well-known Santa Monica-based First Amendment attorney (suggested by Rebel Girl). Carol and I immediately sued the Chancellor on First Amendment grounds. I alerted the media, initiating yet another PR nightmare for the Board Majority, which now comprised Frogue, Williams, Fortune, Wagner, and Padberg. (Get this: our corrupt union had gotten Wagner and Padberg elected [in ‘98], despite W&P’s membership in a group that had written that year’s union-busting proposition! No, I’m not making this up.)

Probably, the Dark Side expected me just to soften Dissent. In truth, a week or so before I received the letter, I had told friends that I was abandoning the newsletter, not out of fear, but out of a sense of the unseemliness of assuming personal risks when my colleagues, judging by their persistent silence and inaction, were, with a few exceptions, unwilling to assume even the slightest risk in combating the Dark Side. I found a towel and threw it in.

But now I was a First Amendment poster boy. The Dissent continued. There was no turning back.

Our strategy: to win a “summary judgment.” Essentially, you win a summary judgment when the judge thinks a trial is unnecessary cuz your opponents have bupkis.

I suppose the district just expected me to cave, ‘cause, when we sued them, they seemed to recognize that they had nothing, and so the district’s lawyers commenced sniffing around for anything they could find. Using declarations solicited from Raghu’s unsavory Old Guard and classified allies, the district concocted a case for my being the district bully, the cause of all recent districtular difficulties, including the Accrediting warning.

There was no one who believed these things. The district was just playing hard ball.

The flim-flam flopped. In March of ‘99, Federal Judge Nora Manella, calling the Chancellor’s action against me “Orwellian,” issued a preliminary injunction, declaring the six newsletter items to be “protected speech” and enjoining the district from wielding the two policies to restrict speech and from enforcing the counseling order.

Manella next set to work on her ruling regarding the summary judgment.

The case was then handed off to Federal Judge Gary Feess (of subsequent DNC and Ramparts fame), who, finally, in October of ‘99, granted the summary judgment in my favor, arguing that my speech was “protected” and that the counseling order was improper. In Feess’ view, both district policies were unconstitutional “as applied,” but the workplace violence policy was also unconstitutional on its face (i.e., it was intrinsically unconstitutional). We had not expected—and, frankly, did not need—the latter “facial” ruling.

In court, Feess ridiculed Ced’s “threat” malarkey. “No reasonable person,” declared Feess, “could have concluded that [Bauer’s] written words … constituted a serious expression of an intent to harm or assault.” He especially derided Ced and Goo’s granite slab worries.

According to Feess, it was “hard to understand what administration was thinking” when they took the action against me. He opined that Mathur’s direction to me (in an evaluation) to “make things nicer” seemed to him to be a possible violation of the First Amendment all by itself. “It’s a college campus.” If you can’t “speak your mind” there, he asked, then where?

Contrary to the district’s lawyers, said Feess, there was no evidence that I was responsible for the district’s problems.

In response, the district’s lawyer, David Larsen, insisted that some faculty (Sherry Miller-White, et al.) feared voicing their opinions because of me, but Feess judged those fears to be “beyond reason.”

“But,” said Larsen, “this is an individual who has been involved in face-to-face threats”! He was referring to the hilarious and hysterical Old Guard declarations, which were mostly fabricated, partly paranoia.

Feess wasn’t buying it. Said he, “That was never a basis which was given in 1998 and that is an after-the-fact attempt to shore up what was a plainly inadequate basis for the discipline.” He added:

I understand that a lot of people would like to do business behind closed doors, that they would like to make decisions that they don’t have to explain, that they would like to come to conclusions and judgments and issue policy without having anyone present to listen and hear and to understand and therefore to make rational, powerful, criticisms of them. That’s just too bad under our system…And if people are afraid of going to meetings and speaking up because … they’re going to be the subject of criticism in a publication, that’s…just life under the First Amendment… I just think this is a case where that concept, a legitimate concept [“workplace violence”], is being stretched for the purpose of taking a vigorous critic of the administration and the board of trustees and trying to keep [him] quiet.

Carol was awarded $127,00.

Next thing I knew, the Board filed an appeal, which meant, among other things, that Carol wouldn’t be getting paid any time soon—and the letters would remain in my file for the time being. (These letters are crucial to any firing action.)

A year and a half passed. The appellate hearing—at the 4th Court of Appeals, in Pasadena, with Rymer, Hawkins, and Gould presiding—finally occurred in May of 2001. The judges heard oral arguments; they then conferred and produced their opinion.

The hearing was frustrating. Larsen, evidently driven to desperation by the poverty of his case, distorted and invented facts.

The discussion largely focused on the constitutional status of the district’s workplace violence policy in particular, which, again, Feess judged to be unconstitutional, not only “as applied,” but facially. Right away, Judge Rymer objected to the vagueness and oddness of the policy insofar as it referred to “violence overtones.” On the other hand, she could not see, she said, how the policy was unconstitutional on its face: why not just delete the problematic phrase?

Larsen struggled to defend the relevance of the district’s highly convenient after-the-fact declarations. He argued that the six elements needed to be viewed “in context”—namely, my angry and violent conduct, as revealed in Woody and Glenn’s [laughable] declarations and Larsen’s impromptu courtroom fabrications. I had caused district employees—Sherry—to be “very frightened,” said Larsen. (For what it’s worth, that’s just not so. And, today, I don’t think you’d be able to scrape up anybody who would testify to this.)

Carol, always at her best in such settings, noted that, to qualify as truly threatening, an instance of speech must be unequivocal and immediate, threatwise. My speech, she argued, did not come “within a mile” of that standard. Concerning the six elements, the judges seemed to agree. But, asked Rymer, hadn’t I actually gone to individuals and threatened them?

“What are you referring to?” responded Carol. Carol knew that Larsen was distorting and exaggerating what appeared in the briefs and declarations.

Rymer seemed willing to concede that my expressions had been satirical and not violent. But, she asked, how can the whole “workplace violence” policy be unconstitutional on its face? “I just don’t get it,” she said.

Judge Gould spoke; he seemed to have his doubts even about the policy’s unconstitutionality as applied. Maybe the “college” needs its day in court, he said.

Things seemed to be going badly, I thought, but then Judge Hawkins, who had said nothing, ended the hearing by asking Larsen a series of revealing questions:

Were any of these alleged threatening incidents cited in the original disciplinary actions?

No, admitted Larsen, but they were “the backdrop” of the action.

“Really?” asked Hawkins. No references to these incidents were made in the disciplinary letters?

No, admitted Larsen, but, he added, you’ve got to consider “context.”

Hawkins then asked if I had done anything physically to anyone.

Well, no.

Had I brought a weapon to school?

No.

Did I have any history of violence, of shoving, anything like that?

No.

Did I have any history of arrests or confrontations?

Nope.

The judges issued their judgment in August. Hawkins, representing Rymer and himself (i.e., a majority), wrote the ruling.

Essentially, I prevailed: Judge Feess’ judgments were upheld, with one exception: though the district’s policies are both unconstitutional as applied, in the appellate court’s judgment, the district’s workplace violence policy is facially unconstitutional only in part. Wrote the court:

[Bauer’s] writings and illustrations were prepared during a traumatic time for IVC and the District…The Accrediting Commission attributed the turmoil partially to OC’s financial troubles and primarily to a four-to-three split on the District’s Board of Trustees… [Bauer] voiced his disapproval in a campus newspaper called “Dissent.”….

We agree with [Feess’] analysis that the policies were unconstitutionally applied to Bauer because “though at times adolescent, insulting, crude and uncivil, [Hey!] Bauer’s publication focuses directly on issues of public interest and importance.” We also agree with [Feess] that Bauer’s statements were not “true threats” and that the District’s rights as an employer were not impermissibly burdened by Bauer’s expression….

We agree with [Feess’] holding that although Bauer’s writings have some violent content, they “are hyperbole of the sort found in non-mainstream political invective and in context…are patently not true threats.”

Within the larger context of the turbulent IVC campus community, the conduct alleged by Sampson does not transform Bauer’s expression into “true threats.” We agree with [Feess] that there is simply no way a reasonable reader would have construed [Bauer’s] writings and illustrations to be “true threats,” even if that reader were aware of all of the other conduct alleged by Sampson [my emphasis]….

In light of the Accrediting Commission’s report…, it can hardly be said that Bauer was the source of the disharmony on IVC’s campus. IVC and the District were going through a contentious period—Bauer’s commentary on these troubles may have raised awareness, but the expression certainly did not cause them…[A]nyone who has spent time on college campuses knows that the vigorous exchange of ideas and resulting tension between an administration and its faculty is as much a part of college life as homecoming and final exams….

[Judge Feess] correctly ruled that [the district’s workplace violence policy] is unconstitutional on its face because it prohibits speech with violent ‘overtones’ that falls short of being threatening. However, the…court erred in holding that the entire workplace violence policy is facially unconstitutional…The…court correctly ruled that the Board’s policies on racial discrimination…and workplace violence are unconstitutional as applied to Bauer.

Carol was awarded about $200,000 in fees, to be paid by the district. No doubt the district has already spent much more than that for their unsuccessful defense.

The press took some interest in the victory:

The Times, August 16, 2001:
College District Loses Appeal in Discipline Case

A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a lower court decision that the South Orange County Community College District chancellor acted unconstitutionally when he disciplined a professor for criticizing the administration in satirical newsletters.

“It’s a victory for free speech and for those willing to report honestly about the incompetence and misbehavior of people in positions of power,” said philosophy professor Roy Bauer. “I certainly hope the chancellor and the board learned a lesson, but judging on past behavior . . . they will continue to run the district into the ground.”

But the court ruled that U.S. District Judge Gary Fees went too far in ruling the community college district’s workplace violence policy unconstitutional. Bauer sued after Chancellor Cedric Sampson in December 1998 ordered him to seek anger management counseling and placed a disciplinary letter in his file. Sampson also said Bauer violated the district’s antidiscrimination policy.

Bauer sued, and Fees ruled in his favor in October 1999. He awarded Bauer’s attorney, Carol Sobel, $127,000 in fees and costs. With interest and the fees from the appeal, that figure has grown to around $200,000, Sobel said.

David Larsen, the district’s attorney, said the board of trustees will have to decide whether to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I don’t think part 3 will be necessary. Maybe a quick wrap-up. We prevailed, of course. Carol got paid and I saved my job. The Dissent continued, went on hiatus for a while, and then returned as Dissent the Blog, again, with Rebel Girl.

Then there was the time that Mathur sued me! —Well, that can wait.
'

My 15 minutes, part 1

This is a story about right-wing Neanderthals, greedy and petty faculty, and the harm they can do.

I was hired as Irvine Valley College's sole full-time philosopher in 1986, just about when Attila the Pup died. For a long time, I stayed out of campus politics, including the politics of the district (the South Orange County Community College District). At the time, the SOCCCD had a sterling reputation.

Things changed in late 1996. In November, our corrupt faculty union had used deceptive and homophobic fliers to secure the election victories of "fiscally conservative" trustees Steve Frogue and John Williams, as well as challenger Dorothy Fortune. A fourth trustee (out of seven) was also in their pocket, but she was not then up for election. Thus it was that a group of corrupt and ruthless faculty gained control over the board of trustees, and, consequently, over the entire district.

(The following account was written in 2001. I edited it slightly:)

...During this early period [i.e., 1997], I produced and distributed several satirical newsletters at IVC. By early ’97, my chief publication was called the ‘Vine. By mid-1998, the ‘Vine had been largely replaced by Dissent, distributed unevenly, district-wide. By then, Rebel Girl (Lisa Alvarez) was my partner in crime. (An English teacher, she was and still is my office mate.)

By design, the newsletters, to which several writers contributed intermittently, emphasized one overriding district truth: that a gang of greedy and disgruntled faculty had made a pact with four opportunistic little devils—the Board [of trustees] Four—and, together, this crew was razing everything worthwhile that had been built.

It was difficult keeping up with the Dark Side’s crimes, hijinks, and peccadillos, but we gave it the old college try. Some people thought we were makin’ things up, what with tales of pants-droppings, loogie assaults, neo-Nazi rallies, gay-bashing, secret bank accounts, secret trustee discussions, Holocaust denial, and all the rest. In reality, we were tonin’ down the facts, worried no one would believe them in unmitigated form.

‘Vine/Dissent was a hit. Early on, readers sent me “thank you” notes, cash, writings, and suggestions.

In ‘97, for PIO, the district hired Pam Zanelli, who functioned as a political consultant and flack for the Four, or so said the Three [i.e., the board minority]. Zanelli was the “professional” who, only months earlier, urged her then-clients, the faculty union Old Guard, to use the “same-sex domestic partners” gambit to get Frogue, Williams, and Fortune elected and protect “life as we know it.”

She has a haystack on her head (big hair).

Naturally, what with the addition of a full-time Board Majority propagandist, some of us began talking to the press more often, givin’ ‘em the skinny. By early ’97, I (along with a few other rebels) had become adept at puttin’ local news hounds on the scent of stories that, invariably, embarrassed the Four, the union Old Guard, and Mr. Goo [IVC President Raghu Mathur, a key member of the corrupt faculty union]. Zanelli’s transparent spinnage was a weak force in this universe.

Mostly, all we had to do was point reporters in a certain direction. We didn’t have to add anything; they’d make their own sauce.

Our success with the press had nothing to do with bias. Hey, if, over time, you never lie or exaggerate or cry wolf, people start trusting you. That’s the secret, but it only works if you’re on the side of the angels. Rat Bastards need to hire people like Zanelli.

But Dark Siders naturally assume that everybody’s a lyin’, manipulatin’ piece o’ sh*t. Inevitably, to such people, if you get your side, your story, across to the public via the news media, you must be pullin’ a fast one somehow.

• • • •

“Oh, get out of here!…You couldn’t find ... more embarrassing conspiracists in America. Even among conspiracy theorists, these people represent the outer limits.”

—Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, commenting on trustee Frogue's “experts”

• • • •
Some truths really ought to be revealed, especially when they concern the fate of hundred million dollar chunks of taxpayer cash. The Board Four’s breathtaking intellectual incompetence was such a truth.

On the morning of the August 18, 1997, board meeting, a colleague alerted me to board agenda item 13. It said

Several speakers have been invited to participate in [board president Frogue’s Fall] forum on the JFK Assassination. Expenses for travel, accommodation and/or honoraria are estimated below:

Sherman Skolnick: Not to exceed $1,500.00
Dave Emory: Not to exceed $1,000.00
John Judge: Not to exceed $1,000.00
Michael Collins Piper: Not to exceed $1,000.00

“Hmmm,” thought I. “Isn’t Piper the boy reporter for Spotlight?”

I made a heads up call to the ADL’s Joyce Greenspan, telling her what I knew about Piper, namely, that he worked for Spotlight, the nation’s #1 anti-Semitic newspaper, published by the nation’s #1 anti-Semite, Willis Carto. I advised her to look into Frogue’s other speakers too.

That night, Joyce addressed the board, informing them about Carto, Spotlight, and Piper. She explained that Skolnick, another Frogueian guest, was on Spotlight’s advisory board. Joyce urged the board not to approve item 13.

Frogue responded by explaining Piper’s theory—how the CIA and the Israelis conspired to kill JFK, etc. Piper’s theory, like dozens of similar yarns, is based on poor scholarship and dreadful reasoning. That is why it is not taken seriously by scholars. That is why Frogue’s “forum” was wrong for SOCCCD. Colleges should have standards.

The anti-intellectual Four understood none of this. They happily approved item 13, thereby demonstrating their utter incompetence.

The next morning, I phoned the Times’ Michael Granberry. Two days after that, the front page of the Times roared: “O.C. College Course Claims JFK Conspiracy.” Granberry’s article, which was picked up across the country, revealed that Frogue’s “experts” were pots so cracked that they even embarrassed world crackpottery. Thus it was that, for a day or two, our board and district became a national joke, an object of fun and frettage among Arianna Huffington, George Will, and the rest of American political blabbermouthery.

For the Featherbrained Four, it was an embarrassment of Biblical proportions. They had no one to blame but themselves.

While the “JFK Assassination” fiasco—and resultant recall effort—raged, our Brown Act lawsuits (Anthro professor Wendy Phillips, now Wendy Gabriella, was one of the attorneys) moved through the courts. [The board had repeatedly violated the "open meetings" law, and we asked them to cut it out. Nothing doing.] Late in ’97, Superior Court Judge Macdonald ruled in my favor in “Bauer I,” as it was called. By late ’98, it became clear that Judge Seymour would do the same in “Bauer II.” Despite Zanelli’s endless haystack spinnage, the Four were getting slaughtered, PR-wise.

A coupla weeks after the trustee election of November 1998, I published a lengthy guest column in the Sunday OC Register, revealing anew the ugly truth about our swine and their union piglets. Despite its relatively high profile, the article probably did more to catch parakeet droppings than to win hearts and minds. Still, it must have infuriated the Four.


Maybe it was just a coincidence, but, a few days after the column appeared, without a hint of warning (contra board policy), I received a letter from Chancellor Cedric Sampson informing me that, in his opinion, I had violated the district’s “workplace violence” and “discrimination/harassment” policies.

Evidently instigated by Mathur, the letter, which (contra the contract) was already in my personnel file, claimed that I had been (a) making life miserable for faculty of the “Christian religious experience,” (b) using a racist term to refer to Mathur, and (c) publishing violent and threatening things in my newsletters.

In a follow-up letter, I was ordered to seek counseling.

“Good grief,” I said.

In part 2: my federal court battle, more Brown Act battles, students sue the district, the Prince of Darkness arrives, etc.

SEE My 15 minutes, part 2
/

Without data, we only have a bloke*

"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants." —Chuckles the Clown (Mary Tyler More Show)

Now, lots of folks in academia claim to teach "argumentation"—how to argue. But they aren't always teaching the same things.

It has long struck me as odd that, while philosophers teach their students that facts about an arguer are irrelevant (this is the essence of their teachings re the "ad hominem" fallacy), writing and speech instructors often seem to teach the opposite, for they make a great point of the importance, for the writer or speaker (the arguer), of presenting himself in a certain way: as reasonable, knowledgeable, etc.

The explanation of this difference, of course, concerns the different purposes these people have. The philosopher/logician seeks the truth and thus teaches students how to seek the truth. Hence, he focuses on evidence and reasons—what writing instructors call "logos" or the "logical appeal." He is not concerned with "pathos" or "ethos"—i.e., the emotional appeal or the appeal that derives from how the writer presents himself.

Writing instructors, however, are more about effectiveness (or persuasion) than truth, and so, for them, "logic" is just one tool among several. For instance, if you want to convince your readers of something—say, that John McCain is too addled to be President—then, assuming they aren't very logical (usually a safe assumption), you'd be a fool to offer mere logic. Reasons and evidence? Most audiences will become bored with that; they'll walk away. Better get out the blooper reel. (See Why we need rhetoric.)

Philosophers, as philosophers, are happy to have people walk away. They want to know the truth, and knowing the truth has nothing to do with having lots of eager listeners or readers. (Indeed, folks who seek the truth invariably become very nervous when their ideas become attractive to others.)

Roughly speaking, writing instructors are unhappy when the audience (or the "reasonable" among the audience) walks away. And so they spend a good deal of time talking about the importance of presenting yourself properly, i.e., effectively. (Ironically, writing and speech instructors can trace their body of theory to the writings of a philosopher/logician, but one who held audiences in low esteem. See Aristotle's rhetoric.)

Um, but if your readers buy that, they're committing a fallacy, right?

—Oh, absolutely. Great. Now show us Obama Girl!

A recent column by Ben Oldacre (in the Guardian: Testing the plausibility effect) concerns what happens when audiences focus on how a speaker presents himself (ethos) without focussing on his evidence and reasons (logos). He notes the case of a Dr. Somebody, an impressive government advisor, who claimed to have done a study that showed that a recent spate of suicides all lived close to a mobile home mast. After a few phone calls, Oldacre determined that Somebody wasn’t a doctor, wasn’t a government advisor, and he had lost his data:

Without data, we have only a bloke. Week in, week out, we see apparently scientific claims being made in the newspapers with great confidence, as if they were based on evidence, when in reality they are based on nothing more than authority, and often from one man. This is because science is communicated to the public by journalists, who sometimes have no understanding of what it means for there to be evidence for an assertion. They are impressed by enthusiasm, long words, by a PhD, a white coat, or a medical qualification. [My emphasis.]

Oldacre recalls an experiment performed in the early 70s. Researchers hired a man to play the role of an authority “on the application of mathematics to human behaviour.” In fact, the man knew nothing about the subject. They gave him an impressive fake CV. They had him give a presentation at an academic conference on medical education. His lecture and Q&A was filled with “double talk, jargon, dubious neologisms, non sequiturs, and mutually contradictory statements.”

The lecture was a hit. They tried the charade several times. They always got the same result.

My advice? Let's start teaching students what is relevant and what is not. We're drowning in illogic.

* * * * *

[Thomas Hobbes] maintains that the establishment of ethos is an irrelevance not merely in the natural sciences…but in the moral sciences as well. His translation of Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric accordingly omits the entire section in which Aristotle speaks of the crucial importance of taking steps to make a good impression on one’s audience.

—From Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, Quentin Skinner

“A second type of … argument is the speaker’s character, not only as established by his reputation, but also as conveyed in the speech itself. Most orators agree that one’s character is the most potent weapon in one’s rhetorical arsenal.”

—From A Brief Summary of Classical Rhetoric, made available to students at Harvard

*This post is a slightly edited version of something I wrote recently for Dissent the Blog (Without data.)

.

I am surely a dolt—or no?

There is the fact that I am here, seated by the fire, attired in a dressing gown, having this paper in my hands…. And how could I deny that these hands and this body are mine, were it not perhaps that I compare myself to certain persons, devoid of sense, whose cerebella are so troubled and clouded by the violent vapours of black bile, that they constantly assure us that they think they are kings when they are really quite poor, or that they are clothed in purple when they are really without covering, or who imagine that they have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass! —Descartes’ Meditations

I’ve been thinking about this “last lecture” idea that’s going around. What would I say in such a lecture?

I would talk about the absurdity of our beliefs. What else?

I might talk about “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” You’ll recall that, in the tale,

An emperor …[unknowingly] hires two swindlers who promise him the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth, they tell him, is invisible to anyone who was either stupid or unfit for his position. The Emperor cannot see the (non-existent) cloth, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing stupid; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they dress him in mime. The Emperor then goes on a procession through the capital [to] show off his new "clothes." During the course of the procession, a small child cries out, "But he has nothing on!" (Wikipedia)

For me, the tale is best if we emphasize, not the Emperor’s semi-belief that he is naked, but, rather, his less semi worry that his perception that he is naked is somehow mistaken, thus exposing him, in his mind, to being revealed as a fool (for supposing he is naked when he is in fact clothed).

The story loses fascination, too, if we suppose that everyone else is pretending to see clothes that are not there out of fear of contradicting the Emperor. Fear of offending the Emperor is not interesting. Our capacity to believe things that defy what our eyes plainly see—now that’s interesting. In my mind, the peasants don’t miss a beat. Right away, they see the clothing. They cheer happily.

And the child—he (or she or it) hasn’t learned how to deny and complicate his own perceptions in the way that the adults have. (Not sure about the ministers, those sycophantic rat bastards.)

So, for me, it’s a story about epistemological innocence or purity. The adult peasants aren’t just going along with a charade; they are corrupted thinkers. The process of seeing what is not there happens so quickly, so naturally, that they are no longer aware of it.

In a way, it is a strange world that we are describing. What a bizarre story! And yet, in a way, it is not strange at all. Obviously, people are complex, are capable of learning all sorts of subtle and peculiar games with perverse twists and turns. Why not the weird epistemological game?

OK. I’m saying that this is our world and we play this game. My message? —Resist being another corrupted thinker. Duh.

Some will say, perhaps, that I have simply stated the obvious. Yes, they will say, that is the way it is. We knew that. Haven’t you read Orwell? People's beliefs are messed up. So what?

If you will say this to me, then I am surely a dolt, for I swear to you that the people I encounter all day long really, truly seem to me to believe, and not just to semi-believe, that “our nation is just and good,” that “the people are wise,” that “the jury system is the best system,” and that “the Administration would not lie to the people about so grave a matter as war.”

Really, I feel a great embarrassment at the thought that, despite how people clearly seem to me, I have utterly underestimated them, for (you will now insist), in truth (Roy, you knucklehead you), people actually do understand that our nation is often callous and arrogant and stupid, that most voters are clueless, that election campaigns struggle for the hearts and minds of the irrationally impressionable, that it would certainly be better to train jurors about fallacies and sophistry, and that the President and his people are certainly capable of lies and deceptions.

Good Lord! It isn't just the likes of me? Everybody recognizes this crazy hell game world?

Wait a minute. Nope, I ain’t going there. Nice try!

I know what I see.

.