University suspends lecturer in racism row

[Caligula]

Gosh. What a bizarre man. \link{http://education.guardian.co.uk/racism/story/0,,1738570,00.html\guardian story here}

But as Real Women, we can accept our inner Girlie

Now, who wants to be Diana to my Anne of green gables?

Oh, go on then. As long as I can avoid being Ruby-who-dies-of-consumption.

Koolkat, you are more dignified than me.

Indeed, koolcat.

Rightho, I'm off to colour my hair green and put too much sugar in the peas!

I find most...oh all, actually...DominiConnor's posts incomprehensible. Must be because I'm a ditzy scatterbrained Arts grad.

Monkey - "Hobbesian ruthlessness" ? Only us arty farty students understand what you are talking about in your last post

Yes, Darwin talked about survival of the fittest. Unfortunatly if you put any of my former bosses in a jungle, they would survive, eh...all of 2 minutes !

How would they be able to "hunt and gather" for food without their wives and 24 hour nannies ?

Me, I understand nothing. I'm just an ickle-wickle girlie arts graduate with an 'easy' PhD...

Oops... rising to the bait there... must parp myself again...

Ellbell - humanities PhD ? Sorry love only a PhD in physics or chemistry or maths counts around here !

SorenLorensen, I found the same, ..must be having an English degree and heaven forbid Fine Art too!

LOL! Louisa May Alcott was childfree and hated little girls. She even admitted it later in life - after her book was famous, of course. She wrote it for money.

:o

I'm with Monkeytrousers that the City is venal. Did try quite hard to point out that competition drives people to make "fairer" decisions on employment, not any notion of morality.
My observation is that bigotry is not typically based upon the notion that group-X is inferior but an attempt to rig the game so that weaker people with political power can prosper. South Africa was a classic example, where degenerate whites were paid more than more useful blacks, and jobs were reserved for the poor little dears.
If you talk to people who are against immigration to Britain, they do not speak of a country with weaker people in it, but their fears of their jobs being taken away from them.
This is not confined to working class types, I hear this from professionals as well.
A common feeling amongst many who would style themselves of the "left" or "right" is that people sohuld stay in the groups into which they were born, be that geographically or culturally.

Kath1972 raises a valid point about my own experience as a white bloke in the City. I can't say she is completely wrong. My view is that the jobs I've had allow me to see how different types of people are treated in different places. To an extent, and I'm being careful not to use circular logic here, the groups that do not succeed also have problems getting an overall view.
If you don't get a particular job, then it's hard for you to know why you didn't, and even harder to judge how that employer treats others.

Thus any personal view is at least partly skewed.

I do know for a fact that senior people at banks have told me personally how little they care about race & sex as opposed to competence, and that failure to deliver good, as opposed to white male people will cost me money personally.
These are not always politically correct individuals, but they see themselves implicitly or explictly the opposite of a white S.African. They take personal pride in having beat others in a "fair" fight. "Fair" being defined as including trickery but not their race/sex.

In a spirit of full disclosure we have noticed a deep demographic gap between people with qualifications to enter investment banks for good jobs, and the gender of people working in these roles.
Very roughly, there are twice as many women studying finance in London as we observe working in it.
It's tempting to call this sexism, and as yet I can't disprove that assertion.
But when we look at people applying for postgrad entry level finance jobs the ratio of women is actually lower than for those already working.

I don't understand this at all, given that the obvious mechanisms, including sexism don't predict this at all.

I'm with Monkeytrousers that the City is venal. Did try quite hard to point out that competition drives people to make "fairer" decisions on employment, not any notion of morality.
My observation is that bigotry is not typically based upon the notion that group-X is inferior but an attempt to rig the game so that weaker people with political power can prosper. South Africa was a classic example, where degenerate whites were paid more than more useful blacks, and jobs were reserved for the poor little dears.
If you talk to people who are against immigration to Britain, they do not speak of a country with weaker people in it, but their fears of their jobs being taken away from them.
This is not confined to working class types, I hear this from professionals as well.
A common feeling amongst many who would style themselves of the "left" or "right" is that people sohuld stay in the groups into which they were born, be that geographically or culturally.

Kath1972 raises a valid point about my own experience as a white bloke in the City. I can't say she is completely wrong. My view is that the jobs I've had allow me to see how different types of people are treated in different places. To an extent, and I'm being careful not to use circular logic here, the groups that do not succeed also have problems getting an overall view.
If you don't get a particular job, then it's hard for you to know why you didn't, and even harder to judge how that employer treats others.

Thus any personal view is at least partly skewed.

I do know for a fact that senior people at banks have told me personally how little they care about race & sex as opposed to competence, and that failure to deliver good, as opposed to white male people will cost me money personally.
These are not always politically correct individuals, but they see themselves implicitly or explictly the opposite of a white S.African. They take personal pride in having beat others in a "fair" fight. "Fair" being defined as including trickery but not their race/sex.

In a spirit of full disclosure we have noticed a deep demographic gap between people with qualifications to enter investment banks for good jobs, and the gender of people working in these roles.
Very roughly, there are twice as many women studying finance in London as we observe working in it.
It's tempting to call this sexism, and as yet I can't disprove that assertion.
But when we look at people applying for postgrad entry level finance jobs the ratio of women is actually lower than for those already working.

I don't understand this at all, given that the obvious mechanisms, including sexism don't predict this at all.

Little Women is a sort of autobiographical story, but Jo is the character Louise May Alcott thought her father wanted her to be, and Mr March is the father she would have liked. In fact she felt very inadequate, and that her father disapproved of her. The 'Beth' storyline blames Jo for Beth's ultimate death, which is how she felt over the death of the third Alcott sister Elizabeth (if Jo hadn't been writing, then she would have gone to the Hummels, not Beth). I think it's a bit sad that she had to 'correct' her life in the stories. May Alcott (Amy) married a rich Parisian, and had a baby girl Lulu, but died 6 weeks after she was born, so Louisa brought up baby Lulu. Sorry for hijack!

I hated Little Women.

thanks for your hijack Tortoiseshell - v interesting abt Louisa May Alcott and her relationship to the books. BTW do you remember Joey on 'Friends' saying 'How little are these women? Are they, like, scary little?' Sorry about extra hijack!

perpetual hijack might just be the way to go with this thread!

Anyone see \link{http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,1745974,00.html\this} in today's Education Guardian?

Am a bit surprised by the implication that only those people whom Ellis actually attacks will find his views unacceptable.

The utter stupidity of some highly educated people astounds me.

I expect the Guardian only published it to cause controversy. I would sack him on the basis that he must be lacking in common sense. I bet if I wanted to I could devise a test that would 'prove' that people with freckles were extroadinarily good at making cheese souffles.

Hmmmmmmm, makes me think about the Patrick Harrington affair in the 80s in North London Poly - (now the Met. Uni?). Showing my age now.......

Harrington was outed as a member of the BNP. Students did not want to be taught with him, staff did not want to teach him. I seem to remember it went to court and court upheld his right to be taught, regardless of his politial affiliation/personal views.

How come the same does not apply to this lecturer? Personally, I think he is a nasty piece of work, but, why is he not entitled to continue to do his job, regardless of his personal views?

I think that part of the problem lies in the fact that students choose a univeristy on the strength of the credibility and reputation of the lecturers.If you were the chancellor of a uni, and discovered that sudents were avoiding applying to a certain course because they felt that the lecturere held views that would make it hard to believe they were being given full credibility as intelligent students, and / or that students were unwilling to put themselves in the hands of academics who stuck doggedly to discredited second-hand research?

Personally, he is entitled to his views, but here he seems to uphold the Bell Curve not because he has any academic research project which deems to explore it further, challenge or extend it, but that he has adopted it simply because it suports his personal political views. That, to my mind, is a dodgy and confused grey area.

ahem, I can't balme my own choice of uni for that unfinished sentence! 'What if you were chancellor.....?

Madameplatypus is right about the filtering by the Guardian.
I think we all know that if he's used equally stupid "facts" to support a left-wing idea like (say) Africans are X% smarter than white people he'd be in the Guardian science pages as a visionary, and If he'd found any theory that allowed the Guardian to write that Americans are X% more stupid than the average human, they'd offer him the position of science editor.

The same of course applies in reverse to rags like
the Daily Mail.

As for his notoriety, the idea that academics should be filtered by how media-friendly their views might be, that is plain scary.

My view of teenagers is that I'd expect applications to his university to go up. Controversy works for pop stars, why not lecturers ?

I'm not convinced that young adults are the impressionable little fluff balls that the press would have us believe.

Was quite entertaining to watch French academics comment upon the recent youth riots in France. The current crop of senior political professors were street fighters in the late 1960s fighting for change and social justice. They are intensely scornful of kids who want the status quo which robs the weaker elements of society of jobs.

Whatever view you have of the rights and wrongs of such issues we see little evidence that a lecturer of any political persuasion has that much effect upon the views of his students.

Try getting a senior position in an American Uni if your views are in any way anti-zionist! there are numerous academic websites dedicated to getting students to ascertain what is taught in the ME studies dept, surveilance of the activities, academic and otherwise of any lecturer deemed to be at all anti-Isreal OR pro Palestinian position.
I don't know whether this is censorship for political puropses, powermongering, or worry that students might be influenced - probably a mixture.

I also think it is a legitimate issue to write about in the Guardian or any paper, because it does raise interesting issues. You moight think that the same people who would deplore his views would also be the selfsame ones to worry most about academic freedom and free speech.

I don't think universities should hire or fire according to media credibility of lectureres, but academic credibility. If I was a chancellor, i wouldn't hire a geographer who believed the flat earth theory, or a physicist who based teaching on creationism (because for xample, it fitted his personal religious beliefs).

Wasn't there abig controversy a few decades ago about structuralism, and who was allowed to teach what where? Hardly a 'political' hot potato in terms of Guarian/Daily Mail concern - but an academic concern nevertheless.

I have to disagree DC. The Guardian, for all of it's fault's is not as reactionary as The Mail.

Certainly I'd agree the Daily Mail and Guardian are different animals. You don't agree with "reactionary" as a term for both, how about "highly selective of political views of the people they repotr on".

I defy you to find an article where the Guardian attacks someone in education for too much left wing bias, or the Mail for being too right.

But whatever the bias of the media concerned, I wouldn't sack an academic for anything other than the most flagrant incompetence or physical assualt upon students.
Maybe if he diverted a lecture on chemistry to one of the relative merits of different races, then I'd see a case, but I am resolutely against thought crimes, rather than actions.

Attacking the embedded views of those you teach is what education is about.