Academic Funding and SSHRC

The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada has launched a minor protest letter in the wake of the last federal budget. In its January 28 bulletin it gives a short nod to the federal government for increasing Canada Graduate Scholarships, but complains that of this money 40% is earmarked for NSERC, 40% for CIHR and only 20% for SSHRC, specifically for business related degrees.

Is this, therefore, a short-sighted capital infusion? The argument the bulletin makes is that SSHRC disciplines are responsible for generating (the very nebulous figure of) $700 billion of Canada's GDP.

If we put aside the irony of protesting getting more money (in a recession no less!) - just not as much as the next guy - I still think SSHRC is making the wrong case. The federal budget is targeting these programs because our economy is in trouble. I'm not suggesting social sciences don't contribute to the economy, but they are not usually considered decisive skills for turning profit margins.

Now just because you break your leg doesn't mean you shouldn't lose some weight. But let's be honest with ourselves: if you do break your leg, you want a cast or a splint - and if the doctor tells you at the same time you need to lose some weight, OK - fine. But if he pushes it too hard you say "go to hell", I've got a broken leg. Talk to me about it in 3 months. I've got a bit more on my mind right now.

And so does the Canadian economy. Academics don't have a divine right to public money.

Who Hurts the Most in Recessions?

Answer: the already poor, and especially the recently upwardly mobile. Recession economics aren't fair: the brunt isn't borne by the already wealthy and industrialized. America, and middle power countries like Canada, will continue to attract foreign investment because they are safe havens in turbulent economic times. They have proven track records, educated work forces and retain far more confidence than developing economies. Ironically in recession markets more money and investment, not less flows into the US - and it's coming out of the developing world.

Joe Clark - a once (Conservative) Prime Minister of Canada - argues the poor will feel this recession the worst for four reasons:

1. Private foreign investment plunges as investors look for "safe" markets.
   
2. Rich countries can borrow and run big deficits. Poor countries can't.
   
3. Aid budgets are the first to go, both in foreign policy and in NGO budgets. Sub-Saharan Africa can't unelect a a developed world government.
   
4. Remittance - money sent home from individuals working in rich countries - plummet (Remittances account for an astonishing 20-30% of GDP in Haiti, Bosnia and Jordan).
   

The real question: will Canada use its privileged place in the G20 to treat this global crisis as more than just a trade and economic issue?

Turning a CV into a Resume

Craving some classroom time?

A friend passed on an interesting link to Academic Earth, a repository of thousands lectures from people the site bills as the world's best scholars. 

It'd be interesting for everyone, according to their respective disciplines, to see if the big names are represented. For entrepreneurship, there are over 70o videos. Among them are a few hitters, but there's a regrettably high number of mid-level nobodies (and the poor scores of the lectures reflect that). Another disappointment is the single lecture in the category of religion. 

Thoughts on the site as a whole? Is it worth universities to try and use this as a tool to promote their allstar lecturers? What other applications could this have?

There Will be Blood

Or so says Niall Ferguson - Harvard financial and historical guru. The recession crunch is going to get much worse before it gets better, and the intensity of the seemingly short-lived "Buy American" scare is only the tip of the iceberg. It started yesterday when Abu Dhabi snapped up Nova Chemicals at bargain-basement pricing. Financial power is quickly moving to the world's creditors - often major sovereign wealth funds - and away from its debtors - us.

"It's revenge of the sovereign wealth funds. They got burned. And this time, no more Mr. Nice Guy."

This is a provoking interview with Niall Ferguson, one of North America's top public intellectuals, and I recommend it for a Tuesday morning read.

Grannie's Virtues

"Ah, for a little more Calvinism - and a little less, er, 'depleted moral capital.'"

Thus sayeth Ross Douthat in a good post on the paradoxes of capitalism. In the news these days, I'm constantly struck by the remedy offered to the economic plight we find ourselves in. The answer is: spending. And tax cuts to encourage spending. Now I recognize that there is much more going on, but I have yet to hear the majority of commentators comment on how saving, investment, frugality can be good things for the economy as a whole. In the short term we might feel the pinch, but in the long term we'll be healthier. Banks don't just put savings in mattresses after all. They make money by investing your money.

Thus, while I have my fair share of problems with them, it's time that we heard a little bit more from people in the Acton Institute, and a little less from the likes of the libertarians and socialist folk among us in our country. Or, perhaps I should ask: why not more Wellum on the airwaves?

We need a more virtuous bourgeoisie!

That's Not What I Heard

I was at a seminar recently in which a friend of mine was doing a presentation on journalism, religion and public life. I warmly recommend his book, which is an edited volume consisting of some rather helpful commentary on reading and enlisting religion in the public square: Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion.

Having done a bit of public policy and public life stuff myself, I asked him: how do you define religion? His answer was: context, context, context. Who are you talking to? What's your audience? What they mean by religion, is more important than what you mean.

Communication, he argued, is not about what you say; it's about what the other person hears. His example: if a journalist asks me whether I believe in the separation of church and state, I don't go into a long explanation about why I think life is religion; I say "yes."

And, frankly, so do I. Academics have the pleasure of making longer, more sustained arguments, in order to nuance the debate and its language. Public intellectuals don't. They use the tools at their disposal, best as they are, to make proximate points toward better policies.

I like what Lori Halstead Windham of the Becket Fund said recently at an event on human dignity. In our work we want two things: to reform and expand the public concept of religious freedom, and a win. But we'll take a win.

Empathy and the Life of the Mind

In conversation with a good friend this morning we discussed the fundamental importance of empathy in the life of the mind, in proper, coherent, generous and Christian thinking.

I argued that empathy - the capacity to inhabit another person's moral and intellectual horizons - is not mere dressing to life of the mind. The ability to hear someone out, understand their perspective, stretch your own moral and intellectual fiber to accommodate another is the first step.

I reflected at a talk recently on spiritual narcissism, a kind of intellectual and existential malaise which reacts violently out of the insecurity of our selves, our identities and beliefs which lacks the capacity to accommodate. In that context opposite opinion, different belief and disagreement become heresy.

Contra this I believe firmly in empathy, and in what Scott Thomas calls a rooted cosmopolitanism (the topic of future posts, and forthcoming dissertation chapters). But the important point I want to make - and hear response to - is this: empathy is the first step in the academic process. For me, this comes out of the fear of the LORD, and a grounded theology of common grace.

We've all met fearsome academics capable of spinning intricate logical webs - but who lack the capacity for empathy, to hear their interlocutor, and so have porcupine intellects: the quills are always out for an errant idea. I want to suggest these are not merely unpleasant people, they are bad academics, and a true, fruitful life of the mind - which draws us deeply into love of God and of our neighbour - begins with the "woolly" enterprise of feeling, and of empathy.

Wisdom and Apprenticeship

Calvin Seerveld says you can't teach wisdom, but you can catch it. It's contagious. Despite my commitment to academia, and universities, I profoundly agree - knowledge and skill are not passed on by transferring cerebral knowledge.

David Greusel writes a stunning piece in the last Comment. He writes, "it is imagined that if a sufficient quantity of correct thoughts about professional practice occupy a person's brain cells, that person is unquestionably qualified... I beg to differ."

Beg on, Mr. Greusel. You have my full attention.

Tracking global spending

The New York Times has a fantastically interesting visual representation of what people the world around are spending their money on, and how said spending relates to their neighbours. It's a tad dated (Sept 08), but still quite insightful.

What I would love to see is a similar chart showing philanthropic activity with a breakdown of what is given to who and how it shrinks/contracts during times of recession. How does this correlate to consumer spending? Do we see people in countries who typically consume less give more when their fellow citizens are struggling? Do certain donors (health care, poverty alieviation,  etc) see a relative increase when things get rough? Would there be any way to leverage this information to better drive donations?

Read the full article here.

Why I Hate Professors

OK - I don't. But Stanley Fish writes a very compelling piece about one of the most tiresome features of academia, and of the entitled attitude of the professorial class in particular.

I've been following - along with Fish it seems - the U of O prof Denis Rancourt who finally ran into problems, after awarding A-plus grades on a whim, turning classes into activism seminars and drawing persistent negative criticism. Rancourt is the icon of tenure gone awry.

Supporters of Rancourt (and there are many) cry foul at his forthcoming dismissal. The argument is that this represents fundamental academic freedom, freedom to the ideals of truth and justice and not to the "parochial rules of an institution in thrall to intellectual, economic and political orthodoxies."

Nonsense. Total, complete and utter adolescent nonsense. Fish argues this reasoning basically boils down to: "the university may pay my salary, provide me with a platform, benefits, students, an office, secretarial help and societal status, but I retain my right to act in disregard to its interests; indeed I am obliged by my academic freedom to do so."

Academics regularly claim a kind of privileged epistemological exceptionalism - a radical postie individualism which says I should not be constrained by any force outside my burgeoning ego and (most radically) this will somehow be for the good of all.

My visceral reaction to this is partly because I used to share this perspective. Moving into a think tank disabused me quickly - though not painlessly - that my cerebral might was both a) not God's singular gift to the world and, b) that this gift must be trained, apprenticed, put to use of the common good; love of God and of our neighbour. Sometimes this means you do less pleasant things (but what roofer wants to get up on the scorching roof on a summer day?), and sometimes it means you even do things that are outside of your "expertise" (a sacred sin in the academy - hence the consistent genuflection to "although I am not an economist/theologian/political scientist").

Wendell Berry argues that people would appreciate food, rest and land more if they became closer to the land, its rhythms and seasons. Maybe professors would be better professors if they became closer to society, to the folks that endow their chairs, to the businesses that contribute to their salaries, and the foundations that make their work possible.

Jubilee: Reflections

Friends,

Mere blogs will not suffice to express the profound gratitude I have to have attended - even spoken - at this conference. Jubilee is - without reservation - the finest, most thoughtful and most enjoyable conference I have ever attended. It is remarkable not for its academic rigor (it is popular), or merely for the wide array of professionals and public intellectuals it draws, but for the confluence of passionate, remarkable, thoughtful and deeply pious people it gathers.

If there is one conference you make room for, which occupies a most sacred spot on your calendar in forthcoming years that you may not miss, let it be Jubilee. In it you will not (mercifully) find the fine minutia of your discipline, but rather gathering crowds of young and old to the vision that Christ is Lord over every square inch.

To put it simply it is the most authentically neo-Calvinist convention I've been to. I was expecting stock American evangelicalism! I was so shocked by the end of the first night I commented to my colleague that it was like "showing up to a party where you don't expect to know anyone, and it turns out they're all good friends with your mother."

I will save my most persuasive and effusive comments for personal conversations - but make plans in 2010 to go. You will not regret it.

Bell Canada: How I Feel of Thee

Sentimental Jesus

In response to Q Prentice asking tough questions about God, Job and the experience of brokenness in the world I wanted to share a personal worship experience from this past Sunday.

At my home church we make Lectio Devina a somewhat regular practice, something I have embraced personally now for a little more than four years. On this evening we read the story from Mark 4 of Jesus calming the storm. Afterward the congregation shared their reflections.

One of the pitfalls of Lectio is that it necessarily focuses on a very small story or section of Scripture (also one of its strengths!). The reflections that were shared after this story basically came to: Jesus cares about us, he's in the boat with us, and he will calm our storms if we ask him.

These comments come out of good Dutch-immigrant axiom's I grew up with: God never gives you a load your shoulders can't bear; He never gives you more than you can handle; it's all to make you stronger (etc). Thus emerges a picture of a loving, but stern Father God who allows pain because it benefits us - personally, in some future-unknown manner.

I don't know about this. I don't know about this at all. Our pastor asked us what kind of images occurred to us hearing this story. Maybe I have a little "glass-is-half-empty" syndrome, or I study the dark side of international politics too much, but the image that came to my mind was: walking along Atlantic coastal villages in Newfoundland, with good friends, reading the plaques and memorials of ships that went down, all hands lost, at sea. "Poor bastards", I thought. "They obviously didn't get a calm sea like Galilee that day in Mark 4". My experience of the world tells me pain and suffering doesn't always make me stronger, it doesn't always benefit me or allow me new important insights on life and God - sometimes it hurts like hell, it doesn't ever make sense, it breaks us, and we die.

This is a bigger discussion: about judgment, about evil, about suffering, about God. But I don't want to get lost in academic and theological jargon to lose the existential heft. There is a real intellectual and emotional effort to be made by Christians to confess that God is indeed omnipotent, indeed all-loving, but that doesn't necessarily mean He's my personal go-to guy who's never going to let bad things happen to me. Just because Jesus is in the passenger's seat, doesn't mean I won't rear-end that Volvo. I believe the Dutch axiom that covers this is: Trust God, but lock your doors.

Brian Walsh and Polemics

Brian Walsh has a lot of good things to say. That said, Brian Walsh enjoys playing the role of the gad-fly which bites, draws blood and considers that a great victory. Like a gad-fly, I find him annoying. His contemporary lectures and talks have a useful role to play, but they serve, at best, as food to other, higher, creatures and at worst to spread pestilence. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I have very little use for people who -- even in rhetoric -- equate hell with Scripture. I consider the words themselves sacred after all.

Subversion of the empire is not what Paul writes about; it is what Brian Walsh loves to talk about with considerable bravado and as one who has the luxury of never having to deal with the hard choices that those of us in the real world have to make. It is certainly not good pastoral leadership to say to someone about to enter the public service, or who is considering running for public office to say "to hell with Romans 13". Should Namaan say "to hell with the Empire?" Or should he, as Elisha counsels him, "go in peace" even though he knows he will have to kneel before idols? Paul is writing about living as embodiments of kingdom of God, which is a very different thing than subverting the empire. There might be overlap between the two, but Paul does not write with the goal of subverting the empire. That's an anachronism and someone of his considerable intellect should recognize that. And to those who would say "it's just rhetoric" I would reply: it's not even good rhetoric. It's sloganeering mixed with a sneer.

Now, what I'm really interested in not so much to debate the usefulness of empire in discussions about the proper Christian response (Though I think we could have a good discussions about that here on this blog) but whether or not it's appropriate to respond with such fervor to such pieces of writing. Is it better to go the route of Yoda, or is there a place for polemics?

Australian Bushfires, Cormac McCarthy, and Job

I've spent the last few days working on a seminar paper that is a reading of Cormac McCarthy's The Road in light of the Book of Job. The task involved reading a very dark and depressing novel as well as a troubling biblical text. I finished it today at the school and thought, Well at the least the world is not as dark as McCarthy or Job seem to think; reading their struggles in the cold and dark make the world look brighter.

Then I came home to find that a my wife had been on the phone with a friend who had lost a baby and with another friend living in Australia where bushfires have killed over a 100 people, destroyed over 1ooo homes, and completely wiped out several towns and villages.

Margaret Avison, in her poem "Confrontation and Resolution, in Job," writes:

Hard-won are the words
we need to truly
converse with someone close
and yet mysterious to us.
(Avison 126)

I thought these words while I sat with my wife, unable to say them as comfort. I thought of all the words I put together carefully in my seminar. I thought afterwards of the ariel shots of the bushfires I looked up online. I read a section from McCarthy's novel again:

The days sloughed past uncounted and uncalendared. Along the interstate in the distance long lines of charred and rusting cars. The raw rims of the wheels sitting in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber, in blackened rings of wire. The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats. Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts. They went on. Treading the dead world under like rats on a wheel. The night dead still and deader black. So cold. They talked hardly at all. He coughed all the time and the boy watched him spitting blood. Slumping along. Filthy, ragged, hopeless. He’d stop and lean on the cart and the boy would go on and then stop and look back and he would raise his weeping eyes and see him standing there in the road looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle." (McCarthy 273)

And, here, now, I don't want to be too dark or gloomy but I think I have to go back and rework my seminar. Because Job and McCarthy aren't just there to show us, by stark constrast, how different our world is from theirs, but how their world is our world - and that there is an incarnate presence of grace herein. McCarthy's protagonist, in the midst of a burned highway (that very well could be a description of highways in Australia), looks up at his son and sees something holy in his child. Job cried out from an ash heap, screaming "I know my Redeemer lives!" Even though his world had been destroyed.

And, curiously, I just received Comment magazine in the mail: the Signs of Hope issue. And I read the bit by Cal Seerveld: "My own hope is a plodding, quiet, steady awareness of God's providing enduring grace through thick and thin en route during my life" (25). And I'm not quite sure what to make of all this coming in a whirlwind all in a day but it has.

I think I will feel Job's gravity more tomorrow when I deliver the seminar... and, I hope, God's grace. Right now my prayers are with a grieving family close by and with those in Australia who are beyond grief.

Top Mags: The IR Edition

In response to Viator, I want to add what I think are the top magazines/journals that thinking Christians should be reading about global politics. These are not academic journals, and you don't have to be in the discipline to discern "what the hell these people are talking about." They are top opinion repositories, and while there are plenty that could merit attention I will mention my favourite three that I read cover to cover:

Unquestionably Foreign Affairs is the leading journal of ideas and opinion in IR. It's articles are written by people from across the spectrum, in both academic and political positions of influence. While the non-specialist might have difficulty reading each issue cover to cover, the broad range and contemporary relevance of topics will undoubtedly satisfy almost any reader. It's balance and weight make it the logical first stop.

Foreign Policy, while a far more popular and glossy magazine, is like the Time or Macleans magazine of the foreign policy world. It has no pretensions of being academic, no desire to pump its issues with 'big names' and IR pop stars, but succeeds at being accessible, relatively balanced, mainstream and providing stories with a very broad range of interest. It's trademark indexes are always a good time, and it's designed to make global politics interesting to the non-specialist. For this reason it's a bit of a guilty pleasure to folks in IR academia, but that's only if those folks are too impressed with their substantial intellectual girth to realize that its mediums like this that actually capture popular imagination. For that reason, I include Foreign Policy in my list.

The Review for Faith and International Affairs, put out by the Institute for Global Engagement, is one of the best resources I have ever come across for thinking about religion and global politics. Written in public language, and intended to appeal to a broad audience, the initial impression is that the journal is more academic. However, browsing through the reader will find that the writing is accessible, and while some pieces may be more narrowly specialist, most of the content is for broad interest. Not only does this Review position the topic of religion and international politics on the radar, but it regularly addresses core questions of religion, pluralism and politics generally. The last issue dedicated to Islam and pluralism is an absolute must read for Christian thinkers. The Review succeeds where many fail: it creates a genuine dialogue with different religious perspectives on international politics, in a public space, while pursuing an integrated and fundamentally Christian view of justice: no small achievement.

A Little Taste of Monasticism

I have begun a practice, along with several others, of doing this sort of thing during Advent and Lent. I thought some of us would be interested to see it covered in the BBC. Last we were down there was talk of attending Vocation Weeks, in which young men consider their potential calling to the community. Perhaps they'll make monks of us all yet.

Recommendations, anyone?

A few posts back, Adunare recommended reading the Chronicle for Higher Education. Duly noted. What do others think it is important to be reading? Which journals, periodicals, magazines, blogs, etc., are must-reads for Christians who want to think deeply about God, faith, and public life?

Sphere Sovereignty?

In response to the Donatists, with whom he had a variety of theological disagreements, Augustine developed his 'just war' theory and his understanding of the role of civil government. I found the following quote in one of Augustine's letters to Boniface (Letter 185):

But as to the enactment of those men who are unwilling that their impious deeds should be checked by the enactment of righteous laws, when they say that the apostles never sought such measures from the kings of the earth, they do not consider the different character of that age, and that everything comes in its own season. For what emperor had as yet believed in Christ, so as to serve Him in the cause of piety by enacting laws against impiety...?

How then are kings to serve the Lord with fear, except by preventing and chastising with religious severity all those acts which are done in opposition to the commandments of the Lord? For man serves God in one way in that he is man, in another way that he is also king. In that he is man, he serves Him by living faithfully; but in that he is also king, he serves Him by enforcing with suitable rigor such laws as ordain what is righteous, and punish what is the reverse.

The Academic Underclass

At least a few of us may find of interest this piece, coming out of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, pushed in the Calgary Herald and National Post: Universities with higher part-time profs lead to lower graduation rates.

Picking up off the York strike, the article argues that the battle lines - while drawn around typical issues of salaries and benefits - were also drawn along the new classes of the academic world: namely the so called permatemp profs.

The idea is basically that in an effort to save money, university admin watch tenured (re: expensive) baby boom faculty retire, and replace their course load with cheaper, temporary profs. From the article, "sometimes likened to WalMart workers, these PhDs, part-time lecturers, and teaching assistants often perform tasks that tenured professors do not - or will not. But in recent years, the tension around this underclass is coming to a boil."

And therein lies the spiral. Many Canadian Uni's require substantive publications, postdocs or research grants - all of which are difficult if not impossible to attain without institutional support; a support that is less and less forthcoming.

I'm not quite sure how to move on an issue like this. The article argues that these academic conditions are leading to lower graduation rates, and poorer education - which seems it could well be. What are next steps to restoring the academic and pedagogical grandeur of the Canadian university?

The Cost of Talent

The CBC published an article today on Obama's plans to cap the compensation packages for executives of companies receiving bailout aid. 

Under Obama’s plan, top executives at firms receiving extraordinary help from U.S. taxpayers will have their compensation capped at $500,000 US. If they receive any additional compensation in the form of stock, it can’t be cashed in until taxpayers are paid back.

This brings a few thoughts to mind. First, how did Obama decide that $500,000 US is the right number? What is the real value of attracting top-level managerial talent?  I know many balk at the $130,000 salaries we pay Canadian MPs, but given their high task, I've often thought we do well to double them. Given the impact of the decisions made, don't we want to draw in our best and brightest?

If top dollar execs do actually bring a return thanks to better management, and if boards actually offer a measure of accountability, should there be a cap on the rate we'd pay if there is a net gain overall? And with the bailout in mind, will we see the sharpest leaders in companies who are suffering take better compensation elsewhere and leave potentially lesser hands to the hard tasks that face us? Is Obama creating a brain drain in recession ground zero? With CEO turnover rates already high, will this just make things more unstable?
Ottawa Brian, I'd especially love to hear your thoughts on this.

Testing the Test

I recommend the daily updates from the Chronicle for Higher Education, though only if you know how to create rules in your Outlook (these emails are indeed daily). A recent piece I found interesting on Testing the Test. I can't be the only doctoral student who loathed the process of writing the GRE (Dave I still have your GRE prep book!) - though not in English lit as this article discusses.

As I recall I did well enough, but the only school that required it was Notre Dame, which I didn't end up attending. Furthermore, the cost of the test is nearly prohibitive these days and schools give only peripheral attention to (some) standardized tests.

It seems to me that the GRE is a relic of the swinging 60's and the positivist 70's, and it's time to retire it. Surely CV's, recommendations and writing samples are far better indicators than whether I can accurately recall my Calculus OAC class.

Another reason why I'm fine with being a Calvinist

The debates about whether religion is good for society are endless for a reason: There are too many variables, too many religions, and too many definitions of "good" to make anything like a universally-accepted answer possible. But I'm pretty comfortable saying that a certain kind of religion is good for a certain kind of person. And it's hard to escape the impression that the world would be in better shape today if more of our elites - our bankers and financiers, our tycoons and captains of industry, and yes, our Presidents as well - had spent the last decade's worth of Sundays on their knees listening to readings from Ecclesiastes, and Jansenist-inflected sermons about the innate depravity of man.

- Ross Douthat here

Governmentium

(Forwarded by friends)

NEW CHEMICAL ELEMENT

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.

A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 to 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration.

This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass. When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (symbol=Ad), an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.