Author: aiross

Currently Reading

Got more books on my mind than usual these days. Some initial thoughts:

Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science by Benjamin Breen: This one is for my book club and I’m finding it fascinating. I confess I knew very little about Margaret Mead beyond the basics. I’m about a third of the way through this (extremely well-written) book and am finding the ways her humanistic anthropology led her not only to the idea that psychedelics might expand our ability to connect to one another, but also to working directly with the CIA to be fascinating and delightfully in tension with one another. So many people enter the orbit of Mead and her cohort you basically come away reading a chapter of this book thinking Breen has found an entry point to explaining the whole of American society during the decades he covers.

Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner: I’m very far into a years (maybe decades) long project of reading all the Hugo winners for best novel. This quest continues despite the recent controversies (Babel absolutely should have been nominated, but the winner, Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher was the better book). I’m only a couple chapters into this one, but the introduction to the edition I got from my awesome local library served as a warning when it referenced Georges Perec as an influence. I will finish this, but the postmodern conceits are strong in this one.

Playing Cleopatra: Inventing the Female Celebrity in Third Republic France by Holly Grout: I’m just about done with Holly Grout’s new book on Sarah Bernhardt, Collette, and Josephine Baker’s relationship to Cleopatra. This might be considered a “work” book that I picked up in order to draft a chapter of an edited volume I am working on, but it hasn’t been as relevant as I had hoped. That said, the book is an excellent companion to Grout’s first book on beauty and effectively showcases the ways that these three actors put on display and mixed up the sexual and racial politics of the Third Republic.

New Syllabi

This semester, I’m once again offering my Honors seminar on the early modern period. I haven’t changed much about this course this semester and the syllabus is available here. As always, one of my main goals is providing some space for addressing the global context within the constraints of what remains a great books curriculum. I did add some extra in-class research and writing time, in many respects in response to the rise of ChatGPT and other tools.

My other course is one I am always excited to teach, though I do not do so very often. What began as my dissertation class, “Sex and the City,” always changes quite a bit from semester-to-semester. This year, again partly in response to AI tools, I moved some of our assignments into the classroom. I continue to use the 3-2-1 model (three things you learned, two things you didn’t understand, one discussion question for the class) to structure a discussion board assignment, but we will be doing our response papers as mini essay exams in class. I also simplified the final project. While in previous incarnations of the course, students could choose the format of their project, this year all students will complete a poster presentation at the end of the semester.

The course continues to focus primarily on my two areas of research expertise: queer history and the history of sex work. On the one hand, this is an advantage because we can trace these two themes throughout the semester and get into some real depth. On the other hand, it remains a disadvantage insofar as there are so many other aspects to urban sexual histories that are left out. Fortunately, the broad research project will allow students to pursue their own interests.

As always, feel free to use my syllabi for your own course development. Acknowledgement is always appreciated.

The University of Chicago discovers the internet

Lawyers, Guns, and Money directed me to this article about how the University of Chicago’s ostensible commitment to free speech ran aground against online harassment instigated by a conservative student. It includes this statement from one of the authors of Chicago’s relatively famous statement of commitment to free speech (really one committing to not being woke, as LGM says):

Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor, led the faculty committee that drafted the Chicago statement. He said that back then, the group was not thinking about how online threats could harm free expression — never mind this situation, where Mr. Schmidt simply posted a tweet with publicly available information.

Ah, yes, who could have thought that the internet could be used to harass people into silence back in 2014? What might have been happening online that might have caused someone to take a step back and consider such a possibility? We’ll never know.

One would think that a law professor of all people would understand that no right is absolute, even those in the first amendment, if one wants to preserve all the other rights that they sometimes conflict with.

Who threatens Higher Education? Don’t ask the Washington Post

Florida is currently governed by a fascist who has made it one of his primary goals to take control of higher education in the state, mold it in a way that supports his ideology, and eliminate those who oppose his policies. The most overt example is his hostile takeover of New College, which recently fired a faculty member for expressing “leftist” views. The state also proposed banning gender and sexuality studies and critical race theory from public university curricula and curtailed tenure protections for its faculty.

So I was a bit surprised to open the Washington Post this morning to see a front-page (or its digital equivalent) story on the purported threat of “cancellation” that focused on a professor at the University of Central Florida. This person was fired (and then reinstated) not because he expressed views deemed unacceptable to the far right, but rather because he seems to be a racist. Here’s a comment from a student who took his course after he came back to UCF:

Several of Negy’s students said that they had signed up for his psychology course without knowing the professor had been fired — but that he had shared it with them during his first lecture.One student, a Black woman, said she thought Negy was a good teacher. But she was disturbed by his suggestion that, “statistically speaking, minorities are just not as smart as other people. I don’t know. I feel like that’s kind of offensive.” The student spoke on the condition of anonymity because she worried about criticizing one of her professors.

Asked about the student’s concerns, Negy said that he lectures about “observed differences” among races on test scores, but that he doesn’t have “training in genes” to assess why these differences exist.

Does the Washington Post really think that this person should represent the threat to academic freedom in Florida?

The thesis of the article is absolutely true — that there is sometimes a messy tension between academic freedom and the needs of the classroom. It is not easy to decide when a professor has overstepped the line. But articles like these distort the picture of the threat to higher education in America. It is not in clunky administrative systems that attempt, in good faith (it seems from these examples), to establish some basic standards for how professors should behave with regard to the classroom environment, but rather in a direct, sustained, and systemic attempt to destroy academic freedom itself.

An Anniversary to Remember

Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin: “Un-German” and “Unnatural” Literature is Sorted Out for the Book-Burning Ceremony (undated photo, May 6-10, 1933). GHDI. © Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz

I wasn’t aware, until I heard it on NPR this morning, that today is the 90th anniversary of the famous Nazi book burnings. This date is worth taking a moment to consider in light of ongoing efforts to ban books from public libraries and schools today. Like in the past, one of the main targets is any book containing knowledge about people marginalized for their sexual orientation and gender identity. One of the first targets of the book burnings (completed, it is worth underlining, largely by students) was Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research, which advocated for sexual reform and cared for queer people between World War I and the Nazi takeover. Today, the targets are graphic novels and young adult literature about LGBTQ+ people. But it’s all the same thing.

It was with this in mind that I read this morning that Indiana legislators defunded Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, using the very same slur that was often used by Nazis against queer people in the 1930s: that they preyed on young people. It is hard to understand how we arrived at this point. Marriage Equality, we were told, would assimilate queer people into American society and reduce homophobia. And yet! One can only agree with Sam Huneke is in the linked article that the pursuit of normalization has only served to reify the divide between normal and abnormal that is used by homophobes and fearmongers.

Don’t Be that Guy

I kind of miss Twitter for making complaints like this, but at least now the complaint remains my own content I guess. Please don’t be that colleague who creates more work for their fellow faculty.

Last night one of my advisees e-mailed me asking how a professor changes an incorrect grade. The reason they e-mailed me is that their professor told them to figure it out and get back to them. The instructions for how to do this were contained in a message that goes out every semester to all faculty. It is entirely the responsibility of the faculty member who made the error. But because this colleague couldn’t be bothered to figure this out and instead put the burden on a first-year student, I had to take time to help. Was it much time? No. But it adds up when some of us take our responsibilities seriously and others do everything they can to offload their own work on others, even their own students.

AI and the Take Home Final

Even before the pandemic, I had been moving most of my examinations away from traditional in-class exams and toward a take-home format. This was mostly because it felt like a contradiction to try to teach students that history was not about the memorization of dates and then have them complete a timed exam for which memorization was a large component. In the wake of the pandemic, a take-home exam also felt more accessible: students could complete it at their own pace, focus on what they felt most comfortable, and use their own notes and the course materials at home. As of last semester, I was even having students brainstorm questions they would like to appear on the exam so that it could play to their strengths and encourage them to really think about what they learned in preparation for the exam.

This move had pluses and minuses. It certainly did decrease student anxiety about memorization. It also provided flexibility during the exam period. It allowed students to take a bit more control over their own learning at the end of the semester. However, especially in introductory courses, there were significant downsides. It was difficult to develop questions sufficiently tailored to the course to prevent cheating. Many responses did not show the kind of deep thinking I thought a take-home option would enable. Despite having access to all the information from the course (and the internet) answers remained superficial, without a great deal of detail in their argument or evidence.

These issues only became more severe this semester, in the middle of which ChatGPT and similar AI Chatbots dropped. I had, for most of the semester, taken a rather laissez-faire attitude to these tools, thinking that some students will inevitably cheat, but that its a minority group. However, what seems to have happened with my final is that rather than simply using ChatGPT to write an answer, a significant number of my students typed in the prompt, looked at the answer provided, and then wrote their own response around it. I have no proof of this and decided, after some thought, to not pursue it with the students.

Continue reading “AI and the Take Home Final”

Separation of Powers only works with Checks and Balances

I had planned on writing a post today on my experience teaching for the first time in the era of Chat GPT, but instead I can’t help but ask if someone, somewhere, could please inform our leading lights that the idea of separation of powers comes coupled with the idea of checks and balances. From today’s WaPo regarding the latest in Clarence Thomas’s obvious corruption:

We’re told that out there, in the constitutional ether, lies a strict separation of powers that precludes any interference by Congress and the president with the independence of judges. Lately, in the case of the upper chamber and the high court, that system looks like this: Durbin in a standoff with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in a battle of polite letters.

Who told us this? Because they are missing an important part! I remember that lesson in elementary school too! But it came quite clearly with the linked idea that each branch balanced one another out so that one could not exercise unjust power over the other (or over us). We’re in the midst of a power grab by the judiciary, so it might be good for Congress to remember that part too.

Won’t someone think of the educational needs of Supreme Court children?

What pushes the latest revelation about Clarence Thomas’s corruption from tragedy to farce is this justification from his sugar daddy Harlan Crow:

“Harlan Crow has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate, especially at-risk youth,” the statement said. “As part of his desire to perpetuate the American dream for all, and believing education is the great equalizer, he and his wife have supported many young Americans through scholarship and other programs at a variety of schools.”

Ah yes, we can all sympathize with the need to provide tuition for the at-risk adopted child of a Supreme Court Justice making a base salary of over $200k a year, plus the various book deals and “personal” gifts of Crow and others. How else would this poor child have gotten a quality education without the beneficence of this Republican billionaire? It’s hard to fathom.

I do wonder how much the “good” ones are partaking of these extra benefits as well…

“Fuck you Richard Corcoran”

Nothing like ruining a few people’s careers and destroying a highly respected institution to score some cheap political points, I guess. From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The issue eliciting the strongest protest was whether five professors who had already cleared the usual hurdles to achieve tenure would be approved by the board — what is normally a perfunctory step. But the college’s interim president, Richard Corcoran, had let it be known that he didn’t want those tenure cases to be approved, citing general upheaval at the college and its new direction. The board acceded to Corcoran’s wishes, voting down the professors one by one, each by a count of six votes to four, before adjourning to chants of “shame on you” from those assembled.

Ron Desantis is a fascist. Control of educational systems is key to the project as much as the bringing into line of private industry.