Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Phillip Kurian II

Here is Phillip Kurian's follow-up piece.

If you think you hate him, please read it. This incident has really caused him a lot of pain and sleepless nights. And if you think, "Good!", then that's okay too. Just do me a favor and read it.

An interesting response, with its own compendium of responses, to the earlier essay by Philip.

My own view? People are right to be mad at Duke, and other "elite" universities, in this sense: we aren't teaching our students the standards of argument. Philip was making a claim, which might in principle be true or false. (I happen to believe it is false, if that matters). But he larded up the claim with a bunch of gratuitously insulting stereotypes and simple non sequiturs.

Would people would have been just as angry at him if he had NOT included all the personal attacks? If he had just argued his main point, which is that organized Jewish political groups wield influence disproportionate to their numbers? We'll never know. And that is in large measure Duke's fault, for patting him on the head when he made unsupported claims like this, in class or in some professor's office. There is no other explanation for why he was surprised (and he was surprised) at the reaction.

I think he should sue, for nonperformance of the educational contract. More and more, faculty on the left just want students to have the "correct" conclusions, like a memorized catechism, instead of making sure the students can defend those conclusions in a debate. And students on the left are the ones who pay the price.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well said about the leftist faculty petting liberal students on the head...

Hope the Killer realizes that if there were enough rightists interested in persuing a Ph.D. (they constitute less than 10% of humanities graduate students), we'd have the exact same problem on the opposite end of the spectrum.

TtwbC (immigration status pending, hopefully soon)

Anonymous said...

He still hasn't learned to express himself well. It was a pretty lame column.

Mungowitz said...

Well, I disagree with you there (for what THAT is worth). Seems to me that the second column was excellent.

Anonymous said...

You state that:

"More and more, faculty on the left just want students to have the "correct" conclusions, like a memorized catechism, instead of making sure the students can defend those conclusions in a debate".

Well, yes, but that goes for faculty on the right, too.

Your view on what is wrong with undergraduate education is way too simplistic.

Do you really think things would be that different if most professors were right-leaning as opposed to left-leaning?

The problem is that of faculty rewarding students for reaching the 'correct' (substantive) conclusions, as opposed to rewarding students for careful thought, logical argument, honest use of data, etc.

Students simply reflect the problem with academics of the right and of the left: strong convictions, shaky logic.

Anonymous said...

This has go to be my favorite response to Baldwin's article:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/10/23/111443/76/32#32
If anything, I think the reaction (especially the overreaction and even more specifically the overreaction by many Duke Jewish students, Alumni, parents of students) has turned me away from the side of Israel. The speech they use against Kurian is acidic at best. At worst, it's undescribably virulent, disgusting, loathsome, and pathetic. Words truly have no way to describe how sickened I am by such an outpouring of hate the Jews that responded (on the sight linked as well as others) gave Kurian, those that supported his right to free speech, and those that tried to moderate or explain the situation to those too ignorant to get past their knee jerk reaction.

If anything, it goes to prove some of the ridiculous things Kurian said in the first place. I'm glad Kurian got his word out. Otherwise, people would never have this chance to view Jews as people and not victims.

Mungowitz said...

"ordure"? excellent.

"hiding"? blow me, The. I've made no effort to hide. And I'm certainly not afraid of YOU.

as for white supremacists: a fair point. Check this out...Post #8 on this web site.
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=160025
A bad sign when the REAL white supremacists quote a REAL black guy because he has the REAL correct views of Israel. I wonder if the STORMFRONTGRUPPENTROOPERS know that Phil is black? Irony on irony....

Anonymous said...

http://www.boomspeed.com/logan_god/arguing.jpg