In yet another indication of the growing influence of the blogosphere and the Internet in general, the primarily online campaigns of Peter Robinson and Todd Zywicki (sponsored on this blog and several others) for positions on the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees have apparently been victorious! This marks a sea change in the election of university trustees. Congratulations to the gentlemen… May they do their jobs well!
Victory now confirmed!
Here is the official press release from the College on the Hill.
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17 Comments
1. Silicon valley Jim:Do you think that there will be reports of voter intimidation? Or that more votes were cast in Wisconsin than there are Dartmouth alumni?
Seriously, this is good news.
May 12, 2005 - 10:56 am 2. Tom O'Bedlam:Good news indeed. And this development (assuming the news bears out) almost certainly has a more than coincidental connection with other recent developments at Dartmouth — developments which caused the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to announce on May 9th, “FIRE no longer considers Dartmouth to have a speech code.”
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/5621.html
May 12, 2005 - 11:30 am 3. thibaud:Great news. University regents’ boards are a very important second front in the bloggers’ fight against MSM spin and crap-mongering.
How so? “Public intellectuals” in the academy prop up MSM hacks by serving as a kind of outsourced research facility. Where you have responsible, careful, cautious scholars– regardless of their persuasion– there’s no problem. Scholarly standards and caveats apply, and journalists will find it difficult, try as they might, to mangle the scholars’ arguments and statements.
But the model falls apart when you have a whacko partisan like Juan Cole of U-Mich, who’s built a career as a public intellectual on a bogus reputation for expertise on Iraq. For ex., if an NPR or McNeil-Lehrer producer on an Iraq story is having difficulty telling a shi’a from a shi’nola, he calls up Perfesser to get his bearings. And a quote, or two, or three. Plus the entire story angle.
Never mind that Juanito’s a rabid conspiracy theorist whose expertise is in obscure ideological movements in 17-18c Persia and has no first-hand knowledge of Iraq or of primary sources. A major research university’s prominent arabist is used by the MSM producer to confer legitimacy and authority on a story line that draws upon COle’s poisonous, obsessive loathing of Israel and the “likudniks” who form a cabal at the top reaches of the Bush administration. The big losers are not only the public but all of us who graduated from U-M and now see our history degrees tainted by the public’s association of U-M with this clown.
Conspiracy-mongering, libel, character assassination are unacceptable on a blog no less than in a university classroom or auditorium. What Cole publishes on his blog is properly a matter for the regents of the University of Michigan: they need to develop and apply a code of professorial conduct that will cover public blog content no less than speech made in any other public forum.
Bloggers, once more unto the breach, and onto the regents’ boards!
May 12, 2005 - 11:57 am 4. TK:These two guys got in under the radar screen because they were not taken seriously and the organized opposition was sporadic.
Just watch, the next people to try this at any US college are going to be met by a hailstorm of vilification which will make John Bolton’s confirmation process look like a tea party for sedated centenarians.
I hope this does open a way to reforming the radical mess which our colleges have become, but it would be naive to expect that the opposition will now just roll over. They won’t, and they aren’t interested in ‘playing fair’ either.
May 12, 2005 - 12:01 pm 5. thibaud:Needless to say, my own emails, phone calls and evidence submitted to the U-M Regents concerning Cole’s libels of the Fadhil brothers and his constant anti-semitic conspiracy-mongering have gone unanswered by the regents, the dean, the head of the history dept. If I lived in Michigan I’d run for the board. Perhaps the blogosphere can find some Michigan-based candidates who will force through a code of academic conduct for sham public “experts” like Juanito.
Anyway, good luck to Robinson and Zywicki at Dartmouth.
May 12, 2005 - 12:02 pm 6. Sandy P:Powerline’s reported this:
UPDATE: The Dartmouth Review reports that Robinson and Zwicki have indeed been elected. Says the Review, “A source with knowledge of the results, who has asked to remain anonymous until the news is official, confirmed that the two petition candidates were elected in a six-way race.”
May 12, 2005 - 1:48 pm 7. Carol_Herman:Mazel Tov! Just goes to show ya, that the STUDENTS were never fooled! Not by the left sucking hyenas that came in with their social diseases, and called it a “program.”
I wonder what this really does, ahead?
Given the NY Times is finally facing its crisis, square. (Of course, it’s not all dead at the MSM. It’s fuel that keeps the bloggers linking to them, and then pressing forward with opinions that are genuinely opposite the trite mush.)
But the universities? Who want $40,000 a year from gullible parents? Are they gonna have to worry, now?
Should be interesting to see how academia steers itself out of the mess created by the Ward Churchill supporters. Fer shur. (Ya know, Roger, by the time your little girl is old enough to choose a college, I think things will be much improved. Don’t you?)
May 12, 2005 - 1:52 pm 8. Silicon valley Jim:Conspiracy-mongering, libel, character assassination are unacceptable on a blog no less than in a university classroom or auditorium. What Cole publishes on his blog is properly a matter for the regents of the University of Michigan: they need to develop and apply a code of professorial conduct that will cover public blog content no less than speech made in any other public forum.
I don’t know (and I mean that literally; I’m far from sure that you’re wrong). I can agree wholeheartedly that public blog content should be treated the same as speech made in other public forum. There does, however, seem to me to be a difference between what goes on in a classroom and what a professor states in a newspaper column, at a conference, in an interview, etc. I’m very reluctant to curtail freedom of speech, even in situations in which a private university is doing the curtailing, which, I think, the Constitution permits.
May 12, 2005 - 2:43 pm 9. Catherine:The results are all the more amazing given that something went wrong with the voting.
I never received a ballot, and had to call the college at least 3 times & exchange several emails to be allowed to vote online.
I only realized my ballot was missing when I read Roger’s earlier post saying that he had just finished voting. If I hadn’t read the blog, I wouldn’t have noticed.
Apparently quite a few other people didn’t receive ballots, because they extended the deadline.
May 12, 2005 - 3:09 pm 10. David:Ok. we have the Orange revolution, the Cedar Revolution,etc. May I be the first to suggest we can call this the Sugar Maple Revolution? And remember it is a process, not just an event.
May 12, 2005 - 3:26 pm 11. Kyda Sylvester:A Hoover Institution Fellow and a George Mason Law Professor of the Year. The times they are a-changin’.
May 12, 2005 - 3:35 pm 12. everyman:Delightful news. It’s the first time in more than 40 years since I left the campus that I have participated in such a vote. Feels good.
We’ll be watching.
May 12, 2005 - 4:16 pm 13. richard mcenroe:Yes, but like the Canadian government, will Dartmouth just ignore the vote?
May 12, 2005 - 4:54 pm 14. Peter Robinson:In writing about my election to the Dartmouth College board of trustees, my fellow Dartmouth alum, fellow blogger, and fellow writer (about which, see one qualification, below) Roger L. Simon noted that the election represented “yet another indication of the growing influence of the blogosphere and the Internet in general.” To which I respond, You bet. And also, Thanks, Roger, for supporting my candidacy and paying such close and continuing attention to the campaign.
Peter Robinson ‘79
P.S. That qualification? It’s not just that Roger L. Simon slings marvelous prose, it’s that he writes marvelous *fiction.* Every time I’ve tried fiction myself, I’ve flopped. I’m green–Dartmouth green, natch–with envy.
May 12, 2005 - 7:50 pm 15. Roger:Wow, Peter! What a terrific compliment to read when you get home from dinner. But speaking of envy, you could write a whole lifetime (or a thousand) without writing line that will be remembered as long as your “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!”
Out here in Lalaland, the best we can hope for are the likes of “Make my day!” or “He’s looking at you, kid…”
May 12, 2005 - 9:06 pm 16. HA:Outstanding! Let the march through institutions begin. Out with the zombie marxbots, in with the real liberals.
May 13, 2005 - 4:17 am 17. thibaud:Silicon Valley Jim,
SHORT ANSWER: The problem with Prof. Juan Cole’s blog is that he’s battening on his academic reputation. People who don’t know better– ie, nearly everyone who’s not an arab studies expert– come to his blog, see his credentials as the Head of the Middle East Studies Ass’n, and think: Here’s an expert on Iraq.
In point of fact, as Martin Kramer has noted, Cole has no expertise on Iraq. He has done no original research whatsoever on modern Iraq and is no better informed on the subject than an intelligent amateur who’s read a few books. Also, according to Fouad Ajami, Cole has not even been to Iraq. Finally, as the viewers of Al Jazeera now are aware, Cole doesn’t even speak enough arabic to be able to address them in their native tongue!
LONG ANSWER: In essence, Cole’s trading on his professional reputation in one field– 18c Persian intellectual history– to bolster his amateur opinions in an entirely separate field, the political history and contemporary landscape of modern Iraq. The underlying theme of this bait-and-switch is an unrelenting, at times hysterical, campaign against Cole’s imagined enemies, Ariel Sharon and the nefarious DC Likudnik Cabal. It’s a fraudulent use of the man’s academic standing, one that serves a rather shabby and disreputable agenda of 1) bashing anyone Cole dislikes; and 2) vaulting Cole into prominence as an MSM darling.
Why should the Univ of Michigan care?
Consider an analogy: say you’re a technology pro who works for IBM. You’re a consultant with deep expertise in, oh, let’s say, supply chain management processes and software. Let’s say that you also have a deep loathing for Microsoft– their product, their execs, and what (in your mind) they represent. So you set up your own personal blog that is separate from your corporate consulting practice but which prominently displays your association with IBM and your status as a famous expert in not supply chain management but information technology generally.
On your blog, you relate your daily musings on open source software (Good, Hooray!) and the Wintel oligopoly (Evil, Hiss!). You find the evil influence of Microsoft everywhere, and weave this theme into as many as half of your posts. You also go out of your way to attack three young startup company programmers as “Microsoft stooges” and “hacks” and “spies,” with lurid details of these programmers’ alleged connections to Redmond.
These opinions gain wide currency in the MSM, gaining you a spot on stories about Linux and MSFT on the NcNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, CNBC, etc which represent you as a renowned technology expert from IBM. However, nowhere is it made clear to the public that you are not an expert on operating systems or open source– the subject of 80% of your blog postings– and that your opinions on same don’t in any way derive from your professional work for IBM in the supply chain field.
Wouldn’t IBM ask you, at a minimum, to cease and desist mingling your status as an IBM supply chain expert with your personal views on Microsoft and open source? After all, you’re misrepresenting the very credentials and expertise that IBM relies on to market your services and win business.
U-Michigan’s also engaged in a marketplace, one of ideas, in which reputation based on expertise is everything. Why does the University of Michigan hold its own standard-bearing employees to a lower standard than the corporate sector does?
May 13, 2005 - 9:35 am