If it seems as if STEM fields are being more violently attacked, it's probably because historically they have been better supported by federal funds, making them more vulnerable to withdrawal of those funds and an easier target.
I can see how it might be reasonable to engage with someone who believes that African history shouldn’t be vested in the American academy, and does so from a position elsewhere in a different kind of vesting institution.
But somebody who has shown up in the American academe. They, presumably, have done so because they think that there is something of value in here, no?
And the lessons taught about education and discourse to other, onlooking students by tolerating rather than shutting down the "you can't talk about this; only I can" claim as an admissible power move—those lessons taught seem to me to be very poisonous.
Thanks much. Be as well as one can be in a world in which one is, personally, quite comfortable, but in which no man is an island. Yours,
I get it. But part of this is students, you know? Pedagogy means patience: it is not about shutting down someone young, someone learning, who is trying to think their way through something, including the point you raise about why you're in this place in the first place. Moreover, there's a genuine question to be asked: why exactly is this field most published and publishable outside the places it studies? By comparison, the Indian academy has substantially supported (and now, under Modi, suborned) producing histories of South Asia; the Chinese academy sustains histories of China (however subordinated to the government's perspective). The answer leads back to something substantively and empirically important, which is that most postcolonial states in sub-Saharan Africa have struggled to support national universities as centers of free inquiry. Which is perhaps about to be the way we are about to be here.
But isn't the genuine question one that courses studying something other than post-colonial African political economy are not well positioned to address?
Thanks much. Be as well as one can be in a world in which one is, personally, quite comfortable, but in which no man is an island. Yours,
If it seems as if STEM fields are being more violently attacked, it's probably because historically they have been better supported by federal funds, making them more vulnerable to withdrawal of those funds and an easier target.
Yes. But oddly enough--despite some warnings to that effect--the people in charge don't seem to have fully anticipated that vulnerability.
I can see how it might be reasonable to engage with someone who believes that African history shouldn’t be vested in the American academy, and does so from a position elsewhere in a different kind of vesting institution.
But somebody who has shown up in the American academe. They, presumably, have done so because they think that there is something of value in here, no?
And the lessons taught about education and discourse to other, onlooking students by tolerating rather than shutting down the "you can't talk about this; only I can" claim as an admissible power move—those lessons taught seem to me to be very poisonous.
Thanks much. Be as well as one can be in a world in which one is, personally, quite comfortable, but in which no man is an island. Yours,
J. Bradford DeLong
Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley
brad.delong@gmail.com :: @delong@mastodon.social :: @delong.social
+1 925-708-0467
http://braddelong.substack.com
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I get it. But part of this is students, you know? Pedagogy means patience: it is not about shutting down someone young, someone learning, who is trying to think their way through something, including the point you raise about why you're in this place in the first place. Moreover, there's a genuine question to be asked: why exactly is this field most published and publishable outside the places it studies? By comparison, the Indian academy has substantially supported (and now, under Modi, suborned) producing histories of South Asia; the Chinese academy sustains histories of China (however subordinated to the government's perspective). The answer leads back to something substantively and empirically important, which is that most postcolonial states in sub-Saharan Africa have struggled to support national universities as centers of free inquiry. Which is perhaps about to be the way we are about to be here.
Touché... Pedagogy does mean patience!...
But isn't the genuine question one that courses studying something other than post-colonial African political economy are not well positioned to address?
Thanks much. Be as well as one can be in a world in which one is, personally, quite comfortable, but in which no man is an island. Yours,
J. Bradford DeLong
Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley