Lee Skallerup Bessette, writing from Morehead, Kentucky in the USA.

Six months ago, we here at University of Venus wrote passionately about our reactions to the beating and blinding of Rumana Monzur by her husband and in front of their daughter. We hoped that this would shed light on the issue of violence against women and the power imbalance that still exists between men and women.  But we also feared for her academic career, her and her daughter’s safety, and her future more generally. How is she?

A little more than a year ago, we were riveted by the news of 33 Chilean miners stuck in a mine and their stories. A year later, can anyone say if they’ve given the miners more than a second thought after they were on all of our televisions and Twitter timelines? Has the mining industry changed at all in Chile? Are these workers any safer, better off or at all alright after their ordeal?

And finally, almost two years ago, Haiti was hit with a devastating earthquake. We, once again, globally rallied our support to help rebuild Haiti. Haitian-Canadian author Dany Laferriere happened to be in Haiti when the earthquake stuck and also happened to have a manuscript due soon after. Instead of the book he was supposed to submit, he instead quickly wrote a memoire of the earthquake, Tout bouge autour de moi(Everything is Moving Around Me; you can read a excerpt in English here). A mere two months after disaster struck, Laferriere provided us with a moving account of the earthquake and how life went on in the immediate aftermath. Because he was an author and a Canadian, the government quickly evacuated him from the island and he continued on his book and speaking tour, noting the reactions in the media and the people he came into contact with. Over-all, the tone of the book is hopeful. The following is my translation of the last few sentences of the book:

When people talk to me, I see in their eyes that they are addressing the dead, while I grab hold of even the smallest living fly. But what really touches me is that they seem genuinely moved by their own emotions, and they hope to internalize and hold on to the emotions longer. It is said that one disaster follows another. And while the journalists will move on to the next tragedy, Haiti will remain in the world’s hearts.

We know that we moved on when the journalists and (more significantly) the media did, too. Haiti remains in my heart because I study their literature and culture academically. But Haiti’s story since then has been far from happy, nor has it been in the front (or even back) of our minds. Instead, there has been political instability, a cholera outbreak, tent cities that were meant to be temporary but remain today, and less than halfin some cases of the aid money promised to Haiti has been paid out or spent and corruption both in Haiti and from the outside remains a problem. We pledged out money and then largely forgot about it. Mostly, we moved on to the next headline-grabbing humanitarian crisis.

The Chilean Miners have not fared well, either. The New York Times recently did a piece that looked at how life was going for the miners a year later. Just about all of them are poorer than they were before. The President of Chile took advantage of his popularity after the miners were rescued to tour the world, and while he made good on his promise to pass legislation to improve the safety of mines in Chile, it is still unclear ifthey have done much good.

Finally, the impetus for this whole post. About a month ago, I was struck wondering what had happened to Rumana Monzur. I knew that her parents had joined her back in Vancouver, but it was unclear (or unreported) whether her daughter had made it to Canada as well. Would the charges against her husband stick? Would Monzur be able to continue her studies? A quick Google search revealed nothing. There was the initial flurry of activity and reports around the date of the attacks, and then nothing save for an announced fund-raiser for her continued medical care and other expenses in Canada. What had happened to her and her family?

A more recent Google search revealed more. The Globe and Mail did a follow-up story on her situation; she is learning Braille and determined to finish her MA and then PhD. Her daughter did make it to Canada and so far more than $80K has been raised to help her recovery. There is an online video channel devoted to archiving the media surrounding her case. And perhaps more importantly, there have been several postsdevoted to how the media in her home country handled the case, sparking lasting change in how issues of domestic violence are covered.

We cannot let the media’s short attention span dictate what we care about and what we pay attention to. These stories mattered to us and they should continue to matter to us even after, as Laferriere says, the media has moved on. I write about this today to remind us to stay engaged and to stay connected; Google can’t send me results that aren’t there.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

“What’s the point of this?”

“Poorly argued.”

“This isn’t about anything.”

For my students, I had them write blog posts as op-ed pieces (or, more formally titled, an argument essay). Particularly in academic blog circles, this seems to be what we expect from blogs: a clear argument or “point.” We have been trained over the years to develop a strong thesis with support to back it up. But, we might not always want to pick a fight. And, why are we repeating a formal style (albeit shorter) in a more informal setting?

Others, like Dr. Crazy, use their blog as more of a journal. Certainly, she has argued about many things as they relate to higher education, but the majority of her posts are about her life as an academic, but also as a woman, daughter, sister, friend, etc. This is less, it seems, about making a point that keeping a public journal. Or perhaps the point is that academics are people too, with rich (and mundane) lives outside of the classroom. These blogs are useful because they do humanize us and the work we do. The Mama PhD blog here on IHE would seem to do that, too (although again there are lots of more traditional, argument-essay style posts).

Still others, like the good folks over at ProfHacker, would seem to favor the how-to or information approach to blogging. Each post usually profiles some cool tech toy or outlines some way that we, the professoriate, can make our lives (both at work and outside of work) easier. One could make the point that they are “arguing” for us to adopt their recommendations, but the tone is more informative than argumentative. It’s a fine line, I know, but an important one. Many teaching blogs and teacher-bloggers share their exercises, nuts and bolts, and tricks in their blogs, to help other teachers. It becomes about sharing information and expertise.

Then we come to perhaps the most controversial blog post of them all, at least in academia: the reflection post. These are posts that don’t really argue for any one clear side, or have a clear stance that they are defending. These posts are a type of work-in-progress, reflecting the author’s attempt to deal with a complex issue, in public, in writing. For me, the point of these kinds of posts (of which I’ve written quite a few) are to generate discussion, help clarify thinking, and generally get others thinking, too. The point, then, is that there is not yet a clear point.

This type seems to be popular for teachers to assign to students. We get them to write blog posts with their initial thoughts about their readings, their brainstorming process for an essay, and their reflections on what has gone on in class. They are useful because we, the instructors, can see where the students are “in real time” and respond. Students can also see where their classmates are and help one another. It becomes a virtual conversation, an extension of their learning. Why, then, do we seem so opposed to fellow academics writing the same kinds of posts?

Perhaps it is the platform; we have a certain expectation from something that is published on IHE, even if it is under the heading of “blogs.” Perhaps it is because we expect more from ourselves than we do from our students, even though we know that we work through the process of problem solving the same way we try to encourage our students to do. Perhaps this reveals our insecurity as academics, that we can’t share the process, only the solid results of that process. Reflection, then, is a sign of tentativeness, indecisiveness, and intellectual weakness.

But of course, it isn’t. Blogging allows for us to make these reflective moments public. So much of what we do in academia has too long been done in isolation. Why can’t we post reflections, incomplete and contradictory thoughts for feedback, discussion, and even new and different perspectives? You could say that I just wrote a standard dividing and classifying essay. The point? To get you, the readers, to think differently about academic blogging. The reflection, as “pointless” as it may be, should be embraced as an important part of academic blogging.

Lee Skallerup Bessette, writing from Morehead, Kentucky in the US.

“Is it always like this?”

This question came from one of the three male students in my 50+ person literature class, almost ten years ago. I was a new, young PhD student and I was teaching an introductory literature course. The class, in the four years that I had taught it, never reached double-digits for male students in the class. So, yes, I answered, it was always like this.

I was proud of my classes. I taught at an R1 institution, one of the top in the country. That women were over-represented seemed like a nice problem to have. I knew there were plenty of men on campus, mostly in engineering and hard sciences. Most men simply weren’t interested in this course. I was young, naïve, and an admitted over-achiever. My role, I thought, was to simply be myself, teach well, and show my students the rich world of our national literature.

I’m older, wiser, married and the parent of two small children now. And I read about the young women in college apparently overachieving in the classroom while seemingly regressing outside of it. As put by Lisa Belkin, the author of the article, “In social settings and in relationships, men set the pace, made the rules and acted as they had in the days when women were still “less than.” It might as well have been the 1950s, but with skimpier clothing, fewer inhibitions and better birth control.” I also read thatmore than 30 percent of college students exhibit signs of eating disorder, while 91 percent of collegewomen admitted to dieting.

I recently came across a study, “Female Bodily Perfection and the Divided Self.” by Catherine G. Valentine. After studying three years of her female students’ journals, she came to the conclusion that:

…women’s moral identity incorporates definitions and feelings of self-constructed in relation to an abstract ideal of bodily perfection and perfectibility, which is produced and disseminated by electronic and print media. I submit that idealized images of female bodily perfection and messages of perfectibility exercise control over women’s lives by constructing a self that is distorted and divided against itself, self-policing and self-destructive”#

These journals were written between 1987 and 1990. The findings, however, haven’t seemed to change; women seem to be dividing themselves, in-class versus out of class. Students seem to be ok today with that disconnect but I’m not.

What is my role as a feminist role model for my current students?

I try to remember what I was like as an undergraduate. My wardrobe consisted of cargo pants and men’s shirts (thanks Kurt Cobain!). It didn’t seem to impact my dating life in any way. When I went out with friends, it was rarely to pick up; we wanted to hang out, drink, and dance. It wasn’t perfect, and nor were we, as each of us battled with our own set of body and relationship issues, but we always maintained control, were supportive of one another, and had a good time largely on our own terms.

That’s not what I see from or read about undergraduates today. Should we blame popular culture that sets the narrow standard for women and our self-worth? The proliferation of the “rape culture” thatexists on campuses? The rise of standardized tests that keep our students from thinking more critically about what messages they receive from the media? Or have we simply split ourselves in two, as described by the study, separating our brains and bodies from one another? And what difference can I make in all this?

I know that my role in front of my students is limited. On the surface, I exude traditional, conservative, sexist, and heteronormative values: I’m married, I have two kids, I make less money than my husband, and I teach gen-ed courses off the tenure-track. I dress professionally, behave responsibly, and yet try to provoke my students into thinking more critically about their lives. Unlike my first teaching experience, my classrooms are equal in gender distribution, and my job relies in no small part on my student evaluations. Talking more overtly about feminist issues is a sure way to lose half my class.

Free choice is often voiced, but what I wonder, based on the students’ own ambivalence, how much of this behavior is the student’s choice and how much of it is using choice as a reason to succumb to peer pressure? I’m not interested in “slut shaming” or “blaming the victim,” which is what often discussions of these issues devolve into. I am interested in creating a meaningful discussion and examination of these issues for my students. I’m still trying to figure out how to do it.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

Lee Skallerup Bessette, writing from Morehead, Kentucky, in the US.

I’ve questioned whether or not real change in higher education is possible. Now I’m beginning to question whether or not I want higher education to change. At least, change in the direction currently being pushed as the “solution” to all of our higher education ills.

The catalyst for this post is the recent comments made by Lumina Foundation CEO Jamie P. Merisotis about improving higher education. He was addressing governors and encouraging them to get more heavily involved in reforming public higher education in their respective states. So what advice does he offer governors?

(This advice very closely resembles the advice currently being tossed around in Texas, by the way, so my responses to them do, too)

To begin with, nowhere is it mentioned that funding levels to public education be restored, to either the K-12 or post-secondary systems. While he suggests that those in higher education work together with the K-12 system to ensure “college readiness,” I wonder how the university is supposed to replace laid-off librarians, learning specialists or reduce class sizes. We can debate (and many have) how universities prepare educators and train administrators, but nowhere in his remarks does Merisotis connect these two dots. How does Merisotis suggest we pay for these partnerships and improvements?

Incentive pay, of course. I’m sorry, “performance funding” or “outcomes based funding.” We’ve seen in Atlanta and D.C. how well dangling money in front of school systems goes towards superficially improving outcomes. Why do we think it would be any different in higher education? Because we are so noble? Then why do we need “performance funding” to coerce, I’m sorry, encourage us to do our jobs? How are we to ensure standards when the funding is tied to things like completion and retention rates?

Not only are institutions going to be bribed with cash for completion, so too will the students. The plan is to base their financial aid awards on their academic performances. This is a controversial idea, to say the least. Particularly with at-risk or non-traditional students where money is often the biggest worry. It isn’t just about paying for their studies; it’s about supporting families back home. If they don’t have to worry about money, then they can focus on grades, not the other way around.

Of course, how do we meet these goals without the extra money up front? We innovate, of course. And, we find as much efficiency as possible. Not to mention actually start providing “useful” degrees. To me, despite all of best intentions that I am sure lay behind these sentiments, those ideas screams: “we need more adjuncts!” More people with “real world” experience. More people who cost less. More people we can easily replace if they are unwilling or unable to comply. More people to deliver a standard curriculum online. Even though more and more information is showing that having full-timefaculty improves retention rates and online education doesn’t work for those most at-risk.

What bothers me the most about these recommendations is that it ensures that non-traditional students get a fundamentally different education than their “traditional” (read, white, wealthy) counterparts. Is it any surprise that the children of professors are more likely to attend small, liberal arts colleges than their socio-economic peers? I’m not saying that everyone needs or wants the liberal-arts college experience, but we seem to be sacrificing the rich variety of educational experiences available to students in the name of accessibility. Instead of innovating, we are conforming to a narrow definition and vision of what higher education should be.

I am writing this as an instructor at a regional state university that primarily serves non-traditional students. I have worked at two other public universities in two other states that also serve non-traditional students. I teach developmental students, those who are at the highest risk of dropping out. I don’t see my students as completion or failure statistics, but as individuals who have, despite their unique situations, a common set of challenges. I also don’t view my colleagues as the sum of their pass/fail rates or class average. I see them as individuals struggling to do the best they can in the face of increasing pressures, ballooning class sizes, and decreasing support. We want our students to succeed and to receive a rigorous education that will benefit them. I think governors should start listening to those on the ground a little more.