Clueless in Academe

The Chronicle Online

The title of this article is richly ironic. Stanley Fish thinks Larry Summers was being "clueless" when he recently opined that women may be underrepresented in math and science because of innate gender differences.

That, of course, is thoughtcrime, doubleplus ungood. Mustn't go against the liberal academic dogma that states that men and women are exactly the same in all respects.

Dogma or not, anyone who has actually met real men and real women - or had significant interaction with children of both genders - knows that there are in fact many innate differences between the genders, and those will be expressed no matter how many dolls and tea sets you give Jack and how many trucks and tool chests you give Jill.

It's Fish who is the clueless one, and like a fish unaware of the water, he doesn't even know how clueless he is.

The morality of e-ducation - for more or for all?

USU's David Wiley with very thought-provoking commentary on the morality of "scaling" education versus making education accessible.

Good to Know The Leadership Gets It

The Daily Brief: It's Good to Know Leadership Gets It

“The metric is what the person has to contribute, not the person’s rank, age, or level of experience. If they have the answer, I want the answer. When I post a question on my blog, I expect the person with the answer to post back. I do not expect the person with the answer to run it through you, your OIC, the branch chief, the exec, the Division Chief and then get the garbled answer back before he or she posts it for me. The Napoleonic Code and Netcentric Collaboration cannot exist in the same space and time. It’s YOUR job to make sure I get my answers and then if they get it wrong or they could have got it righter, then you guide them toward a better way…but do not get in their way.”

If a commanding general in the USMC can say this, why can't a university president?