Author: Andrew Sullivan

by Chris Bodenner

Will Wlizlo takes a glimpse at the future:

The latest, most outlandish transit solution, reports China Hush, is a “straddling bus” (also called a “three-dimensional fast bus”) that travels over the tops of automobiles, like a mobile tunnel. Commuters board from a station one story above the ground, and when the straddling bus parks to pick up riders—as many as 1200 per vehicle—it doesn’t disrupt the flow of traffic.

The project seems almost too good to be true, even though construction of a 115-mile line in Beijing’s Mentougou District is set to begin by the end of the year. The innovating company, Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment, claims that building the infrastructure for straddling buses is three times faster and much cheaper than a comparable distance of new subways.

by Patrick Appel

Emily Bazelon warns:

In the end, do we really want gay marriage to become legal in California because of what's essentially a technicality? That seems a highly unsatisfying resolution to what was always billed as an epic case, and it would expose in the left a bit of hypocrisy about standing much as it would the right. Far better would be for the Prop 8 proponents themselves to decide not to bring an appeal. David Barton of the American Family Association has already floated that idea. If conservatives cave in on their own, they'd implicitly concede how terribly weak their case was at trial, whatever excuse they come up with. (Barton's was to cast Kennedy as a sure vote in favor of a constitutional right to gay marriage. Amusing that he thinks so, but I still wouldn't want to bet on it.)

Jonathan Adler links to other commentary on this question. Bazelon's use of the word "technicality" irks, but she's right that there are theoretically better ways to win. Still, I'll take victories where I can find them. Journalists lust for the "epic case" but progress generally takes small steps forward. I'd love it if every American woke up tomorrow and saw the rightness of marriage equality, but the progress made in the last few years isn't illegitimate just because it doesn't match the ideal. No one person gets to decide how this fight is won.

by Chris Bodenner

A peculiar case against allowing gays and lesbians to fight for their country.

by Patrick Appel

Reid shamelessly comes out against the Cordoba community center. Sargent:

Reid basically threw the whole Dem caucus under the bus: With the Senate leader at odds with the president, the media will press every Senate Dem to declare which side they're on.

Weigel pulls his hair out:

There are a few things more pathetic than a Senate majority leader weighing in on an issue he would have power to affect if he repealed a law he helped pass.

by Conor Friedersdorf

I'm a long form journalism junkie.

My favorite practitioner is the peerless John McPhee, though some days I'd swear it's Lawrence Weschler or Ian Frazier or James Fallows or Gay Talese or Mark Bowden or Gene Weingarten, or whoever last wowed me. In 2008 and 2009 I offered roundups of my favorite stories, and I make frequent use of Instapaper, Readability, and LongForm.org.

In the spirit of Slow Journalism, I want to tell you about one of the more amazing stories I've ever come across: "Pat Dollard's War on Hollywood" by Evan Wright. It's long, but riveting throughout, the kind of piece that you want more of even as it ends. The impossible editor tasked with summarizing the piece came up with this subhead:

In 2004, having made his name as Steven Soderbergh’s agent, Pat Dollard was the stereotypical Hollywood operator: coked-up, Armani-sheathed, separated from his fourth wife, and rapidly self-destructing. But when he hit bottom, Dollard didn’t go back to rehab; he went to Iraq, embedded with the Marines, and filmed a pro-war documentary, which has the industry buzzing and right-wingers hailing him as the anti–Michael Moore. But whether he’s surviving mayhem in Ramadi or dining with Ann Coulter in Los Angeles, Evan Wright reports, Dollard’s life is a one-man combat zone.

But that doesn't do this piece justice.

All I can say is that neither the scene where American troops are filmed playing with a human skull nor the one where the protagonist asks an ex-con to film him while he has sex with the ex-con's former girlfriend is even remotely the craziest scene in the piece. It's got sex, drugs, violence, rock and roll… but also geopolitical insights, a tragic story arc, a cameo by Andrew Breitbart, inside Hollywood gossip, dry writerly humor… if you've got the time, use that Readability link above or print it out.

And let me know what you think.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Chris Beam misses a key point.  Faculty without tenure don't just keep silent out of fear of losing their chance at tenure. They keep silent out of fear of losing the employment they already have. Take away tenure, and that fear not only persists, but becomes permanent; there is no safe haven for any academics to speak freely from, without fear of reprisal.

Another writes:

As someone in academia, I don't think Beam has much an idea of what tenure really is or how it works. Tenure is really just an incentive to attract and keep the best talent in the field.  Does this type of long-term job security cost institutions more?  Yes, of course.  But the best scholars will go where they receive the most perks, and tenure is one of them – along with salary, research funds, etc.  I can't tell you how many faculty at my former research university were being recruited heavily with outside offers from other universities, but either had tenure or were then put up for tenure early, granted it, and stayed.  The university wanted to keep these scholars, and tenure is a big reason why it was able to.

Could tenure lead to complacency?  Sure, in some cases.  But most professional athletes don't stop competing when they sign long-term contracts (even if they know it will be the last of their carer), and in my experience, professors don't either.  They publish because they want to continue to make a name for themselves in the field and they teach because they often genuinely enjoy it and think it is an important job.

Do junior faculty ignore teaching because of the requirements of tenure?  That is utterly ridiculous.  The anecdote Beam mentions about the individual told to hide their teaching award is almost surely from an institution that doesn't value teaching much at all – before or after tenure.  At places where teaching is emphasized, such as small liberal arts colleges, rest assured that teaching is a BIG part of the tenure process.  But how much teaching is weighted is up to the institution, not dictated by the tenure process.

Another:

Tenure is often blamed for prioritizing research over teaching.  But this has nothing to do with tenure.

Faculty at research universities prioritize research over teaching because that is what their employer rewards.  Faculty at teaching colleges prioritize teaching over research because their employers have different priorities.  Tenure is one expression of the reward system, but so are pay raises.  Change university priorities and you will change faculty focus, whether or not tenure is at issue.

The quotation from Chris Beam that you posted yesterday does the same thing – it ascribes to tenure an effect that derives from elsewhere.  It is not tenure that disincentivizes young scholars from shaking things up.  It is the fact that they are being evaluated by their senior colleagues.  Any incentive system in which one is evaluated by one’s senior colleagues, including one based on term contracts, would have the same effect, perhaps even to a greater degree.

Another:

I left academia last year after fifteen years of teaching at three different institutions. I was never in a tenure-track job but was treated for the most part much better than most part-timers are. My experience confirms Beam's argument. All of these institutions claimed to be liberal arts colleges and claimed to value teaching and close relationships between faculty and students.  By the time professors achieve tenure, they are beaten down and have lost their voice. Alternatively, they have drunk the Kool-Aid and cheer-lead for the institution.

Another:

I'm writing you this quick note as an assistant professor of history who will come up for tenure in two years. My personal experience with writing my first book has been that tenured academics, starting with my graduate mentor and continuing with my senior colleagues now, have encouraged me to go out on a limb with my research questions and with my arguments. Every time I developed a new interpretation of well-known primary sources, my mentors in fact cheered me on.  I'm not sure if this qualifies as "dissent" in the true meaning of the word, but in my field of academia, revision of old arguments and development of new methodologies by junior scholars is encouraged.

Of course my own perceptions are just that – my own – but as a thought experiment (and I'll admit, I was procrastinating), I took all the books off my shelves in my home office that I have a) read and b) were written in the last ten years. This was a sample of 44. Of these, 17 were written by junior scholars (i.e., first books).  In a quick evaluation, I would say that ten of these were significant works of scholarship: they radically revised old knowledge, introduced new methods, introduced new sources, or found new ways of situating old material.  This says to me that untenured academics are both motivated by tenure to produce good work but are not intimidated by taking on older scholars and older interpretations.

I think there might be problems with tenure generally, but discouraging dissent isn't one of them. My sense is that most of the problems with tenure come from the other end: tenured professors who cease to be active scholars. I've seen that in a number of departments in a number of universities: the older professor who hasn't published anything in years, not even a conference paper. These folks are both poor scholars and poor teachers, and they're difficult to get rid of.  Most of the time universities penalize these people by preventing further promotions and limiting them to COL raises, but they still can't get rid of them.

There is talk about instituting a long-term contract system for academics instead of using tenure. I'm not sure what I think of that, and I'm not sure it would replace tenure's role in protecting academic freedom. But of course I am about to benefit from tenure myself, and I have to say, lifetime job security is pretty awesome. I promise not to ossify once I get there.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Mark Halperin:

Yes, Republicans, you can take advantage of this heated circumstance, backed by the families of the 9/11 victims, in their most emotional return to the public stage since 2001.

But please don't do it. There are a handful of good reasons to oppose allowing the Islamic center to be built so close to Ground Zero, particularly the family opposition and the availability of other, less raw locations. But what is happening now — the misinformation about the center and its supporters; the open declarations of war on Islam on talk radio, the Internet and other forums; the painful divisions propelled by all the overheated rhetoric — is not worth whatever political gain your party might achieve.

It isn't clear how the battle over the proposed center should or will end. But two things are profoundly clear: Republicans have a strong chance to win the midterm elections without picking a fight over President Obama's measured words. And a national political fight conducted on the terms we have seen in the past few days will lead to a chain reaction at home and abroad that will have one winner — the very extreme and violent jihadists we all can claim as our true enemy.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Like your reader, I was also a teacher of inner-city students who lived right next to the poor, urban neighborhood where I taught for six years. It's not just that these kids have so few educational opportunities; it's that they have so many other tempting opportunities once they are teenagers. Inner city neighborhoods have shadow economies which provide employment for the kids in the hood. Add the gang membership needed to protect oneself, and you can write off almost all of the boys right off the bat. As for the girls, for many Latinas, the ticket to adulthood – and widespread admiration from one's family and friends – is pregnancy.

In short, it's not just that mainstream white culture rejects minorities and provides few avenues out of ghetto poverty. Inner city life has its own things going on, mirrored in the popular culture (professional sports and hip hop, especially).  It's a reflection of cultural norms on all sides.

Notably, the kids who proved most able to use my school as a way to rise into the middle class were usually from Southeast Asia. They were just as poor as the rest of the kids, but their cultural norms were different.

Asians are also perceived very differently in the US than blacks and Hispanics, which also helps. But in truth, the kids I taught who could be relied on to earn top grades were almost always Vietnamese immigrants. Not that others didn't do well, but as a group the Vietnamese stood out. And maybe part of the reason for this, the reason that so many Southeast Asians used the same rotten inner city school the others attended as a ticket out of poverty, was that they were not as likely to be pulled into the culture of gangs, early pregnancy, selling drugs, etc. And they had their own pop culture, too.

I don't think that it's "blaming the victim" to acknowledge these problems. Yes, urban schools suck, but they can work for you if you make them. And yes, society can be racist. But the culture of the inner city, along with all it doesn't offer (connections, power, etc.) does offer for many black and Hispanic kids the allure of easy money, glamour and quick tickets to fame and fortune, however illusory.

Another writes:

People who have actually looked closely at gangs – for example, sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh – have found that, yes, they do a lot of illegal things, but they are often (reluctantly, partially) supported by people in these neighborhoods. Not because the community people are indifferent to crime and gang activity, or just depraved by their lack of a strong culture, but because the gangs often provide small, inadequate portions of the infrastructure that is non existent in poor neighborhoods.  In Venkatesh's words, the gangs "both sustain and imperil their lives."