A Must Attend Event for Conservatives and Libertarians

Brought to you, in part, by yours truly, who sought out and invited, Dr. Machan to campus. 

Classical Liberalism in the Age of Obama TIBOR MACHAN ‘65 MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009 LUNCH 11:30 a.m., LECTURE 12:00 p.m.   The election of Barack Obama was historic. But what does his administration portend for classical liberalism? Senator Obama campaigned for higher taxes on the wealthy. His administration enacted a $787 billion economic stimulus. It has also increased federal spending and budget deficits. Professor Tibor Machan will address these issues and others in his Athenaeum talk. A former editor of the libertarian magazine, Reason, and a graduate of Claremont McKenna College, Professor Machan is a scholar and author of dozens of books on individual rights, libertarianism, and ethics. He is professor emeritus in the department of philosophy at Auburn University, and holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair of Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics at Chapman University in Orange, California. Professor Machan is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, an adjunct faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Tibor Machan’s visit to CMC is sponsored by the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World.

Kyle on KSPC Questions "Safe Spaces"

Update: It's Starbird, not Stewart.

Kyle Kinneberg CMC '09 was just on KSPC 88.7 FM talking about what has euphemistically been described as "the incident." That's when he and David Daleiden were banned from Pomona College for having the temerity to record a public lecture by a Planned Parenthood representative.

He was joined by two other guests, Greg Carter from Pomona's Student Union, and Bryn Starbird (sp?) from VOX, Planned Parenthood's mouthpiece on campus. 

We learned that 

1. Greg Carter and "others," possibly referring to Miss Starbird, approached Dean Miriam Feldblum to change the topic from one of abortion to so-called safe spaces on campus. I'd be willing to bet that even that conversation never takes place. 
   
2. That there is no real definition of a space space. Says Miss Starbird, "The reality is that we don't really have a definition of it." 
3. Bryn's view of what speech should be tolerated, "the goal of dialogue is to be constructive." Miss Starbird left out who would be the judge of whether that dialogue is "constructive" or not.
4. Bryn reiterated that it was Planned Parenthood's position not to engage any Live Action member. [One wonders if maybe that was why they wanted to go ask questions in the first place.]
5. That Bryn believes the banning episdoe wasn't about the boys views on abortion, "It was about respect" and that "talking about abortion isn't going to be helpful."
6. That the moderator and others believe that the problem is a lack of definition over what constitues a "safe space" and not the concept of a "safe space." "There’s this understanding that the WU is a safe space. It isn’t written down, people don’t understand it as a concept."
7. That Bryn believes that there is a "There is a very thin line between what you can do and what you can’t do. I’ve debated myself between what you can and can’t do. The issue of safe space goes into that issue. We found a disagreement about what’s appropriate what’s not appropriate. What as a campus is what we’re going to say is OK." What about individual rights? 

Kyle, to his credit, said, "We both know that it was Ms. Josel that shut down the questioning. I certainly don’t have a definition of safe space. Is it a space where you are safe from something or safe to do something? What are you safe to do? What are you safe from? You’re safe from intellectual discussion and opinions that are different from yours. I think that’s a very dangerous thing on a college campus and goes against the point of a university."

 And Bryn admitted that she agreed with that! 

But she said that if VOX or the Women's Union were going to have events, they need to make people feel "safe." One wonders what was so dangerous or unsafe about having people ask questions in a question and answer period -- that is unless VOX is really worried that the pro-lifers might present another viewpoint that makes people uncomfortable.

Kyle then asked if VOX would be willing to have a debate, only to be told that Planned Parenthood has a policy against engaging in dialogue with Live Action. I guess that's the definition of "constructive dialogue."

Greg carter than chimed in that "There is a time to talk about abortion policy and there is a time to talk about the trauma of making that decision. That is the point of safe space. There are places where you can have private conversations." But Greg missed an opportuninty to say why it was that there needed to be one place and why conversations outside of these centers couldn't take place.

Here Kyle reminded him that he didn't like the idea of deans making decisions about what is and isn't permitted speech. (You'll have to forgive him, but he was banned from Pomona by a certain overzealous dean, by the name of Marcelle Holmes.)

Kyle said, "In the face of those dangers [of chilling free speech], a question that we might consider is 'Is it good to have these safe spaces'? It does seem if we have them, we need a definition and if there are dangers associated with trying to define them, we shouldn't really have them."

Scripps College selects New President, Lori Bettison-Varga

Here's the link to the press release.

Bettison-Varga will take over from current Interim President Fritz Weis starting July 1, 2009. She is currently Provost and Dean of Faculty at Whitman College. She has directed the Keck Geology Consortium, of which Pomona College is a member, and has a B.A. from UC Santa Barbara and an M.S. and Ph.D from UC Davis. Before moving to Whitman, she taught at the College of Wooster, where she developed and taught a class on "Science, Gender and the Environment." She co-wrote this article about the course for Diversity Digest. Below, I've pasted the article in its entirety and commented a few of the more interesting claims. I save my disagreements for the end, mostly.

By Lori Bettison-Varga, associate professor of geology, and Charles Kammer, professor of religious studies, the College of Wooster

In 2003, we developed a course called Science, Gender, and the Environment for the College of Wooster’s Program in Interdisciplinary Studies. Our primary goal in teaching the course is to increase students’ environmental and gender awareness. By examining progressive movements, we hope to generate an appreciation for models and programs that are being used to effectively promote environmental sustainability and gender justice as well as to highlight the importance of scientific literacy to active citizenship. Another significant goal of the course is to challenge two assumptions held by many of our students: that science is a domain somehow set apart from other human intellectual enterprises and that only trained scientists can pose appropriate questions about or find solutions to environmental problems. [I agree here; intellectual curiosity is important!] Consequently, we emphasize the need for scientists to work with historians, sociologists, theologians, economists, artists, and others in the search for creative and just solutions to environmental problems. [However, I don't agree here entirely. See the end.]

The syllabus was designed to address several key questions: What is science and how is the scientific process “gendered”? Is there an inherent link between women’s sensibilities and the environment? How might scientific discourse be in tension with a feminist perspective? How does scientific “progress” sometimes adversely affect both women and the environment? [I realize these aren't claims, but they are certainly loaded questions.]

Students explore the complex relationship between gender, the environment, and science through several key texts. Refuge, a book by Terry Tempest Williams, is a very useful vehicle for stimulating discussions about our sense of place and the relationship between the natural world and gender. Works by Carolyn Merchant, such as Radical Ecology: The Search For a Livable World and Earthcare: Women and the Environment, also provide a variety of feminist perspectives. The paradigm that Merchant articulates helps students understand how the subordination of women is inextricably tied to the realities of class, race, and environmental degradation. This became evident in our studies of toxic contamination at Love Canal and in Woburn, Massachusetts (the subject of the book and film A Civil Action), of the flower industry’s exploitation of third-world women, and of Nobel Peace Prize–winner Wangri Maathai’s Greenbelt Movement. In all these cases, grassroots movements begun by women responding to the immediate realities of human and environmental catastrophes were opposed by male political and scientific bureaucracies that accused those advocating for change of relying on insufficient empirical evidence or faulty scientific method.

By focusing on a few specific issues, we are able to investigate topics in some detail and look at problems that extend from the local to the global environment. We require students to produce an environmental assessment of the local community and then move to additional readings and projects that focus on issues in Latin America and Africa as well as other localities in the United States. Students analyze problems, present solutions, and suggest programs for implementing the solutions. Topics include local water pollution, agricultural issues, and recent work in genetic engineering to develop pest- and disease-resistant crops. Students consequently wrestle with the multiple motivations of scientific work—for example, the desire to feed the hungry as well as the desire for corporate profits. Similarly, attention to the context of science allows students to recognize the impact of mono-cropping and of large industrial farms on sustainable communities or women in developing countries.

In class discussions, we approach science as a social construct. [Science is not a social construct; the scientific method, applied to a particular problem, will give everybody the same, reproducible results.]

As a result, we present a balanced view of science, acknowledging its benefits to society as well as its tendency to serve the dominant powers and reflect dominant social and cultural paradigms.

Investigating science from an ecofeminist perspective allows students to see that science, if not critically and reflectively applied, can have negative consequences. [Science should indeed be "critically and reflectively applied," but I'm not sure that taking an "ecofeminist perspective" is the best way to go about doing so.]

For this very reason, it is important that citizens be scientifically literate and that scientists work collaboratively with colleagues in the humanities and social sciences to develop successful solutions to environmental problems. This, ultimately, requires that the scientific community take seriously gender, justice, and sustainability concerns. [Scientific literacy can certainly be valuable; I'm currently declared as an Econ-Engineering major, and I'll be taking several science classes while I'm here. However, I'm not sure that "gender, justice, and sustainability" are worth worrying about. If anything, economics is the social science expressly designed to value concerns, and the invisible hand of the market can and does do so. To Bettison-Varga's credit, she mentions economists above. I just don't see how "sociologists, theologians" and artists are necessarily able to value these accurately.]

From Kyle Kinneberg

Hey Charles,

I'll be going on KSPC tonight at 5:20 to talk about the banning incident. It's part of the Uproot program, and the question we'll be discussing is "How should Pomona and the Claremont Colleges address the tradeoff between promoting freedom of speech and maintaining safe and supportive spaces for students?" I'll pretty much be arguing that "safe spaces" are contrary to the principles of the university/liberal arts college. Hopefully, it'll be enjoyable.

-Kyle

On Improving Social Life at the Claremont Colleges

I've been thinking a lot about how to improve dry life on Claremont Colleges. Though the Quiz Bowls are fun, they don't come around nearly that often. 

Josh Siegel and the same crew that brought us  Claremont Confessions and The Forum could set up a better web portal that allows for social networking on campus. [A side note: Anyone else having trouble loading The Forum on Chrome?]

Here's my modest proposal. Create a message board where students can advertise events quickly. A good example would be a poker game, a session of racquetball, or Settlers of Catan, which I know Charlie Sprague likes. Students could sign in -- it would descend into chaos if it were anonymous -- and create an "ad" or event that other students could follow or join. 

Students could then sign into events that they were interested in, say a poker game on the 5-Cs. Everytime a new event occurs about poker, that student could receive a text message or an email. Critics might ask if Facebook provides this same function, but I would argue that it is sorely missing. Many CMCers aren't on Facebook and the dispersal of information between friend groups makes it hard to keep everyone involved. 

After running the site for some time, Siegel and crew could sell the data they get to companies and maybe throw some good parties (or as I would like it, reducing student fees). I'm sure the company that produces Scrabble would want to know how often we all play it or people who sell beer want to know how often we play beirut a week.