For the 4th -- Mencken's Creed

Has a finer creed been promulgated? Wouldn't we all benefit were this the American Creed?

Henry Louis Mencken offered the following creed for our consideration. <http://www.bizbag.com/mencken/menkcreed.htm>


I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind, that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.

I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech.

I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I believe in the reality of progress.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie.
I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.



However, to celebrate the Fourth, let us highlight Mencken's thinking in red and offer emendations in blue. Wouldn't that be mighty white of us?

• I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind, that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

If not for "generally speaking" and Mencken's balancing of the benefits of religion against its costs, I should dissent from his first credendum. I'd substitute "dogma." Dogmatic thinking, whether religious or not, burdens humans and foils their thinking. Hence, I am closer to Jefferson's "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," except that swearing on the altar of any god seems to me problematic. I'd go with:

• Dogma has damaged thinking humans for transitory certainty and to no lasting profit.

• I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

To avoid dogmatic phrasing, I'd have to qualify this a bit, but Mencken is close enough. For me the key word is "trumpeting." If one tells grandma she looks lovely even though she looks much like a comicbook cryptkeeper, one is not trumpeting. Spreading misinformation widely increases ignorance and decreases intelligence. That is the danger. Hence:

• Disseminating facts is never wholly useless and disseminating falsehoods is always vicious.

• I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.

Here again Henry Louis overstates dogmatically. Neither all governments nor any government need "war" upon liberty. Governments often protect liberties. Moreover, calling government evil invokes the quasi-religious Manicheanism that Mencken denounces. Thus, I'd rephrase:

• When governments war on liberty, they harm more than help; when governments protect liberty, they help more than harm.

• I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I am with Mencken here. I love the phrasing. If one demands evidence, immortality, witchcraft, and a host of other credenda must slink back into swamps of ignorance out of which muckrakers or romantics or buncombe artists harvested them. With the slightest rephrasing, then:

• Absent good evidence, immortality and witchcraft are roughly equally likely.

• I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech.

If you cannot refute or ignore thought or speech with which you disagree, you must lump it. What cannot be helped must be endured. Still, I'd insinuate what civil libertarians long have taught:

• The remedy for "bad" thought or "bad" speech is more and better thought and more and better speech.

• I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I agree with Mencken here but insist that cynics be given their due. Humans can intellectualize their worlds and their fellows, can analyze what makes up the world, and can theorize how the world runs. Humans are, alas, as likely as not to run from what they discover in pursuit of personal gain -- "If global warming is real, it can be real after I am dead and past sacrificing for others" -- or to explain away unwelcome conclusions about structures -- Romanticism or Idealism, for examples -- or to theorize how the world might run better if only certain thems would accede to this or that us. Thus,

• Humans usually master their worlds better than they master themselves.

• I believe in the reality of progress.

Some progress is real and worth the price. However, humans usually cannot assay the reality or the price until long after it is possible to go back. More, every step forward is at the least a step away from alternatives. Hence, progress may be every bit as real as the opportunity costs of the progress. What Europeans call "handy" phones [cell phones] represent at once progress and nuisance. Progress is real because apparent progress pushes us down and makes it ever less likely that humans shall recover, let alone retreat. I'd prefer to put matters this way:

• Some progress is real; some progress is illusory; most progress is both.

I leave unstated that most users of "handy" phones [as Europeans call mobile or cell phones] should shut the f__k up around me.

• I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie.

Here my fellows cynics and I scream, "Say what?" Those who tell the truth in politics and government we call "losers." Morally or spiritually the truth may be preferred, but in politicking, warfare, employment, and relationships, telling the truth will get you defeated, unemployed, and alone. I believe it better to leave this credendum unstated. "Woven man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen," and all that.

• I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave.

Most of us join Mencken on this one. Still, one must recall that emancipated slaves in the United States suffered mightily when they were no longer the property of wealthy whites. Qualify!

• Generally and over the long haul, it is better to be free than to be enslaved.

• And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

Mencken did not live to hear philosopher Robert Seger opine, "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" ["Against the Wind"]. Ignorance often is bliss. Indeed, "Rump Parliament" exists to upset the blissful ignorance that most faculty assiduously pursue. I cannot fault colleagues for eating lotus. They have families to raise, careers to pursue, and illusions and delusions to protect. What I know about the university and its various departments scarcely makes working here better. Thus, I think we'll ignore Mencken's last belief.

Either list strikes me as a creed worthy of Independence Day. Remember: a fifth makes for a happy Fourth.

If more Americans subscribed to Mencken's creed, maybe one would not need a fifth to celebrate.

Puget Sound Rosetta Orwell Stone Located!

Apologies to Dan Brown, below is my report on the recent Honor Code.



Shortly before her untimely and suspicious demise, linguist Rosetta Orwell Stone had discovered a cryptic code in use on campus. On the underside of a boulder stating the university’s etiology in and dedication to good citizenship and Christian religion, Dr. Stone discovered a new micro-chip off the old boulder. The micro-chip preserved a secret code for phrasing documents from Student Affairs.

Applying the secret code to an honor code recently approved by the trustees, Dr. Stone learned that the honor code hid a remarkable message.

As passed by the trustees, the honor code appears to have been produced when meringue and tapioca, each travelling near the speed of light, collided over a blue dress:

“I am a member of the community of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing its members’ academic abilities and personal integrity. I accept the responsibilities of my membership in this community and acknowledge that the purpose of this community demands that I conduct myself in accordance with Puget Sound’s policies of Academic and Student Integrity. As a student at the University of Puget Sound, I hereby pledge to conduct myself responsibly and honorably in my academic activities, to be fair, civil, and honest with all members of the Puget Sound community, and to respect their safety, rights, privileges, and property.”

Not so fast, Dr. Stone cautioned. “The ocean is a desert with its life underground and the perfect disguise above, as the folk-rock group America told us long ago,” said the linguist. “So, too, the honor code is the perfect cover for an insidious oath. ‘Member of the community’ is an anagram for 'botchery if momentum me,' which of course is the official Klingon designation for all subjects of the Klingon empire.”

Dr. Stone’s suspicions were aroused by the sentiment that all members of the Puget Sound community should have their rights respected. “Puget Sound is a private university. Who has rights here?” She rearranged “safety” and “rights” into “thrifty gases” and “privileges” and “property” into “soppy girlie pervert.” The adage “Soppy girly perverts are thrifty with their gases” was, readers will recall, the first of T. E. Lawrence’s seven pillars of wisdom. Hurrying to the mausoleum of Judge John Minor Wisdom, linguist Stone found on its seventeenth pillar "Refragatio non sufficiens," the Latin for “Resistance is futile.”

“That was the breakthrough,” Dr. Stone enthused. “Klingon designations and Borg imperatives in the university’s honor code? Coincidence? I think not.”

Dr. Stone also recalled that the late Paul Newman is alleged to have said, "24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not." Rosetta thought Paul handsome.

After some Saurean brandy and Romulan baked beans, Dr. Stone was able to piece together the actual code underlying the seemingly meaningless honor code recently promulgated. Substituting for the red-letter oath supra, the honor code cryptically says:

“I am a subject of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing hive mentality. I am but a thrall and submit to Puget Sound’s regimen. As a tuition-paying robot, I forfeit all rights and dignity, I lose my individuality in my academic activities, I abandon all pleasures but to please my superiors, and I believe that resistance is feudal.”


In a related development, Dr. Stone’s interment in a Tacoma time capsule has so far been ruled accidental by TPD.

Eating a Symbolic Worm

What is the point of an honor code?


Is the point of an honor code for an institution to indicate its adherence to norms and principles? Did someone doubt the institution’s adherence? Why would anyone, especially the Academic Standards Committee, doubt the institution's honor?

If the point of an honor code is reaffirmation of an institution’s preferring virtues to vices, wouldn’t endorsement of healthy food and sensible diet do students more good than coming out in favor of honor?

Is the point of an honor code largely symbolism? Does one espouse an honor code to posture in favor of virtue – despite the fact that the existence or non-existence of the honor code says nothing about the advocate’s possession of any virtues? Given psychological transference, why shouldn’t we suppose that the faculty most eager to denounce vices are those most familiar with vicious practices? Other than their own experiences as undergraduates, whence do faculty derive their suspicions?

Is the point of an hour code to stem some upsurge in dishonor? If so, exactly what is the theory behind the panacea? Are we to suppose that deviance is increasing because deviants are ignorant of the views of faculty and administrators regarding honor or cheating?

If more than symbolic, an honor code must spell out standards for deviants. Does anyone who has read "The Integrity Principle" or the standards to which students are held imagine that either or both make explicit any standards?

I have students read "The Integrity Principle" and the standards for student conduct each year in Politics and Government 316 -- so students may see how much due process and how many rights they surrendered by attending a private school and especially this private school. The students always conclude that the standards basically say, "If Student Affairs wants to nail you, they always will find a pretext." Last time around, a philosophy major asked whether anyone in the room purported even to understand "The Integrity Principle." He was reassured when no one could say what the author(s) of "The Integrity Principle" might have meant to argue.

In short, students find the standards applicable to students to be so elastic as to be ex post facto laws and "The Integrity Principle" to be incoherent mush. Other than that, the standards of our incipient "Honor Code" are quite explicit.

The content of the NEW! IMPROVED! Honor Code is so nebulous that the Academic Standards Committee incorporated them by citation

"I am a member of the community of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing its members’ academic abilities and personal integrity. I accept the responsibilities of my membership in this community and acknowledge that the purpose of this community demands that I conduct myself in accordance with Puget Sound’s policies of Academic and Student Integrity. As a student at the University of Puget Sound, I hereby pledge to conduct myself responsibly and honorably in my academic activities, to be fair, civil, and honest with all members of the Puget Sound community, and to respect their safety, rights, privileges, and property."

How nice to have that all cleared up!

Passing an honor code is like eating a worm. It does little good. It does little harm. It keeps faculty and committees busy. It provides purpose to the aimless and empty. It lets trustees feel useful.

Our New Schedule

Is it too early to see returns on scheduling changes that were supposed to foment professional growth?

I suppose I know the answer, but let me ask anyway.

Colleagues who take Fridays or other weekdays "off" from teaching should soon be producing the professional growth that, we were told, justified the days off. What evidence do we have that "research days" have yielded the anticipated conference papers or published work?

Colleagues who flourished pedagogical reasons for teaching classes over 80-90 minutes had no reason not to show up on non-class days, so they will want to supply some other return to the students or the university from their absences. [I freely grant that the absence of certain colleagues from campus is reward enough in itself.] To refresh your recollection of cover stories, please see "U Stands for Unchained Maladies" 27 October 2007 in "Rump Parliament."

That is why defenders of fewer campus appearances had to rationalize their absences as "research days." I have no doubt that over extended weekends our colleagues were zipping to this library or engaged in that colloquium. So let's see some receipts.

A reviewed manuscript or a sizzling book review might go far toward answering those cynics who supposed that colleagues wanted to sleep in or pursue leisure activities.

If students ask why they cannot meet with their faculty often or at all, it would be pleasant to answer with evidence of the advances in human knowledge that more than make up for personal contact with our faculty. The same is true for colleagues who would prefer their committees not to meet on Thursdays at 8:00 a.m. to accommodate committee members who cannot make meetings on Fridays [ or Mondays ... or Wednesdays].

I see no point in looking at the productivity of recent hires. We have no "before" measures for them.

So let's take faculty who started before 2004. Certainly their CVs before 2004 and their CVs after 2004 should reveal startling increases in productivity by those who had one or more days free from classrooms that they could devote to professional growth. Each faculty member, relative to his or her own productivity before, should be expected to have profited from "research days." Faculty who have not secured days away from campus or hidden behind their office doors should, relative to their own productivity before the change, have exhibited far less growth on average than those who took advantage of "research days."

Is someone in Institutional Research on this matter, or should I undertake it as a hobby?

Scoundrels and Frauds

Puget Sound observes its ideals on Graduation Day.

A colleague spoke from the heart about graduation:

#####I am happy to attend for the kids but usually dislike
#####the speeches. The speeches are high-minded. I get
#####inspired then look around and see so many
#####scoundrels and frauds sitting near me. I feel soiled,
#####but say nothing. The hypocrisy bothers me.

Doesn't seem to bother most faculty or administrators.

Maybe you should turn off your critical faculties and let the nonsense pour over you.

Slumber through the ceremonies and be at most semi-conscious amid faculty governance or other dissimulations.

"Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me," said Rita Hayworth. Graduate students are seduced into academia; if they awaken at Coyote Date University, they feel used. This is all the more reason not to wake up.

Sleep in.
Talk critical thinking, but never practice it.
Advocate skepticism about change.
Let reassurance wash over you.
Avoid faculty meetings in favor of alternative soporifics.
Go along and you'll get along.
Stage more conversations among the folks.

There are no problems. The only problems are colleagues who espy problems. They're the problems.

But forget about them.

Have a lotus with that beer?

Before you give me grief about spelling out "STALAGS" along the left margin supra, please note that "stalag" was coinage from "Stamm" main body and "Lager" camp. Scoundrels and frauds are not the numeric majority at the university, but those who avert their eyes from scoundrels and frauds or apologize for the condoning of frauds and other abuses are the leading cadre.

Can you assist the FAC?

The FAC has issued a cry for help. Will you answer?

In its annual report dated 5 May 2009, the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] has implicitly admitted its cognitive disarray:

"As we noted last year, a continuing concern of the Advancement Committee is open file reviews. The participation of all tenure-line colleagues in departmental and program reviews is a long-standing and highly valued practice at Puget Sound. Evaluees have long had the option of open or closed files for evaluations other than the tenure evaluation. The recent vote by the faculty to extend the option of open files to tenure evaluations has raised the salience of the issue of junior faculty participation in all open file reviews. Since the vote to extend open files, FAC members have observed more guarded letters being submitted, particularly by junior faculty though also by some senior colleagues, and a general reluctance by some to weigh in on change of status evaluations."



The FAC's deployment of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy disappoints. It is too bad that the FAC featured no social scientists or scholars familiar with logical validity or cogency.

Can commenters help out?

Please supply arguments that the FAC would advance if members of the FAC cared to be taken seriously.

Please assist your challenged colleagues.

The FAC flips the Senate the bird then invites senators to pull their fingers

The Faculty Advancement Committee Evades the Bylaws Again!

Every spring of late, the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] evades the Bylaws. The Bylaws mandate that each Faculty Senate Committee appoint a chair. The Faculty Senate has insisted for years that the FAC follow the Bylaws. Whether through recalcitrance or arrogance, the FAC has instead upheld the cherished Puget Sound tradition that the Professional Standards Committee and the FAC do as they please irrespective of rules. When challenged on their misbehaviors, the power committees ply the credulous with aged canards and newly hatched rationalizations.

Aged Canard 1: The FAC objects to electing a chair because the FAC has never had a chair.

This objection is not quite true. It would be more accurate to say that, over the years, the Academic Vice President or Dean has been unacknowledged chair of the FAC. The FAC has been guided by a de facto decanal chair more often than it has resembled any roundtable of six decision-makers of equal standing or identical function. Ask veterans who have visited the FAC on multiple occasions over the years whether they were able to detect a de facto chair.

If the FAC has never had an official chair, so what? Other than Puget Sound administrators and apparatchiks, who argues that never having followed the rules justifies continuing to ignore the rules? If only Al Capone had known this "argument" was available to him: "But I have never paid income taxes!"

That the FAC has never appointed a chair establishes only that the FAC has never considered itself bound by rules that apply to all faculty senate committees.

Aged Canard 2: The FAC objects to electing a chair because electing a chair might have legal ramifications.

At least one member of the FAC has argued unspecified legal perils might follow from following the Bylaws. How intriguing! Ignoring or evading the Bylaws has no legal downside, but following them imperils the University? Who vetted this legal argument—John Yoo? Did the FAC ask any competent attorney about the advisability of following authority—often reckoned a legal virtue—as opposed to defying both the Bylaws and the Faculty Senate? Or would asking a competent attorney divest the FAC member(s) of this excuse?

The FAC has supplied no legal authority for this "legal opinion" because any legal peril—to the chair of the FAC or to individuals on the FAC—from following Bylaws is a chimera.

Indeed, that one or more members of the FAC would invoke such hokum shows little faith in other FAC canards.


Aged Canard 3: Electing a chair would spoil the egalitarianism of the FAC.

The 2008-2009 report of the FAC features this drollery: "... the Advancement Committee discussed at its first meeting of the year the matter of committee chair. Affirming that it continues to prefer that all voices at the table be equal participants, the Committee elected Priti Joshi, Sunil Kukreja, Andy Rex, Stuart Smithers, Kate Stirling, and Kris Bartanen as co-chairs."

The FAC knows that not all its members participate equally or identically:

• Concerning third-year assistant professors and distinction, five members of the FAC recommend to the sixth member, the Academic Vice President and Dean.
• Unless the FAC has changed recently, the Academic Vice President and Dean handles correspondence for the FAC, while members of the FAC draft letters regarding individual evaluees.
• Through 2005, the Academic Vice President and Dean was never the lead person for a file; the other five members of the FAC took turns taking the lead.
• "Streamlined" evaluations result in no inequalities of participation?

However, the FAC presumes that most senators and most faculty will not know how often the voices around the table will not be "equal." So the FAC bullshits the faculty.

Even if the suggested equality or equivalence were true, this argument would not be cogent. The Bylaws require every faculty senate committee to elect a chair at each committee's first meeting. The Bylaws further require that the chair be responsible for inducing the committee to meet and producing a report at year's end. The Bylaws require nothing else. How a chair's being responsible for the committee's meeting and reporting would roil or spoil the FAC, we are never told. We are never told for the same reason that we are never told why George W. Bush was one of our greatest presidents.

The FAC does not want to follow the Bylaws and so will not. The rest is blather summoned to explain why members of the FAC are above ordinary rules and authorities.

Newly Hatched Rationalization 1: The FAC this year elected six co-chairs.

The latest evasion by the FAC collides with Article V of the Bylaws [boldface added]:

...

Sec. 2. Organization. The Senate shall name a Convener for each committee during the first month of the fall semester for the purpose of electing a Committee Chairperson and orienting the committee based on the committee's prior year-end report, except when otherwise provided in the organization of the committee.

Sec. 3. Committee Meetings.
A. The Chairperson of each committee shall convene the committee during the first month of the fall semester to plan the work of the committee. Times for additional meetings will be at the discretion of the committee members. The Chairperson shall be responsible for presenting reports to the Senate.


Who would be so wanting in candor as to claim that appointing six co-chairs matched the Bylaws' requirement of "a chairperson" and of "the chairperson?" To ask the question is to answer it.

Perhaps most remarkable, the two newbies on the FAC conformed to the FAC's defiance in their very first meeting. What profiles in credulity! Did they hold out for even ten minutes before abasing themselves?

So here's to the FAC, ladies and gentlemen!

Six doctors who believe that 6 = 1.