The matter of salary levels and professional advancement is much discussed and debated today in business and academe. This paper examines the matter of salary determinants for law professors in colleges of management in the U.S. with an emphasis on examining how gender might affect professorial salary and rank. By focusing on one discipline in today''s academe and in a college having great student demand (management) coupled with a professed commitment to women''s rights and by holding constant variables relevant (...) to salary and rank, this study, addresses the matter of whether gender is a factor in determination of academic rank and salary. This study used correlation and path analysis in arriving at our conclusions. Our sample size meets statistically acceptable parameters. Our results corroborate earlier research which finds significant pay differences between women and men, but they show that at least for the sample of legal studies professors in this study, these pay differences are attributable to the number of years spent in academe. If women have only recently enjoyed opportunities for careers in this discipline, they do not have as much seniority, on average as men. Consequently, if universities pay salaries at least partly according to seniority, women''s salaries are likely to be lower than men''s salaries, as our study indicates. At the same time, however, even after controlling for seniority and other factors that might affect rank, there are still significantly fewer women in the higher ranks. These results point to the operation of a glass ceiling which restricts promotional opportunities for women in other fields. (shrink)

We applied TETRAD II, a causal discovery program developed in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Philosophy, to a database containing information on 204 U.S. colleges, collected by the US News and World Report magazine for the purpose of college ranking. Our analysis focuses on possible causes of low freshmen retention in U.S. colleges. TETRAD II finds a set of causal structures that are compatible with the data.

Colleges of business rankings purport to address relative performance on programs such as sustainability. The primary criticism of rankings is that providers have not established reliability or validity of the ranking. This study examines whether The Global 100 sustainability ranking is sufficiently unique to claim that it is based on attributes not used for non-sustainability ranking (divergent validity) and whether it is appropriately related to independent characteristics expected to measure this attribute (convergent validity).

BackgroundMental health problems have emerged as a significant health complication in United States colleges during COVID-19, and as a result, they have been extensively investigated in the United States and internationally. In contrast, research on coping among the college population during the pandemic is scant. Hence, this study investigated coping strategies proposed by undergraduate students attending a Midwestern university.ObjectivesThe purpose of this preliminary study was to obtain college students’ feedback/opinions about coping strategies for mental health problems, suicide ideation, (...) and self-harm during COVID-19.MethodsIn December 2021, one-hundred and four undergraduate students completed an online survey on coping strategies using Qualtrics. Major topics included: Types of coping strategies/styles expressed by students for general mental health problems, Types of coping strategies for suicide ideation and self-harm behaviors, Preferred platforms for receiving coping therapy, and Reasons for accepting or refusing parent involvement with mental health problems.ResultsThe most beneficial coping strategies for mental health were ranked by college students as follows: a skills training development program, meditation, and mindfulness exercises, and physical education. The respondents’ best coping strategies for preventing self-harm and suicide ideation/behaviors during COVID-19 were ranked as: improving support from friends, building self-esteem, and addressing anger, depression, stress, and loneliness. Finally, a total of 50% of participants felt that parents should be involved in college student interventions. Students stated that the most important type of support that they received from their parents were: emotional support, direction and/or assistance with solutions, and problem-solving.ConclusionThis study identified potential avenues which could be implemented into action during future outbreaks. Specifically, employing interventions that: train undergraduate students to employ more effective skills training coping strategies or practicing mindfulness or meditation; integrate mental health, suicide, and self-harm prevention into the curriculum; offer more in-person campus services targeted toward the psychological and emotional effects of a pandemic, and involve support persons in students’ lives to enhance their well-being during and after COVID-19. (shrink)

It is meet and right that pride and humility should be the two human characteristics on which University sermons have to be preached. Left to myself, although I might have picked on my modesty as something I should share with you, I should have given the preeminence to other among my sins than pride. My greed, my sloth, my avarice or, in this salacious age my lust, are subjects on which I could tell you much that might interest you. Pride (...) lacks immediate appeal. We are not sure what it is, or whether it is a bad thing, when we think of it in purely individual terms. But when we consider it collectively, we can see that it is, together with humility, something Oxford is peculiarly well qualified to preach on. We all of us are proud of our university. We were proud, and our schoolmasters were proud, when we first got our places here. We are, dons and undergraduates alike, proud of our colleges, each grateful that good fortune has brought him to the best college in Oxford, and anxious that everyone else should secretly acknowledge it to be the best. Our parents were proud when we took our degrees, and although we profess to be unconcerned with classes, we are deeply content to record our firsts when occasion requires us to do so, or have our contemporaries allude to them as opportunity offers. We are studious, as dons, not to pull rank, safe in the knowledge that others will do it for us, and that we shall receive the deference due to a fellow of an Oxford college. In an age that is egalitarian in theory but elitist at heart, Oxford men have benefited greatly, as other forms of social eminence have been eroded, leaving a clear field for our own claims to public esteem, which are, if not entirely unchallenged, still generally allowed. Oxford is, as we like to be told by outsiders, a centre of excellence, and a lot of the resplendence rubs off on us, not altogether undeservedly. It is, as we corporately admit on Commemoration Sunday, largely due to our having entered into other men's labours.. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the reality of the use of social networks in the technical colleges in Palestine, where the variables of social networks were included. The analytical descriptive method was used in the study. A questionnaire consisting of (12) items was randomly distributed to college workers Technology in the Gaza Strip. The sample of the study consisted of (205) employees of these colleges. The response rate was 74.5%. The results showed a high degree of approval for the (...) dimensions of the social networks and a relative weight (74.15%) according to the perspective of the employees of the technical colleges in the Gaza Strip. The results of the study showed that there is a high level of social networking areas (site management and Website Content) in the technical colleges in the Gaza Strip. The field of site management ranked first with a relative weight of 74.91%, and second and last (Content Site) with a relative weight (73.38%). The results showed that there were differences between colleges in the use of social networks where the results showed that the most common colleges used these networks (UCAS) and the least used is (GTC). The results showed no differences between male and female employees in the use of social networks in technical colleges. The researchers suggest a number of recommendations, including: the need to raise awareness of the importance of Facebook and other social networking sites, through the holding of courses for employees in technical colleges, and to identify the ways to optimize the use of such sites, and the benefits of this use, and reflected positively on technical colleges. And the adoption of dealing with the various social networking sites as a reality, and the Palestinian and Arab technical colleges, use them in accordance with the objectives of technical colleges. Advise the Department of Technical Colleges to devote time to their presence on social networks to follow the public and respond to their queries. There is a need for the attention of decision-makers in technical colleges in social sites, because they are considered an important and effective means of communication, and the link between beneficiaries and decision-makers. There is a need to promote the use of modern electronic means of work and the need to increase the link of customers to the college through electronic services. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the creative environment of the technical colleges operating in Gaza Strip. The analytical descriptive method was used through a questionnaire which was randomly distributed to 289 employees of the technical colleges in Gaza Strip with a total number of (1168) employees and a response rate equal to (79.2%) of the sample study. The results confirmed the existence of a high degree of approval for the dimensions of the creative environment with a relative weight of (75.19%) (...) according to the perspective of the employees of the technical colleges in Gaza Strip. The results of the study showed a high level of creative environment (fluency, flexibility, originality, sensitivity to problems) in the technical colleges in Gaza Strip, where the field (fluency) ranked first and relative weight (76.86%), in the second place came the area (sense of problems) and relative weight (74.89%). The field of elasticity came in third place with a relative weight of (74.59%). Finally, the field of originality came in fourth and final rank with a relative weight of (74.41%). The results showed that there are differences between the technical colleges in the principles of the creative environment in all fields and the overall degree except for the field of flexibility. The most available colleges in these principles were the university college of applied sciences, and that was the least of the Faculty of Al-Aqsa Society. The results showed that there were differences according to the age variable in the areas of creative environment only in the sense of problems for age groups (less than 30 years) and (from 40 to 50 years). The researchers suggested a number of recommendations, the need to enhance the dimensions of the creative environment in technical colleges by working to improve the faculties of fluency, flexibility, originality and sensitivity to problems. The need to work on continuity and improve aspects of the creative environment of the colleges and the creation of new and innovative ways to support and develop and support these aspects combined. Necessity of technical colleges to continue to develop the creative environment (fluency, flexibility, originality, sensitivity to problems) for employees by engaging them in specialized training courses for creative thinking and problem solving. Developing work procedures with new innovative methods that will accomplish the various tasks quickly and accurately, and provide the effort, time and costs. The researchers urged more future studies that address the same variables of the current study in the field of creative environment and applied to other sectors. (shrink)

In this study, the author uses ethnographic and interview data from a women's floor in a university residence hall to examine how some heterosexual women's gender strategies contribute to their homophobia. The author describes a prevailing heterosexual erotic market on campus—the Greek party scene—and the status hierarchy linked to it. Within this hierarchy, heterosexual women assign lesbians low rank because of their assumed disinterest in the erotic market and perceived inability to acquire men's erotic attention. Active partiers invest more in (...) this social world and prefer higher levels of social distance from lesbians than do others. These women also engage in same-sex eroticism primarily designated for a male audience. They define their behaviors as heterosexual, reducing the spaces in which lesbians can be comfortable. Finally, the author concludes by discussing the unique nature of women's homophobia and the links between sexism and heterosexism. (shrink)

Using the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the authors compare the gender pay gap at predominantly white institutions with the gap at historically Black colleges and universities. Also, within the HBCU milieu, they examine how class of the institution has an impact on pay gaps. First, they find that HBCUs do seem to have a smaller gap but that pay for all faculty at HBCUs is lower than in PWIs. Second, the gap is only significantly smaller in the rank of (...) associates. Third, the gap is smaller at the associate rank because men make less money in HBCUs than they do in PWIs. Fourth, elite HBCUs are more similar to PWIs than to HBCUs in terms of their gender pay gap. Race, class, and gender effects must be taken into account to understand patterns of wage equity across these institutions. The greater gender equity at HBCUs is apparent because of the absence of the “men's bonus, ” which is prevalent in PWIs and elite HBCUs. (shrink)

Gender researchers have only recently begun to identify how women perceive and explain the costs and benefits associated with different femininities. Yet status hierarchies among historically white college sororities are explicit and cannot be ignored, forcing sorority women to grapple with constructions of feminine worth. Drawing on interviews with women in these sororities, we are able to capture college women’s attitudes toward status rankings that prioritize adherence to narrow models of gender complementarity. Sorority chapters were ranked according (...) to women’s perceived heterosexual appeal to elite men. Women believed that top-ranked sororities conferred social power whereas middle- and bottom-ranked sororities offered greater freedom from policing over members’ bodies, fashion, and socializing. However, middle- and bottom-ranked sororities sometimes sought to rise in the rankings. When this occurred, existing members were marginalized, and a new pledge class with a greater tolerance for socializing with high-status “rapey” fraternities was sought. Women’s discussions of sorority rankings show evidence of a hybrid femininity that fuses practices from traditional models of gender complementarity and more recent models of women’s empowerment. (shrink)

The epistemology and phenomenology of contemporary society tend to be deepened, and the philosophical challenges never are minimal that we may be called to face with the kind of post-modern chaos from the rapidly changing phenomena of the global community. The ballast held on the identity of faculty members as a teacher and researcher now turns due so as to be recast with our intrinsic of routine performance. I considered their quality as bent on the intellectual strife on the method (...) and the kind of attitude, say, evaluation and consultation. In this paper, the authors have presented some thought and implications that triangulated the triad, i.e., research methodology, program evaluation and consulting illustration on the college research program rankings. The author is hoped that the discourse can help the academicians to share the attribute of different methods as well as the dimension of evaluation and consulting, perhaps essentially related with their work role in terms of teaching and researching. Keywords: Research Method, Qualitative Studies, Mixed Method, Program Evaluation, Theory and Philosophy, Program Rankings, Consulting, Journal Writing. (shrink)

This study examined the impact of birth order on religious behaviors among college students raised by two highly religious Mormon parents. It is argued that individuals raised in the same religious family might not be equally religious due to some differential childhood experiences based on their birth-order ranking. Self-administered questionnaires were completed by undergraduate students taking classes at a state university in Utah. Results of a multivariate analysis, based on participants coming from highly religious Mormon families, indicated that earlier-borns (...) showed a higher Mormon religiosity than later-borns. (shrink)

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

Employability is a vital aspect for human development in career fields. In order to explore the factors affecting the employability of finance and trade graduates in higher vocational colleges, the researchers focused on human development in educational settings and conducted a piece of quantitative research within nine higher vocational colleges. The study uses descriptive statistical analysis to demonstrate the sample structure, using t-test, rank sum test, and chi-square test to assess the variables. It also adopts exploratory factor analysis to identify (...) the classification of both educational practice and employability. Then, a multivariable linear regression model was adopted to examine the relationships between three main factors as well as the employability and career development of finance and trade graduates. The findings imply that the soft skills and basic skills of finance and trade college graduates have immensely improved through educational practice; graduates with high motivation for learning could enhance their soft skills and more internships or club engagement brings stronger professional skills. Based on these results, higher vocational colleges, enterprises, policymakers, teachers, and finance and trade graduates will benefit from the findings related to the reform of educational practice for strengthening graduate employability and human development. The originality of this paper is the conceptual evolution of finance and trade college graduate employability, as well as the empirical analysis on educational practice, student engagement, and family background affecting their human development. (shrink)

This study analyzes the effect of university social responsibility on environmental accounting disclosure with entrepreneur value as a moderating variable in Asean universities with the population in this study are all universities that are categorized as having a top 10 ranking based on World Class University and publish their reports with the period 2018-2021. The analysis technique used is quantitative with panel data regression analysis tools. The results of the research are (1) Enviromental Awarenes and Enterprenuer Value have a positive (...) and significant effect on Environmental Accounting Disclosures (2) Enviromental Involvement and Enviromental Reporting have a negative and significant effect on Environmental Accounting Disclosures (3) Enterprenuer Value is proven to significantly moderate the effect of university social responsibility on environmental accounting disclosures. (shrink)

sities. TETRAD II discovers a class of possible causal structures of a system from a data set containing measurements of the system variables. The signi cance of learning the causal structure of a system is that it allows for predicting the e ect of interventions into the system, crucial in policy making. Our data sets contained information on 204 U.S. national universities, collected by the US News and World Report magazine for the purpose of college ranking in 1992 and (...) 1993. One apparently robust nding of our study is that student retention is directly related to the average standardized test scores of the incoming freshmen. When test scores of incoming students are controlled for, factors such as student faculty ratio, faculty salary, and university's educational expenses per student are all independent of graduation rates, and, therefore, do not seem to directly in uence student retention. As the test scores are indicators of the overall quality of the incoming students, we predict that one of the most e ective ways of improving student retention in an individual university is increasing the university's selectivity. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the reality of technical education in Palestine. The analytical descriptive method was used in the study. A questionnaire which consisted of 41 paragraphs was distributed randomly to the technical colleges in Gaza Strip. Random sample of (275) employees of these colleges were used, and the response rate was (74.5%). The results showed a high degree of approval for the dimensions of technical education with a relative weight of 76.07%. The ranking and relative weight was as (...) follows: Technical education institutions: 79.51%, graduates of technical education 75.75%, Labor market and local community 72.96%. The researchers propose a number of recommendations, the most important of which is: the need to pay attention to technical education in line with the National Strategic Plan for Higher Education by moving towards technical education. The importance of offering special courses in all technical education programs in these colleges. The researchers urged more future studies that address the same variables as the current study and apply them to other sectors. (shrink)

The Marketing of Education has become epidemic. Business practices and principles now commonly suffuse the approach and administration of Higher Education in an attempt to make schools both more competitive and “branded.” This seems to be progressing without reference to the significant ethical challenges as well as the growing costs to society, students, and educators in pursuing a model with such inherent conflicts. The increased focus on narrowly defined degrees targeted to specific job requirements rather than the focus on raising (...) the level of students’ ability to engage in more abstract and critical thinking is accelerating. The impact on student world views and the lack of engagement with meaningful and challenging discourse has severely impaired their ability to become both engaged and reflective. This model has also impacted faculty morale as concern with lack of academic rigor continues to grow. An ethical crisis has emerged within education internationally and intervention is urgently needed. (shrink)

Studies suggest college students/adult learners interacting with current search tools like Google display tendency to power-browse and adhere to page-ranking order in choosing sources to supplement writing. Such limitations may limit critical reflectivity. We present a tool, ThoughtShuffler which allows users to malleably alter neighborhoods of keywords and presents results as arrays of cards and collections that can be compared and contrasted. We conducted binary qualitative coding of essays produced by 39 users divided into experimental and control conditions and (...) computed a one-tailed t-test to understand if using ThoughtShuffler produced greater likelihood for higher-order reflectivity expressed in writing about efficacy of varied healthcare models in the US, compared to the use of Google to write about the same prompt. Our results suggest that updating search engine interfaces to afford capacity for lateral reading may present potential to augment reflective information search. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo explore the objectives and outcomes most appropriate for evaluating clinical ethics support services (CESs) in the USA.MethodsA three-round e-Delphi was sent to two professional medical ethics listservs (Medical College of Wisconsin-Bioethics and American Society for Bioethics and Humanities) as well as 19 individual experts. The survey originally contained 15 objectives and 9 outcomes. In round 1, participants were asked to validate the content of these lists. In round 2, we had 17 objectives and 10 outcomes, and participants were (...) asked to rank them for appropriateness in a top 10 list of objectives and a top 5 list of outcomes.ResultsParticipants came to a high(at least 70%) level of agreement on seven objectives: mediate, educate, develop policy, improve the moral quality of a decision or action, counsel, create a moral space and manage moral distress. Participants came to a moderate (at least 51%) level of agreement on three objectives: empower, awareness of ethics and preventative ethics. Participants also came to a moderate (at least 51%) level of agreement on five outcomes: ethical justification, transformation of institution, improvement of quality of life, principled consensus and satisfaction with the expertise of a CES.ConclusionThis e-Delphi identified 10 objectives and 5 outcomes that are a good starting point for developing outcome measures to evaluate CESs in the USA, while reminding us of the diversity of perspectives still evident in the field. (shrink)

Studies have found that academic dishonesty is widespread. Of particular interest is the case of business students since many are expected to be the leaders of tomorrow. This study examines the cheating behaviors and perceptions of 819 business and engineering students at three private Lebanese universities, two of which are ranked as the top two universities in the country. Our results show that cheating is pervasive in the universities to an alarming degree. We first analyzed the data by looking at (...) the variables gender, college, GPA, and whether the students had taken the business ethics course. We then supplemented this analysis by building an ordered logistic regression model to test whether these independent variables affect the level of engagement in cheating behavior when we control for the other variables. The results show that males engage in cheating more than females and that students with a lower GPA engage in cheating more. We initially find a difference between business and engineering students, but once we control for the other variables, this difference ceases to exist. Our most surprising result is that the business ethics course seems to have a detrimental effect on the cheating behavior of students. Finally, we find that perception plays a key role in defining the behavior of students. The more that students perceive that others are engaging in a certain behavior, the higher the probability that they will engage in the behavior, even if they believe that this behavior constitutes cheating. (shrink)

This research explored how engineering student views of their responsibility toward helping individuals and society through their profession, so-called social responsibility, change over time. A survey instrument was administered to students initially primarily in their first year, senior year, or graduate studies majoring in mechanical, civil, or environmental engineering at five institutions in September 2012, April 2013, and March 2014. The majority of the students did not change significantly in their social responsibility attitudes, but 23 % decreased and 20 % (...) increased. The students who increased, decreased, or remained the same in their social responsibility attitudes over time did not differ significantly in terms of gender, academic rank, or major. Some differences were found between institutions. Students who decreased in social responsibility initially possessed more positive social responsibility attitudes, were less likely to indicate that college courses impacted their views of social responsibility, and were more likely to have decreased in the frequency that they participated in volunteer activities, compared to students who did not change or increased their social responsibility. Although the large percentage of engineering students who decreased their social responsibility during college was disappointing, it is encouraging that courses and participation in volunteer activities may combat this trend. (shrink)

This study gathered preliminary baseline data on the moral development of journalists using the Defining Issues Test, an instrument based on Kohlberg's 6 stages. Results show that a sample of journalists scored 4th highest among professionals tested using the DIT. The journalists ranked behind seminarians/philosophers, medical students, and physicians but above dental students, nurses, graduate students, undergraduate college students, veterinary students, and adults in general. No significant differences were found between various groups of journalists, including men and women, and (...) broadcast and print journalists. The journalists in the study scored significantly higher on the 3 journalism-specific dilemmas than on 3 nonjournalism dilemmas. (shrink)

"Missouri's return to prominence among the ranks of college football teams is chronicled in this account of the Tigers' 2007 and 2008 seasons"--Provided by publisher.

This paper investigates philosophically the question of whether or not college and university athletes in the USA are doing something morally wrong should they terminate their college or university experience prior to graduation and enter the professional athletic ranks. Various moral arguments are brought to bear in order to attempt to shed light on this issue. One reason why such athletes ?turn professional? before they graduate is the perceived economic exploitation they experience as essentially underpaid workers earning much (...) revenue for their respective institutions. But who is exploiting whom here? Is it just student athletes who are exploited by the system? I expand the reasoning about the exploitation of intercollegiate athletics to include not just student athletes, but their supporting colleges and universities. In the end, it is proposed that the National Collegiate Athletic Association and similar academically related athletic agencies should permit and encourage each of their constituent institutions as a matter of policy to protect themselves (and their supporting taxpayers, in the cases of public institutions) contractually from economic exploitation by professional sports franchises. Thus the question of student athletes leaving college for professional sports contracts has hidden beneath it questions of private professional sports franchises? exploitation of the institutions with which such student athletes are affiliated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.3 (2001) 260-274 [Access article in PDF] Second Thoughts on the Critiques of Big Rhetoric Edward Schiappa This note is divided into three parts. First, I explore some answers to the question "How did Rhetoric get so Big?" Second, I review some of the more important criticisms of a "globalized" or "universalized" view of rhetorical studies. Finally, I contend that the critiques of Big Rhetoric do (...) not withstand scrutiny and ought to be dismissed for insufficient evidence. While there certainly are important issues for scholars of rhetorical studies to consider about how to enhance the quality and importance of our work, such issues should not include the concern that rhetoric has grown too "big."By "Big Rhetoric" I refer only to the theoretical position that everything, or virtually everything, can be described as "rhetorical." I refer to the growth of rhetorical scholarship in communication studies and other disciplines as the "popularization" of rhetorical studies. 1 Theories associated with Big Rhetoric are credited with popularizing or at least rationalizing what Herbert W. Simons (1990) calls the "rhetorical turn" in a variety of disciplines. Within the journals and conventions of members of the National Communication Association (NCA), popularization is often characterized by studies of the form "the rhetoric of X," where X could literally be anything. Outside of the NCA-defined parameters of communication studies, popularization is evidenced by the apparently ever-increasing ranks of scholars who use "rhetoric" as a relevant and important term of art within their scholarship. By either measure, it can be argued fairly convincingly that "rhetoric" has become a widely used construct in scholarship. What I wish to engage is the disputed desirability of broad definitions and the related popularization of rhetoric. [End Page 260] 1. Whence big rhetoric? There are a number of narratives on the rise of Big Rhetoric already in print in communication studies (Simons 1990; Gaonkar 1990), rhetoric and composition (Berlin 1987; Young and Goggin 1993), and interdisciplinary publications (Roberts and Good 1993; Mailloux 2000; Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey 1987). Many accounts identify the 1960s as a turning point. For better or for worse, there was a confluence of changing rhetorical practices, expanding rhetorical theories, and opportunities for rhetorical criticism. The cultural clashes of the 1960s were felt perhaps most acutely on college campuses. The sufficiency of deliberative argument and public address can be said to have been called into question, whether one was an antiwar activist who hated LBJ's war in Vietnam or a pro-establishment stalwart trying to make sense of the rhetoric of protest and demonstration. Years later, scholars would characterize war itself as rhetorical. What counted as rhetorical practice was up for grabs.At about the same time, our understanding of rhetorical theory was being expanded. Here we can identify two main strands of thought. For ease of reference I will call one the symbolic interactionist rationale and the other the epistemological rationale. The symbolic interactionist rationale can be boiled down to a syllogism: All persuasive actions are rhetorical. All symbol/language-use is persuasive. Therefore: All symbol/language-use is rhetorical. Perhaps the two most significant pronouncements of this approach--for my generation of rhetoric scholars, at any rate--are by Richard Weaver and Kenneth Burke. Weaver claims that "language is sermonic" in the sense that whenever we offer a description or label a phenomenon, we are "preaching" a particular way of making sense of it (1970, 201-25). Burke, of course, has two famous (or infamous) statements in Rhetoric of Motives: first, that rhetoric is "the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols" (1950, 43); and second, that "something of the rhetorical motive comes to lurk in every 'meaning,' however purely 'scientific' its pretensions. Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is 'meaning,' there is 'persuasion'" (1950, 172). Obviously, such pronouncements serve as encouragement to [End Page 261] those who would define rhetoric broadly, and arguably fueled the popularization of rhetorical studies within the ranks of NCA.The epistemological rationale is fueled... (shrink)

Several initiatives recognize the importance of transforming institutions, not just changing individuals, to diversify STEM fields. Universities and colleges are distinctive gendered work organizations because workers are highly educated and have authority in hiring, evaluation, and policy. This article explores whether feminist sociologists are particularly well suited to guide institutional change to diversify the academy. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 24 feminist academic sociologists at the rank of associate or full professor, I analyze how their feminist and sociological (...) identities intersect with institutional locations to create opportunities to transform the academy. Outsiders within, feminist sociologists revise and use the master’s tools to produce knowledge that improves recognition of, and ability to reduce, structural inequalities. Proficiency with these tools confers insider legitimacy and access to a “seat at the table” where disciplinary expertise and political commitments contribute to institutional change. Inevitably, these professors confront resistance, and in response develop strategies to advance their goals. Insights from feminist sociologists suggest that to transform universities to reflect the diversity of institutions and lived reality of contemporary faculty, it may be more useful to identify a set of commitments and principles that inform policies and practices, rather than specifying actions to support culture change. (shrink)

Omnipresent calls for more women in university administration assume these women will prioritize using resources and power to increase female representation, especially in STEM fields where women are most underrepresented. However, empirical evidence is lacking for systematic differences in female versus male administrators’ attitudes. Do female administrators agree on which strategies are best, and do men see things differently? To answer this question, we explored United States college and university administrators’ opinions regarding policies, strategies, and structural changes in their (...) organizations designed to increase women professors’ representation and retention in STEM fields. A comprehensive review of past research yielded a database of potentially-effective, recommended policies (e.g., increasing emphasis on teaching, service, and administration during promotion reviews; stopping the tenure clock for childbearing; providing on-campus childcare; couples-hiring; sharing tenure lines; having more women chair search committees; setting gender quotas for promotion). A survey based on these recommended policies was sent to provosts, deans, associate deans, and department chairs of STEM fields at 96 public and private research universities (formerly called R1s) across the U.S. These administrators were asked to rate the quality and feasibility of each recommended policy; 474 provided data, of which 334 contained complete numerical data used in the analyses, so our results are based on a large, geographically diverse group of administrators at research universities. Our data revealed that female administrators perceived the 44 strategies to be higher in quality overall than did male administrators--but not higher in feasibility--with 9 policies perceived differently when rated by women versus men administrators, after imposing conservative statistical controls. There was broad general agreement on the relative rankings of the 44 policies in terms of their perceived quality. Overall, our national survey of U.S. administrators supported the assertion that placing women in administrative roles creates greater emphasis on the importance of enacting policies to attract and retain women in STEM. Topics of disagreement between women and men regarding strategy quality are important focuses of future policy and planning, because female administrators may have insights into how to retain women professors that male administrators do not share. (shrink)

Purpose Intellectual honesty and integrity are the cornerstones of conducting any form of research. Over the last few years, scholars have shown great concerns over questionable research practices (QRPs) in academia. This study aims to investigate the questionable research practices amongst faculty members of medical and dental colleges in Pakistan. Method A descriptive multi-institutional online survey was conducted from June-August 2022. Based on previous studies assessing research misconduct, 43 questionable research practices in four domains: Data collection & storage, Data analysis, (...) Study reporting and Collaboration & authorship were identified and investigated. Descriptive (Frequencies, Percentages, Mean, SD) and Inferential (chi square) statistics were calculated. Results A total of 654 faculty members responded. Every respondent reported committing at least one QRP in their career. The most common QRPs included deliberately failing to mention funding, publishing program evaluation data not meant for research purposes or approved by an ethical body, inappropriately storing identifiable information and non-disclosure of any conflicts. There was significant association of age, gender and academic rank with QRPs in ‘Data collection and storage’ and ‘Data Analysis’ domains. Conclusion Medical and dental faculty members participating in this study are involved in a range of questionable research practices (QRPs) in Pakistan. Their confession might have contributed to the faculty developing self-awareness and reinforcing academic integrity. There is a need for reviewing policies and practices to improve research culture. Future research should explore the factors resulting in such practices. (shrink)

This study examined students' reasoning about simple repeated choices. Each choice involved ''betting'' on two events, differing in probability. We asked subjects to generate or evaluate alternative strategies such as betting on the most likely event on every trial, betting on it on almost every trial, or employing a ''probability matching'' strategy. Almost half of the college students did not generate or rank strategies according to their expected value, but few subjects preferred a strategy of strict probability matching. High-school (...) students showed greater deviations from expected value than college students. Similar misunderstandings were observed in a choice task involving real (not hypothetical) repeated trials. Large gender differences in prediction strategies and in related computational skills were observed. Subjects who understand the optimal strategy usually do so in terms of independence of successive trials rather than calculation. Some subjects understand the concept of independence but fail to bring it to bear, thinking it can be overridden by intuition or local balancing (representativeness). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bioethics in the Twenty-First Century: Why We Should Pay Attention to Eighteenth-Century Medical EthicsLaurence B. McCullough (bio)Those of us who work in the field of bioethics tend to think that, because the word “bioethics” is new, so too the field is new in all respects, but we are not the first to do bioethics. John Gregory (1724–1773) did bioethics just as we do it, at least two centuries before (...) we thought to do it (Gregory 1772). He deployed philosophical methods as sophisticated as our own. Indeed, Gregory took up the very best moral philosophy available to thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, namely, David Hume’s moral philosophy and its core concept of sympathy. Gregory also responded in a conceptually powerful and clinically applicable way to the problems of his time, just as we do. I want here to outline Gregory’s accomplishment and to identify some aspects of its importance for bioethics in the twenty-first century.Gregory’s “Problem List”Gregory wrote his medical ethics as a response to the then current state of medicine in Britain. We now follow Gregory in our writing of bioethics and clinical ethics in response to the problems of our time. A great deal that we now take for granted did not then exist. 1There was not, as there is now, any uniform pathway into medicine. Nor did there exist universal licensure. The Royal Colleges did attempt to assert, but failed to achieve, monopoly control of medical practice. The concepts of health and disease were themselves contested and therefore competed for their success in the market place. There was a marked oversupply of practitioners who competed fiercely—very fiercely indeed—in the medical market place for their concepts of health and disease, their treatments, and therefore their livelihoods. Patients had their own concepts of health and disease, engaged in “self-physicking” or self-care, and often traded physician’s prescriptions.Medicine exhibited little scientific discipline in its accounts of disease and in determining the efficacy of treatments, a fact that Gregory (1743) laments as a [End Page 329] medical student. There was no marked improvement when he began to give his medical ethics lectures nearly a quarter of a century later. Treatments failed as often, perhaps more often, than they succeeded in benefiting patients. The sick usually sought out the help of a physician after trying self-physicking.Physicians, Gregory taught, could not hope to control human biology, though they could aim to manage its processes well. When nature underresponds to disease the physician should assist her processes; when nature overresponds, the physician should tamp down nature’s responses, to lessen their “violence”—in both cases always attentive to the limits of medicine’s capacities in treating disease.Physicians attended the well-to-do sick at home, and the sick person summoned and dismissed physicians, surgeons, or apothecaries at will. A physician therefore might find himself—no women had yet been admitted to the ranks of university-trained physicians—summoned before, after, or simultaneously with a competitor, with his concepts and diagnosis and treatment put to the acid test. In this setting, there existed only a patient-physician relationship, not a physician-patient relationship.Physicians left off the care of dying patients, a practice that was made a matter of duty by Friederich Hoffmann (1749). One would suffer punishing economic consequences if one had a high mortality rate. Better, then, to label the patient incurable, withdraw, and turn matters over to clergy. Gregory attacks this practice as intellectual fraud and calls for the physician to continue to attend the dying. Indeed, he says, “It is as much the business of a physician to alleviate pain, and to smooth the avenues of death, when unavoidable, as to cure diseases” (Gregory 1772, p. 35). He does not explicitly address what we now call physician-assisted suicide; neither does he condemn it, and he is quick to condemn some things—e.g., sexual abuse of female patients or “sporting” with patients in the Royal Infirmary by using experiments as the first line of treatment.The Royal Infirmary was established to care for the deserving, working poor, who received free care... (shrink)

The goal of the research was to question the efficiency of one-time educational programs for high school and college students in positive effects of dealing with ailment/disability. Before and after the educational programs we have gathered data from 11 high school students and 16 college students with semantic differential and measures for perceiving the stage of the handicap, disability and dependence as well as a possibility for a person with chronic illness/disability to lead a happy and fulfilled life. (...) The data have been analyzed by a one sided Sign Test and a one sided Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test. In the final measurements we have determined more positive average descriptions of people with a chronic disease/disability by 7 high school and 13 college students. The biggest change in attitude has been recorded in a decreased number of high school students who perceive the challenged as unhappy and weak and in a decreased number of college students who perceive the challenged as unhappy and discouraged. A significant change in attitudes has also been recorded in a decreased number of participants who consider the challenged as weak, sad, passive and resigned and in an increased number of participants who perceive the challenged as productive. There hasn’t been a change in dominantly negative attitudes towards the challenged as people with handicaps, unattractive, disabled and dependent. After the educational programs more than 4/5 of high school and college students declared that due to the acquired knowledge they have a more positive attitude towards the ailment and the challenged and that this will help them improve the relationship towards the challenged and in coping with ailments in their life. In the final measurements the determined positive attitudes of participants towards ailments/disability and the challenged suggest that the educational programs have been relatively efficient and we recommend they are implemented further. (shrink)

Richard Landau, the longtime editor of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, died on November 3, 2015. Richard grew up in St. Louis. Like many people of his generation, he was inspired to become a physician by Paul de Kruif ’s book Microbe Hunters. Richard went to college and medical school at Washington University in St. Louis and came to the University of Chicago in 1940 as a resident in medicine. Except for a two-year stint in the army during World (...) War II, he spent the rest of his career at the university, rising through the academic ranks to become Professor of Medicine in 1959. Richard held several important administrative positions at the university; he served as Chief of the Section of Endocrinology.. (shrink)

We prove that, for each countable ordinal ξ≥1, there exist some -complete ω-powers, and some -complete ω-powers, extending previous works on the topological complexity of ω-powers [O. Finkel, Topological properties of omega context free languages, Theoretical Computer Science 262 669–697; O. Finkel, Borel hierarchy and omega context free languages, Theoretical Computer Science 290 1385–1405; O. Finkel, An omega-power of a finitary language which is a borel set of infinite rank, Fundamenta informaticae 62 333–342; D. Lecomte, Sur les ensembles de phrases (...) infinies constructibles a partir d’un dictionnaire sur un alphabet fini, Séminaire d’Initiation a l’Analyse, 1, année 2001–2002; D. Lecomte, Omega-powers and descriptive set theory, Journal of Symbolic Logic 70 1210–1232; J. Duparc, O. Finkel, An ω-Power of a Context-Free Language Which Is Borel Above , in: S. Bold, B. Löwe, T. Räsch, J. van Benthem , in the Proceedings of the international conference foundations of the formal sciences V : Infinite Games, November 26th to 29th, 2004, Bonn, Germany, in: Studies in Logic, vol. 11, College Publications at King’s College, 2007, pp. 109–122]. We prove effective versions of these results; in particular, for each recursive ordinal there exist some recursive sets A2<ω such that , where and denote classes of the hyperarithmetical hierarchy. To do this, we prove effective versions of a result by Kuratowski, describing a set as the range of a closed subset of the Baire space ωω by a continuous bijection. This leads us to prove closure properties for the pointclasses in arbitrary recursively presented Polish spaces. We apply our existence results to get better computations of the topological complexity of some sets of dictionaries considered in [D. Lecomte, Omega-powers and descriptive set theory, Journal of Symbolic Logic 70 1210–1232]. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Discover the Unknown Chekhov in Your ESL ClassroomNinah Beliavsky (bio)I was born in Moscow, ate aladushki, and listened to my mother read Chekhov in Russian. Kashtanka, a tale about a young, ginger-colored pup who gets lost, made me cry. And when I read about the death of Ivan Dmitrich Kreepikov, in The Death of a Civil Servant, I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. The poor (...) civil servant was sitting and watching an opera in a theater when all of a sudden he sneezed and spattered an old gentlemen, General Shpitzalov, in front of him. Now, as Chekhov writes, sneezing is not prohibited to any one or in any place; peasants sneeze, and even the chiefs of police sneeze. But, you see, the poor civil servant, being very much rank-conscious, could no longer live with himself after committing such a misconduct. He apologized profusely and went home, and without taking off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa, and... died.And what about Van'ka Zhukov, an orphan boy of nine apprenticed to a shoemaker who is being beaten and overworked. He writes a letter to his grandfather on Christmas Eve, begging him for the dear Lord's sake to take him away from his misery. After scratching his head and thinking for a moment, he dips his pen in ink and addresses his envelope: "The Village. To Grand Dad." He then dashes out into the street and pushes his precious letter through the opening of the postbox...The second part of my childhood I spent in Jerusalem; there I ate falafel with humus, was obsessed with perfecting the pronunciation of the Hebrew guttural "r," and read Miriam Yalan Shtekelis's children's poetry, which was filled with magical objects that laughed and cried. By the time I was in high school I was living in Milwaukee, eating fries and ice cream sundaes and reading O. Henry.The literature that one comes in contact with during childhood and young [End Page 101] adulthood is often deeply engraved on a person's psyche. It is similar to an adult craving sweets because of the psychological association with her childhood and a safe and protected environment. We tend to think back to the "good old days" because we find comfort in our past. Today, as an adult, a wife, and a mother, I often find refuge in my childhood memories. And, like most people, much of what I encounter and read today I tend to associate with my past. If I come across a story that I heard in my childhood, as I search for something new and amusing to give to my college English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students, I try to incorporate it into my curriculum. A few years ago I came across the story The Necklace by Guy de Mappassant and immediately recalled reading it in my adolescence. This story brought back the warm memories of home that I felt would be understood and identified with by my foreign students. Today, this story is one of my students' favorites. By using stories from my own past, I feel that I can bring to my class discussions a unique perspective—my own recollections and feelings and an interpretation not only academic in nature but also personal. Often, my international students will recall hearing or reading some of the same stories (that I bring to class) in their childhood, in their native tongues, and thus these stories will not seem out of context anymore because there will be a sense of connection.I teach ESL to college students—reading and writing at the intermediate and advanced levels. Aside from following the standard curriculum of using grammar and writing textbooks, I bring to my ESL classes music, opera, art, young adult novels by American writers, and short stories by both international and American writers. For instance, my students enjoy reading O. Henry's "The Christmas Present," "The Last Leaf," and "The Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen." These stories are about real people—just like my students—they are about everyday events, they are humorous and tragic in nature, and they have an unexpected twist... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Jitendra Nath MohantyArindam Chakrabarti (bio)The only philosopher in the global history of philosophy who read and taught (in the original Sanskrit, German, and English) Patañjali, Vyāsa, Śaṅkara, Gangeśa, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Frege, Wittgenstein, Hume, McTaggart, Russell, Davidson, and Dummett with equal expertise, depth, and hermeneutic originality is no more. Jitendra Nath Mohanty, who passed away on the 7th of March 2023, was emeritus professor of philosophy at (...) Temple University, Philadelphia. In the last decade of his life, he used to spend long periods in his home in Kolkata, the city where he studied as an undergraduate. Born in in 1928 in Cuttack, Orissa, India, Mohanty ranked first in all public examinations and in his B.A. at Presidency College, Kolkata and his M.A. examination at the University of Calcutta. After receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in 1954, he came back to India and continued his traditional-style tutelage under two great Sanskrit Pandits: Ananta Tarkatirtha (for Navya Nyāya) and Mahamahopadhyaya Yogendranath Bagchi (for Advaita Vedānta). In his long academic career, he taught at the University of Burdwan, the University of Calcutta, the New School for Social Research, the University of Oklahoma, Emory University, and Temple University and held visiting professorships at All Souls College Oxford and Jadavpur University, Kolkata.JNM was trained equally thoroughly in three distinct traditions and styles of philosophy. Even great modern Indian philosophers of the twentieth century, such as K. C. Bhattacharya, B. N. Seal, R. D. Ranade, Radhakrishnan, B. K. Matilal, Daya Krishna, and R. C. Gandhi, could claim scholarly fluency in at most two traditions (of course the "Indian tradition" itself is a maddeningly complex plurality of traditions often sharing very little in common—e.g., Abhidharma Buddhism and Mādhva Dualist Vedānta). But Mohanty was well-versed in and collected insights and inspiration from European (Continental) Phenomenology, and Analytic Anglo-American Philosophy and several of the diverse Sanskrit Indian Philosophical schools of thought. More importantly, as can be demonstrated in detail, it is his expertise in the pluralistic yet both logically and phenomenologically rigorous styles of classical Indian philosophies that made him uniquely capable of doing the bridgework between continental and analytic philosophies of the West—between Husserl and Frege, for example. [End Page 1]Within philosophy in general his interests ranged from metaphysics to epistemology, ethics, social philosophy, philosophy of physics (especially Time), Logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of language and mind. Among his numerous publications, the following books achieved bench-mark status in their respective fields: Gaṅgeśa's Theory of Truth: Containing the Text of Gaṅgeśa's Prāmāṇya (jñapti) vāda (Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati, India, 1966); Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: An Essay on the Nature of Indian Philosophical Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Classical Indian Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2002); The Self and its Other (Oxford University Press, 2000); Logic, Truth, and the Modalities (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999; Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 1999); The Concept of Intentionality (St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1972); Phenomenology: Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy (Northwestern University Press, 1997); Husserl and Frege (Indiana University Press, 1982); Edmund Husserl's Theory of Meaning (Springer, 1976); and The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: A Historical Development (Yale University Press, 2008). His charming and inspiring intellectual autobiography was published in 2012 by Oxford University press with the title Between Two Worlds: East and West, an Autobiography. Some of his classic papers are collected in the volume edited with an introduction by Purushottama Billimoria: J. N. Mohanty: Essays on Indian Philosophy Traditional and Modern (New York and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002). Philosophy East and West is going to publish a special issue devoted to JNM's life-time achievements in different branches and traditions of philosophy. [End Page 2]Arindam Chakrabarti Philosophy Department, University of Hawai'[email protected] © 2024 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

This paper examines the role of body fat distribution as measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) on the judgment of women’s physical attractiveness. It presents evidence that WHR is correlated with a woman’s reproductive endocrinological status and long-term health risk. Three studies were conducted to investigate whether humans have perceptual and cognitive mechanisms to utilize the WHR to infer attributes of women’s health, youthfulness, attractiveness, and reproductive capacity. College-age as well as older subjects of both sexes rank female figures with (...) normal weight and low WHR as attractive and assign to them higher reproductive capability. The study concludes that WHR is a reliable and honest signal of a woman’s reproductive potential. The adaptive significance of body fat distribution and its role in mate selection is also discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Benjamin I. Schwartz (1916-1999)Hoyt Cleveland TillmanBenjamin Sadie Schwartz was born on December 12, 1916,1 to Hyman and Jennie Weinberg Schwartz. In the wake of the Depression, this struggling family moved from the immigrant section of East Boston (near what became Logan Airport) to Orchestra, a working-class section of the city. Ben's intelligence and dedication to learning earned him the opportunity to study at Boston Latin, the city's premier high (...) school for talented youths, and he won a scholarship to attend Harvard College in 1934. Because the collegiate life of Harvard's house system was inaccessible to him, Ben commuted daily from home and ate his sack lunches with the other "townies" on the steps outside the buildings in Harvard Yard. The nationalizing experiences of being Jewish and poor surely enhanced his sensitivity to tensions within cultures and sharpened the critical edge of his reflections on elites and their ideologies. Moreover, his own experiences enabled an empathy with economically and culturally disadvantaged students, for he generously extended himself especially to such students during his long teaching career at Harvard, from 1950 through 1987. Indeed, his office door was always open to students, and no one needed an appointment to come to discuss ideas with him. Furthermore, his critical concerns about contemporary trends in society and polity continued to be central to his life as an engaged intellectual even after he had retired from formal teaching duties.After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1938 with a major in Romance Languages and Literatures, he went on to earn a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1940. Unable to find a regular teaching position, he worked as a substitute teacher. Blessed with an enduring and profound spirituality, he considered becoming a rabbi. World War II intervened to change his life. Serving as a cryptanalyst from 1942 to 1946 in the Signal Corps, he decoded Japanese military cables; and he worked in 1946-1947 as a censor of the Japanese press during the beginning phase of the American Occupation. He rose to the rank of captain. With the educational benefits extended to veterans, he returned to Harvard, where he initially sought to focus on Buddhism, but his professors discouraged him on the grounds that the field required too many Asian languages for someone to begin in his thirties. He was admonished to focus on modern China, for that field required only that he supplement the Japanese language, which he had gained during his military service, with a reading knowledge of Chinese. He threw himself enthusiastically into reading both modern Chinese and what he referred to as "outbidding classical Chinese" because he loved to read texts to explore cultures and encounter peoples. Within less than three years, he not only earned a master's [End Page 183] in East Asian Studies and a Ph.D. in History and Far Eastern Languages but also became, in 1950, a Harvard instructor in history and government. Rising quickly through the ranks, he was promoted to assistant professor in 1951, associate professor in 1956, and professor in 1960. Moreover, he became widely regarded as "the scholar's scholar" at Harvard's East Asian Research Center.His first book, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao (Harvard University Press, 1951), was a revised version of his doctoral dissertation. Modern China scholars have in later years hailed this pioneering work for going against the tide of American political assumptions about Soviet Russian control of the communist movement in China. He demonstrated that Mao had defied Soviet orders and deviated from Soviet plans in struggling to gain power in China; furthermore, Ben also suggested that communism was devolving through expansion. Establishing an intellectual orientation that informed his later work, Ben was also using texts from a movement to explore the conscious life of leading figures and their personalities in the context of concrete historical circumstances and contingencies in order to determine how ideas related to actions. Providing translated texts for others to join the exploration of the interaction between ideology and behavior, he was one of three compilers of A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (Harvard, 1952). He... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:72 Reviews RUSSELL VERSUS THE HAPPINESS INDUSTRY Chad Trainer 1006 Davids Run Phoenixville, pa 19460, usa [email protected] Tim Phillips. Bertrand Russell’sThe Conquest of Happiness; a Modern-Day Interpretation of a Self-Help Classic. Oxford: Infinite Ideas, 2010. Pp. 118. 978-1906821 -27-2 (pb). us$11.95. German translation as Bertrand Russells Eroberung des Glücks in a “Business Classics” series (gabal Verlag, 2012). he popular writing Bertrand Russell undertook to make money has long roused (...) the indignation of those interested in his more technical specialized work, and his 1930 The Conquest of Happiness ranks among the more extreme examples of this pot-boiling genre. Ludwig Wittgenstein denounced Russell’s Conquest of Happiness as a “vomitive.” And the best ways of understanding Russell’s own assessments of his book are unclear, owing to the various sentiments his biographers report. According to Ronald Clark, he said: “… The Conquest of Happiness … I am not very proud of”;1 whereas Caroline Moorehead reports “he was later to say that, of all his books, he felt this had done the most good”.2 In his autobiography, Russell allows us how he wrote The Conquest of Happiness at a stage in his life “when I needed much self-command and much that I had learned by painful experience if I was to maintain any endurable level of happiness.”The emotional challenges to which he was subjected at the time he wrote the book “introduced an intolerable tension into every moment of daily life.” Beacon Hill School, which Russell had started with his second wife, Dora, in 1927, was in such dire straits financially by 1930 that Russell was compelled to resort to much popular writing and lecturing in order to remain solvent. In 1930, Dora gave birth to a daughter fathered by the American journalist Grif- fin Barry.This marked the beginning of the end to Russell’s marriage to Dora. Add to the foregoing Russell’s strained relations with Wittgenstein, when the ______ 1 The Life of Bertrand Russell, p. 448. 2 Bertrand Russell, p. 383. q= Reviews 73 former was asked to be one of the examiners for Wittgenstein’s phd at Cambridge. Although the phd was awarded and Wittgenstein secured a grant to conduct research at Trinity College, Cambridge for five years, Russell and Wittgenstein’s interaction at the time resulted in an end to their friendship. In general, however much control Russell may have had over matters at earlier points in his life, 1930 was a time he was largely at the mercy of unstable circumstances.The repose and leisure on which he had depended for his philosophic activity were not then available to him. Personal problems came to the fore and he was more prone to depression than usual. About The Conquest of Happiness, written primarily with the American market in mind, he remarked to the publisher Stanley Unwin: “I think they [Americans] mostly share Al Capone’s ideas of happiness, which are in a somewhat different vein from mine.”The book became a bestseller in America. Tim Phillips writes on business, technology, social change and innovation, and he has published more than a dozen expositions of other famous authors’ works. His book Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness is a faithful tour through this Russell classic. Phillips provides a readable account of the original ’s lucid points. The treatment is certainly not pretentious or obfuscatory, as it abounds with examples of Russell’s points from contemporary pop culture. It features corroborating quotations from other authors and is salted with some results of modern surveys. Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness has good reminders of the differences between the nature of Russell’s times and lifestyle and that of our own, the most notable being the absence during Russell’s day of a happiness industry. Nowadays, we are bombarded with “self-help” books “encouraging us to obsess about ourselves or manipulate others” (p. 9). Moreover, when Russell wrote The Conquest of Happiness, “the idea of an antidepressant pill was as likely as someone walking on the moon and the idea that people could ‘suffer from stress’ was thirty years into the future. For all... (shrink)

This article reports findings of a survey of college students in 3 educational settings regarding student perceptions of mass media ethics pedagogy, including course objectives, value systems examined, the use of civil law and/or ethics codes as standards of media ethics, and teaching techniques used in media ethics instruction. Of particular interest was how closely student expectations correlate with previous research findings indicating instructor techniques and goals. The results revealed several areas in which instructor goals and the student (...) class='Hi'>rankings were not in accordance, including marked discrepancies between professor and student views on ethical standards employed, values systems examined, and teaching techniques preferred. The study concluded that most students would respond well to a stand-alone media ethics course employing a variety of teaching methods. Respondents felt the course should not emphasize universal ethics, but should respect pluralistic principles and examine various cultural interpretations of media ethics. (shrink)

Grown up as versatile people, Ottoman intellectuals had holistic views towards science, art and literature, and wrote in a variety of disciplines. It was not uncommon for a mathematician to write in philosophy, for a ḥadīth (report of the words and deeds of the Prophet) scholar to write history books, for a statesman to be busy with calligraphy or for a Shaykh al-Islām (the highest ranking Islamic legal authority) to have a “Dīwān” (a collection of poems). However, possibly due to (...) specialization-based scientific understanding of modern researchers, one side of these people generally came to the fore and some capabilities of them remained unknown. Grown up in Istanbul, capital town of Ottoman Empire, in late 16th and early 17th centuries, Okchuzāde Mehmed Shāhī was also one of these personalities called “hezār-fan” (polymath). Mehmed Shāhī served in top level offices of the State, was busy with art and literature, and became known for inshāʾ (composition) kind of works written with elaborate prose. Mehmed Shāhī earned a deserved fame with these capabilities and he was also a poet. Indeed, due to poems he wrote in his early ages, he was noticed by some biography writers about poets and his poems were mentioned in some anthologies. In addition to poetry anthologies, he had some classical works, and some couplets, quatrains and verses included in his prose works. In the present study, a collection and evaluation of poems by Mehmed Shāhī were presented.Summary: Ottoman statesman Okchuzāde Mehmed Shāhī was born in 1562 AD (970 AH) in Istanbul. He was son of Okchuzāde Mehmed Pasha (d. 995 AH/1587 AD) and served as Kātib (scribe), Defterdār (treasurer), Reīs-ul-kuttāb (chief of the scribes), Governor General of Cyprus and Aleppo. His real name was Mehmed, but he was mentioned in different sources by names such as Mehmed Bey, Mehmed Shāh, Mehmed Shāhī, Mir Mehmed Shāhī and Okchuzāde Mehmed Shāhī. Starting at a young age, he was well educated in madrasah (college). With his vibrant character and superior genius, he came to the forefront among his peers. He was educated under the supervision of Māʿlūlzāde Nakīb Efendi (d. 993 AH/1585 AD) and graduated in 988 AH/1580 AD at the age of 18. When Nakīb Efendi became Shaykh al-Islām in the same year, he started his official duty as Dīwān-ı Humāyūn (imperial council) secretary. With the duty of Executive Assistant, he became the secretary of Damad İbrahim Pasha who started to his office in 1004 AH/1596 AD. He worked under the patronage of the Pasha until Pasha’s death in 1010 AH/1601 AD. Mehmed Shāhī succeeded Musa Chelebi as Reīs-ul-kuttāb and Basdefterdar (chief treasurer) in 1005 AH/1596 AD, and was appointed as title deed and cadastre director in 1006 AH/1597 AD. However, he was dismissed from this duty and was included among the officials to join military campaign. He was prosecuted and tried for imprisonment for the accusation of coming to Istanbul without permission. He succeeded Hamza Pasha as Nishanci (high-ranking bureaucrat) in 1007 AH/1599 AD and was assigned to military campaign. Mehmed Shāhī was dismissed from his duty in 1008 AH/1600 AD. Although he was reappointed to his duty in the same year, he was dismissed again in 1010 AH/1601 AD. While Hamza Pasha was reappointed to his office, Mehmed Shāhī was not assigned to any duty. He succeeded Murad Efendi as the Defterdar of Egypt in 1013 AH/1605 AD. After this duty, one of the vassal Sanjak (administrative district) Beyliks (principalities) in Egypt was given to him. When vassal Sanjak Beyliks were abolished by Kara Mehmed Pasha, Beylerbeyi (governor) of Egypt, in 1016 AH/1608 AD, he returned to Istanbul. He was not appointed to an office for a long time. In 1029 AH/1620 AD, he was appointed as title deed and cadastre director in 1029 AH/1620 AD, and became Nishanci again in 1030 AH/1621 AD. He served in military campaign to Poland, but was dismissed from this duty during the campaign. He was appointed as Nishanci for the fifth time during the second reign of Sultan Mustafa (1622-1623). He was dismissed in 1033 AH/1624 AD and retired. In early 1039 AH/1630 AD, he died at the age of 69 in Istanbul. His tomb is near Ekmekchioghlu tomb in the vicinity of Sunbul Efendi.What is known about his family is limited to his son named Vakʿi Ahmed Efendi (d. 1060 AH/1650 AD). Ahmet Efendi learned Naskh, Thuluth and tevkīʿi types of calligraphy styles from his father. He served as anthology writer for Shaykh al-Islām Bahāī Efendi. He died in 1060 AH/1650 AD when he was serving as teacher in Sulaymaniyah Madrasah. His tomb is around Shaykh Vefa tomb.In addition to his administrative duties, Mehmed Shāhī was also interested in poetry, prose, calligraphy, mysticism, ḥadīth and tafsīr (exegesis). Possibly also due to his dismissal of duties many times in his life, he produced many works. Among them are Aḥsan al-ḥadīth, an-Naẓm al-mubīn fī āyāt al-erbaʿīn, al-Maqām al-Maḥmūd, Tarjuma-i Tuḥfa as-ṣalavāt, Jāmiʿ al-ghāyāt, Mukhtār al-akhyār, Qānūn-i Jadīd-i Arāḍi, Munsheat ve Dīwān. Famed for his prose works, the author was also a poet. With his couplets which he wrote under pseudonym of Zaynī, he managed to get on the anthology of Kınalızāde at his twenties. He was celebrated with the expression of “Arrow of word from his bow of soul has reached the target of approval from masters; he is at a young age (at his twenties)”. Subsequently adopting pseudonym of Shāhī, the poet had some poems published within the works of Beyānī, Nevʿizāde and Mustaqimzāde as well as within his own prose works. Mustaqimzāde even mentioned that Mehmed Shāhī had a dīwān. Nevertheless, this work of him has not been found yet. A total of 30 poetry works of Mehmed Shāhī were found in various sources, except for his translations of 40 ḥadīth and 40 Qur’ān verses written in poetry. Of his 30 poetry works, 26 were written in Turkish and 4 in Persian. Various sections of ʿarūḍ (meter) were used in these works written as couplets, quatrains and verses. It could be stated that his poems rich in Persian and Arabic words had a rich rhyme frame. In his poetry works in which religious, literary, historical, legendary and mysticism themes were worked, concepts and figures such as Allah, the Lord, Messiah, Messenger, Risālet (messengership), intercession, Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī (966-968), Mustaʿsim (d. 656 AH/1258 AD), Ibn Alkamī (d. 656 AH/1258 AD), Naṣīr-i Tūsī (d. 672 AH/1274 AD), Jamshīd, Keyumars, Uftade, Hudāyī, Majūsī, Kizilbash, Bayramī and muftī (jurist capable of giving a formal legal opinion). His poems were about intercession demand from the Messenger (PBUH), sin of serving to Persian, importance of an invention, praise of Uftade Sultan (d. 988 AH/1580 AD), effect of prayer, fate of administrator favoring his relatives, futility of envying the rich, importance of fighting with Zoroastrian, benefits of exhibition of sorrow, value of skillful people, resembling of the world to a bride with a thousand grooms, beauty of eloquence, ignominy of leaving chastity for lust, asking for forgiveness for sins, talent of understanding the words, not giving quarter to enemies, praise of Hz.ʿUmar, humbleness, value of lack of worldly things, sufferance due to the beauty of the beautiful, needing not to wonder why the beloved one is far away, evil of protecting the snot, richness of Arabic language, deeds of Anatolian fāḍils (virtuous), importance of endeavor in succeeding the closeness to God and respectability of ʿAzīz Maḥmūd Hudāyī (d. 1038 AH/1628 AD). Okchuzāde Mehmed Shāhī was an Ottoman statesman who also earned a well-deserved fame for his works written in inshāʾ (composition) genre of elaborate prose. In addition, he also had poetry works. Praised for the poems which he wrote in his early ages by anthology writers who included his poems in their anthologies, the poet also had some couplets and quatrains scattered among his own prose works. His poems in the form of couplets and quatrains within abovementioned works mostly were about religious, literary, legendary, historical and mysticism themes.Mehmed Shāhī was knowledgeable in tafsīr, ḥadīth, mysticism and calligraphy, and had good levels of Arabic and Persian. Writing poems in Persian, Mehmed Shāhī was decorated his prose works with Arabic expressions such as Qur’ān verses, ḥadīths and proverbs. It could be stated that such decorations made the language of his poems more difficult. Nevertheless, his poems are plainer and easier compared to his prose works. The poet who also had lyrical poems generally preferred ḥikamī (sapiential) style and wrote genres such as munacaat (prayer to God), shafaatnāme (intercession epistles), historical quatrain, medhiye (panegyric) and hicviye (epigram). His poems in anthologies were lyrical, those in Aḥsan al-ḥadīth and an-Naẓm al-mubīn were didactical and those in Munsheat were epic. Based on an evaluation of these poems, it could be stated that he was a poet with a style, though not a poet of first class. (shrink)

The funeral procession of Sheng Xuanhuai – the renowned Qing scholar-official, financier, and “father of Chinese industrialism” – meandered through the streets of Shanghai on 18 November 1917. The funeral was a grand event, one that was purportedly documented in film, later to be distributed as the first “news short-film” in China. TheNorth China Heraldreported on the event in some detail, at times in rather florid language, and suggested that “the cortege was splendid and impressive, bringing back the days of (...) the Manchu emperors. The ceremonial costumes, the musical instruments and much more of the accoutrements dated back to the days of the Empire”. And indeed, the procession included a variety of ritual customs and insignia from Qing times: imperial banners, ancestral tablets, Buddhist and Daoist priests, paper artifacts, and much more. Simultaneously, nonetheless, other kinds of participants and objects – new and not of imperial pedigree – were part of and intermixed with the older materials: certificates of rank were carried on cars; boy scouts and college students marched alongside the priests; many of the participants arrived by train ; and as the Shanghai portion of the procession ended, it continued by steamer to Suzhou. The conclusion of theNorth China Heraldaccount, however, seems to have emphasized a dichotomy of old and new rather than a joyful mix of the two:Hundreds of men, dressed in the ancient costume of the old dynasties, bore a strong contrast to the eight behind them, sons of intimate friends of the deceased. They were on horseback and wore high silk hats, frock coats and white breeches tucked in riding boots.Truly the passing of the old and the entering of the new. This view – the old giving way to the new – was not just an off-hand journalistic analysis; it was part of a larger discourse about the nature of modernity, about progress, and about the relationship between East and West. By the early twentieth century, China was often perceived by most Westerners and Chinese alike as traditional, backward, and weak. It was, thus, commonly stated that the old was giving way to the new, should be giving way to the new, or was bound to give way to the new, if China was to survive. This kind of discourse was put forward by both Western and Chinese writers, who embraced this linear, progressive, view of the relationship between the old and the new, well before Sheng's funeral or the Qing's demise. In the aftermath of that demise, the New Culture Movement began to grow and seek solutions for the old-new nation's crisis. The Movement's rhetoric in particular advanced the need for the triumph of the new, and journals, such as New People, New Tide, or New Youth served as media for extending such views. (shrink)

Over the past forty years, the administrations of American colleges and universities have developed and expanded the ranks of contingent faculty as an alternative to the tenure line. While acknowledging the gross inequities that divide these two tracks, this essay attempts to awaken tenure-line ethicists through the concept of recognition to the conditions of their colleagues and then argues through the concept of vulnerability that faculty are deeply and unavoidably related, and concludes that through solidarity ethicists from both lines might (...) work together toward the university becoming a more ethical workplace than it presently is. (shrink)

In our target article, we took the position that tenure conveys many important benefits but that its original justification – fostering academic freedom – is not one of them. Here we respond to various criticisms of our study as well as to proposals to remedy the current state of affairs. Undoubtedly, more research is needed to confirm and extend our findings, but the most reasonable conclusion remains the one we offered – that the original rationale for tenure is poorly served (...) by the current system as practiced at top-ranked colleges and universities. (Published Online February 8 2007). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Provoking a ConversationDavid H. PorterLee T. Pearcy's The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (Baylor University Press, Waco, Tex. 2005) is a book every classicist should read. Pearcy's focus is on the state of classics in our country today: where we are, how we got there, where we need to go. His book is wide-ranging, tightly argued, and carefully researched. Pearcy's assessment of the present state of (...) classics in America strikes me as overly bleak, but his analysis deserves our close attention. Chapters 1 and 2, which trace the history of classical studies in Europe and America since the Renaissance, are filled with valuable information and insights; chapter 3 dissects four interlinked arguments that, to Pearcy's thinking, explain the parlous state of classics today—and threaten its future survival; and chapter 4 offers thoughtful suggestions as to how classicists might respond to these challenges. I doubt that most readers will agree with all of Pearcy's analysis—I certainly do not—but I found his book consistently stimulating. He writes that his purpose is to provoke a conversation, not to solve a problem (118); it is a conversation that will benefit us all, and this book is a welcome and timely catalyst.Pearcy's starting point, and the theme to which he repeatedly returns, is what he identifies as an essential difference between classical studies in Europe (including Great Britain) and classical studies in America. To quote from Pearcy's account of Vittorino da Feltre, whom he sees as an architect of what we now call "liberal education," classical education was designed above all "to take those who would... rule and those who might be admitted to the governing class and to form their minds and souls in such a way that they would be the best rulers (8)... "Renaissance classical education... [was] designed to educate members of the governing class by exposing them to the best patterns of conduct, modes of thinking, and products of culture..." (9). In Europe this form of education made sense in that its presupposition of a governing class matched the social and political realities of the countries in question. In America, by contrast, the advent of democracy undermined the central assumptions of such education and threatened its relevance to our society: "The necessary openness of thought in a democracy has a consequence that is fatal to [End Page 595] the paradigm of classical liberal arts education. In a democratic society, the freedom and theoretical equality of all citizens make it necessary to avoid privileging any single set of beliefs or ideas" (23).Pearcy's hypothesis is thought-provoking, but it strikes me as overly neat. A quick glance at two individuals, one English, the other American, offers some corroboration and also raises some intriguing questions. Leonard Woolf majored in classics at St. Paul's School and Cambridge, and, though his origins were not "aristocratic," upon graduation he entered the ranks of the governing class as a civil servant in Ceylon. The progression matches Pearcy's model, and Woolf even comments on it in terms similar to those Pearcy uses: "The male members of the British aristocracy of intellect went automatically to the best public schools, to Oxford and Cambridge, and then into all the most powerful and respectable professions."1 By contrast, S. S. McClure, the American publisher, migrated from Ireland to the States at age nine as a virtual pauper, spent eight years putting himself through Knox College, and chose to major in classics for reasons similar to those Pearcy identifies as the basis for classical education: "During the years that he reads and studies Greek a boy gets certain standards that he uses all the rest of his life, long after he has forgotten grammar and vocabulary."2 Unlike Woolf, however, McClure found to his dismay that though he had graduated third in a class of thirty, his classical education did not open doors to a professional career: "I talked with other boys, and found that most of them had arranged for the immediate future. One classmate was going into his father's law office; another was going to enter his uncle's... (shrink)

Shyness affects and influences the performance of the learners at school and college level. There are different correlates and reasons of shyness. Zimbardo states that Shyness is a vague concept which has many interpretations and definitions. One definition which is very renowned is that “The person, male or female, who is nervous, worried, and uncomfortable in the gathering or presence of others, is called shy”. The objectives of this research study were as: to investigate the relationship of schooling system (...) with shyness to investigate the relationship of residential locality with shyness to check relationship of Socio- Economic status with shyness To rank the correlates of shyness. Overall 252 students from graduation of Indus group of Colleges from Rawalpindi and Islamabad were the population of the study and 42 students were selected through simple random sampling technique as a sample for the study. The researcher got the data with the help of personal visits to the colleges. Questionnaire for measuring shyness was used by the researcher for this research study1. Another self developed questionnaire or instrument was used to know the correlates of shyness. Chisquare test of independence was used for data analysis. The results of the study showed that shyness depended upon these correlates of shyness as residential locality Schooling system socio-economic status of the learners. Shyness depends upon above mentioned correlates. In order to remove this problem of shyness, some steps should be taken as learners or students may not be blamed or punished without any reason. Learners should be encouraged and motivated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy, Dissent, and Nonconformity, 1689–1920Bruce KuklickAlan P. F. Sell. Philosophy, Dissent, and Nonconformity, 1689–1920. Cambridge: James Clark & Co., 2004. Pp. 296. Cloth, £50.00This is a competent, clearly written, and authoritative exploration of its topic, in some respects a labor of love, for the author is both a pastor and a student of theology. Sell comprehensively examines the proliferation of dissenting academies and nonconformist colleges of England and (...) Wales, with some excursions into the Scottish scene, from the Toleration Act of 1689 through the early twentieth century. For the 230 years of this study, a great variety of schools, many of which had only a brief moment of existence, and most of which were barely funded, offered training for the ministers of over a dozen protestant denominations in Britain. Often one man provided instruction in subjects as diverse as mathematics, science, and literature—as well as religious fields.Sell does not focus on ministerial training or even theology, but the way in which the nonconforming religious élite expounded on and was taught philosophy. Thus, one sees how a diverse group that surely had sectarian needs in mind was also interested in grasping how thinkers outside its belief system approached basic problems of human existence. Over time Descartes and other continental rationalists, Locke and the Cambridge Platonists, Kant and Hegel, and the nineteenth-century British idealists were taught by the dissenting professoriate. In summarizing its interpretation, Sell presents a history of modern Anglo-European philosophy as it was refracted in the minds of (some) English-speaking Protestants. Their emphases are not unexpected: empiricism is somewhat devalued, and rationalistic and a priori modes of thinking perhaps inflated. The ethical implications of epistemology and metaphysics are most carefully explicated, and what is taken to be most strategic for [End Page 211] Reformed theology is underscored. Overall, if one is tempted to generalize (as Sell himself does not), the positions reached are credible and not out of line with the philosophical cutting edge of each era.For the most part the dissenters were not themselves creative philosophers of the first rank, but Sell rightly puts forward (206) a short list of thinkers at these schools who have genuine claims to merit, and my own very short list would include Richard Price, James Martineau, and Robert Mackintosh.The author uses diverse strategies to give readers a sense of the effort of these mostly forgotten men. To some extent the book is a biographical compendium, with brief sections on individual or paired thinkers. But Sell also offers coverage by denomination, and he adds a series of discussions by topics—on an assortment of recurring dilemmas in moral philosophy and on apologetics. A final and most useful feature of the book is a trio of indices, in addition to the very full notes and a complete bibliography, mainly of the writings of the many authors cited. Two of the indices are standard, but helpful, lists of persons and topics; the third one is a compendium of all the academies Sell treats, as well as their denominational affiliation, and the duration of their existences.Philosophy, Dissent, and Nonconformity has the defects of its virtues. It is encyclopedic in nature, available for reference but unlikely to be read as a synthetic book, except by devotees of a certain kind of historical philosophical theology. The author also presumes his readers are unlikely to tackle the volume unless they have a prior attraction. That is, the book is written without much contextual explication, and attention to the needs of the non-specialist certainly would have made the volume of wider interest. The work is still relatively brief, under 300 pages, and because of its character, I would have liked to have seen a series of maps that pinpointed the whereabouts of the dissenting schools, giving the reader a visual sense of when and where they arose and declined among particular denominations, and that informed us of what the relations were among the successive professors who defined the learning.Bruce KuklickUniversity of PennsylvaniaCopyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

In 1736, an 80-year-old Edmond Halley, dignified by the academic robes of his alma mater, Queens College Oxford, sat down at the brush of transplanted Swedish artist Michael Dahl for his final official portrait.1 By the time he posed for Dahl, Halley occupied a rank of distinction among practical philosophers of the early Enlightenment. His manifold achievements included authorship of the first catalogue of stars in the Michael Dahl, “Dr E Halley, Aged 80.” © The Royal Society. southern hemisphere, (...) the laying of actuarial foundations for life insurance and annuities, his correct prediction of the return in 1758, 1835, and 1910 of a bright periodic comet that today bears .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Memoriam: Meyer Schapiro (1904–1996)David RosandMeyer Schapiro, University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, died at home in New York City on Sunday 3 March, at the age of 91. With his death, the worlds of art and learning have lost a legendary figure.“The humanity of art lies in the artist and not simply in what he represents,” Schapiro had declared in his lectures on abstract art. “It is the (...) painter’s constructive activity, his power of impressing a work with feeling and the qualities of thought that gives humanity to art.” Informing his own life and work, these were the values that enabled him to give such expressive voice to so much of the art of the past and of the present, to articulate the passions of eighth-century Northumbrian manuscript illuminators and Romanesque stonecarvers as well as of the most creative painters of our own century. Schapiro’s range as an art historian was universal, for he believed in the universality of art.Meyer Schapiro was born 23 September 1904, in Siauliai, Lithuania, and emigrated to the United States with his family when he was three. He grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, where he was first exposed to art in evening classes taught by John Sloan at the Hebrew Settlement House. He entered Columbia College in 1920 at the age of 16, having won both Pulitzer and New York State Regents Scholarships, and received his AB in 1924. Five years later he submitted his dissertation for the Ph.D., the first in fine arts and archaeology awarded by Columbia. “The Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac,” parts of which were published in The Art Bulletin of 1931, opened an entirely new critical perspective on Romanesque art; recognizing its creative and expressive imperatives, Schapiro’s study articulated the aesthetic quality of that art as well as situating it historically and culturally with new precision. Supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, he travelled widely in Europe and the Near East in 1926–27, leaving behind a trail of anecdotal legends that continued to be recounted long after by those who met the brilliant young graduate student—including Bernard Berenson, who compared the eloquence of the “very handsome youth” to Solomon himself.Schapiro began his teaching career at Columbia in 1928 as a lecturer and rose through the professorial ranks, becoming full professor in 1952; he was named University Professor in 1965 and became University Professor Emeritus in 1973. Throughout his career, he moved between the university campus on Morningside Heights and his home neighborhood in Greenwich Village. Lecturing as well at the New School for Social Research from 1936 to 1952, he reached the larger community of the New York art world, especially the artists, in the years when New York was becoming the most dynamic center of contemporary art. And he brought the artists uptown; auditing and participating in his classes at Columbia, their presence in his classroom seemed to validate his wisdom. At the other end of Schapiro’s range were the mathematicians, [End Page 547] scientists, and philosophers, in whose worlds he moved with equal confidence and, importantly, enthusiasm.During the ‘30s Schapiro’s was an important voice of moral balance in the cultural debates of the political left. Although he demonstrated with new insight and undogmatic focus the social bases of art, he insisted on recognizing “its own conditions which distinguish it from other activities.” Even as he avidly pursued knowledge—of history, culture, languages—Schapiro remained an artist. He talked about pictures as an artist. His criticism was an act of re-creation, as he lovingly reconstructed decisions made by the painter on the canvas; every stroke demanded attention. Choice was important, that freedom of the individual responding to the world around him and to the challenge of his own creation. In the anonymous art of the early Middle Ages Schapiro discovered the artist, the human maker; he intuited the feeling individual responsible for the invention of such expressive form. Distant art took on life and became accessible through his recognition of and insistence on its humanity.Schapiro’s learning was legendary, and yet, however intimidating it may have... (shrink)