Some readers
may by now have heard about what is happening at the University of St. Thomas
in Houston, where the university president’s actions have put the philosophy
faculty in fear for their jobs and for the survival of their program. Details are available at Daily
Nous (with a follow-up here)
and at Inside
Higher Ed. Philosophers at the
University of Notre Dame have issued a
statement on the controversy. John
Hittinger at the University of St. Thomas has started a
GoFundMe campaign to raise money for a legal defense.
I have nothing to state but the obvious: A university without a philosophy program is not a true university. A Catholic university without a philosophy program is not a truly Catholic university. A university named after St. Thomas Aquinas without a philosophy program is too stupid for words. And if you really need all this explained to you, then you have no business running a university.
Well, Dr. Feser, as you know, there is not a very high demand for Ph.Ds in philosophy. I am surprised at how many universities continue to offer the Ph.D in phil.
ReplyDeleteThat said, The U St Thomas has a distinguished phil dept. Its faculty is excellent and includes one of the world's finest Thomistic philosophers, Dr.Christopher Martin (formerly of Glasgow Univ.).
Thomism is politically incorrect.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there's more proof Thomism is politically incorrect from WikiLeaks, e.g., the email "Re: Conservative Catholicism" in the Podesta File.
DeleteI think it's just the PhD program's survival that's in question...
ReplyDeleteNo, they were advising the whole department to find a new job or retire. I'm a current student at the school.
DeleteThey were not giving anyone in the department a contract for next year. But thankfully after all the publicity, they let up and conceded. There are a few minor issues that still need to be addressed however,
DeleteI'm a student there.
DeleteA comment on the Inside Higher Ed article:
ReplyDeleteIn case these St. Thomas philosophers lose their jobs, maybe their expertise related to a hot new area of secular philosophy will help them find new jobs. … We saw just last week that philosophers are now wrestling with issues of gender transubstantiation and racial transubstantiation.
I checked. The university has a business program, because knowledge of how to create PowerPoint 'decks' are in clear demand. The MPPA: Public Policy & Administration appears free from anxiety over its existence.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, one could get a degree in 'communications'. 'The Communication Department at the University of St. Thomas educates students from both a professional and theoretical approach, combining theories of communication with practical application.'
That's 'theory' twice, so you know it must be important.
Perhaps an off-the-wall comment: I blame the G.I. Bill. After WWII, liberal arts colleges suddenly realized there were tons of government dollars out there if the colleges were to compete with trade schools for "relevant" majors that were "popular" with people on a non-liberal arts career track. Eventually the vocational/technical and trade aspects of a "college" education became dominant. What the colleges retained was the name "college" or "university." And, of course, the priority to turn a profit.
ReplyDeleteThe GI Bill may have hastened it, but Albert Jay Nock saw it coming long before that. After all, the land grant colleges were a forerunner even of Deweyite progressivism.
DeleteIn addition to what Craig said, there are others facet of this to remember. First, the division of a University into completely independent silos that separate faculties of philosophy from those of theology, English from Communications (as if you were going to learn to communicate in America without doing so in English), etc, is NOT an intrinsically necessary part of a sound University. Putting silo walls between such disciplines - and creating a sort of "autonomy" for each department that has become positively pernicious - has guaranteed that (a) students don't learn various disciplines in an integrated way, leaving them at risk with false arguments that fall between the cracks, and (b) that the departments seek their own good rather than that of the whole university or its students.
ReplyDeleteNor is it intrinsically necessary to have tenure as a foundational element of working conditions for professors. One hardly imagines that the professors at the University of Paris or Cologne when St. Thomas taught had lifetime tenure. While it would be a shameful thing that a professor should consider his job up in the air at the close of any school year just because an administrator doesn't like him, it is no less shameful that most of the employees at most organizations are just that much at risk, and nobody clamors to give them "tenure". At the same time, there is something somewhat ridiculous in a tenure system in which the University administration cannot decide to reduce the payroll by one position in X
for sound budget and service reasons and simply pick the least successful / least professional of its professors to can, merely because he has had the word "tenure" added to his name. We all know of moribund professors who, after 20 years of "teaching", never have a new thought, never give a new (or revised) lecture, never worry about whether they are successful in engaging the students, and simply are going through the motions. University departments that have become inclined to believe that their ENTIRE BUDGET is sacrosanct because of this thing they call "tenure" and its confrere "academic freedom" need to wake up and smell reality.
The historian J H Hexter said something similar in the 50s and 60s, though he referred to "tunnels". (He made the interesting point that, within history itself, the subdivisions came, not from the needs of the subject, but the way in which governments subdivided their records - e.g., fiscal, diplomatic, military, etc.)
DeleteOne of my gripes has always been "political science". What in the world can it study that wouldn't come under history or philosophy (or possible economics)?
However, your item (b) seems to me simply an inevitable result of the fall. I recently was reading Lewis, when he cited the rivalry between philosophy/theology departments on one hand, and rhetoric on the other. This in the 16th C.
the budget is generally spent on students in the PH.D. Program. They are given jobs in order to train at the university by teaching the undergraduate classes. It's basically cheap labor. They are paid just above enough money to be considered above the poverty line.
DeleteAs to whether they are never concerned about engaging the students, I have yet to meet ONE philosophy teacher that is not engaging at this university, and I've known 4 in my first year. (Two of them on tenure) Actually, one teacher period.
It's a great university.
George, your mention of Deweyite progressivism is extremely apropos. The heart and soul of traditional liberal education, which assumed an order to the sciences and to learning, was thrown out and replaced with a mere smorgasbord of selections for the student to choose from, with no department able to constrain or impose on another department. Each one became academically independent of each other department, with foreseeable consequences.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is possible to run a college along the traditional, highly integrated format of learning. St. John's College in Annapolis has been doing it since the 1930s. Thomas Aquinas College has done it in the old Catholic tradition of liberal arts since 1971. Wyoming Catholic now does it also. None of these even has departments. The teachers are expected to be able to cross lines and teach classes not within their own graduate degree expertise.
"None of these even has departments. The teachers are expected to be able to cross lines and teach classes not within their own graduate degree expertise."
ReplyDeleteI was not aware of this. Pretty amazing.
Socrates said, "Philosophy always holds to the same".
ReplyDeleteYet, what is in today's so-called philosophy departments is not philosophy. For me, there is no philosophy going on anywhere in our modern universities and colleges.
Socrates said, "Crete and Sparta are the most ancient and fertile home of Greek philosophy", and every college and university, even Catholic ones, deny that. No, there is no philosophy going on anywhere. No acknowledgement of Sparta as the home of Greek philosophy---no philosophy then. "Philosophy always holds to the same". And if you can't get the origin right--then one is lost in space.
If it closes so what, it's all pseudo-philosophy, or sophistry anyway.
For me, there is no philosophy going on anywhere in our modern universities and colleges.
DeleteSocrates said, "Crete and Sparta are the most ancient and fertile home of Greek philosophy", and every college and university, even Catholic ones, deny that.
Elsewhere you have said that Xenophanes, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle learned and taught in the Spartan - Doric tradition.
Perhaps it will please you to know that there is one college whose philosophy carries that on: Thomas Aquinas College. The philosophy classes focus entirely on these Greeks and their students (such as St. Thomas Aquinas): they start with Plato, go back to some of the pre-Socratics (like Parmenides, who was a student of Xenopnanes), and then go on to Aristotle and St. Thomas. Later they circle back to Plato again.
Eight semesters, and no moderns in the philosophy classes. At all. Also no philosophy department.