West - Why Democracy Demands Quality, Diversity, and Leadership in Universities

Not at all. Thanks for opening up the frame of response to include those who, most reasonably, just don't have the time for all that. To me, that's no problem at all. I don't have the time for all the things I want to do (like being more active in my D.C. United support, for one). The way my work life is structured, I'm able to listen to things like this in the background of my daily doings in the office on-campus, or in the office at home...I've also heard takes on these principles, from West, before. I appreciate that not everyone can take that kind of time out to do that. It's all good.

 

West goes on to address his entire frame by submitting the urgeny of the human condition, saying "you can't talk about [any of the vicious legacies] without raising that question 'Who are you and what are you going to do in the short time in this time and space, givern your movement from womb to tomb? You're not here that long; what kind of human being do you want to be, what kind of witness do you want to bear, what kind of legacy do you want to bequeath to those who come after you? And we don't like to have to wrestle with those kinds of questions, especially in our market-driven, business-oriented, careerist society in which we live...we're too busy...we don't have time for SOCRAATIC QUESTIONING! Even in universities, more and more market-driven; can't wait to get that degree so you can gain access to that job, livein that vanilla suburb and live large..."

This, to me, is the unspoken framework that ought to be in fact subject to Socratic questioning; that ought to, in fact, be challenged in terms of outlining the overall framework inside of which discourse is constituted. Frameworks that, as West puts it, distill talking about principle into talking about self-interest, about the economic notions of principle. That's just one framework, among many.

Given the asserted truths (lower-case "t") of that framework, given that we, in West's view, need to Socratically interrogate in light of our short time to locate ourselves along a continuum of action, we find that West goes on to tie that to (not only the notion of parrhesia - frank speech - but to) "cirriculum - the very terrain upon which our intellectual reflection takes place. And its always incomplete, it's always unfinished...just like any democratic experiment [that has credibility] as long as it is sustained...

BAM! - Cirriculum IS frameworks for understanding the internal and external worlds (not to mention our awareness of such) in an academy setting.

This is where democracy and university are tied to gether at the most critical point, imv. Where we find renewal and Socratic interrogation (ineed a pov subject to critique as ITSELF only ONE of MANY ways to interrogate the realities we subjectively experience), we find sustained notions of democratic experimentation and dynamic cirricula. Where the framework is limited to (falsely) frame every reality as economic, and everything worth wrestling with already pre-fromed, we find democracy and university, alone and in an inversely related sense, dying comprehensive deaths.

Spritual deaths; intellectual deaths; the death of public life; the death of the process of thinking critically. The death of the types of courage that come from knowing and finding worth fighting for the manifestations that emerge as one comes to engage not just economic, market frames on knowable reality, but the INTERDEPENDENT nature of those knowable realities; that nothing is wholly DE-pendent, nothing wholly IN-dependent, but that everything has components of independent dependence, and dependent independence, so to speak.

It's why the title: democracy DEMANDS quality, diversity, and leadership at universities, becasue of the university role IN that democracy; and, because of how, as stated, cirricula is - can be - the larger framework in microcosm...

West goes on...diversity and the Univ. of Michigan, when I get more time...

 

The U. Michigan reference was to the 5-4, narrow decision surrounding affirmative action, and how leadership surrounding that aspect of diversity is sorely missing. To paraphrase West, there's all kinds of preference that takes place.

Geographic diversity preference: folks from all over the nation getting access to slots in other parts of the nation, not always meeting the highest standards...no debate.

Legacy preference: folks getting access to education slots because they are "son of," daughter of" "grandson of," not always meeting the highest standards...no debate. Whatsoever.

Athletic preference: athletic performers gaining access to these slots, making money for their institutions, yet not always meeting the highest standards (I stood in the mud next to a regularly-fvcking-up football recruit during Basic Training at USAFA who was white, and who finally pissed off the upperclassmen so much that they screamed out "____what's your SAT score? He hesitated, knowing the Honor Code...they pressed for an answer...the answer? 700. Total. He's in your USAF today)...

No debate. Even when they are minorities. None.

But after 244 years in which it was illegal for the black community to read and write, and then a period of Jim Crow where the black community PAID TAXES for public institutions of higher learning but couldn't even THINK about sending their children to those institutions for almost a century...after all that, black folks get a foothold and a toehold, and then the WHOLE MACHINERY KICKS IN, and now everybody's so worried about everybody meeting some elevated standard...

...without, of course debating all the other forms of preference. Just the one benefitting the Negroes. That's an instituonal level of hypocrisy we ought to be honest about...

Did we debate the deficient qualifications of Irish rich folk when Ted Kennedy got into college, through legacy, by meeting the minimal standard, thus keeping out some working-class man who was a genius but went to Boston College instead? Have we launched the debate and diatribe on the deficiency of rich WASPS when George Bush, meeting minimal standards, got into Yale, on legacy, keeping out some other genius who did not get in because of preference given this man? Where's the U Michigan-type lawsuit asking why we can't hold these folks to the same standard as everyone else?

If people don't meet minimal qualifications they don't belong. At Harvard, for example, 9000 people a year who apply meet minimal standards; they've only got 1800 slots, how do you choose? One answer clearly is, we don't hate the idea of Harvard (or any other institution) looking to diversify their student pool geographically, with folks from CA who meet the minimal standard, and we don't rail against the idea of legacy, or of athletes gaining access. We only break breath to talk about black folks gaining access. That truth is indiciative of a mindset and instutionalized way of being in the world against which multiple notions of manifesting diversity stand....against that hypocrisy within US, most of all.

Question: those white brothers and sisters who sued, they could have sued re: the other white folks who they scored better than as well, but they didn't. Why? Why just choose the Negroes?

Hypocrisy.

It's in that light that West acknowleges the U Mich. case in particular, and the bravery in standing fast against the assertions of the plaintiffs.

More to come...

 

Both, plus other talks he's given. The post on the U-Mich piece is more from other talks that are thematically tied to this one, all West nonetheless, and my post illuminates his reference to the case in this speech.

On the hypocrisy surrounding preference in academic selection, I'm with him 100 percent; on things like being bereft of optimism, I split with him. On things like noting where the language of love is evident, I'm with him; on limiting that understanding to a Christ-based frame (and even, often, a Paul-based frame on Christ, and not even a Christ-based frame on the world), I split with him.