How Sadly Far We've Come On Campus Free Speech
Camille Paglia posts her talk at HeatStreet on how -- and why -- the modern campus is at war with free speech, and what to do about it.
Now a new generation of college students, born in the 1990s and never exposed to open public debate over free speech, has brought its own assumptions and expectations to the conflict.As a veteran of more than four decades of college teaching, almost entirely at art schools, my primary disappointment is with American faculty, the overwhelming majority of whom failed from the start to acknowledge the seriousness of political correctness as an academic issue and who passively permitted a swollen campus bureaucracy, empowered by intrusive federal regulation, to usurp the faculty's historic responsibility and prerogative to shape the educational mission and to protect the free flow of ideas. The end result, I believe, is a violation of the free speech rights of students as well as faculty.
What is political correctness? As I see it, it is a predictable feature of the life cycle of modern revolutions, beginning with the French Revolution of 1789, which was inspired by the American Revolution of the prior decade but turned far more violent. A first generation of daring rebels overthrows a fossilized establishment and leaves the landscape littered with ruins. In the post-revolutionary era, the rebels begin to fight among themselves, which may lead to persecutions and assassinations. The victorious survivor then rules like the tyrants who were toppled in the first place. This is the phase of political correctness -- when the vitality of the founding revolution is gone and when revolutionary principles have become merely slogans, verbal formulas enforced by apparatchiks, that is, party functionaries or administrators who kill great ideas by institutionalizing them.
What I have just sketched is the political psychobiography of the past 45 years of American university life. My premises, based on my own college experience at the dawn of the counterculture, are those of the radical Free Speech Movement that erupted at the University of California at Berkeley in the Fall of 1964, my first semester at the State University of New York at Binghamton. The Berkeley protests were led by a New York-born Italian-American, Mario Savio, who had worked the prior summer in a voter-registration drive for disenfranchised African-Americans in Mississippi, where he and two colleagues were physically attacked for their activities. When Savio tried to raise money at Berkeley for a prominent unit of the Civil Rights Movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he was stopped by the university because of its official ban on political activity on campus.
The uprising at Berkeley climaxed in Savio's fiery speech from the steps of Sproul Hall, where he denounced the university administration. Of the 4000 protestors in Sproul Plaza, 800 were arrested. That demonstration embodied the essence of 1960s activism: it challenged, rebuked, and curtailed authority in the pursuit of freedom and equality; it did not demand, as happens too often today, that authority be expanded to create special protections for groups reductively defined as weak or vulnerable or to create buffers to spare sensitive young feelings from offense. The progressive 1960s, predicated on assertive individualism and the liberation of natural energy from social controls, wanted less surveillance and paternalism, not more.
...In short, free speech and free expression, no matter how offensive or shocking, were at the heart of the 1960s cultural revolution. Free speech was a primary weapon of the Left against the moralism and conformism of the Right.
Oh how things have changed.
Where she thinks the speech repression comes from -- and I think she's right:
Today's campus political correctness can ultimately be traced to the way those new programs, including African-American and Native American studies, were so hastily constructed in the 1970s, a process that not only compromised professional training in those fields over time but also isolated them in their own worlds and thus ultimately lessened their wider cultural impact. I believe that a better choice for academic reform would have been the decentralized British system traditionally followed at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, which offered large subject areas where a student could independently pursue his or her special interest. In any case, for every new department or program added to the U.S. curriculum, there should have been a central shared training track, introducing students to the methodology of research and historiography, based in logic and reasoning and the rigorous testing of conclusions based on evidence. Neglect of that crucial training has meant that too many college teachers, then and now, lack even the most superficial awareness of their own assumptions and biases. Working on campus only with the like-minded, they treat dissent as a mortal offense that must be suppressed, because it threatens their entire career history and world-view. The ideology of those new programs and departments, predicated on victimology, has scarcely budged since the 1970s. This is a classic case of the deadening institutionalization and fossilization of once genuinely revolutionary ideas.
Amazingly, a Goya, "Naked Maja," was said by a female prof to create a "hostile workplace."
The instructor claimed that she was protecting future women students from the "chilly climate" created by the Naked Maja. But in a later published article about the controversy, she revealed that she herself was uncomfortable in the presence of the painting. She wrote, "I felt as though I were standing there naked, exposed and vulnerable." I'm sorry, but we simply cannot permit uncultivated neurotics to set the agenda for arts education in America.
Her solutions are also wise -- but guess what, nobody's overturning anything that will end the juicy data netherworld jobs of all the PC studies now in colleges:
To break through the stalemate and reestablish free speech on campus, educators must first turn away from the sprawling cafeteria menu of over-specialized electives and return to broad survey courses based in world history and culture, proceeding chronologically from antiquity to modernism. Students desperately need a historical framework to understand both past and present.Second, universities should sponsor regular public colloquia on major topics where both sides of sensitive, hot-button controversies are fully discussed. Any disruptions of free speech at such forums must be met with academic sanctions.
Third, it is my position, stemming from the 1960s sexual revolution that ended campus parietal rules, that colleges and universities must stay totally out of the private social lives of students. The intrusive paternalism of American colleges in this area is an unacceptable infringement of student rights. If a crime is committed on campus, it must be reported to the police. There is no such thing as a perfectly "safe space" in real life. Risk and danger are intrinsic to human existence.
Colleges have already cashed the checks so no one is going to be prevented from having their own unique plate at the table.
I don't think apprenticeship programs are run this way (can't imagine why), but "higher" education is above that crass level of learning (right?).
Bob in Texas at May 10, 2016 5:52 AM
Dear God, Paglia is an awful writer.
I think the problem begins with the forced-helicoptering that is imposed on parents. When I was child, I could pretty much go where I wanted to and had to be home at the end of the day. As a result, there were no adults around to supervise our interactions, and problems that arose had to be dealt with amongst ourselves.
These days, we mustn't let our precious children out of our sight for the briefest of moments, because there are sexual predators behind every telephone pole (which, by the way, does not produce milk), just waiting for the split second our back is turned to abscond with our little lambs.
As a result, the child's problem-solving skills begins and ends with "MO-O-O-O-O-OM!"
Having no exposure to adversity whatsoever, and no experience in conflict resolution, these pampered snowflakes are unleashed on an unsuspecting college, where mommy and daddy are nowhere to be found. Naturally, they expect the administration to take over, and deal with the all nastiness and name-calling.
They never cultivated a thicker skin, and cannot deal with environments where people can say nasty things and not have consequences. And the only opinions they have on anything are the ones their mommies and daddies approved of.
If they read Calvin and Hobbes, they'd wonder, "Why is Calvin so often outside his mother's view? What on earth is wrong with her? Why has no one called Child Protective Services on her?"
Patrick at May 10, 2016 6:33 AM
"If they read Calvin and Hobbes, they'd wonder, "Why is Calvin so often outside his mother's view? What on earth is wrong with her? Why has no one called Child Protective Services on her?" "
+1 to Patrick
I think a big part of the problem is these kids are never around/talking to "others". Their electronic circle of friends are all that matter. They simply have no experience in differences.
This channels them into the SJW/Left's control over their behavior ("You poor dear! Of course we will help you.") covering them in the motherly blanket of group think.
Since there is no downside to the colleges (maybe changing?) the kids are pampered/catered to/rewarded.
Bob in Texas at May 10, 2016 6:54 AM
Interesting, Patrick and Bob seemed to blow right past the point of Paglia's article to get to their pet peeves.
If it were up to me I'd send her a crown and scepter and ask her to get started on her ideas for saving the institutions from themselves.
Canvasback at May 10, 2016 7:36 AM
Sorry, but as I said, her writing is awful. I did my best to slog through it, but I did not "blow past it and got right to my pet peeve."
She addressed what she thinks the cause of this problem is. Therefore I submitted my own hypothesis.
She wrote:
I say that "today's campus political correctness can ultimately be traced to" the special snowflakes who are infesting colleges who never had to deal with adversity in their lives because they were always under mommy's and daddy's watchful eyes.
I see nothing wrong with cultural studies, but unless your goal in life is become a college professor teaching cultural studies, I wouldn't make a degree out of it.
Patrick at May 10, 2016 7:44 AM
> Dear God, Paglia is an awful writer.
> Patrick at May 10, 2016 6:33 AM
Crid at May 10, 2016 10:01 AM
It's a slow moving French Revolution. Instead of immediately starting their Reign of Terror, they had to wait ~50 years.
The solution is to allow them to devour themselves. Ideally, without too much collateral damage to innocent bystanders. At some point along the way, a stronger movement will unleash their version of a "whiff of grapeshot" and calm things down.
You can't save people from theirselves.
I R A Darth Aggie at May 10, 2016 10:18 AM
This blog badly needs more smart people. Or at least, as in olden days, fewer aggressively-stoopit ones.
Crid at May 10, 2016 10:32 AM
Add these:
Professors should stay so far away from indoctrinating students that the students can't even tell how they vote or what they believe. They should strive to impart a love of knowledge and a quest for truth.
There are neurotic and crazy people in the world: don't let them dictate your policy and budget.
School is a place to learn and obtain career-useful diplomas, not a place to become a justice warrior. That is a political activity.
There is no such thing as hate speech, only speech you hate.
Craig Loehle at May 10, 2016 10:58 AM
Patrick,
"I say that "today's campus political correctness can ultimately be traced to" the special snowflakes who are infesting colleges who never had to deal with adversity in their lives because they were always under mommy's and daddy's watchful eyes."
The problem with this thesis is that it doesn't explain how these snowflakes were able to impose their will in universities. It also does not explain the particular form their grievance collecting take s - SJ cant and talking points.
You may not like Paglia's style but her analysis is on the money. I watched all this happen and gather steam at Berkeley in the 70s.
Jim at May 10, 2016 11:18 AM
Crid: This blog badly needs more smart people.
We have Conan and Cousin Dave, among others.
Crid: Or at least, as in olden days, fewer aggressively-stoopit ones.
You could always leave.
Patrick at May 10, 2016 1:00 PM
Hello, Jim. You wrote:
That same helicopter upbringing that cultivated their thin skins also cultivated their sense of entitlement. And their belief that the way to get results is to cry.
Add administrators who are desperate to placate their students, least they take their money elsewhere, and you find a scenario in which spoiled brats can call the shots.
I should also point out that Paglia's and my opinions aren't mutually exclusive. There is no reason we both can't be right.
As for her style, I had a hard time slogging through it. As I read, I was overcome by the clunkiness of it all. It brought to mind the image of a cast-iron wood stove falling down a stone staircase. Noisy, clanging, overwhelmingly graceless and falling apart as it tumbled downward.
Patrick at May 10, 2016 1:10 PM
Them's fightin' words.
You posit an interesting argument, but Jim has already rebutted its major weakness, so I'll skip doing that. The current crop of SJWs is the consequence, not the cause.
I'll stick with Paglia's well-written argument that the dominance of political correctness on campus can be traced to the gutting of the academic rigor of the academy and to the isolation of cultural studies in academia.
If you were studying the history of African-Americans in the context of American History, your findings would be woven into the study of American history in general and increase society's knowledge of its own history; and possibly influence future policy. However, isolated in the African-American Studies department, they are ignored by all but a handful of politicians, who find in them justification for policies already decided upon.
I've made the point before that an ethnic or cultural studies major loses his value upon graduation. In academia, he is valuable to his department as a butt in a chair, a justification for funding a department that adds nothing to the intellectual fabric of the university or society at large. After graduation, he has no value to society or to academia. A physics major, on the other hand, at least adds to the collective intelligence of society, if not to the advancement of science (generally requires a PhD for that).
Conan the Grammarian at May 10, 2016 1:22 PM
Politicians and Social Justice Warriors.
Conan the Grammarian at May 10, 2016 1:35 PM
"You posit an interesting argument, but Jim has already rebutted its major weakness, so I'll skip doing that. The current crop of SJWs is the consequence, not the cause."
Exactly. When the purpose of the University was to educate people who were qualified, and prepared for an advanced education, things were a lot better.
They could at least flunk people out. Now, they can't afford to, so they just water down the curriculum .
The Universities, through a series of perverse government incentives, became about scraping every dime off the table in order to fund an out of control educational bureaucracy/ administration and put butts in the seats, however unqualified, (as long as they could qualify for a massive federal loan)
They lost their core reason for existence. They became just another scam to loot the taxpayers, like the housing bubble fueled by liar loans and the quick sale of derivatives and tranches based on those loans, that collapsed in 2009.
Isab at May 10, 2016 1:44 PM
I think another contributing factor is the new(ish) tendency to treat students like customers who need to be kept happy. I wouldn't be able to pinpoint exactly when this started happening, but early 2000's seems about right. Note that the "rate my professors" site was founded around 1999.
ahw at May 10, 2016 2:11 PM
Conan:
I don't doubt the accuracy of what you're saying. And that's exactly as it should be.
However, try selling that to the average student who is taking an African-American history class. The ones I engage are convinced that "history" is "white history" with the contributions of blacks watered down if not outright omitted.
If the ones I engage on Twitter and in the comments section of YouTube videos (where my usual fodder is documentary-type commentary on third-wave feminism and Social Justice Warriors) are any indication, they believe that blacks created everything. If I argue, for example, that blacks are not "culturally appropriating" when they perform country-western music or classical music of the European Renaissance, they'll tell me that blacks created those too.
White people have no genres of music that they created.
History, as taught in school, is revisionist white history, to hear them tell it, and black history is the only way you can get any historical accuracy.
When I try to get some basis for this claim, they will either try to insult me or they give me vague references to "influences."
One ambitious individual tried to tell me that Mozart himself had African sponsors and he stole his music from them.
And there's some ignorance that is even more astounding. Slavery, according to them, is something only whites have ever done. When I try to talk about the Barbary slave trade, for instance, they laugh themselves silly.
What I'm trying to point out is, you would need to do more than just take out African studies and assure these students that they would get African studies in history class, and even give them the opportunity to do projects that emphasize African history as term papers or the like, if they should choose.
They would riot and march in the streets if you tried, however reasonable Paglia's premise is.
These people, at least the ones I talk to, are in need of something more than steering to a world history or U.S. history class with assurances that black history will be covered along with the history of every other race or culture in the U.S. They are in need of deprogramming.
Patrick at May 10, 2016 2:27 PM
The fall of the US college system started with WW2. Due to the GI bill there was great demand for college educators. A demand we did not have the supply to fulfill. The solution was to import a lot of German professors. This started the nihilistic trend in US colleges. (I don't know why but Germans tend to breed nihilists. Just how it is.) As part of that trend gender/ethnic studies sprang into existence. (A divide and conquer philosophy) The next major breakdown started with Harvard and primary education majors. Harvard students are really smart and really good talkers. They can really sell some stupid and obvious bullshit. One of them noticed that teenagers and especially female teenagers feel lonely, isolated, and sad. Most everyone here will go big whoop. You just went through puberty. You've changed how you view the world as you transition from a child into an adult. Of course that is how you feel. But Harvard grads being so obsessed with their own navels decided that we needed to improve the self esteem of our students. Hence the self esteem movement sprang into existence. Hence we cultivated a generation of special snowflakes.
Also, the snowflakes aren't imposing their will on the colleges. The college administrators are using them to advance their own goals (both financial and political). Cut the snowflakes off from that adult support and they melt just like their namesakes.
Conan, scientific advancement doesn't require a PhD. But it does require the ability to try and fail. With the increasing government control of research funding you also end up with increasing politics. Taking big risks is not acceptable. Also, funding is centralized. Instead of a million little bets we are making one big bet. And we make that bet where it most benefits those already in power. Thus stalling the engines of our ingenuity. I put forth NASA as exhibit A. A failed institution that regularly wastes one third of it's man power or more.
Ben at May 10, 2016 2:48 PM
"The ones I engage are convinced that "history" is "white history" with the contributions of blacks watered down if not outright omitted."
You got that right Patrick. I've given up on them. Cut them off, isolate them, and let them die like the scum they've been trained to be. They aren't self sufficient. Instead they've been trained to be parasites on society. There are enough of them I don't think we can afford to 'deprogram' them all. I'm not unsympathetic but they aren't interested in supporting or building society and I have enough problems without taking them on as well. Cutting them off and letting them starve on their own is just the best solution I can afford.
Ben at May 10, 2016 2:55 PM
Minding the Campus's John Leo interviews Harvard's Harvey Mansfield about today's students and universities:
EXCERPTS:
HARVEY MANSFIELD: the universities have stopped pursuing truth for its own sake. They don’t think that there is such a thing as truth, or at least they have grave doubts about it. And that leaves everyone free to do his own thing.
HARVEY MANSFIELD: Then there is multiculturalism, the belief that all cultures are equal. So none is better than any other is. And that’s because there isn’t really any true culture or a culture higher or better than any other is. And so while many professors do their best, students are misled and generally demoralized by the view that learning fundamentally isn’t possible. All you can do is indoctrinate. And indoctrination is unprovably good, unprovably true. And that, I think, is why you’re seeing that lack of devotion to learning, and lack of accomplishment in learning seem to go together.
JOHN LEO: So you think that the de-emphasis on learning is a direct result of relativism?
HARVEY MANSFIELD: Yes, I do. This relativism is a sort of liberal view in a general political sense, but it’s been made much more specific by what’s called postmodern thinking.
AND
HARVEY MANSFIELD: Right. It can be activism, and it can also just be extracurricular activity, which is not as toxic as activism. The Harvard students that I see are sometimes more devoted to their extra-curriculars, as they call them, than to the courses they take. The courses they take are not very challenging, whereas extra-curriculars do challenge them, either in athletics or in competing with other ambitious students to get an impressive resume. The less presentable aspect of all the leisure time, which students have right now, is to protest in such a way as to try to force the university to adopt your politics or your policies.
AND
HARVEY MANSFIELD: Well, again, students doubt that there really is anything fundamentally that they need to learn. And they look at themselves and say, if I don’t need to learn anything fundamentally, my attitudes deserve to remain as they are right now. And I’ll defend those attitudes, and defend them by feeling offended, rather than reconsider or stop and reflect and wonder if what I’m listening to in the classroom has any effect on my life.
JOHN LEO: How do they become that touchy?
HARVEY MANSFIELD: This idea of being offended gains momentum from feminism, because feminism has used the notion of sexual harassment to establish something called a hostile environment, which had been applied to the workplace, but now also to universities. So women are entitled to be at a university which is welcoming to women, has safe spaces and which doesn’t require them to hear things that they don’t want to hear.
JOHN LEO: Right. A hostile environment now seems to include any difference of opinion, or even the slightest twinge of a hurt feeling.
HARVEY MANSFIELD: Yes, I think that’s right. Because it becomes one’s moral duty to look for offenses. [laughs] And the people who give offense, even though they may be innocent or not ill meaning, still deserve to be smoked out, reproached and told that they are wrong.
Conan the Grammarian at May 10, 2016 2:57 PM
I often agree with Paglia but she's wrong when she says the '60's-70's student uprisings came out of a quest for freedom. The leftist radicals demanded a tolerance that they had no intention of extending to their ideological opponents. They wanted not liberty but control. Their "humanitarian" efforts on behalf of the "disenfranchise" were mostly a false-face for doctrinaire leftism.
All this was apparent to me when I was a student at a "prestigious" college during those years. When I spoke up, people lectured me. I had to Appreciate Diverse Opinions, Allow Others to Challenge My Worldview, See All Sides of the Issues, etc. etc. I didn't buy it but too many did. And now you can see the result - campuses aflame with upheavals caused by agitators who should be expelled or never admitted in the first place. The old system of "no politics at state-supported universities", restrictive as it was, could have been eased without legitimizing troublemakers like Savio.
What I find interesting is that campus administrators either could not see through the leftists - or didn't want to.
Robert at May 10, 2016 5:00 PM
correction: disenfranchised.
Robert at May 10, 2016 5:05 PM
A huge part of the problem is the administrators, many of whom seem to be pursuing a growth-at-any-price policy. More students=more budget, more facilities, more justification for higher salaries for administrators.
I think today's college administrators are, as a general class, one of the most irresponsible groups of 'professionals' in America today.
David Foster at May 10, 2016 5:31 PM
How appropriate that The Naked Maja got Goya called before the Spanish Inquisition, and a copy will likely get someone called before the Feminist Inquisition. In both cases the first reaction of the Inquisitors was to remove the offending picture from public display so it could not corrupt the morals of impressionable people.
Wfjag at May 10, 2016 6:49 PM
> You could always leave.
And you could always grow up, but the thing is, you're going to have to grow up someday anyway. If it happens on your deathbed, even if you snap from your lifelong 9-year-old's habits into full adult awareness in the last 200 milliseconds of your life, that last tenth of a second is going to suck garden hose. Your synapses will, by their last cross of the clefts, remind you that you imagined yourself fit to critique Paglia as "an awful writer." The shame of your transparent, needful, childlike egotism will cook your visage into a loathsome, humiliated (if appropriate) grimace for all eternity. (And meanwhile, who are you kidding?)
Don't do it. Grow up.
> We have Conan
Verily. We need more of him, especially as in this cite:
As someone else here (maybe me) recently noted, Harvard's $37 Billion means that it's now best described essentially as a hedge fund attached to a minor research institution.Well, voracious government employees and their revenue divisions aren't in the truth business anyway. Yale (IIRC) is the first Ivy school to have its (formerly sacrosanct) flanks measured for meat by tax authorities.
So we have to wonder: Even if you imagine America to be a den of oppression and unsustainable corporate exploitation, even if you think it's all about Old White Guys, even if you believe your happiness has been squelched under the thumb of the Mustache Dude from Monopoly, why aren't the money men at Harvard keeping a lid on idiocies like this?
Aren't they (by definition) the smartest guys in the world? Aren't they, in any case, the most motivated? Where are they?
(As with Patrick's infantile posturing to the contrary:) This isn't merely about fey postures of learnedness and erudition. This is about money. What the fuck is going on?
Crid at May 10, 2016 6:53 PM
Crid, there are times when you make my work of goading you into a meltdown too easy. This is one of those times.
I didn't realize that Paglia was some kind of genderless deity, and therefore us unworthy mortals should be struck dead if we find fault with her writing.
I read her screed on the problems that infest colleges today. And it flowed like a river of broken glass.
But it comes as no surprise to me that you're enamored of long-windedness. At least you're consistent.
Patrick at May 10, 2016 7:26 PM
Your enlightened expiration is not as near as was hoped.
Crid at May 10, 2016 7:30 PM
"I'm sorry, but we simply cannot permit uncultivated neurotics to set the agenda for arts education in America."
Brilliant. I'm going to steal that one.
Gene at May 10, 2016 7:35 PM
"Crid, there are times when you make my work of goading you into a meltdown too easy. This is one of those times."
Patrick is projecting, for about the third time, in the same thread.
Could it be? A new record?
Isab at May 10, 2016 8:18 PM
They have to keep the infan - I mean students happy. Because otherwise it's bad press, angry parents, and transfers. That leads to less money and fewer random "administration" positions. How many deans does a school need, anyway?
Also, thanks to Patrick for noting that the helicoptering is forced on parents. My children (under 10) both have been told the reason they can't stay in the car while I, say, run in for some milk is NOT that they aren't capable or that somebody will do something bad, but that somebody would call CPS.
Shannon at May 10, 2016 9:06 PM
I definitely think this is a money issue. My kid's in the cheapest university in the state, sent there on scholarship, and this weird mindset of free speech/hate speech/safe speech isn't pervading every college in the US. That's not to say it isn't creeping in there through Tumblr or wherever, but it's not coming from the top down in lesser universities. Yet.
gooseegg at May 10, 2016 10:20 PM
Isab:
Thanks, Isab, but I got your number during the last thread. Just attack Crid (which I do anyway), and Madame Meltdown goes ballistic.
Reminds me of Feebie, whom I haven't seen on this blog since...hmmm.
Patrick at May 11, 2016 2:29 AM
"They have to keep the infan - I mean students happy." ~Shannon
I disagree. Look at Missou. The SJWs protested and the administration caved in. Then a significant number of students looked to move elsewhere so they can get an actual education and have some peace and quiet. What did the administration cut due to the budget shortfall? . . . Custodial services. Cutting the 'protest' branch's funds wasn't even considered. In reality the administration didn't cave in, they used the SJW students as a pretext. One they built and nurtured so they would have an excuse to do exactly what they wanted.
And that is why I disagree with you Gooseegg. It isn't about money. It is about prestige. The K-12 schools are getting hit just the same as the colleges. And they are getting hit by the most expensive but more significantly most prestigious first. Those schools hire the best of the best out of the Ivy League. That is where this philosophy originates. That is where this spreads from.
Postmodern philosophy is attractive because there are no standards. You can't be wrong or do bad without standards to judge against. But at the same time there is no good, beauty, or justice. In the end it is a hollow and destructive philosophy. Listen to some atonal music. All notes are equal. Position is irrelevant. The height of postmodern musical achievement. In other words, random noise. The only reason we don't have achromal movies is the universe gives them away for free. They are called static.
Spiritual cotton candy. It tastes good at first bite but soon sours and leaves you hungry and nauseous.
Ben at May 11, 2016 6:51 AM
Shannon, there are probably so many things you can't allow you kids to do that you did, your head is spinning.
I can't fathom being a parent these days. It would drive me nuts knowing that the things I was allowed to do as a child without raising the slightest concern, would have Child Protective Services called on me if I let my (hypothetical) kids do them.
Patrick at May 11, 2016 6:52 AM
No, but getting a job doing research all but does.
I went to business school with a physics major and when asked why she didn't continue in physics, she told the professor that a bachelor's degree was not enough to enter the field and even a master's degree meant being little more than a go-fer for a PhD. And if she got a PhD, she said, professorships were few and far between, tenure was being cut back, and corporate research was on the wane (unless it's chemistry or biology), so she was better off with an MBA.
Conan the Grammarian at May 11, 2016 9:53 AM
While true as written there are some big caveats to what you wrote Conan. There are almost no jobs for pure physics majors. But pure physics majors are not the only people who do research or who advance science. Same with university research. If you want to work as a researcher at a university a PhD is mandatory. But once again, those aren't the only jobs advancing science. There are quite a few people with only a bachelors or masters in other degrees than physics who do a lot of hard research and push the frontiers of science.
Ben at May 11, 2016 2:29 PM
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