RIP: Frank Cross

Sadly, Professor Frank B. Cross of the University of Texas Law and Business Schools has died. Frank was a national debate champion at the University of Kansas (1976), Harvard Law School graduate, former practicing attorney, and long-time professor and scholar in Austin. I will link (here) to his obituary when it is published online. My friend, former KU debater Steve Griffin has posted a short blog entry about Frank's academic contributions -- and briefly notes his long battle with a terrible disease.

Honestly, I didn’t really know Frank all that well, but he was incredibly influential in my life and I am very grateful for the inspiration he provided. Obviously, I should have shared this appreciation with him long before he died.

Frank's influence on my life began when I was a senior in high school. I had debated one semester at El Dorado (KS) High School during my sophomore year -- Kansas high schools only had debate for one semester in those days. Then, I debated my junior year at Charles Page High School in Sand Springs (OK). My father's job had taken us to the Tulsa area and debate allowed me quickly to find a new group of good friends in high school. As it turns out, both El Dorado and Sand Springs were pretty good high school debate programs with young energetic coaches.

Some of my friends at Sand Springs were especially serious about debate. My colleague, for example, was attending the Northwestern University debate institute after our junior year. I wanted to be successful and I'm a competitive guy, so I ended up attending KU debate camp. I had long been a Kansas basketball and football fan and the trip also served as an on-site visit to my preferred college. It made for a reasonable sell to my parents.This would have been summer 1978.

Camp was fun and I really liked the KU campus. I learned a lot, started thinking about debating in college, and met Steve Griffin, who provided some encouragement to me. Most KU debaters, he noted, were former Kansas high school products. Steve had gone to Lawrence High School and would make the semi-finals of the NDT in 1979. That's the Final Four in basketball vernacular.

After the camp, I put my hands on a copy of the Journal of the American Forensics Association article featuring the final national championship debate between the University of Kansas and Georgetown University. That winning Kansas team was comprised of Robert (Robin) Rowland and Frank Cross. They were juniors at the time and followed up their championship with a very successful senior year that ended with a loss in the semi-finals of the National Debate Tournament. Frank and Robin are now members of the University of Kansas debate Hall of Fame. 

For weeks (and months) afterwards, I sometimes practiced reading aloud Frank's second negative constructive speech to figure out if I had the verbal "speed" to debate in college at a nationally-competitive program like Kansas. I also mined Frank's references from the "Malthus was right" argument he made in that debate. His bibliography allowed me to assemble (and understand the complexity of) the argument he was making (against a food aid case) – even though I figured it would not be something I could use in Oklahoma high school debate at the time.

Next, Frank's success as a KU debater shaped who I became as a college debater. As a freshman in Lawrence I took a required debate theory and argumentation class from Robin Rowland, who openly admitted that much of what he knew about developing disadvantages to affirmative plans was learned from years and years and years of debating with Frank Cross. Rowland and Cross were both products of Lawrence High School and had debated together through four years of college. They were friends for decades. Essentially, I learned a tremendous amount of debate skill from Robin, but he had learned a good deal about making attacks on affirmative plans from Frank. Robin also repeatedly emphasized the importance of research and often credited Frank on that front as well.

My ultimate identity as a college debater was largely based on my researching disadvantages to various affirmative plans.

Later, Frank's post-graduate education and career decisions also greatly influenced my life.

From around age 5, I had wanted to be a lawyer. When I discovered that Frank had gone to Harvard Law School after attending KU, I figured that was a viable pathway for me – maybe not Harvard Law specifically, but some excellent (if not elite) law school. It would be wrong to say that it made Kansas a viable choice, because I long intended to attend KU. But it made the pathway thinkable -- Kansas, college debate, good law school, etc.

During my years as a college debater (and then two years as a coach), Frank’s decision to leave private legal practice (and Steve Griffin's parallel decision, I would note) for a career in academia, made me rethink why I thought I wanted to be a lawyer.  Why were these bright guys abandoning the career I thought I wanted -- in favor of academia? In the end, that pathway made sense for me too.

Finally, while I was working on my dissertation in late June 1989, Frank generously allowed me to stay with him in his home while I conducted archival research at the LBJ presidential library in Austin. I remember some wide-ranging conversations with him about politics, academia, law, etc. Most clearly, however, I recall our discussions of how best to assemble a team in fantasy baseball. We were watching the NBA draft on TV and I had discovered his library of  Bill James abstracts in his guest room. Frank could be a very serious scholar and thinker, but he also enjoyed having a drink with friends, talking about sports, and speculating about politics.

In the end, I very much appreciate all of those things too.

RIP, Frank B. Cross.

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May travel

In late May, I attended an academic workshop on "Non-Nuclear Peace" at University of Antwerp in Belgium. My paper was well-received and I look forward to the volume that emerges. More on that later.

My spouse and I visited Dublin the weekend prior to the workshop and then remained in Antwerp for the long Memorial  Day weekend afterwards.

In Dublin, we visited a park near one of Oscar Wilde's homes. It has an interesting and unusual statue of the writer. Some of the public art in Dublin more solemnly acknowledges the history of famine in the country:

We also visited the Kilmainham Gaol (across the street from our Hilton) and took in some other nearby local culture:





Peter Paul Rubens is the most famous artist from Antwerp. We visited his former home, which is now a museum hosting a collection of his art. The statue is nearby, but outdoors:



Belgium, of course, is also known for its beers. The Bier Central bar across the street from the hotel near the train station featured this 120 page catalog of beers on offer. I think all were local. The Hopus was actually my final beer at the Brussels airport. Each beer seemed to have its own glass:

Incidentally, prior to traveling to Dublin, we attended my youngest daughter's college graduation, which was held in Yankee Stadium.

Do you recognize the featured speaker?

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Riot hyperbole in history

If you are disturbed by the discussion of what is happening in Baltimore tonight, then I offer some context.

My junior year in college, 1981-1982, my debate colleague and I advocated for fairly strict limits on police use of deadly force. Among the advantages we claimed was reduction in the risk of urban riots, which historically are often triggered by police violence.

Because we were 20 years old and every argument needed to involve significant threats, we used to reference portions of this quote in virtually every affirmative debate. It is from Louis H. Masotti, et al A Time to Burn?, 1969, p. x-xi:

To a very great extent, riots are a cry of utter despair, pleading for someone to hear and respond. Yet our response has been more talk, more unfulfilled promises, more tokenism, and recently, more suppression. And while we are talking, the disillusionment and frustration of the ghetto is accelerating at a frightening pace. The civil rights efforts of the past decade and the continual bombardment of the mass media have heightened the consciousness and raised the expectations of the Negro far beyond the level of our response. Those who say that riots have nothing to do with the civil rights movement are either engaging in enormous self-delusion or are attempting to protect the good name of a phase of the movement which is more palatable to themselves and the American public. They are blind to a long history of social revolutions which have often begun as broad-based nonviolent efforts to change institutionalized injustices, only to merge as violent social revolutions when more moderate efforts failed. As a minority of slightly more than ten per cent of the population, Negroes stand little chance of winning in a violent confrontation. But before the militant leaders push the Negro community beyond the point of no return, we must do some sober thinking about the consequences of such a confrontation. American society itself would be the ultimate loser. We would become the captives of fear and hate of a magnitude that would make Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa seem like meccas for civil libertarians. Such a confrontation would make a mockery of the American Revolution and the entire history of our experiment in democracy. But even this might be a relatively minor consequence. In a mood of rage and hate, the balance of power in this nation might very well shift into the reckless hands of those who would disrupt the precarious balance of peace between the nuclear powers and plunge the whole world into nuclear holocaust.

Update: here's a review of Masotti et al from Edward B. McLean in The Review of Politics, 1970. It is not kind:

"A Time to Burn?...is not a very good book and is already quite dated. The summers of 1968 and 1969 have not supported the assumption that the 1967 summer riots were a prelude to continuing and expanding violence in the Negro areas....Although the authors insist that theirs is a scholarly work, it is far more in the vein of commentary literature....as an effective and relevant examination of the problems of race in the country in 1960 and 1970, it has little value....Serious questions can be raised about the balance and seriousness of the evidence which is the basis of the book and the support for the authors' contention that" the U.S. is a country "on the verge of a race war, and very possibly on the brink of self-destruction." 

The book was coauthored by four colleagues from the Civil Violence Research Center at Case Western Reserve University. The coauthors are Kenneth Seminatore, Jeffrey K. Hadden, and Jerome R. Corsi. That last name is probably the most familiar as he is a well-known backer of Obama conspiracy theories.



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Spending Reallocations at University of Louisville

A few days ago,  University of Louisville President James Ramsey sent the following message to the campus community:

It was another disappointing legislative session given the cut in our recurring state appropriation, but we appreciate the funding in FY15 for the new classroom building for the Belknap Campus.

You are aware that we as a campus community have been discussing the 2014-15 University of Louisville operating budget for several months.  I appreciate deeply Susan Ingram Howarth’s efforts on behalf of our campus.  Susan has had meetings with Faculty Senate, Staff Senate, Student Government, deans, vice presidents and other campus groups.  Susan conducted several forums, particularly on proposed tuition increases.  A week ago I conducted a campus-wide budget forum.

Any way we slice it, it’s another bad budget – a $2.2 million cut in state appropriation; the need to again increase tuition; and lack of funds that we need for critical investment in faculty, staff and students.

After a month of deliberations and feedback we will recommend to the Board of Trustees of the University of Louisville at its May 8th meeting a budget that provides a 2% salary increase for both faculty and staff; a 5% tuition  increase for in-state undergraduates (other proposed tuition increases are attached); and a .65 percent unit budget cut.  We worked hard to not pass on the entire state budget cut to the units and understand the pressure the unit budget cut places on the campus.

I have appreciated your input and, more importantly, your efforts to keep the University of Louisville moving forward in these continued difficult fiscal times. 

Jim Ramsey

I attended a briefing offered by Susan Howarth some months ago. At the time, the information I received showed that a 5% tuition increase would generate $11.1 million. Financial aid increases with tuition, so some of this is returned (reallocated) to students. Unfortunately, the spreadsheet I was provided only lists new spending like that in the catch-all category "strategic initiatives." Salary increases are in that pool too, as are health care cost increases.

Still, because different tuition and salary options were presented, I can make educated guesses about how this breaks down. It appears that each 1% increase in salary costs just over $2.4 million. So a 2% increase is roughly $4.9 million in new expenses.

It appears the new financial aid amounts to roughly $500,000 per 1% increase in tuition. Thus, a 5% increase in tuition costs $2.5 million in new financial aid.

Total those together and that adds up to about $7.5 million of new spending from the $11.1 million in tuition revenue. 

The 0.65% unit cut is out of a 1.5% overall cut in state funding to the University of Louisville. Put differently, units are being asked to finance 43.3% of the total cut even as their personnel will enjoy a 2% salary increase. They'll need to find $950,000 in cuts to earn $4.9 million in salary. 

If the salary increase was only about 1.63%, no new spending cuts would be needed.

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College Elitism

Cleaning out my office, I found an interesting book review written by CUNY history professor Richard Wolin in The Nation, May 21, 2012. Wolin discusses College; What It Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco, a distinguished humanities professor at Columbia University.

The review and the book focus on the elitism that now thoroughly permeates American higher education. Forget the ideal of meritocracy:

"He [Delbanco] notes that whereas the child of a family earning at least $90,000 a year stands a 50 percent chance of receiving a BA by the time he or she turns 24, for a child whose annual family income is in the range of $60,000 to $90,000, the odds diminish to one in four. For someone from a household with an annual income of $35,000 or less, they plummet to one in seventeen....

Delbanco explains further that the children of affluent families are four times more likely to be admitted to a prestigious, highly selective university than students with comparable grades and test scores from families of more modest means."

You probably already know why these statistics are important, but here's a well-known stat referenced in the review:

"Over a lifetime, someone with a bachelor’s degree will earn an average of $2.1 million, nearly twice as much as someone with only a high school diploma."

Moreover, given what graduation from an elite colleges means for entry into a host of professions and professional networks, Delbanco concludes that "top universities perpetuate the perquisites of privilege rather than ameliorate them in a democratic manner." There's more:

"To judge by all the evidence available, American higher education today more closely approximates the dystopian image of the 'nightmare society' than it does the egalitarian 'pipe dream' that would be more in keeping with the democratic aspirations of our founding."

Towards the end of the essay, Wolin addresses the content of higher education, not merely the access to it. For example, he references Dewey on the importance of critical thinking, autonomy, and "participatory learning" for fostering democratic citizenship. He also cites de Tocqueville on the dangers of majoritarian tyranny, which he says higher education can help counter by promoting nonconformity.

The key passage from the conclusion echoes a point made by a long line of critical theorists, though the author refers to Plato and Rousseau:

"One of the central problems of undergraduate education today is that it increasingly reinforces the “instrumentalist” view that the major decisions in life concern the efficient selection of means rather than a reflection on ends. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that higher education has been degraded to the status of an enfeebled auxiliary to reigning social and economic interests." 

My youngest daughter is entering her senior year in high school, so we've been looking at some elite schools, some of the top flagship state schools, and a smattering of liberal arts schools that emphasize her particular interests.


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College trip, 2013

Photo credit: http://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/background-gallery

Incredibly, [insert yet another cliche' about rapid passing of time here], my youngest daughter just completed her junior year of high school and is thus taking her college board tests, receiving piles of mail from various universities, and visiting potential academic homes for fall 2014.

She is primarily interested in schools with excellent theatre programs -- though she has other academic interests as well. This means she is also looking for a very good and well-rounded educational institution.

Last week,  I accompanied my daughter for this itinerary:

Tuesday
Ithaca College (NY):  tour and information session

We had a long travel day Monday because of weather, so we were tired to start the week. But Ithaca is a good school with a well-regarded theatre program and we had an excellent student tour guide (a theatre major!). She emphasized the school's sustainability initiatives and various living opportunities.

Wednesday
Hartt School of University of Hartford (CT):  tour and information session

After making the 5 hour drive from Ithaca, we toured the suburban Hartford campus with one other potential student and his father. The new theatre building is terrific, though remote from the main campus. The BFA students obviously spend most of their time in this location. We also visited downtown Hartford (partly to see the stage, which has a relationship with the university).

Thursday
Boston University (MA):  tour and information session

BU has a long and thin campus stretching along the Charles River. The tour was packed with dozens of families and both my daughter and I were impressed with the school and its facilities. We vowed to return Friday to visit the theatre program, which was not included on the general tour.

Emerson College (MA):  tour and information session

Emerson has a vertical campus, filling several tall buildings in the theatre district of Boston. The institution has obviously devoted significant resources to the facilities as most of what we saw looked new and impressive. A number of generous alumni have had success producing television programs (Friends and Will & Grace).

Friday
Tufts (MA): student tour (pictured above).

We lived near Tufts back in 2005 while I was on sabbatical, but my daughter didn't remember much of that period (she was 8 when we arrived). I also visited Tufts with her sister in 2010. In any case, Tufts is a very good school with a nice campus. The tour guides told us about Jumbo, the mascot and I made a joke about elephants (and zombies) in a tweet.

BU (return visit)

We went back to BU in the afternoon to tour the theatre building and meet with a couple of current students. The facility is old and undergoing renovation (slowly, it seems), but the program seems first rate. The student guide for the tour kept referring to it as a conservatory.


Previously, my daughter visited Webster, Washington University, Northwestern, Columbia College, DePaul, Wright State, Ball State, University of Illinois, Otterbein, Baldwin Wallace, Mary Baldwin, University of Virginia, Georgetown, Barnard, NYU, Rutgers, Marymount Manhattan, and University of Evansville.

Those are roughly in the order of the visits and I marked the schools that I also saw with her. She has fewer geographic constraints than her older sister and has already visited schools in DC, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Virginia.

She still intends to visit Michigan and perhaps a school or two in California.

Feel free to provide any insight about these choices in comments. We are about to enter the winnowing stage. That reality makes it harder for me to ask, "Why not Kansas or Maryland?"


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30 years ago today

This happened:

That's a younger me, with Mark Gidley & the Larmon Trophy

It was a fine weekend.

Here's a link to the program book.


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Top 10 List: "Most Intellectual" College Environments

As my oldest daughter continues to think about her college choices, I'll point readers to Unigo's top 10 list of the "most intellectual" campus environments:

Brown
Carlton
Grinnell
Haverford
Macalester
Pomona
Reed
Swarthmore
University of Chicago
Wesleyan

She visited 5 of those 10 and thought seriously about looking at 2 others. Several were rejected primarily because of geographical preferences.

Meanwhile, 3 of these 10 "new Ivies" are also still under consideration:

Carnegie Mellon
Duke
Johns Hopkins
NYU
Northwestern
Tufts
Virginia
Washington (St. Louis)
Wellesley
Williams

Unsurprisingly, you'll find no overlap from those two compilations with this list.


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College Tour, 2010

Unbelievably [insert cliche' about rapid passing of time here], my oldest daughter is a "rising senior" and is thus taking her college board tests, receiving piles of mail from various universities, and visiting potential academic homes for fall 2011.

This past week, my spouse and I accompanied our daughter for this itinerary:

Sunday:
Swarthmore (tour by alum; spouse of member of our weddding party)
Princeton: student tour

Monday
Vassar: student tour and information session

Tuesday
Yale: student tour and information session

Wednesday
Amherst: student tour and information session
Williams: student tour and information session

Thursday
Middlebury: student tour and information session

Friday
Colby: student tour and information session
Bowdoin: student tour and information session

Saturday
Harvard: student tour
Tufts: self-administered tour

We still plan to visit Brandeis and Brown before flying home. Previously, she visited Penn, Chicago, Carleton and Macalester.

I grew up in small Kansas towns and wanted to attend a large university with lots of resources. Our daughter grew up in Louisville (save for the 2005 sabbatical in Boston) and seems to prefer the smaller liberal arts colleges in rural New England.

In sum, it looks like Williams, Vassar, and perhaps Carleton or Bowdoin are currently the lead choices.

Feel free to provide any insight about these choices in comments. We are definitely still in the shopping stage.


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Real Food Challenge

This year, I'm heading up the Arts & Sciences "Green Team," which has mostly focused on energy conservation issues in the two previous academic years. Last week, however, I had a conversation with a colleague who emphasized the importance of buying (and eating) locally-grown food. We had just concluded a meeting that featured delicious food grown and prepared locally.

Later that same evening, I read Anna Lappé's piece in September 21 issue of The Nation on student efforts on campuses nationwide to change food purchasing for their dining halls. The campaign is called the Real Food Challenge. Lappé:

The concept is simple, really. Students, some who pay as much as $100,000, or more, for four years at a private college, should have a say in what grub their schools serve--and that food should reflect shared values of fairness and sustainability. The Real Food Challenge provides an organizing tool to empower students to persuade their schools to make the move. Schools that join the challenge pledge to shift at least 20 percent of school food to "real food"--sustainably raised, grown with fairness, and from local and regional farms--by 2020.

Unfortunately, Louisville doesn't have dining halls in dorms. Instead, students purchase food from vendors based in locations scattered throughout the campus.

Most are chains: Papa Johns, Wendy's, Subway, Einstein Bagels, etc.

Apparently, hundreds of schools have embraced the challenge. I'd like to see University of Louisville and other schools in the region meet the standard.


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College for Everyone

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards advocates a plan that would make the freshman year of college free to everyone -- so long as they agree to work a nominal amount and "play by the rules" (as President Bill Clinton used to say). This is from his May 11 press release:

Senator John Edwards today announced his plan to make college more affordable for millions of students. Edwards' College Opportunity Agenda includes a national "College for Everyone" initiative, which would pay for one year of public-college tuition, fees, and books for any student who is willing to work hard and stay out of trouble...

The initiative is based on the College for Everyone pilot program in Greene County, North Carolina, that helps pay for the first year of college for young people who agree to work at least 10 hours a week...The projected college-going rate for Greene Central seniors has increased from 54 percent before the program started to 74 percent today.

Edwards says that about 200,000 college-qualified graduates fail to attend college each year, primarily because of cost.

As a college professor, I'm excited by this idea. However, I think it is a good idea primarily because it should make it possible for current students to limit their work hours. Students need to study and excessive work schedules reduce study time.

Over the years, I have taught too many bright students who find a way to attend class, but do not find a way to read their assignments in advance of class or search out knowledge independently. Their work commitments apparently make that impossible.

Obviously, when Edwards says that students will work a "minimum of 10 hours," I hope he also proposes a low maximum.

More details about the plan are available on the candidate's website.


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