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Argumentation Pedagogy Short Essays Writings

Bandwagon Arguments in Academia, Redux

(9/11/23) I have received an intriguing request for a short essay I’d forgotten that I wrote. With some light editing, here it is again, after some digging in the archives. 2018, maybe? In general, the thoughts here hold true. Maybe more so.

One of my pet peeves when reading academic arguments is the persistent and lazy use of the bandwagon fallacy – i.e. many people think X, so X is right. Although, in this particular version, it is more along the lines of “The vast majority of qualified scholars in this subfield think X, so X is right.”

Where should I begin my critique, I wonder? That popularity is no guarantee of validity? That popular ideas deserve to be interrogated just as much as unpopular ones? That the unprofessional arrogance displayed by using this fallacy is only trumped by its stupidity? That taking such a position attempts to cut off future productive scholarship at the knees? And, perhaps finally, that using it is a sure sign of the weakness of one’s position?

Yes, this is a target-rich environment, to be sure. Let’s try some examples.

Exhibit A – “Best Practices”

If I had a nickel for every time someone appealed to “best practices” in my semi-home field of rhetoric and composition and its sister technical communication, I would be able to take my family out to a series of nice dinners.

Behind the concept of “best practices,” it turns out, is a crude bandwagon argument. To follow “best practices” in teaching in tech comm, for example, is to use the techniques that are well attested in the scholarship, supported by “name” academics whose ”names” can be dropped liberally in conversation, and that are ultimately safe and uncontroversial.

Screw that.

I don’t care if 99.9% of the members of NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English, BTW) support a given mode of instruction. I only care about whether or not it works. Show me whether or not it works – not how popular it is, or what academics happen to endorse it. Give me evidence, not sponsorship.

I have known very few real top-flight scholars in my career thus far. If they have something in common, though, it would be that none of them follow trends or take a poll before they plant a flag. The pursuit of knowledge eschews such petty and empty considerations – and so does logic. Someone dedicated to such an ideal would never use popularity as evidence of anything except popularity. Academic arguments are to be evaluated on their own merits, not on whether or not they are in season.

So, in short, while “best practices” might have once had a more innocent connotation, now it just makes me irritable. It represents the worst of academia, when it is at its pettiest – when it is political.

Exhibit B – A Historical Jesus

I’m gearing up to teach the Synoptic Problem in Studies in Religious Texts again, so this has been on my mind of late. One of the subtopics that naturally comes up with the SP is how much of the gospel materials are based on any historical Jesus – which then leads to whether there was a historical Jesus, and if so, what can we say about him?

“Mythicist” arguments, arguing that Jesus has no historical basis and instead is a kind of assembled myth, are as old as the hills, dating back to the first pagan critics of Christianity. I’m agnostic on the issue due to what I see as a failure of everyone writing or speaking on the matter to make a decisive case (due to the paucity of evidence in any direction) but I am frankly peeved at the standard position – that mythicism is nonsense because no mainstream biblical studies or religious studies academic thinks there wasn’t a historical Jesus.

Now, I hardly need to point out at this point in my post that such an argument is one big bandwagon fallacy (as well as an argument to authority, but I’ll leave that one for some other day). It is telling a questioning undergraduate to sit down and shut up, pulling rank, asserting the primacy of one’s subdiscipline, and being an arrogant twerp, all at once. These are all things I despise and oppose.

So I have a certain sympathy for the mythicists as underdogs. That doesn’t mean they are right – they still have to make a case, and so far no smoking gun has appeared – but they have a decent case that is just as strong as the default one.

So why do they get such a hostile reception? Why the flippant and repeated use of the bandwagon fallacy in response (occasionally laced with a choice insult about one’s employment prospects, educational background, and sanity)?

Well, let’s return to rhetcomp for a moment. The most telling and long-lived idea in rhetcomp is process pedagogy – the belief that writing is a process rather than a product and should be taught accordingly as a series of repeating and mutually informing steps instead of emphasizing the text that results. Now, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t think of a single instance of a process compositionist slapping down anyone who challenged or questioned process by saying, “The vast majority of composition academics support process theory. Therefore, your argument is a fringe belief and not worthy of a full treatment.” If such a pretentious mandarin exists, please send me a citation, but I don’t think one does, or ever will.

Now, at the same time, there is that old chestnut mentioned before – “best practices” – that is used instead to enforce consistency. But as it turns out, “best practices” is mostly political cover, because it can mean whatever the instructor wants it to. Composition is a field full of rugged individualists. Some are old-school grammar mavens, some are process fanatics, some are post-process theorists, and others are expressivists, and others (really most) defy easy categorization. We know how to selectively cite. Some of us resist this, of course, but not all – not even most.

Back to the historical Jesus. There is a great wiki page that has collected countless putdowns of mythicists (they are all down near the bottom). Perusing them will reveal that they are basically all variants of the same technique: bandwagon fallacy + insult to education, occupation, or sanity + optional ridiculous comparison to Holocaust denial.

Why are they all the same? Why so prevalent?

First, there is no downside. Picking on mythicists is a risk-free power projection. It’s functionally no different than a bunch of jocks stuffing a nerdy kid into a locker. I have more power than you, so in the locker you go. There is no penalty.

Second, more fundamentally, the nerdy kid is a existential threat. He represents a counterargument to the jock’s primacy – that logic and curiosity might trump their relative powerlessness outside of the artificial world of the school. Similarly, the biblical studies folks know their authority is severely limited outside of academia, and in particular, the theological schools. Outside of it, free thought reigns. Can’t have that. The existing pecking order must be maintained, at least temporarily. In the locker you go.

In a perfect world, biblical studies academics would lay open the question of a historical Jesus. But in order to do that they would have to open their minds. And if you think the average person has trouble with that little task… well. It’s not a question of a threat to existence of the discipline. Opening up the question would doubtlessly lead to an explosion of relevant literature. It would be good for the field, showcasing at last a bit of historical respectability. And such studies do exist.

But the possibility is a clear a threat to individual egos – which is why I think the jock-bully comparison is apt. There is nothing more fragile than a bully’s ego. It has to be constantly fluffed and pampered like Donald Trump’s psuedo-hair. Otherwise it falls apart. Why? Because, ultimately, there isn’t much under the combover. There is no defense for a historical Jesus that doesn’t special plead Christian sources – which brings me to my favorite example.

Exhibit C – The Book of Mormon

The non-Mormon academic consensus is that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was a fraud. The Book of Mormon was not written from golden plates handed over by the angel Moroni, but cobbled together from 19th century Protestant mysticism and the KJV. The jocks are very clear about this.

However, there is another body of academics that call themselves experts on the Book of Mormon – and they are all Mormons. They have all kinds of arguments supporting the authentic nature of the text, including sworn eyewitness statements – the famous Three and Eight – to the existence of the golden plates, with literary analysis showing its originality (check out Orson Scott Card’s defense sometime – it’s fascinatingly doltish).

So there is a problem here, namely that there is more historical evidence for the inspired composition of the Book of Mormon than there is for Jesus – despite the fact that the form of the offered evidence – multiple eyewitnesses – is basically the same. And yet the mainstream historians make quick sport of Smith, and defend Jesus’s historicity to the death.

How, do you wonder, can they expose as a fraud the recent formation of a religion so easily, but secure certain historicity for someone supposedly dead for nearly two thousand years for which we have no reliable non-Christian attestation?

The reason the dice keep coming up seven and eleven is not the incredible luck of biblical studies. It’s because the dice are loaded. And if you point this out? Well, the majority of academics support X. Back in the locker, you.

One more thing.

Another quality I have noticed in scholars, as opposed to academics, is that they almost never defend anything. Instead, they assault. I would use another metaphor family, but the martial one is just too fitting. It might be an unexplored area, or an old position or subject has been neglected, or a trend that has spiraled out of control – but they are always aggressive, constantly stalking and pouncing like half-starved tigers, relentlessly seeking improved understanding.

Playing defense is, after all, the slow death of anything resembling intellectualism. You trade a life of seeking new ideas and understanding in for the apologetic goal of preserving the beliefs of the past, usually in exchange for minor power of some sort – employment, tenure, social respectability, money – the usual earthly rewards. Maybe you get paid in spiritual coin, but either way, sounds like a devil’s bargain for me.

But what do I know? I’m just an English professor, of questionable sanity. My arguments couldn’t possibly have any merit. I’m a member of the lunatic fringe – a crackpot, a verifiable crank, a babbling child talking of adult things he couldn’t possibly comprehend.

And that is how the bandwagon fallacy is essentially the ad hominem fallacy in another guise; by elevating the group, it savages the individual. This is why it deserves the fiercest opposition we can muster.

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Pedagogy Short Essays Writings

Canvas, When Blackboard Fell

I could write about a great many things today – the World War III Ukraine is fighting for NATO, the circus of U.S. politics, another dry theoretical piece, some great PC gaming I’ve been doing, or how cool Strange New Worlds remains.

But I’m in the mood to talk about Canvas.

For many years, the University of Houston-Downtown has used Blackboard as its CMS to deliver online courses, much like desperate individuals often sign a dark pact with demons for temporary relief. I made a separate peace with BB many years ago, agreeing only to visit certain less distasteful circles of its clunky hellscape, and clinging to the fairly certain hope that they would not follow me as unforgivable sins into any hypothetical afterlife or my mythical permanent record.

This summer I opted my summer courses into a pilot program for Canvas, UHD’s choice for a Blackboard replacement. I was on the Academic Technology Committee that had some input into this choice, and I punted at the time. My opinion was, and still remains, that offering the faculty a choice of what CMS they might want is not as important as giving them adequate training and support in what ends up being used. In that sense, the CMS is a lot like the university’s calendar (I was on that committee, too, and took the same stance).

Experienced cynicism generated this response; the usual reason the faculty are “consulted” on such decisions is to give some lip service to “shared governance,” to bless the eventual bad result, and to spread any blame (there are exceptions to this general rule, but not many). The stated reason for a CMS switch was the BB did not meet federal accessibility guidelines; deeply ironic, since the faculty has been castigated for several years to do a better job of accessibility in BB. Accessibility is generally a good idea, but just like assessment, its cheerleaders often take on a cultist aspect.

Actually, let me take that back. Assessment is a straight-up cult.

Credit is due, however. I’d like to give Canvas a solid B+ so far. I’m almost two weeks in the June semester and it’s a definite improvement.

The most dramatic advance is its phone app. Unlike BB’s bug-laden mess, I can actually do some light grading and maintenance on my phone. Nothing serious – the major work is still done on desktop, but I can spread the workload around more.

Canvas also automates several pesky tasks that BB could only do with workarounds. It can automatically apply late penalties, for example, and perform more complex grade calculations that I used to do on the side. Its discussion board front-end is not a horror story told to frighten young UI designers. Support is plentiful and the eventual solutions to minor issues rarely require opening up the hood.

Most importantly, however, Canvas feels stable. So far, it does not generate strange errors, delete my work, or trouble the students with baffling messages.

I am reminded of the paradigm shift of going from Windows 98 to 2000, where all the promises of usability and stability that Gates and his minions had promised but never quite delivered suddenly became real.

I realized quite recently that until a few weeks ago, I had never owned both a new washer and dryer. Both, or at least one, were always crunky cast-offs, purchased from a moving sale, a scratch-and-dent, or handed down. It is odd, refreshing, even civilized, to wash a load and dry it with little doubt as to if the cycle will complete, or the clothes will actually be dry.

Canvas elicits that pleasant feeling – a quiet satisfaction that a longstanding and difficult problem has finally resolved, and entropy, the final enemy, has been defeated for now. I hope this little victory lasts for a long time.

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Pedagogy Short Essays Writings

A Short Account of UHD’s Missing English Department Anti-Racism Statement

Around March 20, 2023, my English department’s anti-racist statement was removed from my university’s website (yes, it’s a broken link).

Fox and many journalism-adjacent sites got wind and turned this into a story, as well as academia-adjacent ones with a different take.

But the actual faculty committee of over ten people that wrote the statement didn’t have a clue.

The committee was not asked to remove the statement. Or, even, edit it. They were not even notified it was going to be removed. Or that it was removed. This happened after they spent a considerable amount of time in 2022 composing the statement in response to both university initiatives and departmental need. It was on UHD’s website for months without issue. UHD still even hosts other related statements, but English’s statement is gone. I do not believe a full version exists online anywhere at the moment; the various stories that quote it tend to do so partially or out of context to render it a straw man that can be easily countered.

I know all this from being a member of that committee.

Naturally, we asked our chair, our dean, and eventually our provost and our president what happened. Many prolonged and patient inquiries later, we learned next to nothing.

As of today, May 22, 2023, the statement is still missing, the committee has no accountability on who removed the statement or a specific reason why it was removed, and despite that lack of transparency, it’s also become quite clear that the statement will be kept off the website for unspecified reasons.

I’ve worked at the University of Houston-Downtown for 14 years. Like all universities, it is far from perfect, but it’s not a bad place to get a degree. The favorable ratio between its relative low tuition and the quality of instruction remains hard to beat, and counterbalances the mostly bureaucratic negatives most of the time.

However, this Kafkaesque affair, where the removal seemingly has no causal agent, is beginning to give me doubts.

Academic freedom is the absolute cornerstone of all our successful endeavors as higher education faculty. Despite what you may have heard, “academic freedom” is not a set of bullshit abstract principles that lets faculty mouth off irresponsible nonsense and indoctrinate students. Mouthing irresponsible nonsense does happen occasionally, though I have yet to witness a single student (or faculty member) change their mind about anything important, much less be “indoctrinated” in those 14 years. Still, the occasional wild card professor is a very modest price for the immense long-term benefits that academic freedom brings: an environment, free from censorship and fear, that allows the long-term development of faculty members.

Academic freedom is thus the carefully tended soil of a garden where professors, particularly younger ones, pursue their research and teaching without worrying about political meddling, so they can grow into seasoned faculty that know what they’re about. Such an environment is a massive advantage when hiring faculty, which is why all serious universities offer tenure-track lines. Sometimes it is the only advantage that more cash-strapped public universities have when competing with the big ones. “You won’t make a lot of money here, but we’ll leave you alone and you don’t have to worry about being fired because someone doesn’t like you,” is a surprisingly effective recruitment strategy.

Academic freedom is not just about research subjects, though. It’s also about teaching. “The faculty own the curriculum” is a repeated axiom for a reason. Competent administrators are necessary for the smooth functioning of the complex, interlocked, and often competitive structures of a large university, but the flip side is that way down at the department level, the faculty decide what to teach and how to teach it, within the broad categories of the many academic disciplines. Furthermore, any regulation of such teaching or research standards is done solely by peer colleagues in the same disciplines, who, again, generally know what they’re about. Teaching, like research, is left to the people who know how to do it.

Unfortunately, the committee’s anti-racism statement was full of exactly those specific teaching stances that remain the responsibility of the faculty who wrote them. And, accordingly, the committee, with a large cross-section of every sub-discipline in the department, got peer criticism about the statement even before it was written – despite any claims to the contrary. Indeed, peer dialogue remains a reasonable avenue for critique.

But censorship is not.

Removing the statement without accountability or explanation suggests, at least on a prima facie basis, that UHD does not value maintaining an environment of academic freedom, and that an environment of uncertainty and fear is preferable. Such a stance does not bode well for the long-term development of its faculty.

I really hope that changes.

In the meantime, the tenured professors of the committee have filed a faculty grievance to have the statement restored.