Reason fires Shikha Dalmia

[thoreau]

Sure, and I'm not criticizing your self-identity or, for that matter, the per se fact of your criticism of the University of Dallas, but there's a significant difference between UD and Georgetown (as there is between Georgetown and Catholic University in D.C.) and I can't imagine you posting the same complaint about Liberty University. Liberty University is "higher ed," too, right?

I dispute the "too" in your last sentence. DU is, AFAIK, higher ed. Liberty University is "higher ed." There's a difference.

If DU want to sit at the big kids table then they should give careful thought to how they confront divisive ideas. I think it's a mistake for DU faculty and students to attempt to block the formation of a "safe space" club. It's a student club, not a university office. I get the case for opposing a university-sponsored safe space, because something maintained and operated by employees is different from a student club meeting. The bar for forming a club should be lower than the bar for obtaining resources beyond the most trivial level (meeting rooms, website hosting, a token budget for snacks, etc.). If the safe space club wants to start commanding significant resources then they should make a case, and if that case is weak it should face opposition. But the club should be able to form and meet if DU wants to be a Big Kids University.

[D.A. Ridgely]

Sure, and I'm not criticizing your self-identity or, for that matter, the per se fact of your criticism of the University of Dallas, but there's a significant difference between UD and Georgetown (as there is between Georgetown and Catholic University in D.C.) and I can't imagine you posting the same complaint about Liberty University. Liberty University is "higher ed," too, right?

I dispute the "too" in your last sentence. DU is, AFAIK, higher ed. Liberty University is "higher ed." There's a difference.

Meh. Liberty's law school grads have a 100% bar passage rate. UD's philosophy department is (rightly) ranked at the very bottom of PhD programs. So is its English and politics graduate program. One could cherry pick the academic strength of these schools department by department and make a reasonable case for either being stronger so, aside from your cultural if not theological identification with one institution of religious intolerance (with a much longer history of oppression of freedom of thought) and not the other, what's your basis for that claim?

[thoreau]

Sure, and I'm not criticizing your self-identity or, for that matter, the per se fact of your criticism of the University of Dallas, but there's a significant difference between UD and Georgetown (as there is between Georgetown and Catholic University in D.C.) and I can't imagine you posting the same complaint about Liberty University. Liberty University is "higher ed," too, right?

I dispute the "too" in your last sentence. DU is, AFAIK, higher ed. Liberty University is "higher ed." There's a difference.

Meh. Liberty's law school grads have a 100% bar passage rate. UD's philosophy department is (rightly) ranked at the very bottom of PhD programs. So is its English and politics graduate program. One could cherry pick the academic strength of these schools department by department and make a reasonable case for either being stronger so, aside from your cultural if not theological identification with one institution of religious intolerance (with a much longer history of oppression of freedom of thought) and not the other, what's your basis for that claim?

Simply put, DU seems to be a place where normal people might send their kids, while Liberty has a national reputation as a place for freaks. DU will never sit at the head of the grown-ups table, but there's a sort of truce that any degree from an accredited and non-freakish college or university is at least an entry-level ticket to the club. Even my non-elite veal farm is at least considered normal in its problems. I won't be made a Member of the National Academy or whatever, but I can sit on committees of national professional societies and nobody will think it strange. My students won't exactly have an inside edge for admission to a top PhD program, but their degree is normal enough that people will at least look at their application.

(Ironically, a high GRE score would overcome doubts about the pedigree, but the GRE is increasingly something that only Philistines approve of, and eventually the nobility will surrender, do away with it entirely, and then quietly come up with new criteria that the barbarians at the gates don't even know they should be railing against.)

DU is nothing special, but like many small Catholic schools with a handful of grad programs, they're at least somewhat respectable. Nobody expects to see them in the top journals on a regular basis, but they can be in the game as niche players without attracting too many giggles. You go there and get a degree that will qualify you for the middle class, even if Google and Goldman won't be recruiting there. The faculty will never be big stars (though even the smallest ponds often turn out to have one very big and unusual fish), but they will get to go to normal conferences and give normal talks and serve on some committee alongside people in the field whom they've known since grad school and it's all good.

If you want to be normal players in the big leagues, the sorts of guys who get the basic salary to play on a team that will never make the championship but will at least get air time, you have to be open-minded in certain ways.

Now, maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe they're in fact known locally as not a normal school but a place for freaks. In that case, they should do what they do.

[lunchstealer]

DU big-kids-tabler than Bob Jones big-kids-tabler than Liberty. Not sure exactly where Oral Roberts would fit on that scale, although definitely no higher than Bob Jones.

I've known DU grads and Bob Jones grads who were no weirder than anyone else who's willing to associate with me. Never met a LU type to my knowledge. Some, I assume, are very fine people.