China’s Fast Rise Leads Neighbors to Join Forces
By MARK LANDLER, JIM YARDLEY and MICHAEL WINES
China’s military expansion and assertive trade policies have set off jitters across Asia, prompting many of its neighbors to build alliances.
31 de octubre de 2010
Evan Williams el creador de Twitter
Noah Berger for The New York Times
Why Twitter’s C.E.O. Demoted Himself
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Evan Williams may embody a classic Silicon Valley type: the inspired entrepreneur with good ideas for a start-up, but not the leader to execute a sophisticated strategy.
30 de octubre de 2010
The good, the bad and the tea parties
IT IS not hard, if you really try, to find good things to say about America’s tea-partiers. They are not French, for a start. France’s new revolutionaries, those who have been raising Cain over Nicolas Sarkozy’s modest proposal to raise the age of retirement by two years, appear to believe that public money is printed in heaven and will rain down for ever like manna to pay for pensions, welfare, medical care and impenetrable avant-garde movies. America’s tea-partiers are the opposite: they exhale fiscal probity through every pore. In their waking hours, and in bed at night, they are wracked by anxiety. How is a profligate America to cut borrowing, balance the budget and ensure that its billowing deficit will not place an unbearable burden on future generations?
The tea-partiers do not just have less selfish motives than the pampered French. They also have better manners. Let the French block roads and set things on fire: among tea-partiers it is a point of pride that their large but orderly rallies leave barely a crumpled candy wrapper behind them. Though some wear tricorn hats, and the movement takes its name from the Boston Tea Party, tea-partiers are peaceful folk. They take the view that one revolution was enough, and that the one America had in the 18th century established a constitution and form of democracy so near to perfect that they can get what they want without taking to the streets and just by working within the rules.
Whether they have worked hard enough they will not know until votes are counted after next week’s mid-terms, but in one way their labours have already borne fruit. In primaries all over the country they have secured the election of Republican candidates who are “true” conservatives, not the big-spending counterfeit Republicans whom they blame for leading the party astray under George Bush. The impure have been purged without mercy. Senator Bob Bennett, who has represented Utah for three terms, earned a lifetime rating of 84% from the American Conservative Union. He was turfed out for having voted in favour of the TARP, the Bush-era bail-out that may have staved off a financial collapse but has become a tea-party anathema.
America’s pontificating class is not yet sure how to take the measure of this strange new movement. Puzzled academics gathered last week at the University of California, Berkeley, to ask, among other things, how tea-partiers were “tapping into and/or managing the populist, libertarian and radical currents on the right, as well as fear, anger and resentment among segments of the American public”. The New York Times has published research suggesting that tea-partiers are mostly richer and better-educated than the average. The Washington Post spent months trying to contact every tea-party group in the nation. Having got through to 647 out of 1,400 it had identified, it found that some consisted of only a handful of members, if they existed at all.
Some call the tea parties an “Astroturf” phenomenon—not grass-roots types at all but the dupes of big business. To others they are merely the most recent incarnation of an ugly right-wing and sometimes racist populism that has surfaced before when times are hard. Such allegations are misplaced. Corporate money has indeed found its way into tea-party coffers, but if you attend a tea-party event you will generally find that it is indeed a self-organised gathering of citizens dismayed by what they see as the irresponsible behaviour of an out-of-control government. Strands of racism can be found on the movement’s fringe, but most tea-party groups have done their best to snip these off.
Along with the liberal disparagement comes a dose of wishful thinking. Some Democrats hope the tea parties will drag the Republicans so far to the right that mainstream voters will be scared away. That looks increasingly unlikely. Few tea-party candidates are as hapless as the overexposed Christine O’Donnell, the former campaigner against masturbation and present ignoramus whose selection as the Republican candidate in Delaware will probably cost the party a precious extra seat in the Senate. Other Senate candidates who were once deemed too radical to win, such as Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada, have adjusted the volume if not the content of their messages and now look eminently electable. Here and there—in Florida and Alaska, for example—tea-party pressure has split the conservative vote, but in the grand scheme that is a small price for Republicans to pay for the revivifying energy the movement has imparted to a party that looked dead in the water two years ago.
Not French, not fabricated and not as flaky as their detractors aver: these are the positives. Another one: in how many other countries would a powerful populist movement demand less of government, rather than endlessly and expensively more? Much of what is exceptional about America is its ideology of small government, free enterprise and self reliance. If that is what the tea-party movement is for, more power to its elbow.
miscanthus - 40 toneladas de biomasa por hectarea
Wood timber is one of the worst sources for ethanol production. At a maximum of four tons of biomass per acre, and around 520 gallons of ethanol produced, it is a relatively poor performer, compared to Miscanthus's 3,250 gallons. While this may seem like an unfair comparison, Miscanthus even outperforms other grasses, such as switchgrass, which yields around 3-6 tons of biomass and 400-900 gallons of ethanol fuel.
http://en.wikhttp://
C4 carbon fixation
C4 plants have a competitive advantage over plants possessing the more common C3 carbon fixation pathway under conditions of drought, high temperatures, and nitrogen or CO2limitation. When grown in the same environment, at 30°C, C3 grasses lose approximately 833 molecules of water per CO2 molecule that is fixed, whereas C4 grasses lose only 277 water molecules per CO2 molecule fixed. This increased water use efficiency of C4 grasses means that soil moisture is conserved, allowing them to grow for longer in arid environments.[7]
28 de octubre de 2010
La calidad de vida del Uruguay ya fue
No soportan más vivir así
Los vecinos de Carrasco Norte están cansados de los constantes robos en la zona y manifiestan que, en los últimos tiempos, el barrio se convirtió en una zona violenta e insegura.
La Policía conoce a los delincuentes y los vecinos también, son chicos que crecieron en el barrio y que ahora tornaron insegura la zona. Los robos y asaltos son constantes según relataron quienes viven allí ya que todos tienen una historia para contar.
http://www.teledoce.com/noticia/14298_No-soportan-mas-vivir-asi/
Los vecinos de Carrasco Norte están cansados de los constantes robos en la zona y manifiestan que, en los últimos tiempos, el barrio se convirtió en una zona violenta e insegura.
La Policía conoce a los delincuentes y los vecinos también, son chicos que crecieron en el barrio y que ahora tornaron insegura la zona. Los robos y asaltos son constantes según relataron quienes viven allí ya que todos tienen una historia para contar.
http://www.teledoce.com/noticia/14298_No-soportan-mas-vivir-asi/
26 de octubre de 2010
Likable India
China's state-led model of winning hearts and minds is no match for India's private effort.
By SADANAND DHUME
Think of it as Harvard's Indian summer. Earlier this month, the industrialist Anand Mahindra donated $10 million to support the teaching of the humanities at his alma mater, the largest gift to the program in the university's 374-year history. Barely two weeks later, the $70 billion salt-to-steel Tata Group plonked down $50 million for Harvard Business School, the biggest international donation since the school's founding.
In the not too distant future, then, Harvard students will likely grapple with Homer and Shakespeare at the newly renamed Mahindra Humanities Center. For others, the first brush with HBS's famous case study method may well be at a new building named Tata Hall.
In a status-conscious society with a yen for education, it's hardly surprising that economic growth has released a gusher of giving toward the Ivy League. In recent years, Indian corporate largesse has also benefited, among others, Yale, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. But these gifts also illustrate a broader phenomenon: India's growing soft power.
The most obvious signs are hard to miss. In recent years, Bollywood-themed dances have invaded wedding celebrations from Sydney to San Francisco. In Britain, curry houses employ more than 100,000 people and generate about £3.5 billion ($5.5 billion) of business each year. And if Yoga Journal is to be believed, an estimated 15.8 million Americans can tell a corpse pose from a downward-facing dog. Indian-born CEOs head such iconic global companies as PepsiCo, Citigroup and MasterCard. In the arts, reports of Indian writers scooping up literary prizes and directors helming big ticket-movies in Hollywood have almost become commonplace.
The contrast with Asia's other giant is striking. In the 21 years since the image of a solitary protestor's heroic attempt to halt a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square seared itself into the world's imagination, China has strived to associate itself with development rather than repression. For many people, the 2008 Beijing Olympics—with their dazzling buildings and clockwork efficiency—symbolized the fruition of that effort.
But the Games also underscored just how much China's ongoing image makeover depends on the government rather than on private initiative. The imposing Chinese pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, the 300-odd Confucius Institutes promoting Chinese language and culture around the world, traveling museum exhibits extolling the 15th century seafarer Admiral Zheng He, lavish aid packages for resource-rich African countries and China Central Television's ambitious global footprint all tell the same tale.
Scholars and journalists alike tend to make much of China's vaunted "charm offensive." It turns out, however, that when it comes to winning hearts and minds—at least democratic hearts and minds—China's top down state-led model is not much of a match for India's decentralized private effort.
In terms of goodwill, India bests China in both Western and Eastern democracies. For instance, according to a poll released last month by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Americans place India in the same ballpark as long-term allies South Korea and Israel. China elicits only about as much warmth as Venezuela and Mexico.
A recent BBC World Service poll of 28 countries says more or less the same thing. On average, more than half of Americans, Britons and Canadians feel "mainly positive" about India; only about one in six feel "mainly negative." With China the numbers are reversed. Barely one in three from the Anglophone countries feel mostly positive about the Middle Kingdom; for more than four in 10 the emotions evoked are negative. Similarly, more Japanese, Indonesians and South Koreans feel positively than negatively toward India; with China it's the opposite.
To be sure, we shouldn't read too much into these figures. For many people, India is probably more likeable in part because it's not nearly as threatening as a powerful, well-organized China. And East Asian hostility toward China likely reflects a certain amount of historical animosity. Moreover, in many of the surveyed parts of Africa and the Islamic world where democratic traditions are weak or nonexistent, India lags China in popularity and, presumably, influence.
Nonetheless, against the backdrop of a prolonged bout of self-flagellation brought on by the recently concluded Delhi Commonwealth Games, India ought to reflect on some of its strengths as well. For one, the country's shambolic democracy may drive the educated middle classes to despair, but it also appears to buy India a reservoir of goodwill around the world.
Second, the legacy of the colonial experience, though painful in many ways, has also proved to be a blessing. As an English speaking democracy, in soft power terms India punches above its economic weight.
And finally, the economic freedom unleashed two decades ago has done more to enhance India's standing in the world than the four decades of finger-stabbing moralizing that preceded it. If you don't believe this, all you need to do is visit a certain university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mr. Dhume, a columnist for WSJ.com, is writing a book about the new Indian middle class. Follow him on Twitter @dhume01.
Think of it as Harvard's Indian summer. Earlier this month, the industrialist Anand Mahindra donated $10 million to support the teaching of the humanities at his alma mater, the largest gift to the program in the university's 374-year history. Barely two weeks later, the $70 billion salt-to-steel Tata Group plonked down $50 million for Harvard Business School, the biggest international donation since the school's founding.
In the not too distant future, then, Harvard students will likely grapple with Homer and Shakespeare at the newly renamed Mahindra Humanities Center. For others, the first brush with HBS's famous case study method may well be at a new building named Tata Hall.
In a status-conscious society with a yen for education, it's hardly surprising that economic growth has released a gusher of giving toward the Ivy League. In recent years, Indian corporate largesse has also benefited, among others, Yale, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. But these gifts also illustrate a broader phenomenon: India's growing soft power.
The most obvious signs are hard to miss. In recent years, Bollywood-themed dances have invaded wedding celebrations from Sydney to San Francisco. In Britain, curry houses employ more than 100,000 people and generate about £3.5 billion ($5.5 billion) of business each year. And if Yoga Journal is to be believed, an estimated 15.8 million Americans can tell a corpse pose from a downward-facing dog. Indian-born CEOs head such iconic global companies as PepsiCo, Citigroup and MasterCard. In the arts, reports of Indian writers scooping up literary prizes and directors helming big ticket-movies in Hollywood have almost become commonplace.
The contrast with Asia's other giant is striking. In the 21 years since the image of a solitary protestor's heroic attempt to halt a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square seared itself into the world's imagination, China has strived to associate itself with development rather than repression. For many people, the 2008 Beijing Olympics—with their dazzling buildings and clockwork efficiency—symbolized the fruition of that effort.
But the Games also underscored just how much China's ongoing image makeover depends on the government rather than on private initiative. The imposing Chinese pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, the 300-odd Confucius Institutes promoting Chinese language and culture around the world, traveling museum exhibits extolling the 15th century seafarer Admiral Zheng He, lavish aid packages for resource-rich African countries and China Central Television's ambitious global footprint all tell the same tale.
Scholars and journalists alike tend to make much of China's vaunted "charm offensive." It turns out, however, that when it comes to winning hearts and minds—at least democratic hearts and minds—China's top down state-led model is not much of a match for India's decentralized private effort.
In terms of goodwill, India bests China in both Western and Eastern democracies. For instance, according to a poll released last month by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Americans place India in the same ballpark as long-term allies South Korea and Israel. China elicits only about as much warmth as Venezuela and Mexico.
A recent BBC World Service poll of 28 countries says more or less the same thing. On average, more than half of Americans, Britons and Canadians feel "mainly positive" about India; only about one in six feel "mainly negative." With China the numbers are reversed. Barely one in three from the Anglophone countries feel mostly positive about the Middle Kingdom; for more than four in 10 the emotions evoked are negative. Similarly, more Japanese, Indonesians and South Koreans feel positively than negatively toward India; with China it's the opposite.
To be sure, we shouldn't read too much into these figures. For many people, India is probably more likeable in part because it's not nearly as threatening as a powerful, well-organized China. And East Asian hostility toward China likely reflects a certain amount of historical animosity. Moreover, in many of the surveyed parts of Africa and the Islamic world where democratic traditions are weak or nonexistent, India lags China in popularity and, presumably, influence.
Nonetheless, against the backdrop of a prolonged bout of self-flagellation brought on by the recently concluded Delhi Commonwealth Games, India ought to reflect on some of its strengths as well. For one, the country's shambolic democracy may drive the educated middle classes to despair, but it also appears to buy India a reservoir of goodwill around the world.
Second, the legacy of the colonial experience, though painful in many ways, has also proved to be a blessing. As an English speaking democracy, in soft power terms India punches above its economic weight.
And finally, the economic freedom unleashed two decades ago has done more to enhance India's standing in the world than the four decades of finger-stabbing moralizing that preceded it. If you don't believe this, all you need to do is visit a certain university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mr. Dhume, a columnist for WSJ.com, is writing a book about the new Indian middle class. Follow him on Twitter @dhume01.
Karzai and the Scent of U.S. Irresolution
Our longest war is now being waged with doubt and hesitation, and our ally on the scene has gone rogue, taking the coin of our enemies and scoffing at our purposes.
By FOUAD AJAMI
'They do give us bags of money—yes, yes, it is done, we are grateful to the Iranians for this." This is the East, and baksheesh is the way of the world, Hamid Karzai brazenly let it be known this week. The big aid that maintains his regime, and keeps his country together, comes from the democracies. It is much cheaper for the Iranians. They are of the neighborhood, they know the ways of the bazaar.
The remarkable thing about Mr. Karzai has been his perverse honesty. This is not a Third World client who has given us sweet talk about democracy coming to the Hindu Kush. He has been brazen to the point of vulgarity. We are there, but on his and his family's terms. Bags of cash, the reports tell us, are hauled out of Kabul to Dubai; there are eight flights a day. We distrust the man. He reciprocates that distrust, and then some. Our deliberations leak, we threaten and bully him, only to give in to him. And this only increases his lack of regard for American tutelage. We are now there to cut a deal—the terms of our own departure from Afghanistan.
The idealism has drained out of this project. Say what you will about the Iraq war—and there was disappointment and heartbreak aplenty—there always ran through that war the promise of a decent outcome: deliverance for the Kurds, an Iraqi democratic example in the heart of a despotic Arab world, the promise of a decent Shiite alternative in the holy city of Najaf that would compete with the influence of Qom. No such nobility, no such illusions now attend our war in Afghanistan. By latest cruel count, more than 1,300 American service members have fallen in Afghanistan. For these sacrifices, Mr. Karzai shows little, if any, regard.
In his latest outburst, Mr. Karzai said the private security companies that guard the embassies and the development and aid organizations are killer squads, on a par with the Taliban. "The money dealing with the private security companies starts in the hallways of the U.S. government. Then they send the money for killing here," Mr Karzai said. It is fully understood that Mr. Karzai and his clan want the business of the contractors for themselves.
View Full Image
Associated Press
Afghan President Hamid Karzai (left) and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The brutal facts about Afghanistan are these: It is a broken country, a land of banditry, of a war of all against all, and of the need to get what can be gotten from the strangers. There is no love for the infidels who have come into the land, and no patience for their sermons.
In its wanderings through the Third World, from Korea and Vietnam to Iran and Egypt, it was America's fate to ride with all sorts of clients. We betrayed some of them, and they betrayed us in return. They passed off their phobias and privileges as lofty causes worthy of our blood and treasure. They snookered us at times, but there was always the pretense of a common purpose. The thing about Mr. Karzai is his sharp break with this history. It is the ways of the Afghan mountaineers that he wishes to teach us.
When they came to power, the Obama people insisted they would teach Mr. Karzai new rules. There was a new man at the helm in Washington, and there would be no favored treatment, no intimacy with the new steward of American power. Governance would have to improve, and skeptical policy makers would now hold him accountable (Vice President Joe Biden, Special Representative Richard Holbrooke, et al.). Mr. Karzai took their measure, and everywhere around him there were signs of American retreat, such as the spectacle of the Pax Americana eager to reach a grand bargain with the Iranian theocrats.
Mr. Karzai didn't need to be a grand strategist. He had, as is necessary in his world of treachery and betrayal, his ear to the ground, his scent for the irresolution of the Obama administration. He saw the scorn of Iran's cruel leaders for America's diplomatic approaches. He could see Iranian power extend all the way to the Mediterranean, right up to Israel's borders with Lebanon and to Gaza. The Iranians were next door and the Americans were giving away their fatigue. Why not accept the entreaties from Tehran?
A year ago, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, laid out the truth about Mr. Karzai and his regime in a secret cable that of course made its way into the public domain. "President Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner," Mr. Eikenberry wrote. The Karzai regime could not bear the weight of a counterinsurgency doctrine that would win the loyalty of the populace. There were monumental problems of governance but "Karzai continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance, or development. He and much of his circle do not want the U.S. to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further. They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending war on terror and for military bases to use against surrounding powers." In Mr. Eikenberry's cable, Mr. Karzai is a man beyond redemption, who was unlikely to "change fundamentally this late in his life and in our relationship."
In one of his great tales of the imperial age, "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad depicts the encounter between a criminal and a noble figure. "Gentleman" Brown and a band of robbers had come into Tuan Jim's domain—a small world, Patusan, where Jim's writ ran and the natives honored and deferred to him. Everything was on the side of Jim—possession, security, power. But Brown senses the hidden irresoluteness of Jim, a man who had come to this remote, small world in the Pacific in search of redemption. We are equal, says Brown: "What do you know more of me than I know of you? What did you ask for when you came here?" Jim pays with his life. He had let the ruffian set the terms of the encounter.
A big American project, our longest war, is now waged with doubt and hesitation, and our ally on the scene has gone rogue, taking the coin of our enemies and scoffing at our purposes. Unlike the Third World clients of old, this one does not even bother to pay us the tribute of double-speak and hypocrisy. He is a different kind of client, but then, too, our authority today is but a shadow of what it once was.
Mr. Ajami is a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
'They do give us bags of money—yes, yes, it is done, we are grateful to the Iranians for this." This is the East, and baksheesh is the way of the world, Hamid Karzai brazenly let it be known this week. The big aid that maintains his regime, and keeps his country together, comes from the democracies. It is much cheaper for the Iranians. They are of the neighborhood, they know the ways of the bazaar.
The remarkable thing about Mr. Karzai has been his perverse honesty. This is not a Third World client who has given us sweet talk about democracy coming to the Hindu Kush. He has been brazen to the point of vulgarity. We are there, but on his and his family's terms. Bags of cash, the reports tell us, are hauled out of Kabul to Dubai; there are eight flights a day. We distrust the man. He reciprocates that distrust, and then some. Our deliberations leak, we threaten and bully him, only to give in to him. And this only increases his lack of regard for American tutelage. We are now there to cut a deal—the terms of our own departure from Afghanistan.
The idealism has drained out of this project. Say what you will about the Iraq war—and there was disappointment and heartbreak aplenty—there always ran through that war the promise of a decent outcome: deliverance for the Kurds, an Iraqi democratic example in the heart of a despotic Arab world, the promise of a decent Shiite alternative in the holy city of Najaf that would compete with the influence of Qom. No such nobility, no such illusions now attend our war in Afghanistan. By latest cruel count, more than 1,300 American service members have fallen in Afghanistan. For these sacrifices, Mr. Karzai shows little, if any, regard.
In his latest outburst, Mr. Karzai said the private security companies that guard the embassies and the development and aid organizations are killer squads, on a par with the Taliban. "The money dealing with the private security companies starts in the hallways of the U.S. government. Then they send the money for killing here," Mr Karzai said. It is fully understood that Mr. Karzai and his clan want the business of the contractors for themselves.
View Full Image
Associated Press
Afghan President Hamid Karzai (left) and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The brutal facts about Afghanistan are these: It is a broken country, a land of banditry, of a war of all against all, and of the need to get what can be gotten from the strangers. There is no love for the infidels who have come into the land, and no patience for their sermons.
In its wanderings through the Third World, from Korea and Vietnam to Iran and Egypt, it was America's fate to ride with all sorts of clients. We betrayed some of them, and they betrayed us in return. They passed off their phobias and privileges as lofty causes worthy of our blood and treasure. They snookered us at times, but there was always the pretense of a common purpose. The thing about Mr. Karzai is his sharp break with this history. It is the ways of the Afghan mountaineers that he wishes to teach us.
When they came to power, the Obama people insisted they would teach Mr. Karzai new rules. There was a new man at the helm in Washington, and there would be no favored treatment, no intimacy with the new steward of American power. Governance would have to improve, and skeptical policy makers would now hold him accountable (Vice President Joe Biden, Special Representative Richard Holbrooke, et al.). Mr. Karzai took their measure, and everywhere around him there were signs of American retreat, such as the spectacle of the Pax Americana eager to reach a grand bargain with the Iranian theocrats.
Mr. Karzai didn't need to be a grand strategist. He had, as is necessary in his world of treachery and betrayal, his ear to the ground, his scent for the irresolution of the Obama administration. He saw the scorn of Iran's cruel leaders for America's diplomatic approaches. He could see Iranian power extend all the way to the Mediterranean, right up to Israel's borders with Lebanon and to Gaza. The Iranians were next door and the Americans were giving away their fatigue. Why not accept the entreaties from Tehran?
A year ago, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, laid out the truth about Mr. Karzai and his regime in a secret cable that of course made its way into the public domain. "President Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner," Mr. Eikenberry wrote. The Karzai regime could not bear the weight of a counterinsurgency doctrine that would win the loyalty of the populace. There were monumental problems of governance but "Karzai continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance, or development. He and much of his circle do not want the U.S. to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further. They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending war on terror and for military bases to use against surrounding powers." In Mr. Eikenberry's cable, Mr. Karzai is a man beyond redemption, who was unlikely to "change fundamentally this late in his life and in our relationship."
In one of his great tales of the imperial age, "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad depicts the encounter between a criminal and a noble figure. "Gentleman" Brown and a band of robbers had come into Tuan Jim's domain—a small world, Patusan, where Jim's writ ran and the natives honored and deferred to him. Everything was on the side of Jim—possession, security, power. But Brown senses the hidden irresoluteness of Jim, a man who had come to this remote, small world in the Pacific in search of redemption. We are equal, says Brown: "What do you know more of me than I know of you? What did you ask for when you came here?" Jim pays with his life. He had let the ruffian set the terms of the encounter.
A big American project, our longest war, is now waged with doubt and hesitation, and our ally on the scene has gone rogue, taking the coin of our enemies and scoffing at our purposes. Unlike the Third World clients of old, this one does not even bother to pay us the tribute of double-speak and hypocrisy. He is a different kind of client, but then, too, our authority today is but a shadow of what it once was.
Mr. Ajami is a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Vargas Llosa y el error de la izquierda
Javier Cercas
El País
MADRID.- Ahora que han pasado unos días desde la concesión del Nobel a Mario Vargas Llosa, ya podemos decir lo obvio: el premio tiene la importancia que tiene, pero nada más. Nada más, claro está, para la obra de Vargas Llosa, a la que ni quita ni añade una coma, no quizá para sus lectores ni para la Academia Sueca, que a juicio de muchos lo necesitaba con urgencia: al fin y al cabo, desde el punto de vista estrictamente literario este premio sólo es, como ha dicho Rodrigo Fresán, un retorno a la cordura.
Así que, aunque el Nobel no cambie en nada lo esencial, al menos hay que celebrar ese retorno; un retorno que, además, ha provocado interesantes efectos secundarios. Por ejemplo, la alegría indisimulable de los lectores corrientes de Vargas Llosa, muchos de los cuales parecían recién salidos del armario tras un largo encierro: de hecho, a ratos daba la impresión de que a todos les hubieran dado el premio, y de que para ellos sí era importante. No es algo tan frecuente, desde luego; no es algo que yo notara, por ejemplo, cuando se le concedió el Nobel a Cela, cosa que puede deberse sólo a que los méritos literarios de Cela no son equiparables a los de Vargas Llosa, y no necesariamente a que esos lectores sintieran que Cela era un hombre opuesto a Vargas Llosa en casi todo, pero sobre todo en esto: aunque casi siempre pareció nadar contra la corriente, Cela siempre o casi siempre nadó a favor de la corriente. Ese es otro de los efectos secundarios que ha tenido el premio: ha mostrado de nuevo que, aunque a algunos les parezca que nada a favor de la corriente, Vargas Llosa siempre o casi siempre ha nadado contra la corriente.
Uno de los comentarios que más hemos leído hasta estos días en los periódicos a propósito del nuevo Nobel ha sido el siguiente: "Admiro sus obras, pero no siempre comparto sus ideas". Dicha así, la frase es extraña, o a mí me lo parece: si ni siquiera comparto siempre mis propias ideas, ¿cómo voy a compartir siempre las de otra persona? Pero en el fondo todos sabemos que la salvedad alude a algo distinto: al hecho de que Vargas Llosa es considerado, en tanto que intelectual -es decir, en tanto que escritor que interviene con sus escritos en la cosa pública-, un conservador, un hombre de derecha, si no un reaccionario o un autoritario. La prueba es que los matices a su premio siempre los ha puesto la izquierda, mientras que la derecha lo ha recibido como un premio a uno de los suyos; mejor prueba aún es el hecho de que esa reputación es la causa más probable de que la Academia Sueca sólo le haya dado este año un premio que merecía desde hace 30.
Pues bien, lo que habría que decir de entrada sobre este asunto es que, sea o no un intelectual de derecha, Vargas Llosa es un intelectual singular. Primero, porque siempre ha servido a las causas que defiende y nunca se ha servido de ellas. Segundo, porque siempre está dispuesto a contrastar sus ideas con la realidad y, si la realidad lo exige, a rectificarlas. Tercero, porque en su evolución política desde las simpatías revolucionarias de su juventud hasta el liberalismo actual hay una coherencia profunda, como comprobará quien se dé el gusto de leer los volúmenes sucesivos de Contra viento y marea , donde entre otras cosas hallará una descripción razonada de esa trayectoria y, por ahí, un instrumento indispensable para entender la vida intelectual de los últimos años. Y cuarto -esto es un corolario de lo anterior y quizá también lo más importante-, por una cuestión, digamos, de estilo. Como pensador, como polemista, Vargas Llosa es un liberal de verdad: nunca confunde, según diría Alejandro Rossi, un error intelectual con un error moral; es decir, nunca ataca a las personas, sino las ideas de las personas (nunca considera que un hombre equivocado es un hombre inmoral). Y cuando ataca las ideas, nunca lo hace caricaturizándolas, es decir, debilitándolas, lo que en un pensador es síntoma de intolerancia y de impotencia, cuando no de vileza, sino exponiéndolas con la máxima fuerza, rigor y nitidez para luego lanzarse a refutarlas en buena lid y en campo abierto. Esto no es de derecha ni de izquierda, ni reaccionario ni progresista: esto es algo que está mucho antes que todo eso y se llama honestidad y coraje.
Pero hay más. El mejor artículo sobre Vargas Llosa que he leído tras la concesión del Nobel apareció en el diario El País y lo firmó Juan Gabriel Vásquez, que no en vano es un heredero legítimo de Vargas Llosa (háganse un favor y compruébenlo leyendo su novela Los informantes ). El artículo se titula "El malentendido Vargas Llosa" y, como corre el riesgo de haber quedado enterrado entre la hojarasca que hemos publicado otros, me permitiré recordar su contenido.
Vásquez sostiene que sólo quien no ha leído a Vargas Llosa o lo ha leído con anteojeras puede afirmar que es un intelectual de derecha o conservador, no digamos reaccionario o autoritario, porque la verdad es que "pocos como Vargas Llosa han defendido las ideas que la mejor izquierda ha reclamado tradicionalmente para sí". No sólo lo ha hecho en sus novelas, furiosos alegatos contra el fanatismo, contra el autoritarismo, contra el militarismo, sobre todo contra los abusos del poder; también lo ha hecho en sus ensayos y artículos, donde ha defendido la libertad individual, el derecho al aborto, la igualdad para los homosexuales, la legalización de la droga y donde ha atacado el nacionalismo de cualquier especie.
Por supuesto, no todas las ideas de Vargas Llosa -y en particular su liberalismo económico, por cierto menos radical y desde luego mucho menos ingenuo y más elaborado que como lo pintan sus detractores- parecen inmediatamente útiles o aceptables para la izquierda; pero lo que me parece seguro es que es imposible que la izquierda salga del atasco ideológico y la consiguiente parálisis práctica en que lleva mucho tiempo metida si no es capaz de discutir con seriedad ideas como las de Vargas Llosa, si no deja de demonizarlas sin esforzarse en entenderlas, si no olvida sus nostalgias autoritarias y su complacencia con tiranías y nacionalismos, si no acepta sin resignación que no hay justicia sin libertad y no entiende con entusiasmo que la democracia debe conseguir que libertad y justicia, esas dos verdades contradictorias -por usar la expresión de Isaiah Berlin que aprendimos en Vargas Llosa-, acaben conviviendo con armonía.
Regalar a Vargas Llosa a la derecha es un pésimo negocio para la izquierda, igual que fue un pésimo negocio regalar a Orwell y a Camus, que nunca quisieron saber nada de la derecha. De ahí, me parece, vienen muchos de los males del pensamiento de la izquierda: de su sectarismo, de su rigidez, de su miedo a salirse del camino trillado, de su miedo a afrontar la realidad como es para cambiarla, de su miedo a la izquierda autoritaria, obsoleta, fracasada y cerril que parece la mala conciencia de la mejor izquierda.
En cuanto a mí, sólo diré que si la izquierda no es capaz de atender las razones de Vargas Llosa y hacer suyo lo que tiene de izquierdista -igual que si no es capaz de hacer suyo lo que tienen de izquierdistas Orwell y Camus-, que empiece a pensar en borrarme de la lista.
España, 26 de octubre de 2010
El País
MADRID.- Ahora que han pasado unos días desde la concesión del Nobel a Mario Vargas Llosa, ya podemos decir lo obvio: el premio tiene la importancia que tiene, pero nada más. Nada más, claro está, para la obra de Vargas Llosa, a la que ni quita ni añade una coma, no quizá para sus lectores ni para la Academia Sueca, que a juicio de muchos lo necesitaba con urgencia: al fin y al cabo, desde el punto de vista estrictamente literario este premio sólo es, como ha dicho Rodrigo Fresán, un retorno a la cordura.
Así que, aunque el Nobel no cambie en nada lo esencial, al menos hay que celebrar ese retorno; un retorno que, además, ha provocado interesantes efectos secundarios. Por ejemplo, la alegría indisimulable de los lectores corrientes de Vargas Llosa, muchos de los cuales parecían recién salidos del armario tras un largo encierro: de hecho, a ratos daba la impresión de que a todos les hubieran dado el premio, y de que para ellos sí era importante. No es algo tan frecuente, desde luego; no es algo que yo notara, por ejemplo, cuando se le concedió el Nobel a Cela, cosa que puede deberse sólo a que los méritos literarios de Cela no son equiparables a los de Vargas Llosa, y no necesariamente a que esos lectores sintieran que Cela era un hombre opuesto a Vargas Llosa en casi todo, pero sobre todo en esto: aunque casi siempre pareció nadar contra la corriente, Cela siempre o casi siempre nadó a favor de la corriente. Ese es otro de los efectos secundarios que ha tenido el premio: ha mostrado de nuevo que, aunque a algunos les parezca que nada a favor de la corriente, Vargas Llosa siempre o casi siempre ha nadado contra la corriente.
Uno de los comentarios que más hemos leído hasta estos días en los periódicos a propósito del nuevo Nobel ha sido el siguiente: "Admiro sus obras, pero no siempre comparto sus ideas". Dicha así, la frase es extraña, o a mí me lo parece: si ni siquiera comparto siempre mis propias ideas, ¿cómo voy a compartir siempre las de otra persona? Pero en el fondo todos sabemos que la salvedad alude a algo distinto: al hecho de que Vargas Llosa es considerado, en tanto que intelectual -es decir, en tanto que escritor que interviene con sus escritos en la cosa pública-, un conservador, un hombre de derecha, si no un reaccionario o un autoritario. La prueba es que los matices a su premio siempre los ha puesto la izquierda, mientras que la derecha lo ha recibido como un premio a uno de los suyos; mejor prueba aún es el hecho de que esa reputación es la causa más probable de que la Academia Sueca sólo le haya dado este año un premio que merecía desde hace 30.
Pues bien, lo que habría que decir de entrada sobre este asunto es que, sea o no un intelectual de derecha, Vargas Llosa es un intelectual singular. Primero, porque siempre ha servido a las causas que defiende y nunca se ha servido de ellas. Segundo, porque siempre está dispuesto a contrastar sus ideas con la realidad y, si la realidad lo exige, a rectificarlas. Tercero, porque en su evolución política desde las simpatías revolucionarias de su juventud hasta el liberalismo actual hay una coherencia profunda, como comprobará quien se dé el gusto de leer los volúmenes sucesivos de Contra viento y marea , donde entre otras cosas hallará una descripción razonada de esa trayectoria y, por ahí, un instrumento indispensable para entender la vida intelectual de los últimos años. Y cuarto -esto es un corolario de lo anterior y quizá también lo más importante-, por una cuestión, digamos, de estilo. Como pensador, como polemista, Vargas Llosa es un liberal de verdad: nunca confunde, según diría Alejandro Rossi, un error intelectual con un error moral; es decir, nunca ataca a las personas, sino las ideas de las personas (nunca considera que un hombre equivocado es un hombre inmoral). Y cuando ataca las ideas, nunca lo hace caricaturizándolas, es decir, debilitándolas, lo que en un pensador es síntoma de intolerancia y de impotencia, cuando no de vileza, sino exponiéndolas con la máxima fuerza, rigor y nitidez para luego lanzarse a refutarlas en buena lid y en campo abierto. Esto no es de derecha ni de izquierda, ni reaccionario ni progresista: esto es algo que está mucho antes que todo eso y se llama honestidad y coraje.
Pero hay más. El mejor artículo sobre Vargas Llosa que he leído tras la concesión del Nobel apareció en el diario El País y lo firmó Juan Gabriel Vásquez, que no en vano es un heredero legítimo de Vargas Llosa (háganse un favor y compruébenlo leyendo su novela Los informantes ). El artículo se titula "El malentendido Vargas Llosa" y, como corre el riesgo de haber quedado enterrado entre la hojarasca que hemos publicado otros, me permitiré recordar su contenido.
Vásquez sostiene que sólo quien no ha leído a Vargas Llosa o lo ha leído con anteojeras puede afirmar que es un intelectual de derecha o conservador, no digamos reaccionario o autoritario, porque la verdad es que "pocos como Vargas Llosa han defendido las ideas que la mejor izquierda ha reclamado tradicionalmente para sí". No sólo lo ha hecho en sus novelas, furiosos alegatos contra el fanatismo, contra el autoritarismo, contra el militarismo, sobre todo contra los abusos del poder; también lo ha hecho en sus ensayos y artículos, donde ha defendido la libertad individual, el derecho al aborto, la igualdad para los homosexuales, la legalización de la droga y donde ha atacado el nacionalismo de cualquier especie.
Por supuesto, no todas las ideas de Vargas Llosa -y en particular su liberalismo económico, por cierto menos radical y desde luego mucho menos ingenuo y más elaborado que como lo pintan sus detractores- parecen inmediatamente útiles o aceptables para la izquierda; pero lo que me parece seguro es que es imposible que la izquierda salga del atasco ideológico y la consiguiente parálisis práctica en que lleva mucho tiempo metida si no es capaz de discutir con seriedad ideas como las de Vargas Llosa, si no deja de demonizarlas sin esforzarse en entenderlas, si no olvida sus nostalgias autoritarias y su complacencia con tiranías y nacionalismos, si no acepta sin resignación que no hay justicia sin libertad y no entiende con entusiasmo que la democracia debe conseguir que libertad y justicia, esas dos verdades contradictorias -por usar la expresión de Isaiah Berlin que aprendimos en Vargas Llosa-, acaben conviviendo con armonía.
Regalar a Vargas Llosa a la derecha es un pésimo negocio para la izquierda, igual que fue un pésimo negocio regalar a Orwell y a Camus, que nunca quisieron saber nada de la derecha. De ahí, me parece, vienen muchos de los males del pensamiento de la izquierda: de su sectarismo, de su rigidez, de su miedo a salirse del camino trillado, de su miedo a afrontar la realidad como es para cambiarla, de su miedo a la izquierda autoritaria, obsoleta, fracasada y cerril que parece la mala conciencia de la mejor izquierda.
En cuanto a mí, sólo diré que si la izquierda no es capaz de atender las razones de Vargas Llosa y hacer suyo lo que tiene de izquierdista -igual que si no es capaz de hacer suyo lo que tienen de izquierdistas Orwell y Camus-, que empiece a pensar en borrarme de la lista.
España, 26 de octubre de 2010
25 de octubre de 2010
Texas y California
A Trenchant Tale Of Two States
Business Climate: In Texas, the payroll count is back to pre-recession levels. California is nearly 1.5 million jobs in the hole. Why such a difference? Chalk it up to taxes, regulation and attitude.
The contrast between America's two largest states, in terms of both population and economic heft, is as stark as it has ever been. Texas is leading the country out of the recession; California is holding it back.
By August, the job count in Texas had rebounded to where it was when the recession officially began in December 2007. California's payroll was still 1.46 million below the pre-recession level. The nation as a whole was down by 6.42 million jobs. In other words, California, with one-eighth the nation's population, accounts for more than a fifth of its job deficit left over from the downturn.
What country needs a state like that dragging it down?
Of course, what America really needs is not to be California-free, but to have something like the old California back — the economic dynamo that was the envy of the nation in the '50s and '60s. But to those who try to do business in the state now, those days seem impossibly distant.
California's business climate is notoriously bad. CEOs polled by the magazine Chief Executive have ranked it dead last for the past five years, with Texas, naturally, ranked first. To anyone seeking to start an enterprise and hire workers, moving to Texas is a lot less trouble than trying to change California's high taxes, overregulation and not-so-subtle bias against the profit motive.
A new study from the Texas Public Policy Foundation gives a good overview of why California lags so far behind and what it can learn from its Lone Star rival. The study was prepared by the econometrics firm of supply-side guru Arthur Laffer, so it's no surprise that Texas gets high marks for low taxes and, in particular, its lack of a personal income tax. The data behind these conclusions are hard to discount, no matter what your point of view.
California and other states with steeply progressive income taxes simply do not grow as fast as their tax-free competitors. The nine states with no income tax had nonfarm payroll growth of 11.76% from 1999 to 2009. Payrolls in the nine states with the highest top tax rates (a group that includes California) rose an anemic 2.48%.
The difference in tax systems reflects a difference in attitudes toward business and the wealth that business generates. Capital gains are tax-free in Texas; in California, they are taxed up to 10.55%. To an entrepreneur choosing where to set up shop, the message is clear: Texas wants to reward success; California wants to tax it.
24 de octubre de 2010
Putting a Price on Professors
A battle in Texas over whether academic value can be measured in dollars and cents.
By STEPHANIE SIMON And STEPHANIE BANCHERO
Carol Johnson took the podium of a lecture hall one recent morning to walk 79 students enrolled in an introductory biology course through diffusion, osmosis and the phospholipid bilayer of cell membranes.
A senior lecturer, Ms. Johnson has taught this class for years. Only recently, though, have administrators sought to quantify whether she is giving the taxpayers of Texas their money's worth.
Matt Wright-Steel for The Wall Street Journal
Chester Dunning, a history professor, has won several teaching awards. According to a report by the chancellor, he also loses money for the university, though his department is in the black overall.
A 265-page spreadsheet, released last month by the chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, amounted to a profit-and-loss statement for each faculty member, weighing annual salary against students taught, tuition generated, and research grants obtained.
Ms. Johnson came out very much in the black; in the period analyzed—fiscal year 2009—she netted the public university $279,617. Some of her colleagues weren't nearly so profitable. Newly hired assistant professor Charles Criscione, for instance, spent much of the year setting up a lab to research parasite genetics and ended up $45,305 in the red.
The balance sheet sparked an immediate uproar from faculty, who called it misleading, simplistic and crass—not to mention, riddled with errors. But the move here comes amid a national drive, backed by some on both the left and the right, to assess more rigorously what, exactly, public universities are doing with their students—and their tax dollars.
![[TEXAStable]](http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AA474_TEXASt_NS_20101022184102.gif)
As budget pressures mount, legislators and governors are increasingly demanding data proving that money given to colleges is well spent. States spend about 11% of their general-fund budgets subsidizing higher education. That totaled more than $78 billion in fiscal year 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.
The movement is driven as well by dismal educational statistics. Just over half of all freshmen entering four-year public colleges will earn a degree from that institution within six years, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
And among those with diplomas, just 31% could pass the most recent national prose literacy test, given in 2003; that's down from 40% a decade earlier, the department says.
"For years and years, universities got away with, 'Trust us—it'll be worth it,'" said F. King Alexander, president of California State University at Long Beach.
But no more: "Every conversation we have with these institutions now revolves around productivity," says Jason Bearce, associate commissioner for higher education in Indiana. He tells administrators it's not enough to find efficiencies in their operations; they must seek "academic efficiency" as well, graduating more students more quickly and with more demonstrable skills. The National Governors Association echoes that mantra; it just formed a commission focused on improving productivity in higher education.
Carol Johnson lectures at Texas A&M; she netted the university $279,617, according to the chancellor's report.
This new emphasis has raised hackles in academia. Some professors express deep concern that the focus on serving student "customers" and delivering value to taxpayers will turn public colleges into factories. They worry that it will upend the essential nature of a university, where the Milton scholar who teaches a senior seminar to five English majors is valued as much as the engineering professor who lands a million-dollar research grant.
And they fear too much tinkering will destroy an educational system that, despite its acknowledged flaws, remains the envy of much of the world. "It's a reflection of a much more corporate model of running a university, and it's getting away from the idea of the university as public good," says John Curtis, research director for the American Association of University Professors.
Efforts to remake higher education generally fall into two categories. In some states, including Ohio and Indiana, public officials have ordered a new approach to funding, based not on how many students enroll but on what they accomplish.
Details vary, but colleges typically earn points under such a system for pushing students to take science, engineering and math; for ensuring that they complete classes that they start; for improving on-time graduation rates; and for boosting more low-income students to degrees.
![[PROFS]](http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AA472_PROFS_NS_20101021175217.gif)
These performance metrics generally affect just a portion of an institution's public funding—but that can be significant. In Ohio, for example, state funding for one community college jumped 11% in each of the past two years because of the new formulas. Several four-year campuses, by contrast, lost about 5% a year. President Barack Obama has pushed for similar incentives on a national level but could not get a proposed $2.5 billion fund for high-achieving colleges through Congress.
A second approach to reform is driven by college administrators seeking to build credibility with the public by disclosing their school's strengths and weaknesses.
Minnesota's state college system has created an online "accountability dashboard" for each campus. Bright, gas-gauge-style graphics indicate how many students complete their degrees; how run-down (or up-to-date) facilities are; and how many graduates pass professional licensing exams.
The California State University system, using data from outside sources, posts online the median starting and mid-career salaries for graduates of each campus, as well as their average student loan debt. "Taxpayers can make a pretty good estimate of their rate of return," says Mr. Alexander, president of CSU Long Beach.
A few schools have even taken to guaranteeing their education. Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Mich., pledges to retrain any of its graduates whose employers are dissatisfied with their skills or attitude.
Matt Wright-Steel for the Wall Street Journal
Assistant professor Charles Criscione works one-on-one with an undergraduate; he ended up $45,305 in the red.
Concern about America's higher-education system kicked into high gear in 2006 when Margaret Spellings, education secretary for President George W. Bush, issued a biting report. She chided universities for coasting on their reputations and urged them to start measuring how much students learn—and why a degree costs so much.
The same year, a survey conducted by a coalition of corporations found that nearly 30% of employers ranked new hires with four-year college diplomas as "deficient" in written communication skills.
The reports jolted academia. Scrambling to respond, scores of public colleges agreed to post data they had previously kept private on a "College Portraits" website—including their scores on standardized tests that attempt to measure how much a school improves students' critical thinking skills between freshman and senior years. About 300 colleges now participate in the site, run by two consortiums of public colleges.
Public Higher Ed: From Jefferson to the Cold War
Getty Images
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
1795
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which formally opened in January 1795 with a single professor, Rev. David Ker, was the country's first public university to admit students. One of the duties of the school's early professors was to perform morning and evening prayers and examine students on the "principles of morality and religion." By the end of June, 41 students had enrolled.
Corbis
The University of Virginia
1819
Thomas Jefferson, along with his friend James Madison, believed that public education was vital to maintaining a strong republic. In 1789, he wrote that "wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government." He founded the University of Virginia—the country's first nonsectarian university and the first to use an elective course system—in 1819.
Corbis
President Abraham Lincoln
1862
The Morrill Act, signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, laid the foundation for a nationwide system of public universities. It granted each state 30,000 acres of land for every member of its congressional delegation. The land was then sold off to fund public colleges, with a particular focus on schools that specialized in agriculture, engineering and science. The act ultimately funded 69 universities.
1915
The standards for tenure, or job protection for professors, were first laid out in 1915 by the American Association of University Professors over concerns about academic freedom. (There had been several incidents in which colleges punished or fired faculty—for teaching evolution, for example.) As of 2007, 21% of U.S. faculty members were full-time and tenured, down from 37% in 1975.
Getty Images
Scientist operating micromanipulator
1945
In the postwar years, a flood of federal research money transformed U.S. universities and boosted their reputations internationally. Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, wrote in an influential 1945 report that basic scientific research should take place in universities, relatively free from the pressures of "convention, prejudice or commercial necessity."
Getty Images
Dr. Clark Kerr
1958
From 1958 to 1967, Clark Kerr served as president of the University of California system, expanding its reach and inspiring other state officials to follow his model. He created a system with multiple campuses state-wide to serve a range of students, from community colleges to elite research universities. He also proposed that every student should be able to go to college, regardless of ability to pay.
To critics, that isn't enough. They see a system in which some tenured professors teach just two or three classes a year, sometimes on obscure topics that mesh with their research but not necessarily with student needs. At the same time, more instruction is handled by part-time lecturers, who now make up at least 50% of the nation's higher-education faculty—up from 30% in 1975, according to the American Association of University Professors.
Meanwhile, tuition is soaring; undergraduate costs at public four-year universities climbed 139% between 1990 and 2010, according to the nonprofit College Board. Last school year, average tuition and fees were $7,020 at a four-year public university and $26,273 at a private institution, the College Board says.
Nowhere has the overhaul movement taken hold more firmly than in Texas. A law that took effect this fall—and which passed the legislature unanimously— requires public universities to post online the budget of each academic department, the curriculum vitae of each instructor, full descriptions and reading lists for each course and student evaluations of each faculty member. The law, the first of its kind in the nation, requ ires the information to be accessible within three clicks of the college's home page.
Supporters say the information will help students pick useful classes so that they can move more quickly toward degrees. Skeptics fear it will spark culture wars as left and right tussle over the merits of specific classes and teachers. Ideologues could "find something they don't like in a syllabus, take it out of context and paint the wrong picture," said Karan Watson, interim provost at Texas A&M.
Others are concerned that posting students' evaluations online will boost the status of professors who are entertaining—or an easy A—over those who require kids to wrestle with tough material. "I know from experience that everyone who taught statistics got a lower evaluation than those who taught courses that were a little less challenging," says John Antel, provost at the University of Houston.
Individual Texas colleges also are moving on their own reforms. Thomas Evenson, dean of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service at the University of North Texas, has ordered his faculty to spend at least four hours a day, four days a week, on campus or engaged in field research, in addition to the hours they spend teaching. The goal: to make "more of an effort" to ensure that faculty are "present, available and productive," he said. The University of Houston has doubled the pot of money set aside for teaching awards, to $400,000 a year.
But perhaps the most far-reaching initiative is the cost-benefit balance sheet at Texas A&M, the oldest public university in the state. Each faculty member is assessed on criteria including the number of classes that they teach, the tuition that they bring in and research grants that they generate.
One metric divides their salary by the number of students that they teach. The range is striking. Some nontenured lecturers earn less than $100 for each student they instruct. Other professors are teaching such small classes that their compensation works out to more than $10,000—in a few cases, more than $20,000—per student.
Mr. Criscione, the assistant professor studying parasites, came out at $23,563 per student. He says that is because he was setting up his lab and applying for grants most of that year, as is standard for new hires in the biology department, so he supervised just two students.
Faculty on the huge flagship campus, which serves 39,000 undergraduates here in east-central Texas, say some of the data on the spreadsheet are inaccurate, including inflated salaries and missing grants. They also say it's unfair to judge their productivity by class size when they often can't pick what they teach but are assigned by their department heads.
And they point out that the data do not take into account the many hours spent preparing lectures, advising students, serving on curriculum review committees or making other contributions to the college community. "A 50-minute lecture takes me two days to prepare," says Mr. Criscione. "There are 24 lectures in a semester, so you do the math."
In response to complaints, administrators recently pulled the report from a public website to review the data. University President R. Bowen Loftin sent a letter to faculty promising the data wouldn't be used to "assess the overall productivity" of individuals.
Administrators in the chancellor's office, which produced the document, declined to be interviewed. The Board of Regents also declined.
The concept of a productivity spreadsheet came from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that Gov. Rick Perry invited to a state university summit in May 2008. The group suggested several reforms with a common theme: Let taxpayers see what's going on at every public institution—and let them decide what's worth subsidizing.
Bill Peacock, a vice president at the foundation, acknowledges that this approach could mean a radical reshaping of academia, with far more emphasis on filling students with practical information and less on intellectual pursuits, especially in the liberal arts.
That's OK by him. "Taxpayers of the state of Texas," Mr. Peacock says, should decide whether "they should be spending two years paying the salary of an English professor so he can write a book of poetry simply to add to the prestige of the university or the body of literature out there."
When the choice is put that bluntly, Chester Dunning, a history professor at Texas A&M, wonders if he'd pass muster. Mr. Dunning teaches two classes a semester and has won several teaching awards. His salary of about $90,000 a year also covers the time he spends researching Russian literature and history. His most recent book argues that Alexander Pushkin's drama "Boris Godunov" was a comedy, not a tragedy.
Mr. Dunning says his scholarly work animates his teaching and inspires his students. "But if you want me to explain why a grocery clerk in Texas should pay taxes for me to write those books, I can't give you an answer," he says.
His eyes sweep his cramped office, lined with books. Then Mr. Dunning finds his answer. "We've only got 5,000 years of recorded human history," he says, "and I think we need every precious bit of it."
Write to Stephanie Simon atstephanie.simon@wsj.com
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)