Danny Crichton

I haven't updated my blog recently due to the new quarter and a new series of articles I am writing for the Stanford Review. I am looking at the changing role of the humanities in university education, especially at Stanford. The first piece looks at the history of higher education and how its changing structure has helped and (mostly) hindered the development of the humanities over the past 100+ years. It is available online at http://stanfordreview.org/article/fraying-at-the-edges.

This article was originally written for the Stanford Review's Fiat Lux blog

Last time on ROTC, I wrote about the apathy of Stanford students on the movement to remove the ban on ROTC on campus. Along the way, I presented a handful of views which generated a healthy exchange in the comments section. Definitely check out that article and its responses.

Rather than responding to the criticisms of that article (many of which are fair and well-argued), I want to take a more encompassing look at the cultural differences between the military and elite universities. It is my fundamental thesis that the military's culture today is largely independent of the culture that exists at places like Stanford, a disconnect that did not exist until the last few decades.

I will start by looking at how the military culture has evolved since the end of the Vietnam War, and what the causes of that change might be. Then, I will look at the current attitudinal differences that I believe are the most striking differences between the armed services and elite student bodies. Implicit in an article of this type is the risk of generalization, so I disclaim upfront that no discussion of groups as diverse as the U.S. military and elite students can possibly encompass everyone.

Where did the culture change come from?

Most commentators focus on the draft as the crucial difference between the pre- and post-Vietnam armed services. The argument is that the draft ensured a level of equality of service in the military, and thus, military culture was not so different from civilian culture since the two were essentially the same group of people.

The problem I have with this analysis is that it makes two broad assumptions that I don't think are accurate. The first is

This article was originally written for the Stanford Review's Fiat Lux blog

The humanities may have been in decline for several decades now, but recent events are signaling that a critical period lies ahead for these disciplines. The recent cancellation of programs in literature and foreign languages at the University of Albany was only the most recent example of colleges aggressively cutting their humanities departments to skeletal staff, often transferring the funds to more "practical” majors like business or IT administration.

Many answers have been trotted out to evaluate and presumably solve the problem. Stanley Fish, a prominent English professor at Florida International University, has argued that the humanities are essentially useless, but in a response to the Albany cancellation, wrote that "it is the job of presidents and chancellors to proclaim the value of liberal arts education loudly and often and at least try to make the powers that be understand what is being lost when traditions of culture and art that have been vital for hundreds and even thousands of years disappear from the academic scene.”

Taking a different approach, Joshua Landy, a Stanford Professor of French, argues that the humanities can open windows into ourselves. His advice? "Don't major in economics." The humanities have an intrinsic usefulness that can engage the young (and old) mind in new questions and new realities, and that passionately pursuing our own questions is much healthier than a rush to major in something practical.

An historical perspective of the situation is offered by Louis Menand, a distinguished professor of English at Harvard. Writing in his recent book The Marketplace of Ideas, he argues in one chapter that the development of humanities and its paradigms arose from the need to professionalize the disciplines - in effect, to require that

This article was originally written for the Stanford Review's Fiat Lux blog

The faculty committee charged with considering ROTC's return to Stanford has recently requested comments from the university community. The response has been a little underwhelming: less than 20 emails and 6 phone calls according to an article by the Stanford Daily. The contact information has been published fairly widely, both in the Daily and in the Stanford Review, as well as here on Fiat Lux.

Interestingly, it was noted that the majority of responses have been positive toward ROTC, a possible surprise given the recent spate of negative editorials condemning its return. It seems that students are quite apathetic about the issue - from both sides of the debate.

This low turnout is disconcerting. History professor David Kennedy kicked off this introspection on ROTC with a speech to the faculty senate in which he noted strong concern over the growing divide between civilians and the military. Since our military is accountable to civilian political leaders, a division can increase tensions and unrest regarding military actions. One only has to look to last year's debate over Afghanistan policy to see the stirrings of this divide in action.

That cultural divide may or may not be wide throughout most of America, but it most definitely is at elite schools. There are just very few people at Stanford who appear interested in joining the military, as the numbers above suggest. The absence of ROTC is partly to blame, as there may be students who are unaware of the benefits of military service. But I am willing to venture here and say that those students are relatively few and countable on a hand or two.

The issue, in my analysis, is already one of culture. The qualities that Stanford inculcates in its

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my experience in learning computer science over the last decade. In that same vein, this article was just published by the Chronicle of Higher Education by Kevin Carey, who discusses what a small background in CS did for him.

Discussing his work in analyzing school finance data, he writes:

So I sat down, mostly as an intellectual exercise, to rewrite the formula from first principles. The result yielded a satisfyingly direct SAS procedure. Almost as an afterthought, I showed it to a friend who worked for the state legislature. To my surprise, she reacted with enthusiasm, and a few months later the new financing formula became law. Good public policy and good code, it turned out, go hand in hand. The law has reaccumulated some extraneous procedures in the decade since. But my basic ideas are still there, directing billions of dollars to schoolchildren using language recorded in, as state laws are officially named, the Indiana Code.

This is why I believe that some level of logic and programming is a prerequisite for far more careers than is generally acknowledged. There's a reason that Columbia recently started a joint-degree program in journalism and computer science. The ability to write your own codes allows you to create your own tools - and that is truly powerful.

Republicans have taken the House in a land-slide victory, swinging the most seats in decades and giving them a fairly healthy majority. They were less successful in the Senate, picking up seven seats (with Alaska) but made up for it with a strong showing in many gubernatorial races.

Those are the basic facts, but it the analysis of the results is a little less clear. Below, I join on the commentating bandwagon by providing my reflections on these results.

Reflection #1: Redistricting Doesn't Matter

One of the common themes of analysis that I have seen about these elections was redistricting - the decennial redrawing of congressional maps based on the U.S. census. Common wisdom has it that Republicans are in a position to lock in their majority for a decade or more by controlling more governor's mansions than Democrats. I believe that such wisdom is incorrect.

Redistricting does not happen in a vacuum. Even with minorities, Democrats do not lack a voice in the process, and they are going to scream if Republicans begin to systematically gerrymander on a wide scale. Given the current cynicism of the American voter, there is only so far that a partisan legislature can push the map before the controversy alone makes the advantage of the map moot. Moreover, both sides can even join forces to gerrymander together (hence why California has gone through elections without a single seat changing hands).

Does redistricting matter a little? Sure, there are always close seats that can take advantage of a few more neighborhoods to make the numbers safer. And given how close many districts are, redistricting may make the cost of running higher. But that hardly cements a single party for a decade.

Post-Analysis #2: Talent Matters

So what does matter? Talent. The loss of Sharron

How will our generation adapt to the decline of America? That will be the question of our country, and indeed, of the world as we progress through the twenty-first century. On both an economic and political level, America has lost the ability to think with vision and with force. Perhaps it was hubris, but this country used to be the destination for success. Today, that success is altogether fleeting.

In economic terms, we will grapple with higher unemployment, greater income inequality, more contingent labor, lower living standards and ultimately less fulfilling careers. The source of these problems are numerous. The lack of quality public education for a large part of the population is my top culprit. Our economy has become more technical over time, yet we cannot increase the number of scientists and engineers coming from our schools (or for that matter, change a culture that ridicules the math and science abilities of its youth). Other sources of problems include a declining civil infrastructure and an aging population.

If our problems were exclusively economic, America's future would be secure. This is the country that leads in economic reinvention and entrepreneurship. No, the other problem is one of politics.

The level of dysfunction in American government is simply breathtaking, and it will only get worse with new trends like the rise of corporate campaign contributions in the wake of the Citizens United case. Public trust has reached such an abysmal low that no politician - I repeat, no politician - can possibly govern effectively in the face of the factional politics that divide us. What politician can ask for the sacrifices needed if no one believes them?

What will America look like in two decades? Take a look at today's New York Times, where Martin Fackler discusses the two decade decline

In an article in the NYTimes, Nicholas D. Kristof discusses the changing experience of Oman over the past few decades. Once fundamentalist, the country has modernized at a breathtaking pace, and today is one of the most open and tolerant societies in the Arab world. Two years ago, I wrote a paper on this very topic for a class at Stanford (the paper also happens to be the first research paper I wrote in college, so apologies in advanced for some less-than-lucid writing).

The theory of deliberative democracy remains very controversial, since the Western tradition generally focuses on rule of law as a critical element of any democratic society. While it remains to be seen if Oman will continue to modernize under future sultans, its gains today should be lauded and encouraged throughout the Middle East.