What’s with the silently imposed assumption in that paragraph that extraneous material is banned from classrooms? I never encountered a rule like that in my teaching. (Broader) context and background is what makes a topic relevant and grounded.
I had a windshield and bug question in my first year physics which sent me on a (brief) tangent about the global collapse of insect populations. Fewer bugs hit windshields now.
The Canterbury Tales were written during the so-called “crisis of the late Middle Ages,” which was driven by the great famine and later Black Death during the 14th C. The subsequent crises following mass death — peasants’ revolt, religious turmoil, etc — all downstream of end of medieval warm period
Are we talking "climate change", which is commonly used as a euphemism for "global warming post-Industrial-revolution"? Because that's the one universities are trying to ban. They aren't forbidding discussions of the Ice Age, big or little.
Just climate and its effect on society. Of course the Little Ice Age was a natural phenomenon. But it reminds us how devastating even minor fluctuations can be--especially if we can avoid them!
When I teach global history, I connect earlier instances of climate change with our current period. I wouldn't discuss the former without also the latter.
Climate change is inherently interdisciplinary. The study of it involves every branch of science & the consequences impact all life on earth & all economic activity. Of course it will be referenced to some degree across many classes, it should be, if anything we still aren’t talking about it enough.
Also: what is up with that graphic of a white dude trying to topple stonehenge stones on Black and Brown women? Was that like an editorial comment from graphics?
It can't be Medieval History, since climate changes characterized the major transformations of that millennium (6th-century Late Antique Little Ice Age; Medieval Climate Anomaly; various globally impactful volcanic eruptions, incl. Samalas [1257], onset of late medieval/early modern Little Ice Age).
I teach a class with a historian of art and architecture in which we discuss the ways climate change affected major cities and settlements over the last 10,000 years (Doggerland, Mesopotamia, Egyptian cities along the Nile, Ancient Greek cities, Rome, Venice, Dhaka, ...)
Has to be relevant, or can be? Lots of math doesn't need to talk about climate change-- look, trigonometry, circles, totally abstract!-- but you can pull examples and problems from the real world.
“I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.”
Easy there, fella. Fordham had to be sued to give spousal benefits to gay faculty who were married. All of them expel students for protesting for abortion rights.
I don’t know about Fordham but I do know that in the year 2000 Spring Hill College in Mobile Alabama hired back a former Jesuit priest that left the order to marry his husband.
It’s part of the reason I let my friend convince me to transfer.
My HS senior decides over the next few weeks whether to attend Georgetown or another highly selective school. In contrast to Georgetown, their letter says their DEI approach is ‘evolving.’ We learn 10 paragraphs in that the DEI office has in fact already closed. Disillusioning for a young student.
Rich people's money. That's the entire orientation of the Trump Administration. Radiating out in the order of priorities explained by Vance when trying to explain what he thinks Christian priorities are - me, my family, my friends, my close neighbours,etc.
oh "extraneous" references to climate change are the real problem? and here I was thinking it was international students being deported for their tweets. silly me :(
Don’t feel bad. I had mistaken the real problem for actual climate change itself. Clearly mentioning climate change when you could possibly get away with not doing so will be the undoing of the human species.
This dude is the head of a college whose students are currently involved with the courts for filming a "To Catch a Predator" hunt -- which involved kidnapping.
He might not be the best choice for advice on anything.
Wow that is some manipulative language isn't it. That's the kind of s*** Elon Musk would say about why he had to buy Twitter. The manipulation the propaganda value of the language is fascinating and horrible
I dunno if orbital mechanics related to spacecraft I would assume things like spacecrafts that at least a cursory discussion of climate change might be present in regards to launch and the travel through the atmosphere.
Also, at least at my program, orbital mechanics dealt exclusively with non-atmospheric flight. Atmospheric flight, and assent-entry was a series of separate classes.
I admit that I discuss it a lot more when I'm teaching the intro population and organismal bio lecture (which includes ~5 weeks of ecology) than when I'm teaching intro molecular biology lab.
For me it's not so much that it's irrelevant as that it is much less clearly relevant sometimes.
It winds up being relevant in every high school science class I teach, so I have to imagine that it's relevant to pretty much every college science class, as well as a decent chunk of economics, anthropology, sociology, architecture, and even art, literature, and more. 55% easy.
I think that’s a misread. High school sciences are by nature extremely broad and will touch on many topics, college courses get narrower and narrower in scope and focus as your progress.
There's a difference between climate change being an integral part of the class and climate change not being irrelevant to the class. Do you have to include it in physical chemistry? Maybe not, but it isn't inappropriate to use as an example of radioisotope analysis. I'll cede quantum mechanics.
Is "the responsibility not to abuse the authority of the classroom by introducing extraneous material" a part of Catholic dogma? Are you still allowed to tell jokes?
I had a professor devote about 15 minutes of a class to a PowerPoint show of her time as an aide in the West Wing of the Clinton White House. *That's* extraneous material. I guess I should have written her up.
Are the students alive?
Do they hope to live in a world not torn apart by climate disasters?
Then understanding how climate chaos will impact them, their families, and their field of study or career is essential.
My reaction was more surprise that 45% of college courses could somehow treat the greatest crisis facing the global ecosystem since universities were created ~900 years ago as NOT relevant!
In Dr Strangelove, Major T J Kong says, “Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human beins if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat.“
I feel like the end of human civilization via runaway greenhouse cycle has similarly broad relevance.
This is a batshit crazy comparison. This motherfucker thinks so along as one thing is in the “liberal” bucket and another is in the “conservative” bucket they can be weighed equally against each other and that’s just so stupid I feel sorry for all those kids dropping $100k to get their brains broken
Such false equivalence. The conservative opinion is that of someone who would be actively harmful to students in their classroom. Also, the conservative view is presented as a statement of fact as opposed to a statement of opinion.
they always do this shit: revert to opinion polling where the question at issue is much deeper than polling can get at, to the point where it becomes an excuse. and on the other side, many things that are very popular but extremely inconvenient for the rich get barely mentioned. balance, amirite?
55% of the faculty said they had discussed climate change despite it being irrelevant…
Who is deciding the relevance here? The faculty? more likely, they were asked if they discussed it, and the people using the survey results decided whether climate change was relevant or irrelevant.
Literally none. It isn't a focus in some of my classes right now (sociology of family, sexuality, sport) but it would not at all be a stretch to include CC related topics in any of those classes.
Exactly. And for projects where they have some choice, it could easily come up. "Professor I want to write about how it might be impossible to host the winter Olympics in the future because of climate change." Yeah, kind of important!
A friend wrote a paper about how dickens discusses snow and skating a lot more than would be reasonable in the modern uk climate because he wrote during a mini ice age.
I mean, younger folks worrying about whether they should even have children or if they'd be doomed to a hell future due to climate change seems relevant....
Excellent. But then you know there are courses where climate change could only be introduced by torturing the subject, which is silly. Everything is connected to everything else, so you can always stretch to cover, but at some point it's forcing "relevant" to work overtime for minimum wage.
Sure, for some courses. But as I said in a follow-up, there is a classic QM course that is basically "the hydrogen atom" in detail. Talking about CO2 in that course would be a waste of everyone's time. Climate change is important, but not universal.
A typical advanced QM undergrad course is basically "the hydrogen atom to many decimal places", where everything bigger than an Angstrom is irrelevant.
i mean i get your point but there are a lot of computer science courses that it would be quite a stretch to associate with climate change. like, compiler theory, finite state automata, etc.
I think the original author who thinks professors bring up these topics to brainwash students is missing the giant elephant in the room which is that STUDENTS bring it up and we have to find a way to guide them emotionally, academically etc. GenZ is v worried about climate change.
When they have the freedom to pick any topic this is one that they consistently pick — and it doesn’t matter what discipline b/c it’s related to all disciplines and it’s related to how we exist in the world (and thus how we even study a discipline).
100%: maybe not (accounting?) but 55%, sure. I also don't see 60% of faculty being okay with conservative colleagues as a sign of an oppressive orthodoxy
Some very specific ones such as clinicals and technical topics. Not all Law, Math, Engineering or Medicine classes need to explain the connections but as a discipline they certainly do, otherwise the students will struggle when they face these realities in their careers. #studentsuccess
I don’t generally mention climate change in my education courses. But I easily could make connections to it when talking about trauma-informed teaching, disability prevalence, and the importance of teaching science and social studies.
The op-ed was neither written by an academic nor someone at a real university; that said, this notion also means that they don’t teach the Bible in every class ?!?
I will give a simple answer.
But first I will premptively state that I believe that climate change is one of the worst crises we face, along with wealth inequality, and the US turn to authoritarianism.
Anyway, the answer is: most of them. Cal I, II, III, nope. Survey of English Lit, nope. Etc etc
So, we are forbidden from discussing the weather? I couldn’t say: "How odd that it’s almost 80 degrees at the beginning of March," because one of my students would certainly respond by saying, "Climate change is real.” And then we might have a discussion related to the weather, aka climate change.
Yes, they already have the snitch email set up. And controversy is welcome in my classroom because I encourage critical thinking. If universities stood together they could end this madness very quickly.
We had a lecture about how a few of our German institutes behaved in the ‘30s and ‘40s… I would not expect more than a few to stand up now either, most will bow to the prevailing administrative winds. 💨 1/2
Comments
Introductory math
Practical genetics
Academic writing
Some really specific lit class I didn’t take
This is just a bunch of words he knows strung together in the least useful way possible.
Also, I've had great classes full of extraneous material. Assumption must be a bore.
I had a windshield and bug question in my first year physics which sent me on a (brief) tangent about the global collapse of insect populations. Fewer bugs hit windshields now.
An enduring smell.
https://bsky.app/profile/carlbergstrom.com/post/3llkv3rl64c2b
During the CRM the Superior General was asked if he was worried about how many Jesuits had been arrested.
He said he worried about those who hadn’t.
Every Spring Hillian knows that by heart, LOL
It’s part of the reason I let my friend convince me to transfer.
AMDG!
Sometimes being able to put an orthodox religious foundation to your personal ethics can be very helpful.
He might not be the best choice for advice on anything.
For me it's not so much that it's irrelevant as that it is much less clearly relevant sometimes.
Saying every course should is a bit bizarre
Though climate change could impact when and where such fellating could occur.
Do they hope to live in a world not torn apart by climate disasters?
Then understanding how climate chaos will impact them, their families, and their field of study or career is essential.
I feel like the end of human civilization via runaway greenhouse cycle has similarly broad relevance.
Who is deciding the relevance here? The faculty? more likely, they were asked if they discussed it, and the people using the survey results decided whether climate change was relevant or irrelevant.
https://bsky.app/profile/heathertubbscooley.bsky.social/post/3llkvkfrkn22q
One creative writing assignment, coming up!
Most of them care a lot about climate change - it’s not only topical to our courses but very relevant to their interests.
Have these people ever been in a college course? Extraneous material is like a third of all classes I've taken
Language courses, maybe?
But first I will premptively state that I believe that climate change is one of the worst crises we face, along with wealth inequality, and the US turn to authoritarianism.
Anyway, the answer is: most of them. Cal I, II, III, nope. Survey of English Lit, nope. Etc etc