David McCullough is fabulous in every possible way. Since it’s clear that nobody in DC is actually listening to transport people any more, maybe they’ll listen to McCullough? If they don’t, you should, in this very charming story from NPR.
05/20/2012
Bike corporate sponsorship…yeah, ok, I guess
Here is a boosteristic op-ed praising CitiBike from Steve Smith in the New York Daily News. It came through my Twitter Feed via Richard Florida. I was suspending judgment until Smith overplayed his hand in the last, chirpy line:
Public services are expensive. Taxpayers are stretched. Let companies be part of the solution.
Or, companies and their elite managers could just pay their taxes, stop putting the screws on cities for endless corporate perks, and stop hollowing out governments so that people could just have public goods in their cities.
But then, companies and their apologists couldn’t ride in on white horses so that they can slap their logos on every square inch of New York and expect the glowing gratitude of the hoi polloi in return.
05/19/2012
Farewell, John Quigley
This is one of those posts I’ve put off writing because writing it means I have to admit that John Quigley is really gone, and I really don’t want to. John was a giant in urban economics, and his students are among my favorite scholars, including three of my most valued colleagues: Chris Redfearn, Juliet Musso, and Gary Painter. John Quigley passed away last weekend. Here is a lovely obituary written by his colleagues.
Keep in mind, I only met Quigley once, last year, at a function for the Goldman School. I’ve been at the academic rodeo for a little while now, and I can tell you: you meet your intellectual heroes, and many of them are jerks. By contrast, John was an intellectual hero of mine, largely because of his work on housing markets, and honestly, even my fangirl crush couldn’t have constructed a warmer, more decent man to go along with my image of what a great scholar should be: brilliant, humble, accessible, and as interested in your ideas as he is in his own. In our brief interaction, Quigley embodied all of those things.
Here are three of my favorite papers:
Quigley, J.M. Urban Diversity and Economic Growth. The Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol. 12, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), pp. 127-138
Quigley, J.M. and S. Raphael. Is Housing Unaffordable? Why Isn’t It More Affordable? Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 18, Number 1, Winter 2004 , pp. 191-214(24)
Quigley, J.M. and S. Rapheal. Regulation and the High Cost of Housing in California. The American Economic Review.Vol. 95, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the One Hundred Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, Philadelphia, PA, January 7-9, 2005 (May, 2005), pp. 323-328
05/18/2012
The good kind of scared
Yesterday, I admitted at lunch to a colleague that I was nervous about letting myself invest so much time in a book. It’s a weird thing, trying to go from being a five-papers-a-year kind of person to saying “I have this book, and it might take me two years, or it might take me five years. Or longer.” The external validation for the latter is very hard to find. There’s plenty of external validation for somebody who writes a book a year. However, you can always tell when it’s only taken somebody a year to write a book, too; it’s thin and unbaked, usually.
There are, of course, people who write really good books in a year. But as Annie Dillard notes in The Writing Life, there are people who lift cars, too. Even people who eat cars. Why act like that’s the norm?
Yesterday, I got the worried feeling in the pit of my stomach: “I don’t know if I can do this.” One of the people I used to consider a mentor said to me, too, “I doubt you will be productive writing books.”
The feeling bothered me all day. It hung around my office. It shadowed me all over.
When I went to bed, the feeling stayed there, and I recognized it, and I laughed and laughed. I’m smiling as I write this. It was the same feeling I had before I went to grad school. And before I took my quals. And a million times as an assistant professor, whether standing in front of a class or submitting a paper.
Performance anxiety.
Hello, friend.
I seem to have found the challenge I’ve been looking for.
05/17/2012
Today’s conundrum: What reader to use for my social justice class in the fall?
I’ve got two, very nice readers in my possession. One is:
What is Justice: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Edited by Robert C. Solomon and Mark Murphy. I have the second edition, and it’s getting rather dated. A new edition is badly badly needed here, and I don’t have high hopes given that the last update came in 1999.
However, I do like the diversity of readings here, and their selections from the ancients really knocks my socks off. We cover liberation theology in the latter part of the class, and the Old Testament selections in this reader make for a nice bookend. Also, there is a little piece from Mencius. And the Qua’ran.
On the negative side, it also has a section on criminal justice that just isn’t going to be terribly relevant to a class on social justice. And I could find those selections from the ancients really easily in other sources.
The other contender is Michael Sandel’s Justice: A Reader. It’s newer, and I’m assuming it came out of his very famous class on justice at Harvard. It’s a fine selection, but I am not crazy about the way he’s clustered the readings, and while I teach in a policy school, his selected cases strike me as somewhat less interesting than other social conflicts we might pick. For me, I’ve read enough about affirmative action to tear out my hair with both hands. I know it’s important, but I’ve just had enough. I can’t teach very well when I’m bored.
There is ONE selection from a woman. One. And there is no Marx or Hegel or even Hume.
Nonetheless, the selections from Sandel’s favorites are magisterial. It takes some work to extract the pith from Aristotle or Kant, and Sandel just nails it.
The difference: Sandel’s has fewer, longer selections from the western tradition; Solomon and Murphy have more, less in-depth selections from a more diverse array.
Thoughts?
05/16/2012
For those who love New York and the Ghostbusters
It is one of the great tragedies of my life that I did not become a Ghostbuster because that was pretty much my dream for the entirety of my life from fifth grade onward. This dream was thwarted, like so many before it, by the need to eat and pay rent.
However, I so totally could have started Paranormal state if only I had believed in myself and my ability to go “DID YOU HEAR THAT?” with a shocked expression on my face.
Anyhoo.
I love the movie Ghostbusters, and I love New York. So this video is super awesome. Watch it at work, as a testimony to your many dreams that have been abandoned due sucky reality.
05/15/2012
Dowell Myers takes on Joel Kotkin and makes me start asking questions
My brilliant colleague, Dowell Myers, has a nice piece in Zocalo that responds to demographic debate that Joel Kotkin sparked with some of Kotkin’s scathing comments about California in the WSJ. The first big argument is that California retains its natives:
California, in fact, holds its own. When it comes to retaining native sons and daughters, California has the fifth-strongest attraction of all 50 states. Among California-born adults who were at least 25 years of age and old enough to have moved away, fully 66.9 percent were still choosing to reside in the Golden State in 2007, the last year of high migration before the recession held people down. Texas, with 75.1 percent of native Texans still living in the state, has the strongest loyalty, and the other three rounding out the top five are Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia. California’s top-five ranking is all the more impressive when you take into account the state’s high living costs and other negatives. We must have something going for us.
He also notes that slowed population growth is, essentially, inevitable: you aren’t going to see 1980s-style growth in California again, and it couldn’t be maintained, for lots of reasons:
When it comes to the question of how much growth is desirable, the last decade of booming population growth in California was the 1980s, when over 6 million people were added. That is Kotkin’s apparent standard of excellence. But the 1980s were a big anomaly. It might have had something to do with Texas being in an oil bust and the Midwest hitting the worst of its rustbelt slide. Or perhaps it had to do with Ronald Reagan occupying the White House and launching a campaign of defense spending to outmuscle the Soviets, with much of the spending focused on southern California’s aerospace companies. California, in that decade, was a magnet without competition.
All that makes a lot of sense. I am with Myers until the end, where I start to get antsy, not because he’s wrong, but because the challenge is not minor:
In reality, the demographic picture in California is brighter than it has been in decades, provided we meet one key challenge. New studies show that the state’s immigrants have settled in and the growth in the workforce now rides on the skills of homegrown Californians, many the children of immigrants. The main threat in California isn’t about business climate or the types of homes being built. It is about the defunding of higher education and the failure to invest in the next generation of workers, taxpayers, and homebuyers. If there is any doubt about California’s future—and this is no crying wolf—that is the demographic challenge to keep your eyes on.
This piece appeared on the same day that Governor Brown announced that the state had a $15-$16 billion budget deficit. We’ve spent the last four years gutting our budget. I get that Myers that wants to take on overwrought narratives, buy I still think we’re in trouble. The first place everybody wants to cut always seems to be education. What’s left to cut at this point? Maybe we can sell the copper wiring from school electrical systems and let them use candles?
When I put on my economist hat (it’s an ugly hat, if you are wondering) I see California in a policy whipsaw; it is an expensive place to live and work. It is not a cheap place to do business–and I don’t mean business taxes. Instead, I think that the regulatory and approvals process makes it hard to get deals done here across a wide variety of economic sectors. At the same time it’s expensive to live here, our public school systems are not doing so well–and business needs schools to function well. So we are already relatively highly taxed; we are already expensive; and we are cheating ourselves on education, one thing that, if run well, could be a means to offset the idea that the state is a bad value for money on the tax side.
05/14/2012
How I became a princess at middle age, riding the bus
I take the 210 bus up Crenshaw when I get off the Expo Line on the afternoons when I don’t want to walk home. I usually walk the rest of the way, as it’s a bit of exercise. But some afternoons, when I am tired, I’ll take the bus. Depending on the time, there are three old men who ride the bus together and who talk about the old days in Crenshaw. I eavesdrop because they are always interesting, with their memories of the the 1960s jazz clubs and 1970s discos in Crenshaw, now loooooooong gone. They must have been something in the day, these men, because they are very handsome now, and none of them is going to see 75 again.
One of them calls me princess; at first I thought it was some harmless teasing. White people are not terribly numerous on buses in LA. Actually, except when I lived in west LA, I’m usually the only white person on the bus. It’s so common I seldom notice any more.
But the Crenshaw buses are different; instead of the usual constellation of Latinos, African Americans, and Asians that keep LA Metro in business, the Crenshaw buses serving the little stretch between Expo and Washington are full of seniors, and almost all of them are black. They make for raucous buses with lots of familiar conversation among people who are easy in each other’s company.
The first time he called me “Princess”, I shrugged and gave him an “Ok, work on me if you want, I can take it” grin and kept my iPhone earbuds in–the iPhone, the perfect piece of transit armor.
He wasn’t having the earbuds left in. He was going to get me listening to him, period. The second and third time he called me Princess, it became my bus name, and I learned to take my earbuds out as soon as I see he’s there in his spot right behind the driver. His name somehow became “Mister.” We talk about the city and politics in the five minute bus ride I have, and we always end our interaction the same way.
“How ya doin’, Princess?”
“I’m doing all right, I can’t complain.”
“Me neither. What do you think of Obama talking about gay marriage?”
“Oh, I figure it’s about time everybody let that go. People do what they do, I guess.”
“That they do, that they do.”
My stop.
“You be good, Mister.”
“I can’t be nothing else at my age.”
I have never really been anybody’s princess before. My social difficulties and my mother’s obsession with my weight/body prevented me from ever thinking of myself as anything other than “draft horse.” That carried to others and stopped anybody from treating me as something precious or fragile when I was little: I was too big and too strong and too independent to be anybody’s little anything, the way the other girls were. I did what anybody locked out of approval and acceptance does: I became an edgy badass who didn’t need anybody to treat me like I was precious, thankyouverymuch.
Now, I find that I rather enjoy being a princess.
05/13/2012
Black studies and how to critique 101 for the CHE
So, here’s a rough recap of what went on at the Chronicle of Higher Education, in bullet form:
1. The Chronicle published one of their puff pieces on the Young Guns of Black Studies. It’s behind a paywall, but the teaser tells you quite a bit: it’s one of their little anointing articles, but in this case, it’s about a group of young scholars from a new PhD program in Black Studies. I hate these CHE featurettes in general because there’s way too damn much fame-seeking and celeb culture in the academy already, yours truly included, but black scholars should, in general, get as many props as possible just for putting up with the rest of us.
Now, in reality, these dissertations all sound interesting enough, particularly that first one about Chisolm and Jordan. Barbara Jordan was one of my first role models.
2. This was followed up by this swaggering attempt at a takedown by Naomi Schaefer Riley, who, after sniffing that the dissertations were all irrelevant and useless and unworthy of attention, said that these dissertations were proof these programs were, basically, worthless:
Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments. If these young scholars are the future of the discipline, I think they can just as well leave their calendars at 1963 and let some legitimate scholars find solutions to the problems of blacks in America. Solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man.
(Via chronicle.com)
3. And then, when called on her controversial piece, said:
Black Studies, Part 2: A Response to Critics – Brainstorm – The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Finally, since this is a blog about academia and not journalism, I’ll forgive the commenters for not understanding that it is not my job to read entire dissertations before I write a 500-word piece about them. I read some academic publications (as they relate to other research I do), but there are not enough hours in the day or money in the world to get me to read a dissertation on historical black midwifery. In fact, I’d venture to say that fewer than 20 people in the whole world will read it. And the same holds true for the others that are mentioned in the piece.
(Via chronicle.com)
4. This little revelation has caused her to get fired, which has thus made her some kind of darling among some commenters on the academy. I mean, she has freedom of speech, right? This is all just political correctness, right?
Um, no.
First of all, my dissertation had to do with national effing security , people, and I’d bet you $100 that 20 people in the whole world haven’t read my dissertation, either. They read the papers that came out of it. Or at least I desperately hope.
Second of all, the Chronicle is journalism about the academy. And journalists are supposed to to look at evidence. Like reading things, even things you think are boring or beneath you because it has to do with black people.
But more importantly, since when did the argument that your writing is about the academy rather than journalism excuse you from reading the material before you open your big fat gob? Isn’t reading, reflecting, and THEN critiquing kind of what we do? Aren’t there enough sources of uninformed yammer on the internet without scholars adding to it?
Here’s my favorite discussion of this problem, from Timothy Burke, a professor of History at Swarthmore. I quote at length, but his suggestions are so good I can’t stop myself, and I’ll give the excuse that I’m encouraging you to start reading him if you don’t:
If you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and work a bit, I think you’ll find that there are important criticisms of Black Studies as field within the field and outside of it, by white authors and black authors alike.
Some suggestions for the person who is genuinely seeking well-considered, ambitious criticisms:
Walter Benn Michaels, The Trouble With Diversity.
Michaela di Leonardo, Exotics at HomeChallenging critiques of identity politics and the academic study of identity from a broadly leftward direction–but that should be as interesting and useful a resource for conservatives as anyone else.
Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa
Stephen Howe, AfrocentrismI would definitely get some flack from colleagues for suggesting the former book, but as long as you understand that Lefkowitz is primarily criticizing a specific branch of thought within Black Studies (Afrocentrism, and specifically forms of Afrocentric scholarship from the 1980s and early 1990s), I think it’s an interesting and important critique. Howe’s critically-focused intellectual history of Afrocentrism will help put the sharp exchanges between Lefkowitz and her critics in a longer and wider perspective.
Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House
Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism
Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity
Paul Gilroy, Against Race
Hazel Carby, Race Men
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Colored People: A MemoirI think these authors would not describe these works as rejecting the political project of Black Studies–indeed, they’re all taught and read as part of the canon in the field. But I think it’s possible to read these books as criticizing some prominent aspects of or ideas about identity and blackness, including how the study of those topics has been institutionalized in academic institutions. (Appiah’s dialogue with Amy Gutman in Color Conscious may also be of interest in this vein.)
Stanley Crouch, pretty much all of his non-fiction that isn’t about jazz, but especially The All-American Skin Game
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Race Experts
John McWhorter, Losing the RaceSharp, contrarian critiques of the institutionalization of identity politics, among other things.
Scott Malcolmsen, One Drop of Blood
Leon Wynter, American Skin
Jacob Dlamini, Native Nostalgia
Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together
Clarence Walker, Mongrel NationAll indirectly or directly raising big questions about whether the black or African (or other fixedly racial) subject is the wrong thing to be studying.
More? I can supply it. The point is, you don’t need a shallow, proudly uninformed rejection of Black Studies to participate in a critical evaluation of the field or of scholars within it.
(Via Easily Distracted)
5. I’m sure Riley will go on to much more lucrative gigs as some money-flush part of the media world picks her up. Read: Palin, Sarah. No need to worry about her.
But sheesh. Why is commenting without reading now seen as a *right* instead the scholarly equivalent of breaking wind in public? Reading and reflecting is central to our g-d jobs, people! If we give up on those tasks, who in the sam hill is going to embody those scholarly tasks in democratic deliberation if not us?
05/11/2012
Graduation day!
I’m so grateful that I have been your teacher, and now, I hope, your friend.
Sounding off