I’m not even on the list of America’s Worst Professors, and Minnesota is completely unrepresented (we must be a very conservative state, I guess)…but Michael Bérubé is. So are Juan Cole and Timothy Shortell and Noam Chomsky (of course!). Go vote for your Favorite Worst Professor.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’ve got a cousin on that list. I had no idea he was so prominent as to warrant being the target of a hate campaign….
Um, where is the “University of California, Berkelyl?” I’ve heard of “Berkeley…” What a lame website.
Also, talk about politics in command. Noam Chomsky, no matter what you think of his politics, he’s an incredibly important linguist. I take it that real contributions to learning don’t immunize you from being named one of America’s worst professors if your politics are wrong.
Man, not a single one from Iowa–or even Yale. Guess I gotta step up the indoctrinatin’…
Absolutely, gracchus, I would consider myself very lucky to have any of the listees as a professor. (Chomsky! Zinn! I wish I could take just one class!) And does this website offer a “best professor” contest? I doubt it. (Who would win?) This is just what spoiled, rich, ungrateful kids do with their time–assuming the people voting actually had any of these people for professors at all.
kristine, perhaps camille paglia? behe?
What a shock to see that Melissa Gilbert grew up, went to grad school, and became a professor at Temple.
She’s clearly come a long way from Little House on the Prairie. Good for you, professor.
Ack. Sorry for the failure to close that link.
That’s the dangerous professors list released to the public. There’s also a super-top-secret list of frighteningly dangerous professors. (You know, the ones with hard drives full of squiddy porn.) I’m betting you’re on that list.
Ratemyprofessor.com has a somewhat higher opinion of Chomsky, 3.3 out of five stars. Weirdly no one rated him as “hot.”
Look at the links off to the side. One of them is
“stoptheism.org”
Stop theism? A noble sentiment, but alas … it’s false advertising.
Chomsky, hot? Bwahahaha!
Gracchus is right — Chomsky isn’t called the “Father of Modern Linguistics” for nothing, even if lately linguistics seems to be more of a hobby for him. And if my life vitally depended on one person’s bad-ass debating skillz, I’d so totally be picking Chomsky to debate for me. Well, actually, it’s a toss-up between him, Socrates, and Daniel Webster.
Whoops … “stoptheism.com”. My eyes must be going… too much looking at organic structures today.
spencer, and get a load of that dress. hubba hubba.
I wonder if it would be bad form to ask everyone to go and vote for me? I know I don’t have the bona fides of a Chomsky, a Zinn, a Foner, a hooks, a Davis, etc. etc., but I make up for it with a cute cartoon.
My campaign promise: if elected, I pledge to redouble my efforts to ridicule and offend!
Damn, do I go with kinsfolk for for the direct appeal?
“get a load of that dress”
It looks nice. And so does Melissa too.
I’ve attended one Chomsky lecture, on linguistics and evolution. *swoon* I even got to ask him a question personally! Then he got into a big argument with Fodor.
He’s really more the “father of modern syntax”…his phonology is way way way out of date, and MIT in general seems to be covering their ears and going “LA LA LA LA” at all modern phonology.
The thing is, 90% or more of linguists are just as liberal as Chomsky, just not as well known. Even the hysterical right-wing crazies are too busy attacking the history department to notice that the linguists are so “unamerican”.
In this world where “Horowitz” is a synonym for “half-assed”, you can vote for everyone as many times as you want! Just click, click, click, go back in your browser, and click some more!
I can tell that that Bérubé fellow has been clicking obsessively on that site all day long. Stop it, Michael! You’ll go blind!
I’m pushing to get on it too. What an honor that would be!
a quick look at the results page shows that Michael Berube (sorry, don’t know how to do accents…) is winning in a landslide.
I’m sure he’ll be thrilled ;-). Just remember, if you didn’t make it on to somebody’s shit list, you didn’t do anything important today…
The only biologist I can find in a quick skim of the list is Paul Ehrlich…did I miss anybody?
When I clicked on the link, Michael Bérubé had 5145 votes, compared to Howard Zinn’s 21. That’s 245 times exactly.
I have one of two alternatives: either Pharynguloids and Michael Bérubé’s readers are distorting the voting pattern or David Horowitz is obsessively clicking and then clearing his cookies every time.
What I wonder is why Howard Zinn’s name isn’t more notorious among conservatives. Don’t they read? (Or have I just answered my own question?)
Guess what? You don’t have to clear the cookies. It doesn’t keep track of anything — just vote away.
geez. not only haven’t i ever studied under any of them, i’ e never met or in any way communicated with so much as a single one of them. i feel so left out now; i need to get serious about my academic networking, i guess.
Um, Folks, I just went to the Temple U website and I don’t believe their Melissa Gilbert, PhD is the same lady as the actress. The dates of her publications don’t jive with starring TV roles.
Geography and Urban Studies
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Chomsky as well, though not until many years after I was an MIT undergrad. Incidentally, for those who have not read any of his political writing: It’s very matter-of-factly presented, and meticulously referenced. No histrionics, no hyperbole — it’s exactly what one would expect from a scientist who is politically active. Recordings of many of his public lectures are available; they’re great “driving music” for progressives who need to be reminded that they’re not alone!
Darn, I was hoping I’d be first with a “Berkelyl” joke! You’d think they’d have written enough anti-Berkeley screeds to spell it right. Go Bérubél!
You can vote with two clicks and then revote with two more clicks.
I voted about 30-40 times for Victor Navasky. He’s been a real trouper for decades, and didn’t deserve to be sitting at the bottom.
PZ,
Maybe you didn’t make the list because, as a “single issue” blog, you just don’t register on his radar.
Jealousy and envy, that’s all.
Damn you, Myers, you were assigned to get yourself on that list; you’ve obviously been highly inefficient in the required political indoctrination of your students. Didn’t you read your orders from the Central Committee? Don’t make us schedule you for re-education.
Baylor?? How little do you have to do to get listed as a lefty at Baylor?? That Marc Ellis must be quite a guy.
What? No one from Macalester in St. Paul? As a proud alum, we have a reputation to uphold! I thought we were an institution of godless liberals living in a den of sin, blasphemy, and (gulp) tolerance…
“I don’t believe their Melissa Gilbert, PhD is the same lady as the actress”
Ooops. I guess I was too enticed by the package to consider the content of that post… Why is it called gonads, when ‘gonuts’ would be so much more appropriate?
I’m so sorry you weren’t nominated! You were totally robbed. Say, what if we started a petition to include you? I bet the Discovery Institute would write you a letter of recommendation!
Sorry you came up short this time PZ. I have added a bunch of votes for Berube, let’s all see if we can get him over 100,000!
By the way, anybody who’s interested in Chomsky, linguistics, and the human drama of scientific competition might want to read The Linguistics Wars by Randy Allen Harris.
It describes the 15-year battle between Chomsky and the Chomskians on one hand, and the Generative Semanticists on the other. (Those including several former students, who viewed themselves partly as out-Chomskying Chomsky.)
George Lakoff, who has also come up on this blog, was one of the leaders of the generative semanticists. More recently he’s been an advisor to Howard Dean and the Democratic Party, on political rhetoric. (He wrote the book Moral Politics.)
I sat in on Lakoff’s seminar at Berkeley one semester, and he told me that a lot of his ideas about rhetoric grew out of his experience arguing with Chomsky for 15 years; if you read Harris’s book, you can see some connections. (And I have to say, it can be kinda scary. I don’t like some of Lakoff’s rhetorical advice, but I understand his arguments for it better than I’d like to.)
Some people may be idolizing Chomsky a bit too much; there is what many people think of as a cult of personality around him, in linguistics as well as politically. But there is no question he’s quite the formidable scientist and rhetoritician.
Sorry you came up short this time PZ. I have added a bunch of votes for Berube, let’s all see if we can get him over 100,000!
hmmm… that gives me an evil thought. Since the predictably half-assed voting system doesn’t set cookies or otherwise check whether you’ve voted already, maybe we could write a script to vote for him in a continuous loop…?
There’s a python script over in Bérubé’s thread that will do just that.
There’s a python script over in Bérubé’s thread that will do just that.
Nice :-).
Um, Folks, I just went to the Temple U website and I don’t believe their Melissa Gilbert, PhD is the same lady as the actress
Gee, ya think?
There’s a python script over in Bérubé’s thread that will do just that.
And Berube’s in the lead, breaking the 10,000 vote barrier, with Foster in second at around 9,000. I guess his script doesn’t run as fast.
I am just SO offended; I couldn’t find a single physicist on that list, and I know for a fact that we inflict some of the worst teaching known to man on a the student body. Just ask any engineering student or pre-med.
While all those bleeding-heart liberal arts types on the list will be oh, so sensitive of their student’s delicate self esteem, we’ll hammer them hard with no compunction whatsoever: “Ah, Mr. Fratboy. I guess you were too busy drinking last night to studey for the quiz, otherwise you’d know how to take the definite integral of a hyperbolic function. D-, sucka!”
Either that, or Horowitz is a moronic putz. Oh, wait…
“But there is no question he’s quite the formidable scientist and rhetoritician.”
The point you’re making stands, but I think Chomsky would be the first to say that he is not a scientist in any useful sense of the term.
In fact, I think he’s often blamed for ushering in the era where linguistic ‘data’ consists of “hmmm, that doesn’t sound grammatical to me” instead of actually venturing out into the field to collect or analyze anything :)
oh my god, what a farce…
I’ll put good money on Horowitz threatening to sue everybody in sight when he eventually figures it out. Should be entertaining.
By the way, I particularly liked the “user agent” ID that the Python script provides the server:
“Diebold Ballot-Rectify-o-bot v2.1”
In fact, I think he’s often blamed for ushering in the era where linguistic ‘data’ consists of “hmmm, that doesn’t sound grammatical to me” instead of actually venturing out into the field to collect or analyze anything :)
Well, he defends introspection as the only manner in which one can get any linguistic data at all. He has a very elaborate set of arguments to explain why folk notions of collecting “linguistic data” misperceives what language (ie, the object of inquiry) actually is. I believe his analogy is something like physicists going out onto the street with a video camera to understand gravity, rather than constructing approximations of ideal environments as the basis of their experiments (which is what they actually do). So the approximated ideal environment of linguistics is, unfortunately (and he’d admit that it’s unfortunate), your own mind, since you can only “videotape” the epiphenomena of what other people do, which is a waste of time.
The challenge in linguistics of the Chomskyan variety is how to do as much as possible with as little, since we can’t cut open functioning human brains.
Ha! I have the honour of having given Shortell both his 100th and his 3000th vote [tho’ not all those in between].
It’s amazing what boredom and a back key can do for one’s day…
They missed…
Jared Diamond
E.O. Wilson
Daniel Dennett
who else?
Does the winner of the American section get to go head-to-head against our old boy Dawkins?
I’m sure those guys are wishing for the good old days, when Bertrand Russell got booted out of City College in 1940 for corrupting the youth..
“The challenge in linguistics of the Chomskyan variety is how to do as much as possible with as little, since we can’t cut open functioning human brains.”
But that’s true of ALL human behavior, and we’ve made some pretty good progress on many other fronts.
I think you explain Chomsky’s rationale well, but I’m far from the only one who doesn’t really buy it :)
“The challenge in linguistics of the Chomskyan variety is how to do as much as possible with as little, since we can’t cut open functioning human brains.”
Eureka! DC is full of research subjects, starting with the White House!
But I’m so disappointed that UC Davis got left off the list – so many candidates, so few nominations…..
;-}>
Clearly the list reflects East Coast bias. No one from Wisconsin; only one person from Missouri, and he’s at Truman (the Minnesota-Morris of the lower midwest). And he’s a specialist in Latin American history, for Cripesakes. No scientists? No stem-cell people? No Steve Weinberg? No global warming specialists?
Guess Horowitz has joined the liberal mainstream media. All in all, the list has the same smarmy tone as Cohen’s recent “I suck at algebra, so it’s useless” column.
Ha, I had Harry Targ with 275 votes at Purdue. It was a poly sci class called something like peace issues in contemporary society. Loved it!
I’m disappointed. Clearly my fellow philosophers are not very shit-disturbing.
As for Chomsky, he’s not actually the greatest speaker, though what he says is quite interesting and important. Rating him objectively as a bad professor certainly wouldn’t be surprising if one somehow had him for a class that required him to lecture a lot.
But that’s true of ALL human behavior, and we’ve made some pretty good progress on many other fronts.
I think you explain Chomsky’s rationale well, but I’m far from the only one who doesn’t really buy it :)
Chomsky is fairly adamant that he doesn’t “buy” most of psychology except the parts where people cut open brains. ie, behaviour-data-collecting psychology is a subject he regularly derides, not just for language. I mean, he built his entire career on his attack on Skinner.
Not only is it not the same Melissa Gilbert, but I’m reasonably certain that Grover Furr has never appeared on Sesame Street.
It’s too bad they don’t allow readers to nominate professors. Surely, riverine ecologist Dr. I.P. Freely should be castigated for his tacit support of the Communist regime in China. Not to mention Professor Seymour Butz’s brilliant analysis of the exploitation of the underclass in spectator sports.
“Chomsky is fairly adamant that he doesn’t “buy” most of psychology except the parts where people cut open brains.”
These days, of course, there are non-invasive ways to investigate living human brains: fMRI, EEG, PET, TMS, HRG… okay, I made that last one up.
Chomskyean linguistics is more or less incompatible with what we know thus far about how the brain works, though, so I imagine it’ll be a long, long time before there’s a working neuroscience of language.
I voted for Foner, who I expected to be way further down than third.
Curiously, Paul Krugman isn’t on the list. Is it because it was considered obvious that he’d win with a majority of the votes if he were included, or because Horowitz prefers to attack humanists than to attack scientists and social scientists?
Well, at least Angela Davis is on it. It does rather irk me that she’s living on my tax dollars.
-jcr
There is indeed a cult of personality around Chomsky within linguistics. In fact, I’ve heard that exact phrase used to describe Chomsky’s standing in the field for almost 20 years. However I would agree with the earlier poster who stated that Chomsky pretty much only does syntax anymore — he hasn’t dipped his toes into phonology for over 40 years. Most of what he wrote on phonology was really the work of Morris Halle, and even that work is pretty much discredited now. Chomsky never really had his heart in phonology.
Don’t overestimate the importance of Chomsky to the work of most linguists — unless you’re a theoretical syntactician who feels an overwhelming need to be doing the same thing that the syntacticians at MIT are doing at all times, he’s pretty irrelevant to the vast majority of linguists. He just gets lots of press.
Chomsky and his apostles were indeed responsible for the shift linguistics underwent 45-50 years ago from going out in the field and analyzing lots of languages to navel-gazing at English only. Most of Chomsky’s theories don’t work with most of the world’s languages, so their eagerness to discourage work on most languages is rather predictable. This English-only (or Western-European only) bias has done a vast amount of damage to linguistics, in my opinion. However, this syndrome started to shift the other direction over the last 15 or so years, thankfully. Working on really alien languages is again respectable.
Not too long ago Chomsky gave an interview where he essentially said that he felt his revolution had basically failed. I don’t really know what he would have *wanted* it to do, but I do wonder how some of his most loyal followers felt about being told they hadn’t really accomplished anything.
In my view the greatest problem in linguistics is the “neurolinguistics gap”, i.e. organizing a grammar out of the cellular machinery. Sure, you can have a neural net learn a CFG, but that seems to miss something, not the least of which is semantics. I find it all rather puzzling.
Aw, PZ, I woulda voted for you, but D-Ho is obviously in collusion with shady elements like Herr Bérubé to deny you your rightful spoils here. And, no write-ins allowed! So, I voted for Juan Cole, ‘cos I’ve actually read him more than any of the others. And, besides, it’s obvious Bérubé’s minions are cheating.
Tierney, George, are you saying that the idea of “deep structure” has been discredited in light of recent evidence?
It’s way off-topic for discussing here, but if you have any sources you could refer me to, I’d be most interested. Thanks!