I was there once. I remember working in a research position where almost all of my colleagues were white men, and then getting a job where I had to work with large numbers of diverse students, and it was a major change. Fortunately, I buckled down and paid attention to all those workshops on bias and seminars on effective teaching, and I started out with a relatively large amount of respect for students with different backgrounds. You may think that it’s all administrative make-work, and that you just want to get back to work in the lab, and that it is the job of the students to accommodate you if they want to learn at your feet, but that’s not reality. You are part of a community of learning that includes students, and every part of the machine must be respected and treated well.
Learn that, and you won’t make the career-wrecking mistake this assistant professor did.
Although it may not be just her fault; that two other faculty members came to her to ask for help identifying wicked students who committed the egregious sin of speaking their native language suggests that there is a widespread problem at Duke University. I have two points to make about this remark: They were disappointed that these students were not taking the opportunity to improve their English and were being so impolite as to have a conversation that not everyone on the floor could understand.
The first is that foreign students are going to get better practice in mastering English by listening to faculty in their classes, which are all in English, I ‘m sure, and by communicating with the majority native English-speakers in their community. Why are you seeking to hobble the ability of two fluent Chinese speakers to talk to each other? And second…why the hell do you think you have a right to listen in on the private discussions of students?
Also extremely dismaying is the implicit threat: they want to know the names of these students so they can deny them opportunities for internships or for work in their labs, and the department chair is amplifying that threat. This is completely unacceptable.
Megan Neely has resigned from her position as director of graduate studies in that program, which is entirely appropriate. No word on what happened to those nosy professors who wanted to blacklist a couple of students for a private conversation. It seems to me that this ought to provoke a major effort to get all the faculty in Duke Biostatistics into bias training, which will piss off a lot of them, but this is what happens when you neglect basic information on what ought to be university-wide standards for the people you promote to administrative positions. Apparently you all need to have your understanding of civil behavior refreshed.
Even old professors can royally fuck up and set a bad example for their colleagues, like this bozo:
Yes. Anxiety is a disability. I’ve had students force themselves to come into my offices, voices trembling and sweat streaming off their faces, because they’re terrified of authority (it’s not because I’m scary, I’m a teddy bear — they were somehow afraid of big mean old people generally). I’ve had students seize up and break down at the prospect of taking a test, even when they were competent on the material. Every university has policies in place to tell faculty what accommodations they must make for disabilities. They have ways of dealing with these problems. Every semester I’ll have two or three students who come to me with a note that says they’re not going to take tests in class — instead, I drop off exams at the library, where they have quiet rooms where they take the tests in a supervised but consistent and less stressful environment. This is a good thing. My job isn’t to make students suffer, but to make sure they comprehend the science I teach so they can succeed in subsequent courses and in their careers.
Also, don’t belittle students with disabilities.
The key thing to understand is that you are there to help students learn, not to create an obstacle course. When I teach a course in, for instance, ecological development, I’ll often include an assignment that involves public speaking in class — but if a student tells me that they’re totally wrecked at the thought, I’ll come up with an alternative that involves just as much work and allows them to demonstrate mastery of the material, because while public speaking is an important skill, it’s also not the primary subject of the course. Can you show me that you understand development? Good. I’ll recommend that they might want to take a separate course in communication in the appropriate department, or offer other options, like making a video for the class.
Maybe part of the problem is that people think they’re climbing a hierarchy and that they’re being given dominion over everyone with a lower rank, rather than that they’re joining a web of mutual responsibilities. Hierarchical thinking really does mess people up.
P.S. Ted Talks are a terrible model for good communication.
I wonder that the two professors didn’t consider the possibility that the one or both of the students were actually native English speakers who were studying Chinese, and merely taking the opportunity to practice. I would be right pissed to learn that I was going to lose out on academic opportunities for doing my homework in public.
I wasn’t sure why Meghan Neely was in the wrong just based on the portion of the e-mail you have here. Wasn’t she just alerting people of the behavior of these two other faculty members? Then I saw the send addresses were students, clue 1. Then I clicked the link and saw the rest of the e-mail, clue 2.
God damn. My first reaction would be to alert the school that this sort of discrimination was taking place. Who the hell cares what someone is speaking in the halls if you’re going to be making hiring decisions based on skills and interviews anyway?
This is like if a professor overheard students talking about movies instead of their studies, and then sent out an e-mail expressing an intention to discriminate against said students. Only, more racist.
As an inhabitant of a country that formerly suffered from a pesky native language problem, may I make the following modest proposal? A simple tally stick attached around the neck of each student can be marked whenever they speak the offending language; then at the end of the day, a suitable punishment can be meted out by the relevant authorities. In this day and age, I’m sure a more bells & whistles-y technological solution could be implemented, possibly with blockchains or such. The ongoing moribund status of the Irish language can attest to the success of this simple but effective scheme. Hurrah for colonialism!
Since there’s now an opening on the staff, maybe this is a good time to increase diversity?
Those biology professors etc should consider flipping the scenario. What if all the students and staff had complained about the two biology professors speaking with each other in a hallway, talking about biology using obscure technical words that only professors understand? Would the bio profs say that it was rude of themselves to talk about their field in their normal way, where people could overhear them? Trying to imagine this should make the bigoted views of the original profs obviously ridiculous. They would never stand for being criticized on the grounds they cited. That makes their hypocracy clear, and thus their bigotry also clear.
In before someone complains about you dragging Shermer. That man needs to be dragged harder, and more often. They would likely argue his tweet doesn’t apply, while missing your larger point about how faculty (especially the old guard) is having difficulty embracing (or downright rejecting) changes in education (broadening culture, identity, environment, etc.). As someone in a relationship with a person who has anxiety issues, I am dismayed every time someone (particularly someone who should know better!) belittles that condition. And I am encouraged every time I read an account of the ways in which compassionate people find ways to support them through their difficulties.
Maybe part of the problem is that people think they’re climbing a hierarchy and that they’re being given dominion over everyone with a lower rank, rather than that they’re joining a web of mutual responsibilities. And in so far as there is a climbing of the hierarchy, in this context it means more responsibilities to the well being of the academic community of which you are a member. Which doesn’t mean shitting on more people.
Huh, total blockqute fail there, the first sentence is of course PZ’s
Many people over on Twitter were pretty sure that the faculty members who came to her were actually made up and I think there’s something to that theory. I mean, I know, never underestimate petty racism, but taking that much time out of your busy schedule? Also, I’m really god at remembering faces, but I think I’d have problems reidentifying two students I don’t know whom I saw briefly in the hall.
Of course this is about Chinese students. It would never be about Swedish students or German students. Nobody ever complained about me and my German housemate in Ireland. We’d simply switch languages when the conversation involved other people.
I have a kid in 6th grade who regularly starts to cry during class tests. He already gets the “writing in a small group with more time” accommodation. It’s usually my job to do that and every time he’ll simply break down over something that in 90% of the time he’s able to do, so I need to calm him down and prompt him, so he can do his class test.
Yes, I know, Mr Shermer would be very disappointed with me. I, on the other hand, would be very disappointed if I taught to Shermer’s approval.
Also, I hear non-English conversations all the time. Some of them in languages I understand, more of them not. But it’s usually trivial to figure out what they’re talking about, because they only know the hardcore jargon in English. So you’ll hear stuff like “zhege scatterplot buxing, kankan ni de compensation matrix ba?” No, they’re not talking about you, genius.
I’ve worked in a non-English speaking country myself, and yeah I know that practice is important, but holy crap is it exhausting to have to struggle to make yourself understood all the time. I was very, very happy to encounter English speakers. Not gonna begrudge anyone else for wanting a break too. Science is hard enough.
LOL!!!
That actually happened to me once at a University long ago.
At a party, one of my coworkers just had to ask me a few technical questions.
(Normally, we don’t talk shop at parties without a lot of other scientists.)
I answered briefly and that was the end or so I thought.
Later on, one of the other people, who was pretty freaked out, asked us if we were witches talking about witchcraft.
Well, you know, science, witchcraft, it is easy for some people to confuse the two, sometimes.
Not only does the idea of the ted talk suck, 18 minutes??? That’s a really long time! I would think for presentations 5 minutes, maybe 10 max would be sufficient. Obviously I don’t know what subject the teaches, but that seems stupid.
PS, I hate ted talks – I have some friends who love them and I just roll my eyes.
Although now that I think about it, I’m not sure I understand how a ted talk would specifically differ from a regular ol’ oral presentation except for the pretentious attitude one must have.
Ack, I’m just glad I’m not in formal school anymore.
“afraid of big mean old people generally”
I don’t blame them. I am too, in spite of being a mean old person myself.
Shermer’s confusion between “feeling anxious” and “suffering from anxiety” is sadly a common one. He unwittingly recognises the distinction in what he says. Yes it is natural (and to some extent productive) to feel anxious when faced with difficult situations like exams. After the situation is over you go back to normal life. Anxiety bears no necessary relation to causation; it is uncontrollable (though there are helpful medications) – certainly uncontrollable by an act of will; it goes on and on, day after day, although it may fluctuate between low level anxiety and full-blown panic attacks; it is debilitating, with physical consequences related to heart, lungs, brain, digestion etc; during a severe attack it becomes impossible to act, and even low levels make normal everyday functioning a challenge.
Yes, I do suffer from anxiety, brought on by a major medical problem, its treatment, and its consequent side effects. I wouldn’t wish the condition on Professor Shermer, but, you know, maybe just for a day to boost his empathy levels.
that right there describes one off the biggest problems that plagues modern society generally. I am not sure if it is restricted to the capitalist first world more or everywhere. It is the opposite of the democratic ideal. It is a large of authoritarian thinking. there are many ways it is reinforced money power respect. It is not the only way we can organize ourselves nor has it been like this all along our history.
uncle frogy
Also, why are faculty even going into student lounges/spaces and listening to conversations in there? When I was a grad student, we had grad student rooms in the library and some separate office space on our building. Faculty did not have access.
Indi@2, those professors are also assuming that the students they heard don’t already have sufficient fluency in English.
Once when I was working at University of Houston, I heard that a student had stood up in class and asked why they were conducting class in English, when the professor and all the students were from China. Dr. Hu gruffly replied that all classes would be in English, which ended the matter.
(I do not believe this has any bearing on the topic, but it jumps to the front of my brain whenever I read the thread, so I am exorcising it by relating it. Students’ choice of language outside of class should not be policed or held against them.)
Shermer would make an excellent physician. “Blood pressure too high? Good! You’re supposed to have blood pressure.”
TED talks: after all the hype I decided to watch a few. I reckon about a quarter of them were worth it. The remainder was made up of people with good presentation skills completely ballsing up a complex topic, or even worse, spreading dangerous crap (see the TED talk on how police know when people are lying — a load of bollocks that only adds to the risk of getting false confessions).
Nothing wrong with the idea of brief talks to bring interesting ideas out of obscurity, but the basic problem with TED talks is there is neither an editorial standard (other than “sounds good on stage”) nor a critique phase. Arguably this makes the TED format worse than debating.
cedrus: earlier today I confused the heck out of an employee by switching from English to French from one sentence to the next.
I found it funny given how, when he talks French, he drops in English nouns and adjectives, he conjugates English verbs, and he’ll drop in subordinate clauses that are entirely in English. But that’s still French in his brain.
Shermer needs to get the hell out of my hometown.
@ 11 Giliel
Don’t bet money on that. Ireland is used to mobs of tourists and a multitude of languages plus the Republic of Ireland is, I believe, officially bilingual–Am I correct Cat Mara?
A quick look at the 2018 Census Census estimates suggests a rather homogenious US-born population who may be completely unaccustomed to hearing other languages used in normal social situations. In my very limited experience of this sort of thing, I have encountered a two or three older white male Americans who have reported feeling “threatened” by people speaking another language that they do not understand. Those people could be talking about them.
Still I was a bit shocked at the two professors reactions. I would have thought that Duke would have enough foreign students that a few people speaking a foreign language would be common place.
I’d say the behaviour of Neely and the two professors was totally reprehensible.
@ 12 cedrus
One year at university I had a Cantonese-speaking Malaysian housemate. When he was on the telephone with a fellow Cantonese speaking classmate I would hear a burst of Cantonese then “invert the matrix”, more Cantonese.
@ 23 numerobis
When I lived in Ottawa it was not unusual for teenagers on my bus to change from English to French, or vis versa, in the middle of a sentence.
I’ve heard Shermer’s position many times and it makes my blood boil. Your job is to teach your subject to your student, and to do what’s necessary to make that happen. You are not qualified to treat mental health condition x, and even if you were, your students are NOT your patients and you are emphatically NOT authorised to impose your idea of treatment on them during their classes.
jkrideau@25: “Still I was a bit shocked at the two professors reactions. I would have thought that Duke would have enough foreign students that a few people speaking a foreign language would be common place.”
The “about” page for Duke’s Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics is headed by a large photograph of three persons at the front of a lecture room. All three appear to me to be Asian women….
Giliell: I suspect you would have gotten shit on by the resident xenophobes, if there had been a sufficiently large German population. In one department I studied in, people grumbled about Chinese students and a couple groups of Indians (one from Northern India, another from Southern India), in another it was the Greeks. In both cases, the trick was that there were enough of them that they’d be able to form groups of 4-5 people and chat in their own language. And then the xenophobes would fear that language.
@29
Apparently in the Duke department in question about 60% of the grad students (and 20% of the faculty) are Chinese.
jrkrideau @ 25:
As they say on Facebook, “it’s complicated”. Article 8 of the Constitution of Ireland (a document drafted in English and translated into Irish, but thanks to some nationalistic wishful doublethink if a discrepancy ever arises between the two versions, the Irish version takes precedence) deals with the issue of language. Sub-articles 1 and 2 declare Irish and English as the primary and secondary national languages respectively. Again, this is wishful thinking; as of the last census, only something like 1.76 million people (out of a total population of ~5 million) indicated they spoke Irish to any degree of fluency, and only about 78,000 spoke it daily. Personally, I rarely speak Irish, though I can probably read it and write it better somewhat better than average. There’s probably a whole essay/rant I could go into there for the reasons for this.
So even though Ireland isn’t strictly a bilingual society, it does share a lot of properties of one. Most road signs and public notices are bilingual, for example. And people when talking might code-switch, dropping a word or two of Irish here and there for effect, even if they’re not 100% fluent.
jrkrideau @ 26:
This reminds me of a series of videos on analogue synthesisers I used to watch on YouTube. The woman presenting them is Czech, a language I don’t speak (though I learned Russian in University and can occasionally identify a pan-Slavic word) but she uses English terms of art for the various components of the synthesis chains she builds so it sounds like, “(rapid Czech) NOISE GATE (rapid Czech) 4 POLE BAND PASS FILTER (rapid Czech) MODULATOR (rapid Czech)… ” 😂
The real “fun” is researching and teaching in a second language (English) because your local language is too parochial for either academic publishing or for the international students/faculty. In these situations, there’s hardly ever any native English speakers present, so communication can be strained. You typically share your native language with most of your students,so you might give bilingual instruction to varying degrees, and you have to constantly judge the dynamics and be wary of talking too much “past” the students who don’t understand the language. You hardly even notice if some students are speaking Chinese in their group work.
@numerobis, jrkrideau:
I have a friend in Ottawa with this T-shirt:
https://image.spreadshirtmedia.com/image-server/v1/mp/products/T1191A1MPA2683PT17X14Y0D1001378776S42/views/1,width=300,height=300,appearanceId=1,backgroundColor=F2F2F2,version=1520329456/french-english-funny-women-s-relaxed-fit-t-shirt.jpg
(Wording if the image doesn’t come through: ‘Ce moment when you start penser en deux langues at the same temps’.)
Yeah, in Ottawa that’s pretty common.
On other subjects, I remember attending scientific conferences (on radio astronomy) where there was talk about ‘International English’, that subset of English used mostly at such conferences because you’re dealing with people from a dozen different countries and technical jargon that mostly only exists in English. Many of these people would have difficulties with extended conversations, but specific technical talk was fine.
For jargon in general, one of my favourite ‘wake up’ moments involved a dinner with friends where two of said friends had both studied geology and got deep into jargon in their discussion because neither had much of a chance lately to get into ‘interesting’ conversations. I listened to them for a few minutes, getting maybe half of it, then turned to friends on the other side and said, “Oh, so this is what it sounds like when I talk about computers.”
Die Duke Professorinnen sind einen grosse menge Arschloecher.
What about the faculty members who went to Neely and asked her to identify students for the express purpose of being able to discriminate against those students more effectively. Did they get off with no punishment whatsoever? Not so much as a “stop that” from the department head?
@34: Si, jag hasse es quand that passt. And ich veux cette T-shirt.
My goodness. if you did that in a Canadian university you would have to boot everybody out. Seriously, what is wrong with people speaking their native language? In private conversations? Almost everyone in our small university here are students from other countries. Also First Nations people (who are desperately trying to hold on to their languages), and French Canadian students who are in an officially bilingual country. Why is this such an issue in Duke Univeristy?
University dang it.
@dianne #35
I think Arschloecher was the only word of German I understood from that. :)
Dianne!
Waves a lot
Ja, puedo confirm das.
Ow ow ow ow! I understood that and I don’t speak most of those languages! The language center of my brain is now demanding a little lie-down.
Ni hao Giliell! (Using up my entire stock of Mandarin words.)