Heh:
I had to chuckle. First, note the opening sentence. That made me laugh out loud. "Similar and related authoritarian ideological dynamic." I couldn't help remembering this post of mine from a few weeks ago. That's Sam trying to make what he's about to say appear academic. You know, scholarly. That way some might think 'Gee, some academic guy with a degree is saying this, so it must be true.'
Anyway, the rest of it is just the typical Leftwing 'ARCs are tunneling under our homes' hysteria. EWTN, which has replaced the KKK in the mind of many leftwing Catholics, is in the crosshairs. Word on Fire, the once beloved Bishop Baron's pet project, is also lumped together in the line of fire.
Why? Apparently neither outlet presents Pope Francis's teachings. Because the pope's teachings - ba, ba, bam! - threaten the unclean group. Meanwhile, Word on Fire attacks any who present the pope's teachings? I know EWTN has become pretty vocal in its criticisms of Pope Francis and his die hard supporters. I was unaware of Word on Fire doing the same.
Unless, of course, Sam is invoking the classic 'To disagree with a liberal is to hate, attack, threaten, and on and on' tactic. I'll have to look into WoF's blistering attacks aimed at those presenting Pope Francis's teachings.
I just had to chuckle at his calling them cowards, all the way from the safety and security of his keyboard. What would be swell would be for Sam to meet on a live interview with Bishop Baron and make the same claim to his face in the exact same manner that he has done here. That, my friends, is an interview I would definitely watch.
He used to be subtler than this, back in his Vox Nova days.
ReplyDeleteAgain, Rocha holds a faculty position that should not exist. Not unusual in today's higher education.
I think you've said what his position is, but can't remember. I know he was more subtle than this. Though there were still signs that subtlety covered a slick partisanship even then. But like so many, he's warming to the old 'he who hates white conservative Republicans and Christians is my brother' template.
DeleteHe's ensconced on a teacher-training faculty. AFAICT, his research and publication on educational psychology or the mechanics of teaching students to read, write, and sum are pretty much zero. The excuse is that his specialty is the 'philosophy of education'. Well, if he's a philosopher, put him in the arts and sciences faculty. Only, if I'm not mistaken, his dissertation was not supervised by actual academic philosophers. Note, if positions were distributed proportional to student interest, there would be somewhere around 4,000 philosophers at baccalaureate granting institutions in this country and most schools would not employ any.
DeleteHi guys. If you're curious about my faculty position, you can always just ask me or visit my faculty page or website or grab my CV and have at it. Cheers!
DeleteSam, to me it isn't your faculty position one way or another, though I was surprised that Art says you're here in the Buckeye State. It's the joining in with modernity's sanctioned two minutes hate against those who would resist the latest, maddest trends of the day. And couching it in academic jargon (something I've never cared for). But I see you, like I see Deacon Greydanus, and to a lesser extent Dawn Eden, engaging in online discourse in a way, some years ago, all of you would have looked down upon. And rightly so. If no other reason existed for me to question the trends I see, it would be people acting in ways those same people once criticized.
DeleteMy mistake. His dissertation was supervised at Ohio State. He teaches at the University of British Columbia.
DeleteAh. I thought he was in Canada, but we're always willing to increase the Buckeye fold when the opportunity presents itself.
DeleteYea, our department is a separate entity from the Teacher Education program. We do interact with them, along with the other departments in the Faculty of Education, but most of my work is in graduate seminars and working with my student in our graduate programs. Apparently this Art Deco fellow doesn’t know where I am geographically nor knows much about my department or field, to boot. It is all out there online for free.
Deletehttps://u.osu.edu/esphe/former-students/sam-rocha-phd/
DeleteFor reasons best known to themselves, Ohio State is willing to put your mug on its website as if you worked there.
It makes little sense to have a 'faculty of education' whose business is not training teachers. The empire builders at the University of British Columbia have carved up their 'faculty of education' into seven departments which you see here.
They've put Rocha in this department here
Deletehttps://edst.educ.ubc.ca/about/
Which is the sales job for the notion that 'education' is an academic subject.
Sam, again I'm less concerned about where you are and what you're doing, as much as I am the content of what you wrote - which is, to be honest, ridiculous. Standard boilerplate for the liberal punditry to be sure, but ridiculous nonetheless. Five years ago I don't see you writing such dribble - though perhaps I missed it. That's my concern.
DeleteThe pope isn't a threat to Republicans, just a source of dismay to Catholics.
Deletehttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ot8XzJsAAAAJ
DeleteYou can have a gander at his publications here.
I should note that from 2010 to 2014 he was employed at American institutions. The Digest of Education Statistics helpfully offers some data on degrees conferred in his subdiscipline in this country during the 2017-18 academic year.
In philosophy and religion faculties, none to speak of; a number of specialities are listed, but not this one. Miscellaneous specialist degrees account for 2% of all philosophy and religion degrees awarded (about 245 degrees, graduate and undergraduate. About 12,000 degrees in philosophy or in comparative religion were awarded.
Education faculties offer an ant heap of credentials. Every conceivable sort of teacher has a corresponding credential, as well as those for different sorts of administrator. There's another whole bloc for test designers. For Mr. Rocha's specialty, just shy of 500 degrees were awarded, of whom 4% went to undergraduates. Foreign language programs often have weak enrollments. The thing is, people actually speak and write in those languages somewhere in the world. Mr. Rocha's is a program whereby people who want to cogitate about the 'social and philosophical foundations of education' self-replicate.
If you read some of my writing, Art Deco, you may be surprised to find me in agreement with a lot of the critiques you are making of education as an academic subject. I even have a whole chapter devoted to the history of that idea and a critique of it in the present. If you're interested, I am happy to send you a copy.
DeleteWatch the cat/dog fight... +barron isnt much better, he's nicer, friendlier but that's about all... I'll stick w ewtn!
ReplyDeleteI used to appreciate Bishop Barron back in the day. I didn't always agree with him, and sometimes I felt his attempts to reach out to the darkness self-defeating. I haven't kept up with him over the last year or so. Last I remember he gave positive remarks about Jordan Peterson, and that seemed to be the end for a great many of leftwing Catholics.
DeleteBarron does good work, but gets antsy around culture war issues. The problem is that the war is unavoidable and Red Guards like Rocha bring it to your doorstep every day.
DeleteThat's a big problem with those trying to straddle a fence one side is hell-bent on destroying. The thing we can call The Left is making it clear there will be no tolerance for dissent in the near future, and I wonder how someone like Bishop Barron will handle that when there is no longer a way of denying it.
DeleteRocha's Twitter feed is a 24/7 exercise in "tell me you are a pseudo-intellectual without saying you are a pseudo-intellectual."
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteWho's Sam Rocha? This is the first I've heard of him.
ReplyDeleteAbout a dozen years ago, one of the more polite characters on the old Vox Nova blog, now ensconced in the teacher-traning faculty at Ohio State. (Vox Nova was long ago passed on to a completely different crew and is hosted by Patheticos).
DeleteI came to know him when I was at Patheos. He was the editor for the Catholic Channel. It wasn't hard to see he tacked left, but he didn't seem to have the 'watch out for the evil righties' approach either.
DeleteI am 100% certain that Sam Rocha regularly name searches himself so that he can dispel any accusations said against him, anywhere.
ReplyDeleteExcept he usually dodges the most serious accusations against him and focuses on something else, like here where he completely ignores the accusation that he is willing to libel fellow Catholics if they are insufficiently liberal and instead focuses the conversation on his teaching position.
There's quite a bit of patronage for privileged political interests in contemporary higher education, both in the administration and on the faculty. So, no, he won't be discussing his teaching position, either.
DeleteNote, there are 36 positions in his department. You can look down the list here
https://edst.educ.ubc.ca/people/faculty/
If you have satisfactorily staffed social research departments in the arts and sciences and you have a satisfactorily staffed public policy faculty, you don't need these people.
He might. I don't know. I can see wanting to know if someone has posted about you. I would. But what I don't like is what you point out. If you feel the need to comment, then stay and discuss for a bit Some do that, and I've never cared for it. It's a form of trolling. Don't comment, or comment and discuss. But drive-by comments are just another form of dumbing the discourse down.
DeleteI have been falsely impersonated before and had things written about me which were false which, in both cases, have sometimes led those who know me personally to be deceived and ask questions. Some of this is innocent because I share a name with a bassist in San Francisco and people confuse us, but much of it is intentional and indirect like David's post here. So, yes, I do name search myself periodically and have alerts set to notify me when my name appears. I don't see why that is somehow a bad thing to do. If you have a serious question to ask me, feel very free to reach out privately or to call me out in public and trust that I will always reply in kind.
DeleteSam, again you miss, or dodge, the point. And his bigger beef seemed to be about that, not your name searching. You ignore the critique of your partisan slam aimed at Catholic outlets, making assumptions about their motives for not covering topics as you say they should. Which is what you did. It's not an accusation, it's an observation. Engage with that observation, or accept that his appraisal of you - not your name searching, but being a Catholic scholar who likes to take swipes at others, but then avoids the point when called out - is correct.
DeleteI am entitled to respond to things people bring up, like name searching and my credentials. I am also entitled to not respond to cherry-picking and bad faith accusations.
ReplyDeleteYou call that a bad faith accusation? Then what do you call your own twitter post, making wild accusations against entire Catholic ministry outlets? If you don't have what it takes to meet with them face to face and repeat such accusations in a public forum, at least muster some dignity to defend your accusations against them on an obscure blog of little note. To do otherwise, or to avoid accounting for your own statements when called out, is simply a form of trolling, and my observations about your post not only stand, but are vindicated.
DeleteAll that you are demonstrating is that you care about your credentials, but you don't care about whether you are falsely accusing others.
DeleteIf you are willing to ignore an article making the serious accusation that you are libeling others without comment, then it makes even more sense to ignore a spurious comment on that article that your faculty position is unjustified. And it's even more bizarre to continue to ignore the more serious accusations to respond to accusations that you regularly name search yourself when you admit that you actually do do that.
If you name search and think it's justified, why even comment? It only makes sense if you are so obsessed with your self-image that you feel a need to comment to make sure that people don't see what you are doing in even the slightest wrong way. But if you are that obsessive about yourself, why ignore the claim that you are making wild accusations against your Catholic brethren? I can only see two possible motivations: First, maybe you simply don't care about libel and so it doesn't bother you if you are accused of it. Second, maybe you know that you are making false accusations and there is no way to defend yourself, so you avoid the conversation entirely.
These accusation in this blog post are not serious and certainly not libel. They can be found in longer form in many other, more developed, writings and I would happily face any of these folks to debate them, anytime. The lowest bar of good faith critique, however, needs to understand this single tweet within the thread it belongs to rather than cherry picking it. If you can do that, David, I would gladly reply in kind.
ReplyDeleteI would happily face any of these folks to debate them, anytime.
DeleteYou're rather unclear on the concept.
If you want context, then don't post on Twitter. Twitter is the antithesis of context. Almost nobody goes out and seeks to find a catalogue of Twitter posts to understand the broad context of a comment. That's why Twitter is best avoided for anything but prayers and comments on the weather.
DeleteNonetheless if you have in depth articles or writings that can justify your accusations and give evidence to back them up, please let us know how to find them. You can copy a link here. That would be fine. You can even unpack your arguments here. You'll find I run a friendly, informal blog and most regular guests behave themselves. I don't block or ban, so no need to worry I'll remove something that devastates my points. I look forward to you doing that, and will happily post a special post with those links explaining your Twitter comments.
When there is a thread on Twitter and you only quote one a part of that thread then the context, in that case, begins with the whole thread in question. Sure, I could link you to other writing of mine on these subjects, including a whole series on Word on Fire, but I would just as soon begin with simply reading the tweet you are responding to in the context of the thread it was a part of.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of amazing how much of an art you've made of explaining why you're not going to explain. You literally could have clarified your views three times by now in the same amount of text used to say why you're not going to do that.
DeleteWell Sam, I don't have TWitter. I typically get images sent to me or see them on various websites and forums I visit. I avoid Twitter personally because its entire platform is based on reducing discourse to a bumper sticker. And in doing so, you open yourself up to people focusing on that one bumper sticker.
DeleteNow, even though I don't have a Twitter account, I was able to get what I think is the entire thread. Sadly, it doesn't shed any contextual light on your Twitter post above. I'll post the whole thing and see if anyone else has input, but by my eyes it looks like the claims you make are questionable at best, based only on your own personal standards. Those standards are not clear, or at least from a charitable perspective I'll say they aren't clear.
Otherwise, I found no other writings of yours that speak to the issue, save one where you were talking about a banned comment or two at WoF. I really don't have time to search the Internet for anything else. For all I know, you have entire webpages I couldn't access. So links it is, or we'll go with the Twitter feed I found which, as I said, doesn't change the impression of your Twitter post as much as you seem to think it does.
No one is entitled to have a serious conversation on a matter they kick-off by cherry-picking. I can see now that since you don't have Twitter, David, you probably didn't do that in bad faith, but it might be a good idea to not comment on Twitter posts when you don't use the platform at all. If Twitter is bad enough for you to avoid then why post about Twitter posts at all?
ReplyDeleteTwitter? Again, it's the definition of cherry picked. Its whole point is a quick 'look at this Tweet'. When someone shares a Twitter post, or a press outlet reference one, it's typically never a thread, but a single post. Being surprised by that that would be like me having a bumper sticker, and then being shocked that someone commented on the bumper sticker out of context.
DeleteI comment on Twitter posts - to be honest - because I see it as a dumbing down of discourse in the most charitable appraisal. Worse, it seems to encourage the worst of the Internet and Social media. Those who send me images or post on them are typically those watching how Christian = esp. Catholics - behave on Twitter (and it's not usually a case of praising the content).
As I said, I found the whole thread you spoke of and am just not seeing how it changes anything. It doesn't contain anything I saw that said my appraisal was off. That's why a link to some of the greater conversation you've had, hopefully on other formats, could possible help.