Just returned from the beautiful fall-turning Quebec Laurentians where I had some family business to attend to, and am barely touching down before heading to Budapest on the weekend. You don’t see quite the display of red here in Newfoundland as you do north of Montreal. Canada has many parts. Red is good, livens up the dreary anticipation of winter.

I hate skipping blog-time but it’s just been too busy. I am trying to see the lighter side of all this travel. If it gets you down you just can’t do what you have to when you get to where you need to go. Soon I catch a plane to Central Europe. I have never been to Hungary and am looking forward to visiting one of the reputedly most beautiful cities in the world—or two cities, Buda and Pest. Will it be cloudy with meatballs? I will be gathering with about 30 colleagues from all over the world to discuss developments in technology, MOOCS and all that jazz, and, I hope, getting a better sense of what everyone else is doing with that venture capitalist enterprise. Much more on that trip and what I learn in Hungary next week.

And so this is just a brief, colourful sign that I am here—for now.

NG

I am just returning from beautiful, ancient, hot, dense, and fragrant Istanbul. I am writing this blog somewhere high above Budapest. With some colleagues from Memorial, I have been attending the annual European Association of International Education conference. Thousands of people who work in the field of international education gathered to attend sessions and meet with each other to discuss international partnerships, exchanges, and potential joint ventures. You’d see Spain talking to Korea, Italy talking to Turkey, Ireland talking to Iceland, and so on. It’s been a hugely interesting and inspiring week and I have come away from the event feeling more on top of what internationalization really means and what the trends are.

Probably the most defining expression of the subject came from Lord Paddy Ashcroft, the keynote speaker at the opening plenary–a robust and articulate auto-didactic who spoke seamlessly and without a note for almost 40 minutes to several thousands of us on a hot Wednesday afternoon. Ashcroft observed that the paradigm of the century was the network, that more than at any other time it is essential to be connected to each other. Collaboration and exchange, he stressed, are the keys to education, to the development of global competences, and even to the solving of the world’s enormous problems. The university that doesn’t get this is doomed to be left behind. Provocatively, Ashcroft said that governments don’t seem to get this. They still act vertically, and diplomacy remains a very narrowly defined exercise in non-lateral dialogue. Universities, he flattered us, have figured out that we need to work horizontally, partnerships being the dominant framework of a healthy educational system.

It was obvious to me at the EAIE that Canadians are still struggling to grasp this. Our students don’t like to to study abroad, but then we aren’t very good at embedding such study into our curriculum, not yet, anyway. Travel comes so much more naturally to European students. They think nothing of taking a semester or two in another country, moving fluidly from language to language, although most of their learning is in English–like it or not, the dominant language of the planet. European students and their supervisors understand the enriching benefits of partaking of another culture, of immersion in a place not our own. It’s about way more than sitting in a classroom or even studying on line. It’s about breathing in another country’s cooking and learning to respect the way they drive or dress, or greet you in the morning.

The universities we met with–in Iceland, France, Korea, Norway, Mexico, Brazil, Sweden–are keen to send their students to us and to receive ours. And so how do we get ours to get out of their self-satisfied shells and explore the world? We don’t have any claim on being superior, that’s for sure, and we need to inspire in our students a sense of the richness of travel and study abroad. I thought it was telling that the EAIE award this year for the most innovative university went to Helsinki for having embedded internationalization directly into their curriculum, into the fabric of everything they do. This is so much the case that they no longer need an international office at all. I wanted to find out more about how they pulled this off. Surely, it’s an incremental process, one requiring patience and some serious strategic thinking. We are getting better at recruiting international students to our study halls. We need to improve that other piece.

What could better demonstrate the allure of place than Istanbul itself? That’s the stunning and famous Blue Mosque above, with its unusual six minarets and its stunning blue tiles, just one of the countless attractive sites in that splendid city. It was impossible not to feel slightly intoxicated by the energy emanating from some twenty million people, from the daily calls to prayer ringing through the hot air or the smells of spice and coffee in the shops and the impossibly large bazarre. While all major media screamed exaggeratedly about riots and protest in Takksum Square, the reality on the street was quite another story. Turks are warm and welcoming and there was never a hint or whisper of threat or danger. Yes, there had been some demonstrations against the government and people spoke with contempt about the current political scene, but one never for a moment got any sense of insecurity. We heard that several US schools had cancelled because of the fear of riots and who knows what. You have to wonder: people committed to international education withdrawing out of fear…of nothing. We have a lot to learn from each other, and being afraid to take some risks is no way to get there.

NG

I’m just glad I’m not a dean at St. Mary’s University this week, where administrators must be taking special meds to deal with the frosh catastrophe. It’s impossible to avoid the story: a bunch of incoming students chanting some highly offensive verses about rape. Ugh. Who said things stay the same? That’s 1963 up there in that photo. The most remarkable thing about this hazing ritual seems to be that they’re all nurses. Who knew nurses had so much fun?

The first week back at university almost always generates some hazing ritual story. When the kids go too far the media rushes in and for at least a week everyone is talking about the horrible state of youth today. Most of these events involve some sort of sexual transgression. In the SMU case, the transgression was a group endorsement to assault an underage “sister.” There is nothing to defend here. The song, allegedly chanted for years at that university, was never before deemed inappropriate until it hit the YouTube circuit. Nothing like a big virtual spotlight to focus our attention on some bad, time-honoured behaviour. It’s actually quite shocking that no one ever complained before. But perhaps that’s because these sorts of expressions are easily dismissed as the product of youthful folly, or as essentially benign and forgettable moments in a freshman’s inexperienced life.

The SMU incident is being met for the most part with surprise and derision. It’s kind of hard to find any of it acceptable, although there are enough who say it’s all being overblown by the media and university officials. In short, get over yourself and lighten up. I remain more interested in that reaction, albeit a minority one so far, than by anything else. Why doesn’t everyone see that it’s really not cool to joke about rape? At some fundamental level our society still doesn’t fully accept the notion that sex must be consensual. Sex is such a complicated business, isn’t it? Because almost everyone who is human wants to get some, there’s almost always an undercurrent of belief that no really means yes. Young women were chanting enthusiastically at SMU, along with their male peers, and so you can’t say it’s just a gendered thing going on here. Sure, it’s largely that, because it’s male desire at the heart of the chant, and male-dominant culture that gives permission to utter it. But why are women jumping up and down reciting all kinds of offensive stuff about something they would not want to have done to them? Peer pressure or groupthink, blah blah, yes, but also a radical disconnect from the meaning of the words, the kind of disconnect that comes naturally with inexperience and ignorance. In our young-body-obsessed media world this kind of thing becomes normalized early. The message about the inappropriateness of it all is countered by the sheer ubiquity of, say, an over-the-top self-pleasuring Miley Cyrus performance at the VMAs, another effect of viral effects.

I really do find it all at once discouraging and fascinating.  It’s not just about younger people, either. I was at an event for some elderly people this summer—a relatively affluent group with great jewelry and personal trainers. We were entertained during the evening by a local theatre group who changed the lyrics to the popular Abba song “Fernando.” Essentially, the song was about date rape. Talk about bad taste!  I can tell you no one laughed. I am not even sure everyone really understood or heard all the words to the refrain that stressed the appeal of such an ignominious criminal act. The performers just kept going through the verses, even though the reaction was in the order of the lead-balloon variety. It was shocking, really, but I reflected long after that no one had said anything, no one had complained, including me. And if the SMU frosh event hadn’t been posted to YouTube, entry-level classes would be singing the same lyrics years hence. Technology giveth, and technology taketh away.

NG

At the turn of the last century French artist August Rodin celebrated the very act of thinking with this bronze sculpture. Little did he know just how iconic the pose would become, an elegant, literal representation of the contemplative life. The sculpture has been copied, imitated, and parodied for a century (my favourite is a Steve Colbert-headed truthiness version). To our jaded eyes it has achieved the order of kitsch, but anyone who went to high school still recognizes the original.

Rodin was living in an age much more disposed to the value of thinking than ours seems to be. He was French, after all, raised in a culture that boasted a Descartes, Diderot, Compte, and so on.  There was nothing radical or startling about The Thinker. The piece is notable for its mastery of bronze, its appreciation of the male form with its taut muscular structure and well-proportioned geometry of the body. It was by no means a barn-burning statement or challenge to received wisdom. It was in itself about wisdom.

At the risk of sounding cynical it is hard to believe that any such comparable statement of the value of the very act of thinking could emerge in our own time. 21st century sculpture is by turns extremely abstract or informed by new technologies. Figural sculpture is often an expression of the tortured, not the calm, life of the mind. Things change, sure. Rodin and his cohort were living in a pre-tech time, with fewer distractions and far fewer pressures on the body. Who’s got time to think anymore, anyway?

But have we actually given up on the value of thinking?

In the last month or so, during the usual sleepy summer diversions, news has been pretty steadily circulating about the closing down of arts and humanities programs all over Canada and the USA. This week the University of Alberta announced it was moving to close 20 such programs, including music and language majors. At Mount Royal University down the road in Calgary theatre-arts and journalism programs have been eliminated. To my knowledge, these and other targeted arts programs are fading without so much as a whisper, let alone a bang. The rationale for all of these cuts is, of course, economic. Classes are small, enrolment is thin, and so it is easy to justify their elimination. Courses in the humanities have always been opportunities for thinking through and about problems, not necessarily solving them. And, to be sure, they have never promised to lead directly or obviously to a vocation. This is the rub. Vocationalism dominates university culture now, and while I do think we have an obligation to be honest and responsible to our students about the job market, we need to balance that against providing a space and time for the contemplative ideal.

Writing in the New Republic this week, Christina H. Paxton, President of Brown University, tries to make an “economic case for the humanities.” She joins several other leading administrators and academics who have recently taken a shot at defending the humanities. Her essay is a variation on a common theme: we need people trained in the humanities because a progressive civilization depends on it. She cites the great intellectuals and inventors who came up through a humanities education, and underscores the importance of understanding the world in all of its complexity. Knowing a lot about Latin America is important in view of the changing nature of that region, and so closing down language departments is a step backwards.

Notwithstanding some of the ways she links education to outcomes, I like the way Paxton actually avoids making an economic case for the humanities and instead insists on the value of thinking, of taking one’s time to be educated without clear or measurable results. Too many defences of the humanities incline towards arguments based on their practical or applied value—you know, like making the world more democratic. Really?

Maybe it’s time we stopped trying so hard to say that a humanities education leads to this and that career or this and that utilitarian or lofty purpose. Instead, let’s stress the value of thinking—just thinking, for its own sake.

NG

The Fogo Island Inn. That’s what you’re looking at—or at least the front end of it. I was snapping pictures with my iPhone and, as wonderful a device as it is, it could not possibly take in the magnificence of this structure, perched on the edge of a point of the land in the community of Joe Batt’s Arm. I just returned from a trip to this astonishing hotel and the environment from which it springs. Never mind pictures. Words will fail me, too, if I don’t calm down. I am still quite buzzed from the whole experience and have vowed to return first chance I get. For a much better selection of photos just visit the web site: http://www.fogoislandinn.ca/

As the world is swiftly learning, the Inn is now on Oprah’s WOW list. Who else could even devise such a list? It is aimed at acknowledging innovation, creativity, and general awesomeness. The Inn has all of that in spades. Marketing for the Inn has also successfully extended to glowing reviews in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and beyond. When I was in Toronto a few weekends ago for a meeting everyone wanted to know about it. Now I am in a much better position to report.

It deserves the attention. It is one thing to stare at the pictures and quite another to experience the place—and by place I am talking about way more than the Inn itself. The chatter around town here in the capital city is all about whether or not the hotel is sustainable. After all, Fogo is in the middle of nowhere. The ambition and scale of the hotel seem, at first, so disconnected from the rugged landscape and hardscrabble existence of the island residents. But being there, soaking up the totality of the dream of the Inn and the vital part it is intended to play for all of Fogo Island, has turned my townie scepticism into deep appreciation and a soaring hope for its future. I have come away from the experience with profound respect for all elements of the project and a firm vow to return as soon as possible.

The driving genius behind the whole exceptional experiment is, as everyone in Newfoundland well knows, Zita Cobb. A native Fogo islander, Zita returned home after years on the mainland with a powerful dream and enough capital to launch a daunting mission. The story is now a familiar one, of how she researched for the right architects and design people to realize the dream of a hi-end hotel. The mission is to stimulate the economy and pay homage to the land that nourished her. For the most part, Zita relied on talented Newfoundlanders to help with the concept, particularly the award-winning Todd Saunders who now lives in Norway. Indeed, there is a decidedly Scandinavian vibe to the Inn with its bleached walls and spare aesthetic, its wood-lined hallways through which natural light filters in delicate streams, its spa, wood stoves, and benches.

So it is that the Inn was conceived as a magnificently refined architectural object, standing, in part, on stilts that evoke fishing stages. Every single exquisite object in the hotel–from the quilts on the beds to the hooked cushions on the colourful handcrafted furniture, from the privacy signs to the room keys to the brilliantly elegant chandeliers of cotton rope, from the rocking chairs to the stunning place-name map in the elevator, from the coasters to the lamps to the writing–literally—on the shower walls–has been designed to quote, honour and respect local tradition and culture. You’d be stunned if you didn’t get it. Each of these elements have all been lovingly created and recreated. There is nothing even remotely kitschy or quaint or frilly or vulgar about any of it. A certain alchemy of design has occurred, a transformation of the everyday into the realm of art. It—and the island winds—will take your breath away.

Zita’s Cobb vision is both imaginative and practical. I wandered into a nearby craft store where three women were busily hooking the colorful threads of cushions that are carefully placed on the wooden benches in the hotel corridors. These women were in non-stop work mode, wiping their brows and proudly acknowledging the intense workload they were carrying because of the Inn. This fact repeated itself everywhere we went. A large slice of the community of all generations and skills has been harnessed to serve the vision—whether shuttling guests to the ferry, taking guests out on a boat to experience the water or to fish, educating visitors about the natural habitat, leading hikes, showcasing any or all of the four artist studios that dot the landscapes like startling cubic constructions as dreamed up by Cocteau, serving the meals…. All these community members have been put to work because of the Inn and were being trained to harness their experience and natural affinity with the place in the service of hosting, welcoming, teaching, and celebrating the island. It is impossible not to feel inspired by the embracing totality of the experience, the Inn being the anchor in the grander long-term scheme of things.

Engagement is the buzzword of the millennium, to be sure, and everyone—from individuals to institutions—is trying to figure out what that means and how best to implement it. The Fogo experience is a model of social and economic engagement and I, for one, have such a better understanding and appreciation of what’s really happening on the ground now that I have been there.

Wow, wow, wow.

NG

A few years ago I got to know a Science graduate student. Despite a certain self-admitted clumsiness, she came to my aerobics classes, regularly giddily flailing about as I barked orders to move this way and kick that way. When she first arrived at Memorial she wore a headscarf or hijab, even through fitness classes. She was Egyptian, had grown up in a religious household with lots of brothers and a stern father, or so she said. She was deeply shy by nature and very fragile, but she clearly wanted to open up about her childhood and current state of confusion. Adjusting to secular society was challenging and she felt the need to talk it all out. One day she showed up to aerobics without her hijab. It was kind of shocking to me, and probably to her, too. She declared that after a long struggle she had decided to abandon it altogether. I was never sure what that said about her faith, but she had made a strong decision about her appearance. She seemed happier and excited about her future, if worried about what her father would think if he ever found out. I haven’t seen her in a year or so and often wonder where she is and where her graduate degree has taken her.

At that time, just a few years ago, her headgear had made her more conspicuous on this campus. Now it wouldn’t. The internationalization of the student body is more obvious than ever. As August rolls out, our office will become increasingly busy with new students arriving from all over the Middle East. I am sure some will be arriving from Turkey and maybe even France, where the battle between Islamic practice and secular society is heating up again.

A story was leaked this week in France about a high council recommendation that headscarves be banned on university campuses. It has rekindled an always simmering tension about rights and the role of the state to interfere in the lives of others.  To those of us living in North America such an edict seems invasive, if not actually regressive. For us, a secular society includes a tolerance for religious belief and diversity. In France, things are not that straightforward. France has fiercely defended its laws against public displays of religious belief, although I would put money on it that no woman wearing a cross around her neck was ever prevented from entering a public space in Paris. Moslem women in France have been repeatedly scorned for wearing headscarves on the streets, with things heating up to the point of riots in the suburbs. Now, as the debate intensifies about whether women should or should not be allowed to wear a hijab on campus, there will be more noise, more rage and likely more violence. Moslem women have repeatedly said they are targeted unfairly, and that they have become lightning rods for more general xenophobia and a pervasive nationalism—an anti-Islamic reflex. The debate is complicated by the fact that many secularists believe the hijab is itself a sign of oppression of women.

On the streets of any North American city today you can find young women dressed about as immodestly as our laws will permit. Celebrity culture and our fetishizing of the young, exposed female body certainly have a lot to answer for.  For most of us, like it or not, women own the right to dress as they wish, and so the same extends even to those who wish to be modest in the extreme. I grew up in Montreal at a time when the site of flocks of nuns in full habit in public places was common—even a little exotic. No one ever whispered that they were inappropriate for flaunting their faith.

Yes, it’s complicated, and there is no avoiding the many contradictions that attend to a woman choosing to cover herself up in public. I am not sure we will ever settled comfortably on a consensus about what the hijab signifies both to the woman who wears one or the secular public that gazes on it. But Moslem women have a point when they say that this not so much about women but about a dangerous anti-Islamic attitude, one implicitly endorsed by the state.

In Quebec, France’s sister state, intolerance has also reared its ugly head from time to time. A few years ago the banning in a small town of the wearing of headscarves among other signs of Moslem belief led to a bitter backlash and the inevitable Canadian Commission (Bouchard-Taylor) on Reasonable Accommodation. That is the perfectly Canadian legal phrase that speaks to the need for tolerant behaviour and attitude.

I find it hard to accept a law banning the hijab from anywhere, let alone a campus. The presence of international students at Memorial has been, in my view, healthy and enlightening. Many of our students have led pretty sheltered lives in small communities where the only real difference between people was marked by someone’s eccentricity or gender. Exposure leads to conversation and

understanding. I know that’s Hallmark-Card worthy, but it’s true.  A university campus should be an ideal microcosm of a tolerant society. I love France and almost all the 400 cheeses it produces but I am decidedly against the direction they are taking their secularism. We’re not perfect and we don’t make cheese but vive la difference.

NG

A horribly distressing thing happened on the way to Toronto the other day. It was a hideously early flight and I kept drifting asleep on the flight. When we landed at Pearson and were waiting for the signal to disembark, I spotted a colleague across the aisle. We started yakking away and continued the conversation all the way through to the baggage claim area. Following that distraction I was soon in a cab to the hotel, still punchy sleepy. After settling in my room I reached into my purse for my iPad, only to realize in one crushingly vivid moment that I had left it on the plane in the seat pocket. You can imagine how quickly I jolted myself into full wakefulness at that moment.

When something like this happens I tend to go through the five stages of loss and grieving in about three minutes. First denial and isolation: a stage of not fully believing the iPad has been taken from me. Then follows anger: rage against myself, of course, for having been so stupidly tired and forgetful, and anger against the Universe for conspiring against me. The third stage is bargaining: if only I hadn’t talked to that colleague, if only I had taken more caffeine, if only I could have my time back. Fourth stage is depression: a sinking feeling that all is irretrievable, that replacing the iPad will cost me a lot of coin, that all my notes and notes on my Pages app are gone forever. Finally, inevitably, I faced acceptance: worn out by moving through the preceding four stages there was nothing to do but surrender to the reality of loss.

And so I did. But, but… I needed to play out the arguably futile exercise of filing a claim with Air Canada. Without the iPad to direct me to the Web I had to ask the hotel concierge to do so for me. She promptly filled out the claim on line, as requested by the airline, and pressed Send. There was no automatic reply, no indication that the claim form had been received by anyone. I had little hope anyone would be paying attention, but this gesture was morally, practically, and professionally necessary.

For the next three days in Toronto I sulked during meetings. Every time I had the impulse to check my email or browse the news sites I felt that kick in the gut. My iPad had been with me for several years. I had been one of the first adapters, having bought the first iteration of the device and was still loyal to its magical properties, even if those properties did not include a camera or phone line capacity. I could no more trade it in for an upgrade than I could give away a pet.

Now I was forced to consider the loss and consequences. After returning home I called the Air Canada Lost and Found line. A distinctively non-Canadian voice was on the other end of the line, working through all the distinguishing details of the lost object, reviewing markers or notable features for easy identification. By the end of the call he admitted he was nowhere near Pearson or any other Canadian airport. The whole lost and found business had been outsourced by Air Canada and the connection between this guy sitting somewhere at a call centre in India and my missing iPad seemed even more remote and hopeless than ever.

Despairing all over again I decided to give myself a week. If the iPad didn’t show up by then I would buy a new one. Who was I kidding? After I tweeted about the experience a friend replied that the same thing had happened to him and it had taken 6 weeks until his old iPad was returned. When you consider that it should have taken no more than 48 hours to do so you realize that you are dealing with one of those modern-day atrocities—an entire level of bureaucracy and paper-trailing interfering with the simple act of finding, identifying, and returning a device found in seat 13C on a routine flight from YYT to YYZ. I mean, how many cell phones and iPads and laptops do they find daily? I bet there are tons of them, but the system just somehow can’t cope with a more efficient way of handling this common occurrence. Certainly the guy sitting in Bangalore wouldn’t and didn’t have a clue about where the object was, or, indeed, if it had been found at all.

I waited two more days before getting an email from some automatic generator in god-knows-where informing me that the object in question had not yet been found.

That did it. I was off to the Apple Store as fast as you can say iPad 4. That’s what you see above, my new hi-res, picture-taking, gorgeous, speedy, wonderful, red-leather bound tablet. I am in love all over again. As for my old one, when and if it ever does show up I will clear it of clutter and happily donate it to the School of Graduate Studies for the multiple purposes it will surely serve. I now have less respect for Air Canada, but a lot of newfound admiration for Apple. And so it goes.

NG

There was a time when one wouldn’t even think of keeping a graduate dissertation under lock and key, withheld from public view except in very rare circumstances, such as the potential harm that could befall an informant. But as with so much about graduate studies these days, things are changing. There are two main reasons why deans are currently receiving pressure from graduate students to embargo their theses for anywhere from a year to six and much longer.

The American Historical Association just published a new policy statement that, as the Chronicle of Higher Ed reports it, “’strongly encourages’ graduate programs and university libraries to allow new Ph.D.’s to extend embargoes on their dissertations in digital form for as many as six years.” The AHA insists that commitments to scholarly publishers now come with this sort of restriction, the publishers believing that exposing the thesis to the digital field jeopardizes the chance to publish the material as “original”. If it’s part of an open access regime then anyone can poach it long before the material is transformed into a book. There go the publishers’ hopes of making a profit.

The other source of pressure is industry, usually large corporate sponsors of research that claim the research results are theirs. This is part of a growing and troubling ownership issue, a battle between the creator and the sponsors /funders over who owns the findings and who has a right to disseminate them—and in what form.

I recently received a request for a fifteen-year embargo.

I don’t think so.

This is all starting to get out of hand. The consensus at the CGS meetings I attended last week in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was reasonable: publicly funded institutions need to be responsive and open. Keeping research findings from the very public that funds you is totally uncool.

You can understand why publishers or industry funders would see it as their right to request thesis embargoes, but doing so ignores the very principles of university research practice. At least, that’s my strong opinion. It’s great that some students are getting supported outside the university, or being dangled book contracts for their hard-earned research. It’s not cool that these grants are starting to come with so many thick strings attached.

As the essay in the Chronicle points out, we really lack the evidence to show that digital dissertations undermine the sale of scholarly books. Surely, no one is going to poach a thesis whole when it appears on line for all the world to see? I mean, really, what kind of readership are we talking about here? The open access movement has always had its detractors, those who fear that wide dissemination encourages intellectual theft. But that rocket has left the space station and increasingly we are creating a digital community of shared information. That’s a good thing. There is, indeed, a problem when a creative writing dissertation, say, a novel appears first online and then in a bound publisher’s copy, but in turn we might ask why are we creating programs that inevitably lead to such embargoes?  I like creative writing programs but a creative thesis worth publishing should have no more than a year in the dark. Publishers should get their acts together and publish the bloody material before everyone forgets everything.

As for industry, it seems to me that students need to be doing research that they can safely claim as their own, or at least claim to be first authors of, and nothing less should do. If their work is being supported by industry with strings and embargoes attached then we should be discouraging that tendency. It follows that we should be supporting our students without such strings. This is their moment to stretch intellectually. There’s enough time for getting into bed with the devil, however well meaning, greedy, or just plain insensitive to the principles of publicly funded research.

I hate to think of ourselves as being even more removed from the public sphere than we already are. Open. Access.

NG