"Professor" Whitmer? Isn't that stretching the truth?
By which I mean, isn't that a bald-faced lie? He's a lecturer.
Oh well, it doesn't cost the department any money to call him a professor. It's a tidy little fringe benefit, like all those pens, pencils, and rolls of toilet paper that Whitmer takes home from work.
And like Churchill did with his "honorary enrollment card" he'll (Benji) flash that title all over his resume and (god forbid if he ever makes it) on any lecture circuit.
Why is it "Professor, Ben Whitmer"? What's the comma for?
From Professor Sohi's CU webpage: "Her work engages with critical theories of race and she is committed to advancing students’ understanding of the ways in which institutional structures and social and political practices constructed racial formations and reinforced racial hierarchies in the United States."
Translated into Standard English: "I research American race history, and teach courses on it."
When I read that all I see is "...race...racial...racial...gender..."
Fred:
My guess is the comma's there to indicate a brief, respectful pause before breathlessly whispering Benjie's name.
"Ways in which" always bugs me. What's wrong with the simpler, less pretentious equivalent: "ways that"?
That's how you know they're ejumacated, Noj. Er, That is the way in which you know they are ejumacated. Um, the way you know in which they are ejumacated. Dang, it's harder than it looks.
In most cases, you can even replace "the ways in which" with "how". For example, where Dr. SmartyPants writes:
"...committed to advancing students’ understanding of the ways in which institutional structures..."
--a normal person would say:
"...committed to advancing students’ understanding of how institutional structures..."
We replaced four words with a single three-letter word, and made the sentence easier to read.
Mmmmmm, mini-snickers.
"We replaced four words with a single three-letter word, and made the sentence easier to read."
Which would make her unqualified for Ethinic Studies.
"The Department requires that first-year students master the use and preventive maintenance of the McGonigle Word and Phrase Elongator in Room B-047."
They've invented the Yellow Elongated Fruit school of Ethnic Writing! Quick, somebody give them a grant!
"The Department requires that first-year students master the use and preventive maintenance of the McGonigle Word and Phrase Elongator in Room B-047."
You got it! Ethnic Studies seems to be about the practice of stretching everything. Take any common fact and stretch it beyond recognition and then imply that it means something else. Ward's belief that there is no truth just means that everything can be stretched out of recognition--which he takes as a comment on truth rather than on the practice of stretching. So Whitmer stretches Instructor into Professor. For small men stretching is about the only hope.
Over at Tryworks the Whitmer and the Charley Arthur have been running a relatively clean left wing blog the last week or so. No acknowledgement of criticism, no psychotic revenge fantasies, no long strings of curse words, no affected Deliverance Hillbilly Intellectual spews.
It's almost as if they were advised to cool it in view of the Big Old Giant Lawsuit.
I applied the above language to my own doctoral dissertation and this is what I came up with.
His dissertation engages with critical theories of military structure and is committed to advancing researchers’ understanding of the ways in which institutional structures and social and political practices constructed military formations and reinforced military hierarchies in the German Army from 1914-1918.
The real title was: From Sturmabteilungen to Freikorps: German Army Tactical and Organizational Development, 1914-1918
I prefer clear, consise, and to the point.
Dr. K
Sorry, Dr. K. "Clear, concise, and to the point" don't move the US one inch off the planet.
FYI: this is what a real PhD can write/cite vs. a Wart --
http://insidehighered.com/views/...2007/08/28/
ford
The Curtis Mayfield quote is especially apt re Churchill:
“But a weakness was shown, ‘cause his hustle was wrong."
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