Oratorical Animal

Graduate School Applications

I've spent the last two years on the graduate program admissions committee at the University of Illinois. Before that, I was the Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Georgia and served on their admissions committee any number of times. I'm wheezing across the finish line of this year's process. Here's some advice on good apps--if you'd like, feel free to spread far and wide. But always remember and repost that these are solely the opinions of the Oratorical Animal (John Murphy) and do not claim to represent the University of Illinois, the Department of Communication, or any of my faculty colleagues.

1) Complete your application fully. Complete it on time. I shouldn't have to say this, but students repeatedly forget to include some part or another of the application, the writing sample being the most usual suspect. In addition, our site, for instance, shuts down after the deadline passes. So, unless you want to make a lovely name for yourself with our graduate coordinator and staff by bothering them to apply after the date, check early in the fall semester on deadlines. Make a list of what you need to include. Complete the application fully and on time.

2) GRE scores matter. They are one of the rare data points we can compare across students, institutions, and nations. So, yes, they matter, but for those of you who do not do well on standardized tests, they are not the only thing that matters. So, several points. First, study for the damn thing. It's annoying, but it's worth the effort. Second, complete it on time (time--noticing a theme here?). Third, if you do not do well, if your score consists of 3 digits, for example, rather than the customary 4, then someone needs to address that issue. You need to say something in your personal statement or one of your letter writers needs to say something. Simply ignoring it as if it did not happen will not do. We'll notice if you're in the bottom 2% of all those who took the test. So, you need to say something.

3) Your recommendations should show that these people know you. I am not sure how this happens--I suspect that some students occasionally ask the most important person that they know. But those letters are usually terrible--1 paragraph, vague, useless. Make sure that those who write for you are happy to do so and are willing to devote some effort to the task. If they seem doubtful or tired, don't try to persuade them--the letter won't turn out well. And, as an aside, if you agree to write a letter for someone, don't be an ass. Write a real letter.

4) Your personal statement is not a memoir. It is not an audition for Oprah. Illinois is an academic institution. It values the life of the mind. This will be true of nearly every place you apply. This is graduate school. The emotional crap you're taught to write for undergraduate admission matters very little to us. As a matter of fact, we generally want smart students who are NOT constantly creating drama. So, if there is a narrative that opens the statement, it should be professional and clear. The statement should also have a clear focus--what are you interested in? What would you like to do? No, we don't care if you are a people person. Yes, we like the fact that you're obsessed with the impact that new media can have on public health campaigns. Tell us what you would like to think about. That's what we do--think. Finally, tell us how we can help you think. What is it about the University of Illinois--or Georgia or Penn State or whatever--that caused you to apply? What specializations do you have some interest in? Particularly if you're an MA applicant, we don't expect you to be sure about everything. But it's always nice to see the link between your concerns and our expertise--the people, programs, etc. that you think might work for you.

5) Your writing sample should be clear, clean, and focused. I have been a professor for far longer than I care to remember and I have yet to meet an undergraduate whose theory of communication I wish to read. Generally, the best writing samples are concrete; they study a particular process, case, instance, or whatever. They show us that you can review a literature--even if small--and that you can understand a communicative event with reference to that literature. In other words, show us that you can--or have the potential--to do research. The best samples are clean; if you cannot avoid typos, errors, problems in this paper, when can we expect you to be clean? Come on. Proofread. Finally, show us you can make an argument. If you can do that, everything else will follow.

Oh, and if you're a forensics geek--I was one--don't just send along your rhet. crit. The speech has jargon, lingo, stuff that does not make for a nice writing sample, however much it may help you to kick the ass of some punk ISU competitor :). So, make it a paper--not a speech.

Finally, above all, do not anger our professional staff. You treat our invaluable professionals like crap, then we don't want you. And I'm willing to bet that's true everywhere.

So, some thoughts. Love to have you apply. Don't want to read your 75 page honor's thesis--can't do it, as a matter of fact. Don't really care about your childhood--sorry. We're not friends yet. Be clear, professional, succinct. Leave us wanting more. Because that's what you want to have happen--you want us to admit you.

 

Conferencing

I know that I helped to organize it, so these comments might seem unseemly, but the Teaching Rhetorical Criticism this past weekend at Puget Sound was among the most helpful events I have ever attended. I enjoyed nearly everything, and so I don't mean to leave people out. But a few things struck me as most useful--apart from delicious food and beautiful landscapes.

First, there was a continuing discussion, introduced by Vanessa Beasley in the opening session, on the kind of students we're likely to encounter in the next several years. In particular, we spent time, led by Vanessa, talking about the effect of No Child Left Behind on our rhetorical criticism classes. Vanessa's done a good deal of research and it's good stuff. The fact that many secondary schools have cut back on history and government to teach to the test in reading and math hit me the hardest. I'm going to have to rethink time allocation in some classes, I suspect.

Second, given my biases, the conference made me think carefully about ways to teach the text or teach to the text. On one level, Jim Jasinski, Robert Terrill and Andrew Hanson led a great discussion on analysis of a single text--Jasinski's ability to teach what might be called "rhetorical grammar" to his students was impressive. On a second level, there was lots of discussion about ways to teach beyond the traditional text but still have that focus. For instance, Susan Owen's version of descriptive analysis for film, the way she teaches students to parse those sorts of texts, was very helpful to me. Finally, there was debate about the text itself--some of that was a bit abstract for this venue, I think, but it raised useful questions. Equally important, it's led me to think more carefully about the ways in which I can introduce institutional analysis into my public address and criticism courses.

Third, the Sunday session and others offered me some good ideas for various teaching tools. So, for example, Rae Lyn Schwartz-Dupre of Western Washington has thought very carefully about how to teach journal articles to undergrads and a number of people, including Karlyn Campbell, demand way more such reading than I have of late. I'm convinced now I can dig into this more deeply. Similarly, Kristy Maddux manages to teach criticism in a mass lecture setting (120 students) and, given budgetary constraints, her strategies for larger classes may well be helpful down the road. Although not THAT big, please God!

Finally, on a personal note, I couldn't help but be impressed by some true luminaries of our discipline, Hall of Fame sorts :), who attended every session, thought carefully, questioned closely, filled small groups on Sunday, and generally acted as if they had more to learn than the newest of graduate students. I only hope I can be them.

Professional Presidents

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, an occasionally amusing, but often damaging fiction pervaded American politics: the civic republican theory of leadership. Civic republicans believed power corrupted, absolute power corrupted absolutely, and even a little power raised a faint and unpleasant odor. Therefore, if one pursued power one was, by definition, corrupt and unfit to wield power. Presidents should not seek the office; the office should seek them.

Like much republican thought, it made for attractive theory and annoying practice. Beginning with, oh, the third US presidential election (1796), the campaigns became fraudulent exercises in which the candidates disclaimed any desire for the office while slipping the knife into the backs of one and all who stood in their way. Thankfully, William Jennings Bryan (1896) and then Teddy Roosevelt put an end to this charade.

Except that the feeling didn't fade from American culture. There was a continued love for all things amateur, whether it made sense for those practices to be amateur or not. In sports, for instance, it took golf and tennis until the 1960s to finally make sense and it took the Dream Team, for heavens sake, to bring a symbolic end to the amateur era in Olympic basketball.

But the fiction still lingers with University presidents. Due to an admissions scandal, the University of Illinois has recently accepted the resignations of its president (system president--commands campuses at Springfield and Chicago as well) and the chancellor (in charge only at Urbana). Both men will, in a phrase I love, "return to the faculty."

Really?! The last time the Illinois Chancellor taught an undergrad, s/he was doing "The Hustle." With rare exceptions (Drew Gilpin Faust being one), presidents, chancellors and the like either have not been teachers/scholars for decades or have never filled that role. In fact, some enter administration precisely because they could never have made it as scholars (cough--UGA--cough).

Yet departments (as I have done) go through this fiction of offering them tenured faculty appointments. They are in no way (again, DGF and the like being exceptions) qualified for those appointments, yet we know we have to give them.

Look, university presidents are now corporate chieftains. They are rarely scholars elevated by their peers on the faculty to serve in this high position of responsibility (against their wishes, of course) and eager to return to teaching Math 101. They are professional fundraisers, schmoozers who try desperately, constantly, and sometimes successfully to make money. I appreciate that; I like them very much when they can do that, given that UI has gone from something like 40% state supported to 17% in the last couple of decades. Presidents matter.

But they are not teachers or scholars. And now these two will "return to the faculty" for salaries in the 350-400k range and do what? Teach? Please.

University presidents should no longer be given tenured appointments. If they are scholars, they can be given one when they retire, if everyone agrees. But like 19th century presidential elections, tenured appointment for many of them now is fraud, pure and simple.

They are professional adminstrators. Treat them as such. It's not as if the former president of GM "returned to the factory line" when he was forced out, nor is George W. Bush training fighter pilots for the Air National Guard (not that he could). At a time of extraordinary budget stress, just what will the Illini two do to justify those paychecks? 

Admissionsgate

My sweetheart and I had a lovely time at a conference celebrating the life and achievements of David Zarefsky--except for the moment when we noticed Foellinger Auditorium on the cover of the Chicago Tribune. Huh? Why is our university on the cover? Thus began admissionsgate.

For those of you who don't follow the Champaign New-Gazette twitter feeds with the religious devotion they deserve, here are the bare outlines. Over the past 6 years or so, officials at the University of Illinois have received an increasingly large number of, um, inquiries from UI trustees (we're governed by a Board of Trustees appointed by the governor of Illinois--"we" meaning UI Champaign-Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield), state legislators, lobbyists, contractors, felons, and the like (these are non-exclusive categories) about applicants to programs in the University--undergraduate, graduate, and professional. The queries generally went to the System (all three schools) President or the Chancellor of this campus. 

Query is, of course, a kind word; the politicians were not shy and the admissions office felt enough pressure to set up "Category I," a special system for those applicants with pull. The Trib breathlessly broke the scandal, other newspapers followed up, Governor Pat Quinn appointed a commission to investigate, and its hearings are currently absconding with my NPR station. In short, critics accuse the university of admitting unqualified students to curry favor with politicians. We are shocked--shocked--to discover that politics affects important decisions in the state of Illinois.

Except that people are. Seriously. During my adult life, a majority of Illinois governors have ended up in jail, yet people are--again--shocked that public officials in Illinois might be admitting students partly for political reasons. I'm just happy they aren't selling kidneys (Hello, NJ!). I'm less intrigued by the scandal itself and more interested to figure out the common assumptions that have made it a scandal. There are several, I think. And they're generally misdirected or just wrong.

First, there's clearly a widespread assumption that university officials have behaved very badly and that the trustees, politicians, legislators, etc. are just doing what Illinois politicians do. Public outcry has generally been directed at the university folks who responded to the inquiries, not at the people who demanded the favors (with the exception of the trustees, who are sort of betwixt and between). The Governor did not give the panel subpoena power (a telling omission) and virtually no state legislators have agreed to appear. Instead, the onus is all on the university. The politicians are all crooks, or so people seem to believe. Thus, university officials should have expected them to behave this way and rejected them--regardless of the effect on the university. I'm not sure most critics hold themselves to this ethical standard. Such as a newspaper that privileges coverage of a baseball team that has been owned by the newspaper for a quarter century. Much less the various financial shenanigans involved in the sale of that newspaper.

Second, there's the related widespread assumption that we are still a public university and that the people of Illinois should run the place. Um, not really. The state of Illinois finances less than a fifth of our budget. On the one hand, perhaps we should have realized that fact during admissions and told the legislators to buzz off. On the other, the people of Illinois need to understand that this is not truly their university any more. I hate that. I want to be a state university. But if the citizens of this state want to define the admissions process, then they need to step up to the plate with some tax dollars.

Finally, there's the widespread assumption that these students are unqualified. People confidently talk about qualified and unqualified applicants as if we can precisely define these terms. We can't and don't. In the local paper yesterday, a new basketball recruit happily announced his 19 ACT score. That is, shall we say, below the scores of the "unqualified" students currently at the core of the controversy. There is no quantitative measure that clearly determines admission; every university weighs lots of criteria, from athletics to test scores, from rural to urban, from men to women (men now get a break at many places), from race to band, from theatre to first generation college student. In short, these are files with lots of stuff in them. Officials try to make decisions based on the whole student and the whole university. Using our very own nuclear reactor and very own supercomputers is fun. So is beating Michigan State in basketball. Or Illinois State in football (its important to adjust ambition to ability). Sure, officials understand priorities (I think). But many factors come into play.

Now, am I fine with what has been going on? No. I think UI got, um, carried away. But the real problem rests with leaders of the state legislature (I'm looking at you, Mike Madigan) who badger Illinois officials to admit their pets, refuse to fund the University to the extent needed, can't come up with a state budget, borrow money for everyday expenses, and won't face up to the hard choices needed to move this state forward. Much less make themselves accountable for their actions. And to the legislators who keep making these people Majority and Minority leaders. There's a solution to this problem, alright, but it won't come from a commission in Urbana. It'll come from some courage in Springfield.

Obviously, by the by, these are my views and in no way the views of my employer. Or anyone else who may happen to fund my opulent lifestyle. :)

Obama and Public Address

Later on, I'll post a substantive reaction to the president's speech today, but I wanted to make one quick point to my professional colleagues. Most commentators breathlessly anticipated this speech. The NYT now has five articles up on its home page concerning the speech, including reactions from lots of folks. Virtually every blog has written about it. Andrew Sullivan appears to be posting on the speech every 40 seconds or so. All this--for a speech.

If we can't get our students enrolled in public address courses during this presidency, then it's pretty much time to find another line of work. Seriously.

I am that Liberal Dana Cloud Dislikes

(Note: This is a note I put up on Facebook in response to one of Dana's notes, a status update, and some comments. I thought those not on FB might like a look. Plus, I get another blog post out of it!)

 

Well, I hope Dana doesn't dislike me. We've been friends a long time, although I suspect she rues the professional and philosophical paths that my career has taken. In a couple of recent posts/notes, Dana has argued that free speech is a luxury that those interested in social justice cannot afford. Confrontational protest demands that we shout down people like Joe McCarthy and David Horowitz. Wussy liberals like me won't do that; we need to man up and shout down. Yep, I'm aware of the imagery there; others should be as well. Here are some reasons to rethink that position--offered with an inordinate amount of respect to Professor Cloud, as well as an understanding that I do not live her life.

First, hasty generalizations make for bad policy decisions. That's been proven time and again and it's one of the reasons we call this an argument fallacy. I used to work on a faculty that made a new rule for every instance of student misbehavior. Given the imagination of students, that was a bad idea; rules proliferated. We even started naming the rules after the particular students. I honestly don't think we need a Horowitz rule for public debate; he's not normal and his life is a bad basis for policy. In every sense of those terms.

Second, Dana is absolutely right. Confrontation is an invaluable mode of protest and, in my strict understanding of the term, it's not censorship when it's not government or their agents. But we should also remember that confrontation does not = shouting down. Nor is silence consent, despite the lovely bumper sticker. The most affecting protest against the Iraq war in Athens Georgia is, in fact, the silence of Quaker women in front of the arch. Nor did the Boston Tea Party involve anyone being shouted down; the protestors were particularly polite by all accounts, as were the Freedom Riders. That was precisely why they were so effective. One can confront someone with their sins and still allow them to defend themselves.

I also recognize that it is not censorship. But it's not a particularly good idea, I submit, for the community to allow the gagging of various of its members, whether by government consent or not. Shouting people down transforms an argumentative issue ("What are your reasons for that?") into a test of power ("How many people can you put into the streets or into a classroom? How loud are you?"). Violence is the end of this trajectory, as Leland Griffin might point out. Less persuasion and more coercion is not where we want this nation to go; rather the opposite should be the goal. We've tried communally sanctioned, self-imposed gags on particular points of view in the past; 1836 comes to mind. They don't work very well.

Third, as I argued in front of Dana at Madison, a liberal democracy depends on the norm of reciprocity. Minority views survive and someday become majorities (or not) because they know what happens to me can happen to you. Such reciprocity breeds trust; we both know that we can count on a free expression of our views. Thus, we do not fear the results of a policy disagreement or an election. When that norm is violated--when the minority insists it doesn't have to abide by an election in 1860 or when suits riot in 2000, preventing a fair and accurate count of an election--then the trust essential to democracy disappears. This is a bad thing. It's better for Horowitz to have his podium and for Dana to have her classroom than for both to engage in a mutually assured escalation of shouting down. That's a different kind of reciprocity and the trajectory, again, is not a good one.

Finally, we do not fight McCarthy or Horowitz in order to become them. That simple. Sometimes, cliches are true and in this case, that is the case.

Of course, all of this may well be moot. When the happily seceded, newly re-established Republic of Texas takes over UT, I suspect y'all won't have to worry about this pesky liberal democracy. You can match power with the radical right in the streets of Austin and Dallas, College Station and Lubbock. Good luck with that.

RIP Postmodernism

The New York Times tells me today that the batting order of the hometown Yankees is "postmodern." Evidently, the writer sees the end of the master narrative in the Yankee effort to separate speed and power in the lineup.

Meanwhile, David Sanger of the Times tells me in the front section that President Obama's budget plan is "postmodern" because "he appears to have shed President Clinton's fear of being labeled an old-fashioned liberal." Old-fashioned liberalism is apparently postmodernism. By the by, the plan is also aimed at the middle class because neither a "far larger federal role in education" nor "national health care" seek to help the poor. Helping the middle class must also be "postmodern."

The Yankee lineup. The Obama budget plan. Both postmodern. I think we can safely say that postmodernism died on February 28, 2009.

What Kind of Dissertation Advisor?

So, we're driving back from Nashville the other day and giggling at Paul Krugman's latest endorsement of the stimulus package: "It's not a terrible bill. There's an output gap. And it sorta fills it. There are some things I like." Given that he's an academic, we laughed at the fun it would be to have those things said about one's dissertation--it's not a terrible dissertation. And that got us going on other people in public life. Feel free to contribute to: What kind of dissertation advisor?

Barack Obama: Ideal. Except for the fact that he has 300,000,000 other advisees.

Hillary Clinton: Most conscientious advisor EVER. You get your chapters back in a day. With every line edited. Not coincidentally, you are her only advisee.

Joe Biden: "God help me, but I love this dissertation. It's GREAT! I take it to bed with me. Write me another one."

George W. Bush: Doesn't read your stuff. Wonders why there's so much of it.

Bill Clinton: Greatest advisor ever once a year. Focused on you, loves your project, best advice and direction you've ever received from anyone on anything. Does not recognize you in the hallway the rest of the time. 

Dick Cheney: "Write it this way. Or else."

Rod Blagojevich: "It's passable. For $300,000."

Gregory House: Worst. Dissertation. Advisor. Ever.

Rhetoric, History, and Zarefsky

As part of our Lincoln's Rhetorical Worlds series, we've been happy to have David Zarefsky on campus for a couple of days. David is the Owen L. Coon Professor of Argumentation and Debate in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. He is well known for his rhetorical studies of Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson, as well as for being one of the nicest human beings alive. In fact, we're lucky to have him because he's been among the most popular guys in the state this week--something about a certain well-known American's 200th birthday. You can find David's radio interview here and we'll soon have his public lecture on Lincoln's "House Divided" oration streamed on the Lincoln website.

Buuut that's not all. We also asked David to participate in the Rhetorical Studies Reading Group, sponsored by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. It's always a lot of fun when we meet, so thanks to the IPRH, and it was a particularly good time this noon. Our theme this year is rhetoric and history; we couldn't have a better guest than David Zarefsky. The discussion flowed this way and that, but one methodological and one practical theme emerged for me. 

We spent a good deal of time exploring the ways in which context infuses readings of texts and vice versa. For instance, David is currently working on Lyndon Johnson's March 31, 1968 speech announcing a policy change in Vietnam and, oh yeah, his withdrawal from the presidential race. Not to steal David's thunder, but it's clear he's discovered some fascinating stuff in the Johnson Library, information that raises questions about the role of Johnson's advisors in the construction of the speech, particularly Clark Clifford. Our understanding of that speech is liable to shift significantly, given what David has discovered about its construction. 

On a practical note for all of us, we also tried to figure out when enough is enough research. This is a salient issue for a Lincoln scholar like David, what with the 14,000 titles out there, new ones arriving each day, much less the prospect of this thing breaking one's desk. I find this to be one of my most pressing personal and advising issues. The absolute, no-holds-barred best way to procrastinate is the lovely statement, "Well, I need to read this book before I can write that--really, just one more book. Oh, and that book, too." I say it. My advisees say it. My friends say it. There's obviously no hard and fast rule, but, frankly, David is right. When there's not much news for you in the next book you glance at, when you know the period well enough to recognize the stories and their sources in each book, then it's time to go confront the white, blank screen.  

Lots of other stuff--if anyone wants to add in the comments, feel free--but all in all, it was a great time. We were very lucky, indeed.  

Free the Archives!

This is very good news. Under the Bush Administration, not only could the current president obfuscate, delay and lie, but all past presidents could as well. They could deny access to materials that historians, rhetoricians, and, oh heck, American citizens wanted to look at because, y'know, we only paid their salaries. And now pay their pensions. We shouldn't get to examine what they did in office. That would be wrong, as an ex-president with experience in matters of deceit once said.

Now, initial reports indicate that President Obama's (Ahhhhhh, that feels good to write) executive orders yesterday included provisions to free the archives. Hurray! Now, if only we could free Katie Holmes.