Michael Diamond is a political scientist and lawyer who write about the domestic violence clause in the US Constitution. I haven’t read through this website yet, but my professor (Mary McBride) told me about this guy’s thoughts on how to fix the environmental crisis we face today by simply using what’s written in the Constitution.
I’m using this blog post as a place holder for that website and to spur me to read his book that outlines the case.
My Ecoleadership Professor, Mary McBride, told me about this Op Ed in the New York Times by Mark Taylor. Great piece about the flaws of the higher-education system and six recommendations on how to reform it.
A couple of the ones I liked: have students work on theses and projects rather than papers; abolish tenure; abolish permanent departments and have universities focus on problems (like water or energy) because the study of these problems is multi-disciplinary; and stop training our graduate students to be academics because there are few who will be able to get academic jobs.
He also criticizes the university’s business model and says that the only way they can operate is to use cheap graduate labor to do research and teach classes. Very true.
Taylor echoes my own feelings and trepidation about taking on massive NYU debt. Although I have thoroughly enjoyed my semester at NYU (the past 6 weeks aside), I always wonder how practical any of this knowledge is. My first job in the Navy taught me that even government managers who oversee nuclear engineering projects don’t actually need a degree in it, they can learn it on the job just like everyone else. So, if your job teaches you what you need to know, and the university education system fails to give you even the basic work-place skills (like conflict resolution, negotiation, how to run effective meetings), what is the point of the education system?
Although I am not an academic and haven’t fully experienced his critique of the tenure system, my initial reaction to his piece is that he hits the nail on the head. I believe the reason my professor, McBride, liked it is because she advocates a similar, non-tradition classroom experience. My final group project was a skit that spoofed America’s Next Top Model, replacing Model with Cell Phone because we want to educate younger folks (14-21 year olds) that their decisions to buy cell phones has an impact on the world around them.
Taylor ends with this quote:
For many years, I have told students, “Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” My hope is that colleges and universities will be shaken out of their complacency and will open academia to a future we cannot conceive.
So will I. You can read the full article, here.
Last week in my Ecoleadership Class, we talked a bit more about James Speth’s book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World. I had to read this book as part of a group assignment. I presented three of his chapters – Consumerism, the Corporation, and Capitalism. In the corporate chapter, Speth describes the current characteristics of the corporation – separation of owners from managers, limited liability, personhood, etc – and talks about ways the corporation can be reform. Speth asserts that many see corporations as responsible for the environmental degradation we experience. He also notes that many see the biggest impediment to reforming corporations, voluntarily, is the primacy of the shareholders. Managers of the corporations must act in a way to increase value to shareholders.
Speth talks about ways to reform the corporations to diminish their influence in politics and to hold them accountable for environmentally damaging practices. His thoughts include: revoking corporate charters, eliminating corporate personhood, as well as reforming corporate lobbying rules.
Why am I writing about this? In my cynical world, where Congress in completely enthralled by the money the corporations offer for their reelection campaigns and their post-personal-aggrandizement-at-tax-payer-expense (I mean public service) careers, there is no political will to decrease the corporations power.
Just yesterday morning (Tuesday, 21 April 09), Democracy Now! interviewed Thomas Linzey, an attorney advising Envision Spokane, to discuss his groups’ efforts to get a community bill of rights included in Spokane’s city home rule charter. Linzey describes the home rule charter as a city’s mini constitution.
The relevance of this discussion is … the following exchange:
AMY GOODMAN: You’re a part of this whole corporate charter movement. Explain what that is.
THOMAS LINZEY: It’s an understanding that our activism is limited in the United States. We’re, in essence, placed into a box, which is limited by something called corporate rights. Corporations today have the same constitutional rights as you or I, but because of their wealth, of course, they can exercise those rights to a greater extent. So, even though you and I have First Amendment rights and Fourth Amendment rights and Bill of Rights protections under the US system of law, corporations have those rights too. So, Wal-Mart Corporation, for example, has First Amendment rights and Fourth Amendment rights under the law.
And what the folks in Spokane have started to say is, well, as a hundred-some communities on East Coast which have begun passing these ordinances and laws as well, is that to say to themselves, “We can’t build a sustainable, environmentally, economically sustainable system, if our activism is defined for us within that box. And so, we need to break out of that box somehow.” And one of the most amazing things about this—these particular Community Bill of Rights, which are being amended into the Spokane city home rule charter, is that it actually deals with that, declaring in that bill of rights that corporations don’t have rights that can actually exceed those rights of people within the city of Spokane. And so, it’s pretty groundbreaking stuff, in addition.
It’s pretty cool to learn about something in a book and hear that someone is actually working on making it happen. It gives me hope that despite the failure of Washington politicians, people in this country can still make a change to take control of their environment, literally and metaphorically.
I highly recommend listening to what the folks in Spokane are doing,Here’s the link to the interview.
If you want to look at my group’s notes on Speth’s book, you can get them here.