The Power of Branding
In my town, there was this nice locally owned little coffee shop that I used visit. The coffee was good, the people who owned it were friendly but no one seemed to ever be in the place except me.
The shop kind of limped along until they lost their lease and they were replaced by Peets Coffee, a chain based in California. Peets and the old place were about the same thing; decent coffee and some sweets. Unlike the old place though, Peets is packed. Everytime I go in there, soccer moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas – in general upper middle class older white folks - fill the place. It’s hard to find a place to sit down most times.
The change in retail traffic was the result of one thing and one thing only, branding. When people see a sign that says Peets, they know what they are getting. It’s familiar to them. And humans love the familiar.
What’s true in coffee is also true in music. Today, the Billboard sales charts came out and the Dixie Chicks new album went Gold the first week, over 500,000 in sales. People haven’t even heard the music – the album has received very little air play – and yet it’s flying off the shelves. The Dixie Chicks are a brand and people know what they are getting: good musicianship, a big-voiced lead vocalist, nice harmonies, and songs about real life written primarily for women. There is probably only room for one brand with this formula at any given time; for the foreseeable future, the Dixie Chicks are that brand.
You can go down the list of musicians who are brand names. Each of them has their unique formula to make them a brand. Take for example Sting, the sensitive balladeer with singable hooks and an air of pretentiousness. That formula used to be owned by Paul Simon - who in my opinion was much more sophisticated – but Simon got older and retreated, giving room for a new person to take his brand name slot.
Once musicians establish themselves as brands it seems that only getting too old can dislodge them. Even Madonna – who is my age – seems to be able to hang on as a brand in the realm of pop dance queen/pop tart. Apparently the market has room for more than one brand in this genre. Britney, Hilary Duff, and Ashlee Simpson can sell millions as well.
Branding can be almost instant if there is a vacuum in a certain area. For example, it had been a long time since anyone had filled the white female trailer trash slot in country music – a slot once the domain of Tanya Tucker – and then Gretchen Wilson came along. She was an unlikely success story – she was too old (32) and not particularly good looking – but she had a big voice (she was hands down the best demo singer in Nashville for many years) and a signature song.
Sony-Nashville took almost all of their advertising and promotion money for developing new acts and bet it all on Gretchen, on the order of two million dollars. They established her look and image and sold it out the ying yang. The end result was the creation of an instant brand and four million CDs sold. Now other labels are trying to get their own people in this slot; but my guess is there is only room for one brand and Gretchen is it for at least a few years.
Becoming a brand is a very difficult thing. It takes strategy, a ton of money, and a whole lot of luck. But most importantly, there has to be room to establish the brand. For example, supposing someone aspired to be a handsome, mellow male, somewhat jazzy guitar vocalist. Sorry, that slot is more than filled right now with Jack Johnson and maybe John Mayer if he wants to go back to the formula. You have to offer a sound and image that are somewhat unique relative to the other brands that are prominent out there.
Off the top of my head (and that’s all these essays are about anyway, talking off the top of my head), I’d say there is room in pop right now for a crunchy thoughtful male band; Cold Play with some balls or Green Day with a good looking front man. There’s also room for an angry, let her hair down female with some crunch. There may be room for a new say stupid sh*t that makes sardonic teens and males laugh rock band a la Weezer.
In country, a lot of the mainstays, females and males, are getting old - thank the Lord for cowboy hats because otherwise those guys would have to wear toupees - and I believe that in the next three to four years you are going to see new brands emerge big time. Someone new, maybe two people, will take the classy female slot. Someone new will be the country girl next door, although that slot may already be taken by Sara Evans. Someone new will take the High Noon/Gary Cooper stoic studly cowboy slot. Someone new will be the garrulous, bragging, strutting male. It's only a matter of time.
Without branding, the best a musician can hope for is being a one-hit wonder. Almost all musicians fail to establish themselves as brands. The public has only room for a handful of musicians in its consciousness and they are loath to dislodge the brands they already trust.
Branding works in universities as well. Establish yourself as a brand in a unique slot and you can count on a good admissions pool of students. The list of examples is long. Serious and geeky with a science bent? Go to MIT. Smart and like warm weather and watching sports? Go to my former employer, Duke. Status-oriented and want to get into a top-notch law/medical school? Go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. A school with a unique moniker that hasn’t been filled, like a musician, can be on top of the heap for a long, long time. And in the cased of universities, age is a good thing.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Monday, May 29, 2006
Doing The Right, Actually Left, Thing
The little birds on the street say that the new Dixie Chicks album will sell about 200,000 units its first week. That’s going to translate into #1 on the sales charts, folks. And it’s no surprise. The Dixie Chicks are a brand. And brand names sell.
It doesn’t matter that there is no country radio play. This isn’t a country album anyway. Five of the songs are co-written by Semisonic’s front man Dan Wilson, which already tells you something. The topics for the music include stuff country radio would never play.
What the Dixie Chicks have done very consciously is leave the world of country music behind, figuring that their core audience – college educated women – would be so loyal that they would follow them. And they are right.
This isn’t the first time that someone has successfully and consciously left country music and kept a good-size audience of women. Mary Chapin Carpenter did the same thing in the 1990s. Women still flock to her concerts. She still has a very viable career.
With the Dixie Chicks the core audience is even bigger than MCC. I expect them to prosper for a long time. No, they won’t go 8Xplatinum with this album, but no one is selling those kinds of numbers anymore.
From a marketing standpoint, groups like the Dixie Chicks and Mary Chapin Carpenter are doing the right thing. Establish the “brand” in country and sell a ton of slightly “left of center” music (remember, country radio had to be dragged into playing Goodbye Earl), and then move completely outside the box of country to play the kind of music you wanted to play all along.
Staying atop the country music tower is a difficult thing and few acts can do it. You have to establish yourself as a brand, which is hard enough. Then you have to stick to the formula that made you a brand, which for people like the Dixie Chicks and Mary Chapin Carpenter, just isn’t appealing.
In a strange way, Natalie Maines putting her foot in her mouth about George Bush was probably the best thing for the group; it allowed them the liberty of pursuing a graceful exit strategy out of the country music market, a market they would never have stayed in much longer anyway.
The little birds on the street say that the new Dixie Chicks album will sell about 200,000 units its first week. That’s going to translate into #1 on the sales charts, folks. And it’s no surprise. The Dixie Chicks are a brand. And brand names sell.
It doesn’t matter that there is no country radio play. This isn’t a country album anyway. Five of the songs are co-written by Semisonic’s front man Dan Wilson, which already tells you something. The topics for the music include stuff country radio would never play.
What the Dixie Chicks have done very consciously is leave the world of country music behind, figuring that their core audience – college educated women – would be so loyal that they would follow them. And they are right.
This isn’t the first time that someone has successfully and consciously left country music and kept a good-size audience of women. Mary Chapin Carpenter did the same thing in the 1990s. Women still flock to her concerts. She still has a very viable career.
With the Dixie Chicks the core audience is even bigger than MCC. I expect them to prosper for a long time. No, they won’t go 8Xplatinum with this album, but no one is selling those kinds of numbers anymore.
From a marketing standpoint, groups like the Dixie Chicks and Mary Chapin Carpenter are doing the right thing. Establish the “brand” in country and sell a ton of slightly “left of center” music (remember, country radio had to be dragged into playing Goodbye Earl), and then move completely outside the box of country to play the kind of music you wanted to play all along.
Staying atop the country music tower is a difficult thing and few acts can do it. You have to establish yourself as a brand, which is hard enough. Then you have to stick to the formula that made you a brand, which for people like the Dixie Chicks and Mary Chapin Carpenter, just isn’t appealing.
In a strange way, Natalie Maines putting her foot in her mouth about George Bush was probably the best thing for the group; it allowed them the liberty of pursuing a graceful exit strategy out of the country music market, a market they would never have stayed in much longer anyway.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
David Brooks The Political Hack
Supposedly, David Brooks is the left's favorite political conservative. I don't understand why. Most of the time, he's either a cheap pop sociologist or political hack. Today in the New York Times he wrote about the Duke Lacrosse team and showed his George Will-like tendencies of defending anyone who possesses a trust fund. Two of David Brooks' big things are "character" and "virtue." In his columns he constantly finds a lack of morality as a cause for all that ails society. But today, he reversed field. Apparently rules about character and virtue only apply to people on the other side of the tracks.
He comes to the defense of the members of the Duke Lacrosse team. According to Brooks, whatever happened that night "didn't grow out of a culture of depravity."
Let's see now. A group of athletes urinates in public, disregards university property, finds itself cited for alcohol abuse at rates well out of proportion to the rest of the student body at Duke, and in one case is arrested for assault (which runs counter to Brooks' selective use of data that claims that these athletes were not violent). They hire two strippers. They threaten the strippers with a broom. They hurl racial slurs. And somehow according to Brooks, whatever happened that night "didn't grow out of a culture of depravity." Excuse me?
Somehow Brooks tries to use this tragic event to bash the left or in his words, "social causes like the civil rights movement, feminism and the labor movement have spun off a series of narrow social prejudices among the privileged class."
Excuse me again. But the reason the NY Times and major media have focused on this issue has nothing to do with politics. It's just a lurid juicy story that sells newspapers and attracts viewers to the TV. Both the left and right have tried to spin this very local tragic event for their own personal causes. But the reason this thing has stayed in the "news" is that the public likes to hear about lurid gossip. Folks like Brooks and FOX news on the right and Jesse Jackson and others on the left are just a side-show.
Supposedly, David Brooks is the left's favorite political conservative. I don't understand why. Most of the time, he's either a cheap pop sociologist or political hack. Today in the New York Times he wrote about the Duke Lacrosse team and showed his George Will-like tendencies of defending anyone who possesses a trust fund. Two of David Brooks' big things are "character" and "virtue." In his columns he constantly finds a lack of morality as a cause for all that ails society. But today, he reversed field. Apparently rules about character and virtue only apply to people on the other side of the tracks.
He comes to the defense of the members of the Duke Lacrosse team. According to Brooks, whatever happened that night "didn't grow out of a culture of depravity."
Let's see now. A group of athletes urinates in public, disregards university property, finds itself cited for alcohol abuse at rates well out of proportion to the rest of the student body at Duke, and in one case is arrested for assault (which runs counter to Brooks' selective use of data that claims that these athletes were not violent). They hire two strippers. They threaten the strippers with a broom. They hurl racial slurs. And somehow according to Brooks, whatever happened that night "didn't grow out of a culture of depravity." Excuse me?
Somehow Brooks tries to use this tragic event to bash the left or in his words, "social causes like the civil rights movement, feminism and the labor movement have spun off a series of narrow social prejudices among the privileged class."
Excuse me again. But the reason the NY Times and major media have focused on this issue has nothing to do with politics. It's just a lurid juicy story that sells newspapers and attracts viewers to the TV. Both the left and right have tried to spin this very local tragic event for their own personal causes. But the reason this thing has stayed in the "news" is that the public likes to hear about lurid gossip. Folks like Brooks and FOX news on the right and Jesse Jackson and others on the left are just a side-show.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Duke Lacrosse Women Plan Celebration in Support of Men’s Team
May 27, 2006 (Durham, NC) The women’s Duke Lacrosse team, who created a stir by wearing bracelets proclaiming the innocence of the men’s lacrosse players, announced that they will, in conjunction with the sexual favor granting female group the Duke “lacrosstitutes,” hold a “proper” celebration of their Final Four trip to honor the men’s team.
“They never got to their Final Four,” said Andrea Mayflower, co-captain of the women’s team. “We feel the need to do something in their honor.” And so they will.
In an off-campus house, the team and the lacrosstitutes will reenact the ill-fated men’s party, girl’s style. Black male strippers will be hired. Racial insults will be hurled. The women will drink themselves into a stupor.
“We won’t rape the strippers, don’t worry, " said Ms. Mayflower. " Just like the men’s team we’ll show our integrity and character by abusing the strippers verbally and by threatening them with a broomstick. We may scare the hell out of them, but we won’t hurt them. After all, we’ll be paying good money. Why shouldn’t we have some fun just like the men’s team? We’re proud to call the men’s lacrosse players our friends."
Duke's president Richard Brodhead when asked for a comment, said, “Sounds like a great party. I plan to be there. It’ll be sweeeeet.” Rumors that Mr. Brodhead has taken to excessive drinking as a result of the lacrosse scandal have not yet been confirmed. AP
May 27, 2006 (Durham, NC) The women’s Duke Lacrosse team, who created a stir by wearing bracelets proclaiming the innocence of the men’s lacrosse players, announced that they will, in conjunction with the sexual favor granting female group the Duke “lacrosstitutes,” hold a “proper” celebration of their Final Four trip to honor the men’s team.
“They never got to their Final Four,” said Andrea Mayflower, co-captain of the women’s team. “We feel the need to do something in their honor.” And so they will.
In an off-campus house, the team and the lacrosstitutes will reenact the ill-fated men’s party, girl’s style. Black male strippers will be hired. Racial insults will be hurled. The women will drink themselves into a stupor.
“We won’t rape the strippers, don’t worry, " said Ms. Mayflower. " Just like the men’s team we’ll show our integrity and character by abusing the strippers verbally and by threatening them with a broomstick. We may scare the hell out of them, but we won’t hurt them. After all, we’ll be paying good money. Why shouldn’t we have some fun just like the men’s team? We’re proud to call the men’s lacrosse players our friends."
Duke's president Richard Brodhead when asked for a comment, said, “Sounds like a great party. I plan to be there. It’ll be sweeeeet.” Rumors that Mr. Brodhead has taken to excessive drinking as a result of the lacrosse scandal have not yet been confirmed. AP
Friday, May 26, 2006
What We Don’t Learn
Both the Enron and Duke scandals were prominent in the NY Times today, one on the front page and front business page, the other on the front sports page. In the Enron case, you have greed for money turning into criminal behavior. In the Duke case, you have greed for national visibility through sports turning on its head into nationally visible shame and possible criminal behavior.
Both of these cases could potentially be taken as a wake up call. Enron could be used as a springboard to radically reform business practice in America. Duke could be similarly used to reform college athletics. But that isn’t what is happening. The national business community and universities aren’t taking any message from these scandals to heart. Instead for both of them it’s business as usual.
As an example of the refractory nature of corruption and greed in both communities you don’t have to look very far in today’s NY Times. Below the fold on the front business page, you find that a couple of hedge fund managers earned in excess of one billion dollars in one year and that the top 25 managers all earned in excess of 130 million dollars. Hedge funds are lightly regulated; and in the absence of meaningful regulation, individuals – even those of presumably the “highest character” – will tend to engage in all kinds of chicanery to make more money. Despite one of the most prominent and “trusted” hedge funds, Long Term Capital Management, going bankrupt a few years ago because of horrible, if not criminal, management, the industry remains largely unregulated. We don’t learn; the desire for money leads us to look the other way. Expect another scandal related to a hedge fund disaster in the not so distant future.
Were it simply hedge funds that are largely unregulated. The SEC, formed in the aftermath of the Great Depression and in charge of regulating securities offered by public corporations, is woefully understaffed and run by former corporate insiders. What are the chances that they can effectively clamp down on corporate corruption?
And what about college sports? Turning to the page in today’s NY Times following the discussion of the Duke Lacrosse Scandal, you can read that Kelvin Sampson, newly hired at the University of Indiana, violated NCAA recruiting rules while coaching at the University of Oklahoma. It’s worth noting that, like hedge funds, college athletics is lightly regulated. Like the SEC, the NCAA is woefully understaffed and run by sports boosters and former insiders in college athletics. It has no real ability to effectively root out corruption in college athletics. Essentially, college athletics is self-policed. Self-policing never works.
As an example of the problems inherent with self-policing, Mr. Sampson infamously graduated zero percent of his players at University of Oklahoma for a least a couple of years. Not a one. Over the time period of 1993-2001, Oklahoma graduated about 10 percent of its basketball players, the second worst graduation rate of all 70 schools in major athletics conferences (only LSU ranked lower). Apparently, this didn’t deter University of Indiana from offering Mr. Sampson one million dollars a year to coach its basketball team. They wooed him despite knowing he was under investigation by the NCAA.
If the NCAA or the University of Indiana was concerned about ethics, Mr. Sampson wouldn't be coaching at Indiana and would have been banned from college coaching a long time ago. But we don’t learn; the desire for national visibility in sports has led a major university to look the other way. Expect another scandal related to a sports program meltdown to occur in the not so distant future.
Both the Enron and Duke scandals were prominent in the NY Times today, one on the front page and front business page, the other on the front sports page. In the Enron case, you have greed for money turning into criminal behavior. In the Duke case, you have greed for national visibility through sports turning on its head into nationally visible shame and possible criminal behavior.
Both of these cases could potentially be taken as a wake up call. Enron could be used as a springboard to radically reform business practice in America. Duke could be similarly used to reform college athletics. But that isn’t what is happening. The national business community and universities aren’t taking any message from these scandals to heart. Instead for both of them it’s business as usual.
As an example of the refractory nature of corruption and greed in both communities you don’t have to look very far in today’s NY Times. Below the fold on the front business page, you find that a couple of hedge fund managers earned in excess of one billion dollars in one year and that the top 25 managers all earned in excess of 130 million dollars. Hedge funds are lightly regulated; and in the absence of meaningful regulation, individuals – even those of presumably the “highest character” – will tend to engage in all kinds of chicanery to make more money. Despite one of the most prominent and “trusted” hedge funds, Long Term Capital Management, going bankrupt a few years ago because of horrible, if not criminal, management, the industry remains largely unregulated. We don’t learn; the desire for money leads us to look the other way. Expect another scandal related to a hedge fund disaster in the not so distant future.
Were it simply hedge funds that are largely unregulated. The SEC, formed in the aftermath of the Great Depression and in charge of regulating securities offered by public corporations, is woefully understaffed and run by former corporate insiders. What are the chances that they can effectively clamp down on corporate corruption?
And what about college sports? Turning to the page in today’s NY Times following the discussion of the Duke Lacrosse Scandal, you can read that Kelvin Sampson, newly hired at the University of Indiana, violated NCAA recruiting rules while coaching at the University of Oklahoma. It’s worth noting that, like hedge funds, college athletics is lightly regulated. Like the SEC, the NCAA is woefully understaffed and run by sports boosters and former insiders in college athletics. It has no real ability to effectively root out corruption in college athletics. Essentially, college athletics is self-policed. Self-policing never works.
As an example of the problems inherent with self-policing, Mr. Sampson infamously graduated zero percent of his players at University of Oklahoma for a least a couple of years. Not a one. Over the time period of 1993-2001, Oklahoma graduated about 10 percent of its basketball players, the second worst graduation rate of all 70 schools in major athletics conferences (only LSU ranked lower). Apparently, this didn’t deter University of Indiana from offering Mr. Sampson one million dollars a year to coach its basketball team. They wooed him despite knowing he was under investigation by the NCAA.
If the NCAA or the University of Indiana was concerned about ethics, Mr. Sampson wouldn't be coaching at Indiana and would have been banned from college coaching a long time ago. But we don’t learn; the desire for national visibility in sports has led a major university to look the other way. Expect another scandal related to a sports program meltdown to occur in the not so distant future.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Love Songs
Over the past couple of years I’ve watched only two things on TV: the World Series and American Idol. I love baseball, even bad baseball. I love music, even bad music. The Series and Idol are both fairly wholesome events, just good family fun. Someone wins. Someone loses. There is unexpected drama and there is lots of talent. Plus it spaces things out for me. In the spring it’s Idol. In the fall it’s baseball. That’s enough TV for anybody, especially me. TV is generally awful stuff.
Last night, I watched the grand finale on Idol. By the time the finals rolled around, the best vocalists musically were gone from the competition. As Herb Alpert says, people today listen with their eyes and charisma is more than about voice. The two finalists weren’t bad singers, just very limited in what they can do: Hicks can sing 60s and 70s r&b and little else; McPhee can sing show tunes with a pop twist. But they both are on pitch and know how to work a crowd. They deserved to be in the finals.
I think you can learn something from the popularity of the show and from the popularity of the two finalists. One is that love songs, cheesy though they may be, have enduring appeal. Whether the love songs are sung poorly by Barry Manilow or Rod Stewart or Andrea Bocelli (all three were guests on the show this year) or sung well, whether or not they are well written, people can’t get enough love in their music.
Pop radio long ago made the transition from talking about love to primarily talking about sex, but Idol tends to stay strongly on the love side of the equation. It isn’t a raunchy show in the least. Most of the songs sung are old classic pop and r&b radio staples. Whenever a singer tries to venture into rock and roll, as one contestant last year did with a dreadful song by the dreadful group Nickelback, they tend to lose votes. To win, the contestants need to keep it sweet and hold onto those high notes.
If you listen to a lot of classical music and jazz like I do, you can start to get overly analytical about music, breaking things down and looking for patterns. But ultimately, music is mostly about heart and emotions. For example, while I appreciate all of the intellect present in Mahler, if there wasn’t emotional drama in his music, who would care? I wouldn’t listen that’s for certain.
With pop music the structures are so simple and repetitive and the language is usually so banal and simple that it’s all about emotional content. Occasionally, lyrics will rise above the ordinary and be more than bad high school poetry, but usually that isn’t the case. That’s why pop music doesn’t often do anything for me; there is not even a smidgen of intellect.
But every once in awhile, I can put my brain on the shelf and just let my heart rule the day. And that can be a liberating thing. On Idol, even though the songs are almost all incredibly cheesy, I can get caught up in the effort and emotion of the contestant trying to win over the audience.
I think it’s because of that show that I’ve finally figured out how to write love songs of my own. For years, I could never write anything approaching a love song. I could only write about love in a sideways glance sort of way; now I can write about love head on. I think that’s a very good thing. Life isn’t always about irony, even for me. Sometimes like pop music, it’s about pure, unbridled emotion.
Another aspect of the show that’s interesting to me is the enduring nature of 60s Motown/Stax r&b. Taylor Hicks won this year by ignoring anything contemporary. Even when he was forced to sing a “new song,” he chose Trouble, which is very much a retro-70s Van Morrison tune. Without borrowing liberally from 60s Motown and Stax r&b, Van Morrison wouldn’t have much of a sound at all. The rhythms of that sound, generally heavy on the 3-beat in 4/4 or heavy on the 4-beat in 6/8, are inherently toe-tapping things. The melodies stay with basic major and minor chords. The lyrics are trite, but have some hook that is repeated over and over. The songs are chorus heavy. And they are all unashamedly about love won and lost.
Pop music today owes a great deal to those “race records” of the 60s; with the exception of much of country music, almost everything you hear today has its roots in r&b, which in turn has its roots in black gospel. Essentially, pop music today is black music. It’s one reason why so many singers today sing with fake drawls (more on this in another future essay).
The lesson of Taylor Hicks is that a charismatic throwback singing old classic r&b can be a popular draw on TV. It isn’t a fluke incident, either. A couple of years ago Fantasia won Idol using the same formula. Taylor does not have the voice or versatility of Fantasia, but he does have a lot of charisma. My bet is that his popularity won’t rise up above Idol. But as one of the fathers of r&b, Ray Charles, once said, “Ain’t a man born can pick a hit for sure.” Taylor Hicks just might surprise.
Over the past couple of years I’ve watched only two things on TV: the World Series and American Idol. I love baseball, even bad baseball. I love music, even bad music. The Series and Idol are both fairly wholesome events, just good family fun. Someone wins. Someone loses. There is unexpected drama and there is lots of talent. Plus it spaces things out for me. In the spring it’s Idol. In the fall it’s baseball. That’s enough TV for anybody, especially me. TV is generally awful stuff.
Last night, I watched the grand finale on Idol. By the time the finals rolled around, the best vocalists musically were gone from the competition. As Herb Alpert says, people today listen with their eyes and charisma is more than about voice. The two finalists weren’t bad singers, just very limited in what they can do: Hicks can sing 60s and 70s r&b and little else; McPhee can sing show tunes with a pop twist. But they both are on pitch and know how to work a crowd. They deserved to be in the finals.
I think you can learn something from the popularity of the show and from the popularity of the two finalists. One is that love songs, cheesy though they may be, have enduring appeal. Whether the love songs are sung poorly by Barry Manilow or Rod Stewart or Andrea Bocelli (all three were guests on the show this year) or sung well, whether or not they are well written, people can’t get enough love in their music.
Pop radio long ago made the transition from talking about love to primarily talking about sex, but Idol tends to stay strongly on the love side of the equation. It isn’t a raunchy show in the least. Most of the songs sung are old classic pop and r&b radio staples. Whenever a singer tries to venture into rock and roll, as one contestant last year did with a dreadful song by the dreadful group Nickelback, they tend to lose votes. To win, the contestants need to keep it sweet and hold onto those high notes.
If you listen to a lot of classical music and jazz like I do, you can start to get overly analytical about music, breaking things down and looking for patterns. But ultimately, music is mostly about heart and emotions. For example, while I appreciate all of the intellect present in Mahler, if there wasn’t emotional drama in his music, who would care? I wouldn’t listen that’s for certain.
With pop music the structures are so simple and repetitive and the language is usually so banal and simple that it’s all about emotional content. Occasionally, lyrics will rise above the ordinary and be more than bad high school poetry, but usually that isn’t the case. That’s why pop music doesn’t often do anything for me; there is not even a smidgen of intellect.
But every once in awhile, I can put my brain on the shelf and just let my heart rule the day. And that can be a liberating thing. On Idol, even though the songs are almost all incredibly cheesy, I can get caught up in the effort and emotion of the contestant trying to win over the audience.
I think it’s because of that show that I’ve finally figured out how to write love songs of my own. For years, I could never write anything approaching a love song. I could only write about love in a sideways glance sort of way; now I can write about love head on. I think that’s a very good thing. Life isn’t always about irony, even for me. Sometimes like pop music, it’s about pure, unbridled emotion.
Another aspect of the show that’s interesting to me is the enduring nature of 60s Motown/Stax r&b. Taylor Hicks won this year by ignoring anything contemporary. Even when he was forced to sing a “new song,” he chose Trouble, which is very much a retro-70s Van Morrison tune. Without borrowing liberally from 60s Motown and Stax r&b, Van Morrison wouldn’t have much of a sound at all. The rhythms of that sound, generally heavy on the 3-beat in 4/4 or heavy on the 4-beat in 6/8, are inherently toe-tapping things. The melodies stay with basic major and minor chords. The lyrics are trite, but have some hook that is repeated over and over. The songs are chorus heavy. And they are all unashamedly about love won and lost.
Pop music today owes a great deal to those “race records” of the 60s; with the exception of much of country music, almost everything you hear today has its roots in r&b, which in turn has its roots in black gospel. Essentially, pop music today is black music. It’s one reason why so many singers today sing with fake drawls (more on this in another future essay).
The lesson of Taylor Hicks is that a charismatic throwback singing old classic r&b can be a popular draw on TV. It isn’t a fluke incident, either. A couple of years ago Fantasia won Idol using the same formula. Taylor does not have the voice or versatility of Fantasia, but he does have a lot of charisma. My bet is that his popularity won’t rise up above Idol. But as one of the fathers of r&b, Ray Charles, once said, “Ain’t a man born can pick a hit for sure.” Taylor Hicks just might surprise.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Me, Gravity B, and Einstein
I never thought that my ties to Albert Einstein were anything approaching strong. We’re both Jewish. We both have troll-like hair. After that the connections get very fuzzy.
Albert actually wrote a paper on hyrology – my field of study – but it wasn’t very good. His son, Hans, however was a well-known hydrologist. And I stayed in the same suite as did Albert at Caltech. I went inside the same shower, slept in the same bed and drank coffee on the same balcony.
A few days ago I found out that my connections could have been stronger. I attended a lecture on the Gravity B space mission, an experiment that has been going on for over 40 years in an attempt to prove aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity. To quote from a NASA web site:
“GP-B will measure two parts of Einstein's general theory of relativity by assessing how the presence of Earth warps space and time, and how Earth's rotation drags space and time.
'The geodetic effect' describes how the presence of Earth changes space and time. Visually, it is similar to holding a bedsheet by four corners and placing a basketball in the center. The bedsheet will slightly wrap around the ball, somewhat similar to the way Earth warps space and time.”
It turns out that I could well have worked on this experiment as a graduate student at Stanford. During my first year in graduate school in geophysics, I took a class in the physics department. I did well. The professor in that class asked me to visit him after finals and I did.
Professor William Fairbank was a kindly older guy who worked on superconductivity, the dramatic change in electrical conductivity that takes place in some substances near absolute zero. He was also one of the fathers of the Gravity B space mission, which he noted, “"No mission could be simpler than Gravity Probe B. It's just a star, a telescope and a spinning sphere."
Visiting Professor Fairbank after finals turned out to be a bit awkward. Beneath that kindly exterior was one tough cookie. He wanted to know why I was wasting my time in geophysics when I could work on the real deal, physics, and in particular, with his research group on superconductivity.
I’d heard this kind of stuff before. Geology and geophysics were in the view of physicists and mathematicians, mundane things for those who weren’t the sharpest pencils in the box. I didn’t understand this snobbishness. And I had my own reasons for being in geophysics.
When I was an undergraduate, I was thinking of going on in math until I became friends with an older guy who was getting an undergraduate degree in geology and geophysics. It turned out that he already had a math Ph.D. He had taught at some small school in Tennessee. He had been miserable, but in relation to his friends, he was quite the success story; they could find no tenure-track academic jobs at all. He said to me, “Go into math, and the best you can hope for is teaching in bumblef*ck Tennessee to people who can barely count.” It didn’t sound too inviting.
I’d heard similar stories in physics. Getting a Ph.D. in physics was one thing. Getting a decent job in physics was another. It seemed that by getting involved in using math and physics in a more applied way – like geophysics – I might actually have a shot at a decent job.
So when Professor Fairbank asked me to move into the physics department and work in his research group, I kindly said no. He couldn’t believe I said no. To his mind, what he was doing was the most interesting thing in the world. And it could have been. But I wanted a real job when I got out of school not the likely employment path of a physicist: at best, a long term soft money position in some awful place in the country.
In retrospect, it was the right thing to do. I’m not at all an experimentalist. I’m so forgetful that I ruin most any experiment I put my hands on. I’m not detail oriented. I think Professor Fairbank would have regretted his offer to me along the way.
But had I chosen that path, I would have likely worked on the Gravity B experiment. I would have been part of a huge team trying to prove the greatest theories of one of the greatest minds the world has ever known. And at least at face value, that would have been a rewarding thing to do.
Instead, I got my Ph.D. in geophysics, got a real job at a real university, watched my field dry up intellectually, got incredibly bored doing the same old/same old as a university professor, and became a music publisher. Life always holds surprises. I like the surprises I've had (except for my area of research dying) and am more than happy with what I've done. If a truck hit me tomorrow and my past flashed before my eyes as I died, I'd be happy with the story that was told.
Getting back to me and Einstein, I vaguely remember that Einstein loved Chopin and used to listen to his music for inspiration. I love Chopin as well although there isn’t exactly a market to sell that kind of music today. I doubt Einstein would have any interest in the kind of music I write and sell. Unlike snobbishness in physics and math, I understand such sentiments in music. I barely have any interest in some of the music I write and sell. However, for me bad music is usually better than no music at all.
I never thought that my ties to Albert Einstein were anything approaching strong. We’re both Jewish. We both have troll-like hair. After that the connections get very fuzzy.
Albert actually wrote a paper on hyrology – my field of study – but it wasn’t very good. His son, Hans, however was a well-known hydrologist. And I stayed in the same suite as did Albert at Caltech. I went inside the same shower, slept in the same bed and drank coffee on the same balcony.
A few days ago I found out that my connections could have been stronger. I attended a lecture on the Gravity B space mission, an experiment that has been going on for over 40 years in an attempt to prove aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity. To quote from a NASA web site:
“GP-B will measure two parts of Einstein's general theory of relativity by assessing how the presence of Earth warps space and time, and how Earth's rotation drags space and time.
'The geodetic effect' describes how the presence of Earth changes space and time. Visually, it is similar to holding a bedsheet by four corners and placing a basketball in the center. The bedsheet will slightly wrap around the ball, somewhat similar to the way Earth warps space and time.”
It turns out that I could well have worked on this experiment as a graduate student at Stanford. During my first year in graduate school in geophysics, I took a class in the physics department. I did well. The professor in that class asked me to visit him after finals and I did.
Professor William Fairbank was a kindly older guy who worked on superconductivity, the dramatic change in electrical conductivity that takes place in some substances near absolute zero. He was also one of the fathers of the Gravity B space mission, which he noted, “"No mission could be simpler than Gravity Probe B. It's just a star, a telescope and a spinning sphere."
Visiting Professor Fairbank after finals turned out to be a bit awkward. Beneath that kindly exterior was one tough cookie. He wanted to know why I was wasting my time in geophysics when I could work on the real deal, physics, and in particular, with his research group on superconductivity.
I’d heard this kind of stuff before. Geology and geophysics were in the view of physicists and mathematicians, mundane things for those who weren’t the sharpest pencils in the box. I didn’t understand this snobbishness. And I had my own reasons for being in geophysics.
When I was an undergraduate, I was thinking of going on in math until I became friends with an older guy who was getting an undergraduate degree in geology and geophysics. It turned out that he already had a math Ph.D. He had taught at some small school in Tennessee. He had been miserable, but in relation to his friends, he was quite the success story; they could find no tenure-track academic jobs at all. He said to me, “Go into math, and the best you can hope for is teaching in bumblef*ck Tennessee to people who can barely count.” It didn’t sound too inviting.
I’d heard similar stories in physics. Getting a Ph.D. in physics was one thing. Getting a decent job in physics was another. It seemed that by getting involved in using math and physics in a more applied way – like geophysics – I might actually have a shot at a decent job.
So when Professor Fairbank asked me to move into the physics department and work in his research group, I kindly said no. He couldn’t believe I said no. To his mind, what he was doing was the most interesting thing in the world. And it could have been. But I wanted a real job when I got out of school not the likely employment path of a physicist: at best, a long term soft money position in some awful place in the country.
In retrospect, it was the right thing to do. I’m not at all an experimentalist. I’m so forgetful that I ruin most any experiment I put my hands on. I’m not detail oriented. I think Professor Fairbank would have regretted his offer to me along the way.
But had I chosen that path, I would have likely worked on the Gravity B experiment. I would have been part of a huge team trying to prove the greatest theories of one of the greatest minds the world has ever known. And at least at face value, that would have been a rewarding thing to do.
Instead, I got my Ph.D. in geophysics, got a real job at a real university, watched my field dry up intellectually, got incredibly bored doing the same old/same old as a university professor, and became a music publisher. Life always holds surprises. I like the surprises I've had (except for my area of research dying) and am more than happy with what I've done. If a truck hit me tomorrow and my past flashed before my eyes as I died, I'd be happy with the story that was told.
Getting back to me and Einstein, I vaguely remember that Einstein loved Chopin and used to listen to his music for inspiration. I love Chopin as well although there isn’t exactly a market to sell that kind of music today. I doubt Einstein would have any interest in the kind of music I write and sell. Unlike snobbishness in physics and math, I understand such sentiments in music. I barely have any interest in some of the music I write and sell. However, for me bad music is usually better than no music at all.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Win a Trip To Nashville!
Maybelline is sponsoring a contest where you send them your personal story of overcoming adversity, and if they select it, two hit country songwriters will turn it into a song. You also get a free trip to Nashville, a makeover in a Nashville salon, and a ton of make up. No joke. You can fill out your life story on http://www.cmt.com/asm/contests/unsung_stories/ . Now I don’t have any need for makeup but I’m in Nashville all of the time. I wouldn’t mind a free stay. So I’ve started to make up stories and enter them. I invite you to do the same. I've met Gary Burr, one of the songwriters participating in the contest; he's a nice guy and also is a hell of a guitar player. Last one to Nashville is a rotten egg.
Story 1. Emily Rothberg. I was born without cuticles. My fingernails were literally attached to my fingers by a slim thread my mom would lovingly sew every Sunday after church. Many kids at school teased me mercilessly, but one boy would always protect me from the time I was in second grade. He was big and older, fourth grade, and we became fast friends. When my mom died in a car crash and my daddy was sent to prison for forgery all at the age of 14, he took over the job of sewing my fingernails. He got real good at sewing from that experience and created a new line of athletics jerseys that "tore away." That patent on tear away jerseys has earned him millions of dollars. And of course we were married when I was 18 in a beautiful church ceremony. My husband wasn't satisfied with making football jerseys. He went to medical school determined to find a cure for my dreaded cuticle disease. He worked day and night, and one day...Eureka! He found the cure. I now have wonderful cuticles just like a normal person and three wonderful kids.
Story 2. Candice Remmington. My mom died from a poison dart while on an Amazon River cruise. They raided our ship and I was forced to watch her being boiled in a cast iron pot and eaten for dinner by the chief of the tribe and his 15 wives and 60 children. It was devastating. I was taken in by the chief as a member of his family and learned Amazon ways. I completely forgot my English. At the age of 13, I was to be married off to the brother of the chief, 80 years old and mentally infirmed. On the eve of the wedding, I miraculously escaped through the help of a National Geographic photographer. We fell fast in love. He taught me English. He brought me back to the US. It was tough at first. People at school teased me for the tattoos on my face. But the leader of a punk band liked my look, and I began to sing for them. We were a hit! Our album, Amazon Death Waltz, went to the top of the Billboard charts. I married the photographer who rescued me. My life has been one joyful moment after another ever since I left the jungle. As a memento of my mom, I still carry her pickled toe on my keychain. I’ll never forget her.
Maybelline is sponsoring a contest where you send them your personal story of overcoming adversity, and if they select it, two hit country songwriters will turn it into a song. You also get a free trip to Nashville, a makeover in a Nashville salon, and a ton of make up. No joke. You can fill out your life story on http://www.cmt.com/asm/contests/unsung_stories/ . Now I don’t have any need for makeup but I’m in Nashville all of the time. I wouldn’t mind a free stay. So I’ve started to make up stories and enter them. I invite you to do the same. I've met Gary Burr, one of the songwriters participating in the contest; he's a nice guy and also is a hell of a guitar player. Last one to Nashville is a rotten egg.
Story 1. Emily Rothberg. I was born without cuticles. My fingernails were literally attached to my fingers by a slim thread my mom would lovingly sew every Sunday after church. Many kids at school teased me mercilessly, but one boy would always protect me from the time I was in second grade. He was big and older, fourth grade, and we became fast friends. When my mom died in a car crash and my daddy was sent to prison for forgery all at the age of 14, he took over the job of sewing my fingernails. He got real good at sewing from that experience and created a new line of athletics jerseys that "tore away." That patent on tear away jerseys has earned him millions of dollars. And of course we were married when I was 18 in a beautiful church ceremony. My husband wasn't satisfied with making football jerseys. He went to medical school determined to find a cure for my dreaded cuticle disease. He worked day and night, and one day...Eureka! He found the cure. I now have wonderful cuticles just like a normal person and three wonderful kids.
Story 2. Candice Remmington. My mom died from a poison dart while on an Amazon River cruise. They raided our ship and I was forced to watch her being boiled in a cast iron pot and eaten for dinner by the chief of the tribe and his 15 wives and 60 children. It was devastating. I was taken in by the chief as a member of his family and learned Amazon ways. I completely forgot my English. At the age of 13, I was to be married off to the brother of the chief, 80 years old and mentally infirmed. On the eve of the wedding, I miraculously escaped through the help of a National Geographic photographer. We fell fast in love. He taught me English. He brought me back to the US. It was tough at first. People at school teased me for the tattoos on my face. But the leader of a punk band liked my look, and I began to sing for them. We were a hit! Our album, Amazon Death Waltz, went to the top of the Billboard charts. I married the photographer who rescued me. My life has been one joyful moment after another ever since I left the jungle. As a memento of my mom, I still carry her pickled toe on my keychain. I’ll never forget her.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Global Business/Local Culture
There is an interesting article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs (yes my wife is OK with me having foreign affairs, but domestic ones are off the menu) by Samuel Palmisano, CEO of IBM, on the end of the multi-national corporation (MNC). CEOs of major companies usually stay out of the limelight of public discussion. They are too busy with the practical matter of running their companies or want to appear to be too busy. Also, they tend to be doers, not contemplative thinkers. Even when they open their mouths they either have little to say because they don't want to offend stockholders or because they just aren't that interesting.
But this article, entitled The Globally Integrated Enterprise, is out of the box of typical CEO writing. It waxes philosophical on the end of the MNC. Corporations according to Palmisano are no longer working on a country by country basis in production. They've gone back to the 19th century model of operating globally both in terms of design and production. The obvious difference is that in the information age the 19th century model of the international corporation works smoother. He calls the new model, the Globally Integrated Enterprise. Needless to say, he loves the new model.
I'm not going to disagree with him except to say that the globally integrated enterprise works well for information companies like IBM, but doesn't work for many businesses. Information isn't a tangible product, something you can pick up in your hands and feel, something you can get inside and look around. But cars for example are a tangible product. And for these type of products what works in one culture may not work in another. For corporations where product design depends on culture, the MNC will remain.
It's interesting to me that while corporations have ignored borders and boundaries, culture still operates on a small scale. I used to believe that the information age would yield the homogenization of cultural identity. And there is evidence of that happening. For example, local languages and dialects worldwide are disappearing rapidly. The language of business internationally is essentially English only. You can go to the edge of the Earth and find Baywatch on television screens.
But overall, culture, unlike corporations, remains resistant to globalization. Even on the scale of a supposedly homogenized culture like the US, there can be major regional differences. For example, when I moved to the South to teach at Duke, I moved under the assumption that television had essentially homogenized the US. Aside from a tendency for Southerners to linger on their vowels, I thought that cultural mores would be about the same as elsewhere. But they weren't. The South is profoundly different culturally.
Even at the scale of a city, there can be large differences in culture from neighborhood to neighborhood. Even on a city block. As an extreme example, I note that the father of one of my best friends growing up - he lived three houses away from mine - was in the Mafia. Growing up, I'd be in his house at least a few times a week. I never thought much of that house being that much different. There are a lot of similarities to Jewish and Italian culture. When I sat down with his family for dinner, I didn’t feel out of place. But when we were twelve playing pinball at a local bowling alley, my friend asked me the strangest question anyone will ever ask me, "Would you kill for your father?"
Right then and there I knew that despite growing up in diapers together and despite living on the same block, there was something fundamentally different going on in his house than in mine.
Culture can be highly resistant to homogenization. Corporations may act globally, but regional and local differences in culture can be expected to linger. Businesses that take advantage of cultural variability can still be expected to prosper.
There is an interesting article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs (yes my wife is OK with me having foreign affairs, but domestic ones are off the menu) by Samuel Palmisano, CEO of IBM, on the end of the multi-national corporation (MNC). CEOs of major companies usually stay out of the limelight of public discussion. They are too busy with the practical matter of running their companies or want to appear to be too busy. Also, they tend to be doers, not contemplative thinkers. Even when they open their mouths they either have little to say because they don't want to offend stockholders or because they just aren't that interesting.
But this article, entitled The Globally Integrated Enterprise, is out of the box of typical CEO writing. It waxes philosophical on the end of the MNC. Corporations according to Palmisano are no longer working on a country by country basis in production. They've gone back to the 19th century model of operating globally both in terms of design and production. The obvious difference is that in the information age the 19th century model of the international corporation works smoother. He calls the new model, the Globally Integrated Enterprise. Needless to say, he loves the new model.
I'm not going to disagree with him except to say that the globally integrated enterprise works well for information companies like IBM, but doesn't work for many businesses. Information isn't a tangible product, something you can pick up in your hands and feel, something you can get inside and look around. But cars for example are a tangible product. And for these type of products what works in one culture may not work in another. For corporations where product design depends on culture, the MNC will remain.
It's interesting to me that while corporations have ignored borders and boundaries, culture still operates on a small scale. I used to believe that the information age would yield the homogenization of cultural identity. And there is evidence of that happening. For example, local languages and dialects worldwide are disappearing rapidly. The language of business internationally is essentially English only. You can go to the edge of the Earth and find Baywatch on television screens.
But overall, culture, unlike corporations, remains resistant to globalization. Even on the scale of a supposedly homogenized culture like the US, there can be major regional differences. For example, when I moved to the South to teach at Duke, I moved under the assumption that television had essentially homogenized the US. Aside from a tendency for Southerners to linger on their vowels, I thought that cultural mores would be about the same as elsewhere. But they weren't. The South is profoundly different culturally.
Even at the scale of a city, there can be large differences in culture from neighborhood to neighborhood. Even on a city block. As an extreme example, I note that the father of one of my best friends growing up - he lived three houses away from mine - was in the Mafia. Growing up, I'd be in his house at least a few times a week. I never thought much of that house being that much different. There are a lot of similarities to Jewish and Italian culture. When I sat down with his family for dinner, I didn’t feel out of place. But when we were twelve playing pinball at a local bowling alley, my friend asked me the strangest question anyone will ever ask me, "Would you kill for your father?"
Right then and there I knew that despite growing up in diapers together and despite living on the same block, there was something fundamentally different going on in his house than in mine.
Culture can be highly resistant to homogenization. Corporations may act globally, but regional and local differences in culture can be expected to linger. Businesses that take advantage of cultural variability can still be expected to prosper.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The End of Dignified Governance
Rudeness is now an accepted part of American society and I don't claim to be immune to the trend. There are times when I certainly don't avoid being rude. I just don't feel the societal constraint of propriety and politeness I felt as a kid. Plus sadly, there are times when I feel rudeness is now the only effective way of communicating; people just won't listen otherwise. They've become immune to polite, reasoned discourse. I wish it wasn't so. But it is.
The lid is off. The rules of societal interaction have changed. And with it comes an assortment of acceptable bad behavior. And with it comes fundamental changes in how we as a society work. That's as true for government as it is for any component of society.
During the McCarthy era a rebuke on the order of "have you no sense of decency" could stop a politician in his tracks. Now, decency in political discourse is the equivalent of the appendix in human anatomy. It's can be there. But it has no purpose.
In a society where for entertainment people love the caustic and nihilistic characters of South Park, or celebrate a rapper who sings about killing his mother like M&M, it's not surprising to see politicians behave like spoiled children in public. It's acceptable for politicians to drop all pretense of dignity and show their ugliness and partisanship on camera. Ranting is now acceptable public behavior.
Newt Gingrich was perhaps the first politician to realize how the coarsening of American society could be used for political advantage. Unapologetically confrontational with a lurid personal history, he was someone completely unelectable in a previous era where dignity mattered. But I think he realized that in contemporary society his immoral past was nothing of importance and his obnoxiousness was an asset. It was more than OK to be undignified. It allowed him to get things done in a spectacular way.
Now there is talk in conservative circles of Newt Gingrich running for president. I don't think at this point in time someone like Gingrich is viable. But if American society coarsens a bit more, someone like him just might be electable.
In our current undignified climate, the rules of government have changed. Politicians are less likely to be compromisers, people who work to achieve consensus, and are more likely to be ideologues who simply try to trample over opponents. The Orrin Hatches and Dianne Feinsteins of the world are becoming dinosaurs. The implications for this change are tremendous. It means on the whole less thoughtful legislation. It means on the whole, a government that is less competent.
Rudeness is now an accepted part of American society and I don't claim to be immune to the trend. There are times when I certainly don't avoid being rude. I just don't feel the societal constraint of propriety and politeness I felt as a kid. Plus sadly, there are times when I feel rudeness is now the only effective way of communicating; people just won't listen otherwise. They've become immune to polite, reasoned discourse. I wish it wasn't so. But it is.
The lid is off. The rules of societal interaction have changed. And with it comes an assortment of acceptable bad behavior. And with it comes fundamental changes in how we as a society work. That's as true for government as it is for any component of society.
During the McCarthy era a rebuke on the order of "have you no sense of decency" could stop a politician in his tracks. Now, decency in political discourse is the equivalent of the appendix in human anatomy. It's can be there. But it has no purpose.
In a society where for entertainment people love the caustic and nihilistic characters of South Park, or celebrate a rapper who sings about killing his mother like M&M, it's not surprising to see politicians behave like spoiled children in public. It's acceptable for politicians to drop all pretense of dignity and show their ugliness and partisanship on camera. Ranting is now acceptable public behavior.
Newt Gingrich was perhaps the first politician to realize how the coarsening of American society could be used for political advantage. Unapologetically confrontational with a lurid personal history, he was someone completely unelectable in a previous era where dignity mattered. But I think he realized that in contemporary society his immoral past was nothing of importance and his obnoxiousness was an asset. It was more than OK to be undignified. It allowed him to get things done in a spectacular way.
Now there is talk in conservative circles of Newt Gingrich running for president. I don't think at this point in time someone like Gingrich is viable. But if American society coarsens a bit more, someone like him just might be electable.
In our current undignified climate, the rules of government have changed. Politicians are less likely to be compromisers, people who work to achieve consensus, and are more likely to be ideologues who simply try to trample over opponents. The Orrin Hatches and Dianne Feinsteins of the world are becoming dinosaurs. The implications for this change are tremendous. It means on the whole less thoughtful legislation. It means on the whole, a government that is less competent.
A Compelling Character in the Narrative
A little while back, I was talking about how unlikely it would be for there to be a compelling character on the defense side in the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. I said the lacrosse players were likely to be inarticulate because of their age. But yesterday, a new character emerged in the drama. David Evans - for reasons I can't understand - strode onto the stage and willingly stood before the cameras. He has the right pedigree - a captain on the team - and seems more than willing to open his mouth.
If this legal drama continues on to trial, it looks like he could be a dream media personality. He's wealthy. He has a bit of a record related to bad behavior associated with alcohol. He's decent looking. With people like Evans and Nifong, this scandal could well have legs. Too bad for Duke. And if David Evans is innocent, too bad for him.
A little while back, I was talking about how unlikely it would be for there to be a compelling character on the defense side in the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. I said the lacrosse players were likely to be inarticulate because of their age. But yesterday, a new character emerged in the drama. David Evans - for reasons I can't understand - strode onto the stage and willingly stood before the cameras. He has the right pedigree - a captain on the team - and seems more than willing to open his mouth.
If this legal drama continues on to trial, it looks like he could be a dream media personality. He's wealthy. He has a bit of a record related to bad behavior associated with alcohol. He's decent looking. With people like Evans and Nifong, this scandal could well have legs. Too bad for Duke. And if David Evans is innocent, too bad for him.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Bush Fatigue
There is a nice article in the NY Times today by Michiko Kakutani that tries to use the ridiculous number of books written about the Bush presidency to paint a coherent picture of just how good or bad a president Bush is. Poor Kakutani. She presumably had to wade through all of those books to write the article. But that's what she gets paid for. It doesn't sound like a bad gig to me.
The NY Times is a liberal newspaper (now that's an obvious statement if I ever saw one). I'm a liberal guy. So I like reading the Times. The Kakutani view of Bush is not surprisingly, resoundingly negative. I'm sure that the Wall Street Journal (ugh, I can barely read that thing) or Fox News (I don't watch TV news, but I get a view of that horrible thing when I'm working out at the Y) could paint a different picture of Bush using books written about him.
The books, according to Kakutani, show a man who is stubborn, ignorant, and a failure. I'm not going to disagree with any of that. I didn't vote for Bush either time. I think he's an awful president. But I want to give him the benefit of the doubt on a couple of things. One is that I really do think he is doing what he thinks is best for the country. I really think he has a "grand vision" of the US. It's just a lousy vision.
The other aspect where I want to give him the benefit of the doubt is on his sagging poll numbers. The newspapers have been making hay of how the public disapproves of Bush. Many liberal columnists like Herbert and Krugman in the NY Times, who have found nothing to say in six years that's in the least bit positive about Bush, have taken this to indicate some sort of awakening on the part of the public. I'm not so sure. I think something else is at work.
It could be that the public is simply having buyer's remorse over the last election. They didn't like Bush much back then, but the guy the Democrats put up - who I should note I gave a lot of money to and did volunteer work for - was so unattractive a candidate that they were stuck. They felt that they had no choice but to vote for Bush. But they weren't happy about it. Now they are expressing their disapproval for having had to vote for him in the first place.
Buyer's remorse though is not what I think is the principal reason for Bush's sagging numbers. He was a lousy president before 2004. He's a lousy president now. Nothing has really changed. The economy is pretty healthy because we continue to borrow on our nation's future; people don't seem to mind this borrowing. Iraq is still a mess, but no one is really making personal sacrifices for this mess beyond the soldiers and their families. Oh you can say that gas prices have made people upset. That's certainly true. But here's another idea.
We're sick of Bush because he's just been around too long. Just like Clinton before him, we just don't want to see the same guy in the news for longer than four years. We get tired of seeing the same face saying the same things. The media covers every little tidbit of our president's lives. Like a TV show that's run out of steam, a presidency starts to get boring after a while. We want something new.
I'm of the view that the two-term presidency is becoming an anachronism. People including me have shorter attention spans than previous generations. We get bored easily. I used to just think Bush was a bad president. Now I think he's also a boring one. It's a sad commentary on both me and society that we are in need of constant change to keep us energized. But in this case it's a good thing. This president has been so awful and wrong-headed that being weakened by lack of public support is the best thing that could happen to this country
There is a nice article in the NY Times today by Michiko Kakutani that tries to use the ridiculous number of books written about the Bush presidency to paint a coherent picture of just how good or bad a president Bush is. Poor Kakutani. She presumably had to wade through all of those books to write the article. But that's what she gets paid for. It doesn't sound like a bad gig to me.
The NY Times is a liberal newspaper (now that's an obvious statement if I ever saw one). I'm a liberal guy. So I like reading the Times. The Kakutani view of Bush is not surprisingly, resoundingly negative. I'm sure that the Wall Street Journal (ugh, I can barely read that thing) or Fox News (I don't watch TV news, but I get a view of that horrible thing when I'm working out at the Y) could paint a different picture of Bush using books written about him.
The books, according to Kakutani, show a man who is stubborn, ignorant, and a failure. I'm not going to disagree with any of that. I didn't vote for Bush either time. I think he's an awful president. But I want to give him the benefit of the doubt on a couple of things. One is that I really do think he is doing what he thinks is best for the country. I really think he has a "grand vision" of the US. It's just a lousy vision.
The other aspect where I want to give him the benefit of the doubt is on his sagging poll numbers. The newspapers have been making hay of how the public disapproves of Bush. Many liberal columnists like Herbert and Krugman in the NY Times, who have found nothing to say in six years that's in the least bit positive about Bush, have taken this to indicate some sort of awakening on the part of the public. I'm not so sure. I think something else is at work.
It could be that the public is simply having buyer's remorse over the last election. They didn't like Bush much back then, but the guy the Democrats put up - who I should note I gave a lot of money to and did volunteer work for - was so unattractive a candidate that they were stuck. They felt that they had no choice but to vote for Bush. But they weren't happy about it. Now they are expressing their disapproval for having had to vote for him in the first place.
Buyer's remorse though is not what I think is the principal reason for Bush's sagging numbers. He was a lousy president before 2004. He's a lousy president now. Nothing has really changed. The economy is pretty healthy because we continue to borrow on our nation's future; people don't seem to mind this borrowing. Iraq is still a mess, but no one is really making personal sacrifices for this mess beyond the soldiers and their families. Oh you can say that gas prices have made people upset. That's certainly true. But here's another idea.
We're sick of Bush because he's just been around too long. Just like Clinton before him, we just don't want to see the same guy in the news for longer than four years. We get tired of seeing the same face saying the same things. The media covers every little tidbit of our president's lives. Like a TV show that's run out of steam, a presidency starts to get boring after a while. We want something new.
I'm of the view that the two-term presidency is becoming an anachronism. People including me have shorter attention spans than previous generations. We get bored easily. I used to just think Bush was a bad president. Now I think he's also a boring one. It's a sad commentary on both me and society that we are in need of constant change to keep us energized. But in this case it's a good thing. This president has been so awful and wrong-headed that being weakened by lack of public support is the best thing that could happen to this country
What I Think I Know
Of course I read the news about the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. Every morning, I type in "Duke lacrosse" in Google to see the latest. I look at a couple of blogs some days. It's mindless gossip really. I have no opinion as to whether the accused are guilty or innocent. I'm amazed anyone could form any opinion at all based on what's been presented in the media. Who knows what is true? I certainly don't.
What I think I know is that a stripper with a shady past - what stripper doesn't have a shady past anyhow - went to a party with over 40 men, many of whom were drunk, some of whom were abusive. What I think I know is that she was sodomized sometime that night, either before or in the house where she stripped. What I think I know is that the DA, who has his problems presenting himself as a competent attorney, thinks he has a prosecutable case on his hands. That's all I think I know from my reading of "the news" over the last month. Based on this "evidence," I'm going to presume two things. The accused are innocent until proven guilty. The accuser is telling the truth until proven that she is lying. Both of those presumptions are obviously incompatible.
Today there was a partial DNA match reported in the news. Maybe that's true. Who knows? It may be that this case will actually go to court. And if and when that happens, what I think I know will expand into something where I will make my own judgment as to what happened. It won't be an unbiased opinion; like everyone else, I'm incapable of not including my own biases into my judgment. Eventually my biased opinion will form. But given what is known now, I don't know enough to make any sort of evaluation. Unless a trial takes place a year from now, I won't have the information I need. And even if I were to receive better information, my opinion wouldn't matter because I will not be on any jury should an actual jury trial take place.
What I think I know is that regardless of the outcome of this case, the damage to Duke, its lacrosse team, its coach, and the accused has already been done. What I think I know is that the damage to Duke's reputation will not be long lasting. Many more people will still want to attend Duke than there is room. Professors will still do a pretty good to outstanding job with their research. They will still do a poor to outstanding job teaching. Some students will continue to study light and debauch hard; some will continue to study hard and debauch light. The university will continue to be well funded by donations, although its endowment will continue to lag behind the those in the top tier.
What I think I know is that a single event like this will not have long term repercussions for Duke or Durham; but it may well have a long-term negative impact on some of the individuals involved. What I think I know is that it's easier to harm individuals than institutions through scandal.
Of course I read the news about the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. Every morning, I type in "Duke lacrosse" in Google to see the latest. I look at a couple of blogs some days. It's mindless gossip really. I have no opinion as to whether the accused are guilty or innocent. I'm amazed anyone could form any opinion at all based on what's been presented in the media. Who knows what is true? I certainly don't.
What I think I know is that a stripper with a shady past - what stripper doesn't have a shady past anyhow - went to a party with over 40 men, many of whom were drunk, some of whom were abusive. What I think I know is that she was sodomized sometime that night, either before or in the house where she stripped. What I think I know is that the DA, who has his problems presenting himself as a competent attorney, thinks he has a prosecutable case on his hands. That's all I think I know from my reading of "the news" over the last month. Based on this "evidence," I'm going to presume two things. The accused are innocent until proven guilty. The accuser is telling the truth until proven that she is lying. Both of those presumptions are obviously incompatible.
Today there was a partial DNA match reported in the news. Maybe that's true. Who knows? It may be that this case will actually go to court. And if and when that happens, what I think I know will expand into something where I will make my own judgment as to what happened. It won't be an unbiased opinion; like everyone else, I'm incapable of not including my own biases into my judgment. Eventually my biased opinion will form. But given what is known now, I don't know enough to make any sort of evaluation. Unless a trial takes place a year from now, I won't have the information I need. And even if I were to receive better information, my opinion wouldn't matter because I will not be on any jury should an actual jury trial take place.
What I think I know is that regardless of the outcome of this case, the damage to Duke, its lacrosse team, its coach, and the accused has already been done. What I think I know is that the damage to Duke's reputation will not be long lasting. Many more people will still want to attend Duke than there is room. Professors will still do a pretty good to outstanding job with their research. They will still do a poor to outstanding job teaching. Some students will continue to study light and debauch hard; some will continue to study hard and debauch light. The university will continue to be well funded by donations, although its endowment will continue to lag behind the those in the top tier.
What I think I know is that a single event like this will not have long term repercussions for Duke or Durham; but it may well have a long-term negative impact on some of the individuals involved. What I think I know is that it's easier to harm individuals than institutions through scandal.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Thin Skin
I read the report of the Duke response to the Lacrosse Scandal by Bowen and Chambers. The report had both some expected criticisms and surprises. Like me, Bowen has been a long time critic of college athletics so it’s not surprising that the report comes down hard on the athletics department. The issue of the nearly all-white and all-male nature of Duke leadership also came up; that is a valid criticism to my mind as well.
I know most of those “guys” in Duke’s leadership. And they are typical guys, people who stand around the water cooler and talk sports. They have a blind spot about issues of sexual harassment on campus; it’s just not an issue they are attuned to. And you can easily imagine they wouldn’t “get” just how serious this rape charge was. And you can easily imagine that they wouldn’t “get” just how serious race is as an issue. Put a half-dozen white guys in a room and one female who is a big supporter of Duke athletics, and you’re not going to get wide-ranging perspectives. Wide-ranging perspective was what was needed.
As an aside, Duke had a black female vice president in charge of student life, Janet Dickerson, in the 1990s. She was there during Duke’s first efforts to move alcohol use off campus. Duke students were angry and outraged. What was interesting was that during that time, Duke students focused their anger not on Dickerson, but on the president, Keohane. They staged a mini-riot in front of the Duke administration building and screamed “F*ck You Nan!” Keohane was never the same after that incident.
Dickerson went on to Princeton and was replaced by a white guy with a big mouth, Moneta. Student criticism moved almost instantly from Keohane to Moneta. In that case, hiring a white male made Keohane’s life a lot easier. However, if Dickerson was still on staff, Duke leadership might have received some valuable insight concerning the Lacrosse Scandal.
It’s amazing that Brodhead didn’t know about this scandal until he read about it in the student newspaper. One would think at a bare minimum that he would be told of any felonies committed on campus. That’s a real failure in communication on the part of his underlings. But he shouldn’t be so oblivious to campus life. It shows just how out of touch he is.
Duke leadership isn’t responding well to this criticism. I can only imagine what would have happened had Bowen and Chambers been given a broader mandate to examine how the scandal came to be. The narrowness of the guidelines given for this report kept it from being a truly embarrassing expose. Yet, even though the criticisms are highly focused and narrow in scope, Duke leadership is responding in a very defensive way; they are in essence ignoring this report.
One problem with Duke is that leadership is put on a pedestal and they are collectively incredibly thin-skinned. Leadership can’t improve unless it’s held accountable. In this case, Brodhead asked for a rare accounting. In response, he received some valid criticism. Too bad it’s criticism he didn’t really want and likely won’t heed.
I read the report of the Duke response to the Lacrosse Scandal by Bowen and Chambers. The report had both some expected criticisms and surprises. Like me, Bowen has been a long time critic of college athletics so it’s not surprising that the report comes down hard on the athletics department. The issue of the nearly all-white and all-male nature of Duke leadership also came up; that is a valid criticism to my mind as well.
I know most of those “guys” in Duke’s leadership. And they are typical guys, people who stand around the water cooler and talk sports. They have a blind spot about issues of sexual harassment on campus; it’s just not an issue they are attuned to. And you can easily imagine they wouldn’t “get” just how serious this rape charge was. And you can easily imagine that they wouldn’t “get” just how serious race is as an issue. Put a half-dozen white guys in a room and one female who is a big supporter of Duke athletics, and you’re not going to get wide-ranging perspectives. Wide-ranging perspective was what was needed.
As an aside, Duke had a black female vice president in charge of student life, Janet Dickerson, in the 1990s. She was there during Duke’s first efforts to move alcohol use off campus. Duke students were angry and outraged. What was interesting was that during that time, Duke students focused their anger not on Dickerson, but on the president, Keohane. They staged a mini-riot in front of the Duke administration building and screamed “F*ck You Nan!” Keohane was never the same after that incident.
Dickerson went on to Princeton and was replaced by a white guy with a big mouth, Moneta. Student criticism moved almost instantly from Keohane to Moneta. In that case, hiring a white male made Keohane’s life a lot easier. However, if Dickerson was still on staff, Duke leadership might have received some valuable insight concerning the Lacrosse Scandal.
It’s amazing that Brodhead didn’t know about this scandal until he read about it in the student newspaper. One would think at a bare minimum that he would be told of any felonies committed on campus. That’s a real failure in communication on the part of his underlings. But he shouldn’t be so oblivious to campus life. It shows just how out of touch he is.
Duke leadership isn’t responding well to this criticism. I can only imagine what would have happened had Bowen and Chambers been given a broader mandate to examine how the scandal came to be. The narrowness of the guidelines given for this report kept it from being a truly embarrassing expose. Yet, even though the criticisms are highly focused and narrow in scope, Duke leadership is responding in a very defensive way; they are in essence ignoring this report.
One problem with Duke is that leadership is put on a pedestal and they are collectively incredibly thin-skinned. Leadership can’t improve unless it’s held accountable. In this case, Brodhead asked for a rare accounting. In response, he received some valid criticism. Too bad it’s criticism he didn’t really want and likely won’t heed.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Changing Culture III
A little while back, I wrote a couple of essays on how institutions can change their culture for the better. I talked in general terms on the need for openness, energy, participation by all stakeholders, and emotional capital on the part of leadership. Fundamentally, all those elements can be present, but without good ideas and strategy on how to change culture, it’s all for naught.
Somehow, a strategy needs to tackle the core reasons for an institution’s less than ideal culture. The tendency in self-examination is not to do this, but to identify and try to alleviate symptoms of problems. It’s just easier to try to think of an institution's core failures as being unsolvable – like the common cold – and work on addressing the specific impact of those core failures.
I’ll use as an example, a culture I understand well that has core failures, Duke. I know. I know. I’ve dwelt on Duke way too much over the last month. But, it is the place I know best and I wouldn’t be writing about changing culture at all if it hadn’t been for the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. So you’ll have to begrudge my frequent use of Duke as a symbol of a failed culture.
As a result of the Lacrosse Scandal, Duke formed internal committees to examine potential failures in Duke leadership and culture. Two of those committees have reported their results. Both point to alcohol abuse as a problem and recommend that Duke be more effective in policing alcohol use.
While both of these committees are right: there is excessive alcohol use on campus, alcohol is a symptom of a core problem at Duke: students in general don’t work much when it comes to school. They study and attend class less than 25 hours a week and they often go through the motions in their studies. Yet over 90 percent of all freshmen graduate within four years and the average GPA is in excess of 3.4.
Alcohol is a symptom of a problem: in essence, the undergraduate culture of Duke is intellectually bankrupt. It’s no wonder that many students drink too much. Many have little interest in learning and a lot of free time.
The reasons for this bankrupt culture are many. I’ll mention a few. First many students come to Duke not for the education per se but for ancillary reasons. If your focus in attending college is not for education but as a stepping-stone to your career, perhaps Duke is the best of all worlds. Duke provides warm weather. It provides the entertainment of a national basketball power. It has a reputation for heavy partying. And it has a national reputation as a “top 10 school” in US News. You get entertainment and a “status diploma” at the same time.
As a result, there is some filtering that goes on. Many serious students stay away from Duke because of the very attributes that make it an attractive place for the unmotivated student. The students that tend to apply may have high SATs and high GPAs, but when it comes to college they just aren’t that interested in studying. That's not true of everyone, but it is true for about one-third of the student population. Those students have the ability to kill the intellectual atmosphere on campus.
But you can’t just blame student attitudes. The professorate is at fault as well. Many professors are poor teachers. Many are so distracted by their research that even if they have talent to teach, they don’t put in the necessary effort to do a good job. Class work-loads are light, typically demanding less than three hours a week of studying per class, and attendance of lectures can be avoided with ease and without loss of much learning. The tendency is to expect little of students because high standards mean more work for the professor in terms of creating assignments, facilitating discussion and grading.
Suppose you wanted to change the culture at Duke. How would you do it? Well, cracking down on alcohol use doesn’t eliminate the core problems. It’s treating the symptoms. It won’t be effective.
The filtering problem – the existing reputation for partying, warm weather, and basketball entertainment keeping away many serious students – is a difficult one to solve. You can’t change Duke’s weather, that for certain. But Duke can and should eventually get out of the basketball entertainment business. Coach K won’t be around forever. Eventually he will retire. That would be a good time for Duke to realign priorities.
Basketball does little for Duke nowadays. At one time, Duke needed basketball for national visibility. Now the visibility it gets from basketball hurts more than it helps. It skews the population of applicants to the non-serious student. In addition, there is no doubt that the national visibility associated with Duke basketball greatly increased the newsworthiness of the Lacrosse Scandal.
It’s also true that Coach K has become a liability to Duke, the 800-pound gorilla that no one can control. His shenanigans related to the last Athletics Director job search meant that an AD was hired, Alleva, who was an internal candidate he could keep under his thumb. His power play on Brodhead’s first day on the job – pretending he was interested in coaching the LA Lakers – effectively removed whatever aura of power Brodhead had as president.
But waiting for Coach K to retire is not an effective strategy to put it mildly. And basketball is not the chief reason Duke has such a bankrupt intellectual culture for undergraduates.
Ultimately, if Duke wants to attract more serious students, it needs professors who can provide serious students the education they demand. The Duke professorate needs to collectively raise the bar. They need to raise expectations. Duke isn’t a serious place for undergraduate study because professors have heretofore made no collective effort to demand intellectual achievement from the existing student population. Instead they whine that students are bad and disinterested. A good teacher deals with the students he has and molds them. There is precious little effort on the part of Duke professors to do just that. Plus, there are a great number of excellent students who really do want to learn that flat-out aren't being challenged.
If Duke wants to change its intellectual climate, the quickest way is to make sure that professors have uniformly high intellectual standards in the classroom. I’ve said this many times before. I don’t think you can repeat it enough. This is a core problem at Duke. Change classroom expectations and a lot of good things will happen.
It won’t be easy to do this. It needs to be a collective effort. There are a lot of professors that have no interest in participating in that effort. That’s where leadership needs to come in. They need to provide incentives for the professors to do the job they are supposed to do. More than anything else, Duke needs a faculty committed to teaching well.
A little while back, I wrote a couple of essays on how institutions can change their culture for the better. I talked in general terms on the need for openness, energy, participation by all stakeholders, and emotional capital on the part of leadership. Fundamentally, all those elements can be present, but without good ideas and strategy on how to change culture, it’s all for naught.
Somehow, a strategy needs to tackle the core reasons for an institution’s less than ideal culture. The tendency in self-examination is not to do this, but to identify and try to alleviate symptoms of problems. It’s just easier to try to think of an institution's core failures as being unsolvable – like the common cold – and work on addressing the specific impact of those core failures.
I’ll use as an example, a culture I understand well that has core failures, Duke. I know. I know. I’ve dwelt on Duke way too much over the last month. But, it is the place I know best and I wouldn’t be writing about changing culture at all if it hadn’t been for the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. So you’ll have to begrudge my frequent use of Duke as a symbol of a failed culture.
As a result of the Lacrosse Scandal, Duke formed internal committees to examine potential failures in Duke leadership and culture. Two of those committees have reported their results. Both point to alcohol abuse as a problem and recommend that Duke be more effective in policing alcohol use.
While both of these committees are right: there is excessive alcohol use on campus, alcohol is a symptom of a core problem at Duke: students in general don’t work much when it comes to school. They study and attend class less than 25 hours a week and they often go through the motions in their studies. Yet over 90 percent of all freshmen graduate within four years and the average GPA is in excess of 3.4.
Alcohol is a symptom of a problem: in essence, the undergraduate culture of Duke is intellectually bankrupt. It’s no wonder that many students drink too much. Many have little interest in learning and a lot of free time.
The reasons for this bankrupt culture are many. I’ll mention a few. First many students come to Duke not for the education per se but for ancillary reasons. If your focus in attending college is not for education but as a stepping-stone to your career, perhaps Duke is the best of all worlds. Duke provides warm weather. It provides the entertainment of a national basketball power. It has a reputation for heavy partying. And it has a national reputation as a “top 10 school” in US News. You get entertainment and a “status diploma” at the same time.
As a result, there is some filtering that goes on. Many serious students stay away from Duke because of the very attributes that make it an attractive place for the unmotivated student. The students that tend to apply may have high SATs and high GPAs, but when it comes to college they just aren’t that interested in studying. That's not true of everyone, but it is true for about one-third of the student population. Those students have the ability to kill the intellectual atmosphere on campus.
But you can’t just blame student attitudes. The professorate is at fault as well. Many professors are poor teachers. Many are so distracted by their research that even if they have talent to teach, they don’t put in the necessary effort to do a good job. Class work-loads are light, typically demanding less than three hours a week of studying per class, and attendance of lectures can be avoided with ease and without loss of much learning. The tendency is to expect little of students because high standards mean more work for the professor in terms of creating assignments, facilitating discussion and grading.
Suppose you wanted to change the culture at Duke. How would you do it? Well, cracking down on alcohol use doesn’t eliminate the core problems. It’s treating the symptoms. It won’t be effective.
The filtering problem – the existing reputation for partying, warm weather, and basketball entertainment keeping away many serious students – is a difficult one to solve. You can’t change Duke’s weather, that for certain. But Duke can and should eventually get out of the basketball entertainment business. Coach K won’t be around forever. Eventually he will retire. That would be a good time for Duke to realign priorities.
Basketball does little for Duke nowadays. At one time, Duke needed basketball for national visibility. Now the visibility it gets from basketball hurts more than it helps. It skews the population of applicants to the non-serious student. In addition, there is no doubt that the national visibility associated with Duke basketball greatly increased the newsworthiness of the Lacrosse Scandal.
It’s also true that Coach K has become a liability to Duke, the 800-pound gorilla that no one can control. His shenanigans related to the last Athletics Director job search meant that an AD was hired, Alleva, who was an internal candidate he could keep under his thumb. His power play on Brodhead’s first day on the job – pretending he was interested in coaching the LA Lakers – effectively removed whatever aura of power Brodhead had as president.
But waiting for Coach K to retire is not an effective strategy to put it mildly. And basketball is not the chief reason Duke has such a bankrupt intellectual culture for undergraduates.
Ultimately, if Duke wants to attract more serious students, it needs professors who can provide serious students the education they demand. The Duke professorate needs to collectively raise the bar. They need to raise expectations. Duke isn’t a serious place for undergraduate study because professors have heretofore made no collective effort to demand intellectual achievement from the existing student population. Instead they whine that students are bad and disinterested. A good teacher deals with the students he has and molds them. There is precious little effort on the part of Duke professors to do just that. Plus, there are a great number of excellent students who really do want to learn that flat-out aren't being challenged.
If Duke wants to change its intellectual climate, the quickest way is to make sure that professors have uniformly high intellectual standards in the classroom. I’ve said this many times before. I don’t think you can repeat it enough. This is a core problem at Duke. Change classroom expectations and a lot of good things will happen.
It won’t be easy to do this. It needs to be a collective effort. There are a lot of professors that have no interest in participating in that effort. That’s where leadership needs to come in. They need to provide incentives for the professors to do the job they are supposed to do. More than anything else, Duke needs a faculty committed to teaching well.
Monday, May 01, 2006
This and that
I'll be writing more on music and popular culture in a couple of days. I'm in Nashville and will be cranking out new tunes in the studio all day and night tomorrow. It's absolutely my favorite thing to do. You go in there with fantastic musicians and take a basic melody, arrange it, and turn it into something an average Joe or Jane would want to dance to. The creative energy present when you put a half a dozen talented people together in a studio is addicting.
I see that Duke has put out two of its reports concerning the Lacrosse scandal. I read them online. Last week I said I would hold off on criticizing Brodhead and Duke leadership. I'm biting my tongue right now.
I'll be writing more on music and popular culture in a couple of days. I'm in Nashville and will be cranking out new tunes in the studio all day and night tomorrow. It's absolutely my favorite thing to do. You go in there with fantastic musicians and take a basic melody, arrange it, and turn it into something an average Joe or Jane would want to dance to. The creative energy present when you put a half a dozen talented people together in a studio is addicting.
I see that Duke has put out two of its reports concerning the Lacrosse scandal. I read them online. Last week I said I would hold off on criticizing Brodhead and Duke leadership. I'm biting my tongue right now.
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