Friday, September 15, 2017

#6 paean to older women friends; 30 years ago; losing a job; school attachment; divorces; Confederate statues





A paean to older women friends:  it occurred to me late last year that I have had the remarkable good fortune to be (almost) life-long friends with three extraordinary women, all of whom turned 80 in 2016 and all of whom I remain in touch with.  Each of them, at different times and in different ways, had a significant impact on my life.  (Yes, I should have included this story in my 2016 letter, but I didn't think of it until a week after I'd mailed the 2016 edition.) In alphabetical order.

1.  Ellen Berscheid, retired Regents Professor of (Social) Psychology, University of Minnesota.  I met Ellen when I entered the Ph.D. program in Psychology after dropping out of the University of Minnesota Law School in 1973.  In my second quarter in Psychology, in early 1974, I took the graduate-level introductory course in Social Psychology, taught by Ellen Berscheid.  During one of the class sessions, Ellen mentioned her dismay at "grade inflation," the apparent increase in the number of high grades given to students even though they weren't necessarily putting in any more work or learning any more.  (One remembers the oddest things from classes.  One of the lessons from Ellen was that folk wisdom about social psychology is often ambiguous:  "absence makes the heart grow fonder" but "out of sight, out of mind"; "birds of a feather flock together" but "opposites attract"; "he who hesitates is lost" but "look before you leap"; and so on.)

Ellen's comment on grades led me to initiate a study of University grades from 1955 to 1974 (with help from the University administration and funded by the student government), which documented conclusively that grades had indeed inflated over the period—and especially during the period of the Vietnam War (when faculty members may have given male students in particular sufficiently high grades to enable them to stay in college and avoid being drafted—or so one hypothesis goes, anyway).  The report made a splash in the local newspapers and resulted in my being asked to address the Council of Academic Officers—primarily the deans—about grade inflation.  So at age 24, knowing little about the administration of the University, I was sitting in front of the all of the deans and the president and vice presidents explaining why I thought grade inflation was not a good thing.  The dean of the Law School at the time wondered why this was an important issue.  I never did like the guy thereafter.

(I am often startled by coincidence.  Just when I finished composing these paragraphs about Ellen, I found on my Facebook news feed an article from March, 2016, titled "A’s for Everyone: How Grade Inflation Is Wrecking Higher Education," with the subtitle "Students who may not deserve high marks are getting them."  So 40 years later the problem hasn't gone away—so you can see how much effect my study had on the course of events.  Nor is it confined to the U.S.  Two days after I wrote the preceding paragraph, the daily news update Inside Higher Ed had an article:  "British Universities Fret About Grade Inflation":  "Roughly one in four students are leaving British colleges and universities with top honors, raising concerns about grade inflation and the devaluation of degrees.")

Ellen and I got to know one another because of the study and have maintained the friendship for the succeeding 43 years.  While we have enjoyed discussions on a variety of topics over the years, we have debated and sparred in friendly fashion about religion ever since we met.  I don't recall now how we ever got on the subject in the first place.

It was Ellen who was partly responsible for my returning to school to obtain my Ph.D.  She pointed out to me, in a kindly but also mildly acid tone, that I would turn 40 (a few years later) with or without the degree, so I might as well have it than not.  Her logic was indisputable.

Ellen made her mark as one of the "founding mothers" of the study of close relationships, has been recognized nationally with numerous awards for contributions to the field, and is one of the most distinguished psychologists in the country.  When I was in the doldrums following my divorce, she suggested I take a look at her recently-published magnum opus on close relationships.  I did so, and learned much—and emailed her to tell her that while much of what was in the book made sense, some of it did not.  She asked if I would go through and provide her comments on sections where I thought the research results were puzzling.  I wasn't exactly in the mood to do so at the time, but I acceded to her request, in part because I was complimented she thought enough of me to ask.  One datum came through loud and clear:  older single men have much higher mortality and morbidity rates than do attached/married males.  I already knew I had no intention of staying single, but reading that information in her book provided whatever additional impetus I needed to get into serious dating.  After going through the book paragraph by paragraph, I was a soi-disant expert on close relationships in the State of Minnesota (i.e., after Ellen herself).

Ellen continues to be interested (as a scholar) in topics that I also find intriguing, such as the nature of consciousness (she's delving into quantum mechanics because it is one of the approaches to studying consciousness!).  We continue to have lunch once or twice per year (when she retired, she moved back to her native Wisconsin, in Menomonie, but that's only a 45-minute drive from Minneapolis) and talk about subjects of interest.  We also continue to exchange emails about life, travel, and academic matters, and I continue to be enriched by her presence in my life.

2.  Shirley Clark, retired Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for the Oregon higher education system and, before that, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Minnesota and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs (and, a number of years later, Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs).  I met Shirley in 1975 when she was Assistant Vice President; her office was on the same floor as mine in the University's main administration building (Morrill Hall).  Although our responsibilities did not intersect to any significant extent, they did so just enough that I got to know and like her very much.

            She decided to leave the administration and return to her faculty position; she was in that role when she served on the University's senior faculty committee advising the president and administration, and was elected chair of the committee.  That was the same time I had taken the job of professional staff to the committee, so we began working more closely together.  Shirley joined Ellen in badgering me about returning to graduate school to obtain my Ph.D., and I finally did so—and Shirley agreed to be my Ph.D. adviser.  In that role she was enormously helpful in getting me going and orienting me to the department and the "higher study of higher education."  I am not sure I would have pursued the degree without her guidance and insistence.

            Unfortunately for me, Shirley was offered the vice chancellor's position in Oregon, so she and her husband Jack (also a colleague I worked closely with) left Minnesota after many years here and I had to find a new adviser (I did, and he was wonderful in the role—but I still missed having Shirley).  We stayed in touch, however, and I continued to gain from her insights and wisdom—and still do.  My regret about her move was that I had not seen her in person in many years—but finally caught up with her last summer in Eugene, about which more later.  (When Jack and Shirley left for Oregon, they asked us to "take care of" their lake cabin in Wisconsin.  "Taking care" of it mostly meant mowing the lawn and ensuring there was no damage to it; what it also meant was that for four summers, starting in 1991, we had use of a lovely lake place every weekend.  They wouldn't even let us pay the utility costs.  So the weekends of Elliott's formative summers—he was born in 1990—were spent at the lake.  It doesn't seem to have had any effect on him whatever.  He loved the sunfish and crappie filets that Pat made—he ate them like potato chips.  As an adult, he won't eat fish of any kind.)

            One of the small elements of Shirley's persona that I have always tried to imitate and to impress upon my children—with only modest success in both cases—is her practice of speaking in complete English sentences, punctuation (implicit) always included.  I marvel at her precision every time I listen to her—in part because it is so rare and in larger part because I believe it reflects a disciplined and thoughtful mind.

            Shirley is indirectly and unbeknownst to her responsible for this part of the letter.  In mid-December of 2016 she and I were in touch the old-fashioned way:  we talked on the telephone for nearly an hour.  Later that evening, in the jumble of thoughts we all have when somewhere between being awake and sleeping, the fact of these three women all turning 80 and that they had been such part of my life came to mind.  What's amazing is that I remembered it the next morning.

            I also need to make a note for the record.  I am given credit for the "6 Presidents" event at the University in May 2015.  It's true that it was my idea, but when I floated the proposal before 3 of the 6 presidents, including the current president, they all gave it a thumbs down.  So I dropped it—but I did happen to mention the idea to Shirley in an email.  She wrote back to tell me of a similar panel that had been constituted at the University of Illinois when she was on the faculty there, before she and Jack came to Minnesota.  I passed along Shirley's description to one of the former presidents, who, upon reading the description, changed his mind about the attractiveness of a "6 Presidents" event.  The others did as well, so the event came off.  It is to be recorded, however, that it would never have happened had not Shirley written to me.

3.  Christine Grant, retired Director of Women's Athletics, University of Iowa.  When the president of the University of Minnesota rearranged administrative responsibilities in 1976, he shifted athletics to the vice president for whom I worked.  That vice president assigned me central staff oversight responsibilities for athletics—budgets, facilities, policies, the usual stuff of any organization.  As I have told many friends over the years, inasmuch as I had never had any interest in athletics and heaven knows no one had ever accused me of being an athlete, I approached the job as a complete novice.

            The mid-1970s was a period when women's college athletics were just getting off the ground, after the passage of Title IX of the Higher Education Amendments of 1972, which forbade discrimination on the basis of sex for any institution receiving federal funds.  As part of my new responsibilities, I began attending the national conventions of both the National Collegiate Athletic Association—NCAA—and the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).  I quickly got to know many of the women from Big Ten schools, and in particular Christine Grant at Iowa.  Over the years I've known her, she's (deservedly) been given more national honors and awards in recognition of her service to athletics, and especially to women in sport, than I could earn in 10 lifetimes.

            As an undergraduate I'd studied American constitutional law and history and learned about the slow advance of civil rights.  I realized much later that the focus had never been on women's rights.  I had not given the topic much thought (mostly because it had never occurred to me there was a question:  what antediluvian thought men and women shouldn't be treated the same in society?).  In long conversations with Christine and some of her colleagues from around the country, it became evident to me that women were in a number of ways as disadvantaged as blacks and other minority groups in the country—and not just in college athletics.  Christine sensitized me to issues of sexism, and taught me much, for which I have been grateful ever since.  (One thing Christine has not been able to do is make me much more interested in athletics per se than I was 40 years ago; I was interested in the administration of college sport but the games?  Not so much, although a little more.)

            I have visited Christine in Iowa City nearly annually for almost 40 years.  (Fortunately, the drive between Minneapolis and Iowa City has been shortened by over an hour with the completion of new freeways and highway upgrades.)  Before I met Pat, I would go down by myself; then Pat and I would go; then Pat and I and the kids would go (turning Christine's house into the Hotel Grant).  Kathy and I have only been down twice since I've known her (Kathy), but we did visit last summer and are resolved to do so again.

            Unrelated to athletics, Christine is a native of Scotland.  When I was on leave at the University of Edinburgh in 2006, she put me in touch with her brother Hugh and his friend Margaret, who lived (and still live) in a small town very close to Edinburgh.  Hugh and Margaret were wonderful friends when we were in Scotland, and gave us several fun tours of the area surrounding Edinburgh.
           
            My life is infinitely richer for having had the acquaintance of these three women for four decades.  (Yes, all three of them have received this letter every year I've written it.)  I hope this isn't taken as a self-congratulatory "I've had a great life" kind of entry; I intended it to be a tribute to these three friends of mine.  It also seems that when I was about 25 years old I enjoyed the company of women about 40.

            After reading this panegyric, Kathy asked me if I could name any men who had played similar roles in my life.  I can; I thought of four or five who did.  But those names are for another day.

* * *

            One night Kathy and I were talking about where we were 30 years earlier (that is, in 1987, when I was 36).  I was married and had one child, but no evident career.  I had just taken the job with the senior faculty committees, but that was intended to be for a couple of years, not evolve into the Secretary to the Faculty position it became soon thereafter and that I kept for 27 years.  Kathy in 1987 had neither career nor marriage and child; fast forward so she's also age 36, in 1992, and she was in the same position:  married with one child but no evident career.  Fortunately, we both fell into careers at that point in our lives and lived happily ever after.

* * *

I was surprised to read, in a report on Bloomberg.com, that losing one's job is a greater blow to one's mental health and well-being than losing a loved spouse (or a divorce).  I've always understood that the worst blow anyone can take is the death of a spouse or an unwanted divorce—that those are even worse, in terms of impact on mental health, than losing a child.  At least in Britain, according to researchers there. 

Fired employees never quite recover to the same level of well-being, a measure that includes mental health, self-esteem and satisfaction with life, according to data provided to Bloomberg this week from a review of more than 4,000 research papers.

            The best cure, it seems, is to find another job, preferably as high or higher status than the job one lost as well as with similar salary.  The researchers report that people do recover from the loss of a spouse; eventually they get back to where they were before (mentally).  Meeting and getting involved with/marrying will pretty much eliminate the pain of the earlier loss.  At least in the studies of job loss that were reviewed, however, British men hadn't recovered even after four years.  (Women seem to be affected less than men by job loss.)

            There's little evidence about why job loss has such a devastating effect.  The researchers suggest that the impact is related to "the importance we place on having a meaningful job." 

            I never lost a job so I can't understand the impact, but I can imagine it.  Even though this was about the British, my bet is that this equally true of Americans—if not even more so, given American work habits (longer work weeks than almost everyone in Europe).  It could also be more devastating in the U.S. because one has always lost health insurance if one lost a job.  Whether or not that is or will remain true is hard for me to tell.

* * *

            I dearly love my son Elliott but sometimes he exhibits personality traits that I’m not fond of.  As he was facing his last full day at Moorhead State, I texted him to ask if he would not feel at least a little bit of sadness at leaving, given that it was where he had been trained, and blossomed, artistically.  Nope, he wrote, he was anxious to get away from the "stupid tundra" and never go back again.  I told him I meant the school, not the geographic location.  Same feeling, he said.  I replied that if I were him, I’d look back fondly on my experiences, given the growth that occurred.  He agreed about the experience but not the school.  I maintained they are inseparable.

            Am I misguided in thinking that?

* * *

In many cases, divorce leads to estrangement and the separation of families.  In some, it can be the result of, and exacerbate, intrafamilial warfare.  (In some cases, of course, it is necessary and desirable, such when there is spousal or child abuse.)  I have not seen statistics, but I’m guessing that some significant portion of divorces can end with civil if not friendly relationships.

            I am pleased (and relieved) that mine has turned out about as well as can be expected.  On Christmas Eve 2016, we had Christmas with my two kids, Kathy, and my former wife Pat.  (Kathy’s son Spence was in Texas with his dad’s family, or he would have been there, too.)  Pat offered to bring dinner; we took her up on the offer.  It was a pleasant evening and everyone had a perfectly good time.  Kathy and Pat met a few years ago and have interacted on a few occasions since with no animosity and with mutual respect.  At one point a year or so ago Kathy even commented that she could like Pat as a friend if the circumstances were different.

            I’m also heartened to know that in the case of some dear friends, their children got divorced but the divorced spouses have amicable relationships that includes sharing child-rearing obligations responsibly and cordially.  I’ve known of some extremely bitter divorces, so it’s a relief to know that there can be adult, thoughtful, and calm ends to a marriage that does a minimal amount of psychological damage to the children. 

I may have written this before in an earlier letter, but I’ve cited it numerous times to folks I know going through a divorce.  In the case of one couple who went through a hellacious divorce—and I was friends with both of them, which was awkward at times—the husband later told me that there are three sides to any divorce:  his side, her side, and the truth.  In most cases, that’s probably accurate, but there are no doubt instances of abusive marriages where the blameworthiness lies squarely on one party.

These marriage terminations also remind me of an opinion expressed many years ago by Ellen Berscheid (see earlier in this message, she who knows something about human relationships).  The problem with liberalized divorce laws—which she fully favored—is that they make it TOO easy to end marriages that should not be terminated.  We never have the counterfactual, of course, but she speculated—and I agree with her—that in many cases, if the couple had stuck it out and gotten through their difficulties, they could have had a long and happy marriage.  Now it's so easy to divorce that even a minor tiff can end a marriage.  I certainly don't want to return to days when divorce was nearly impossible—largely to the disadvantage of women, I am sure—but any divorce makes me a little sad, because presumably all marriages start out with high hopes.

The phenomenon of divorce isn't alien in my family.  Besides me, my maternal grandmother got divorced from her second husband (she was a widow) in the early 1950s, her younger sister (in whose house we now live) got divorced in the early 1930s, and my dad's mother's mother got divorced around the turn of the century—and married some guy and went to Skagway, Alaska with him!  (That must have been the end of the world in 1900—and maybe it still is.)

* * *

In the view of at least one writer, Adam Serwer in the Atlantic, the widespread admiration for Confederate General Robert E. Lee is unwarranted and a misreading of history.  "The myth of Lee goes something like this:  He was a brilliant strategist and devoted Christian man who abhorred slavery and labored tirelessly after the war to bring the country back together.  There is little truth in this."  He was a Christian and seen by historians as a good tactician—but "his decision to fight a conventional war against the more densely populated and industrialized North is considered by many historians to have been a fatal strategic error."

            A Washington Post article included comments from one of the leading historians of the Civil War (and debunker of Lee's military prowess), Edward Bonekemper.

Lee, they [a number of historians] wrote, mishandled overall strategy of the war. Outmanned, Lee should have taken a more defensive posture, drawing the North into difficult Southern terrain. Instead, he was constantly on the offensive, which resulted in heavy casualties and broken spirits.

"All the Confederacy needed was a stalemate, which would confirm its existence as a separate country," Bonekemper wrote.  "The burden was on the North to defeat the Confederacy and compel the return of the eleven wayward states to the Union."

Historian James McPherson put it this way:  "The South could ‘win’ the war by not losing."  However, "the North could win only by winning."

            In Serwer's view, the elevation of Lee to honorable status is part of a long-term campaign by Southern states to eliminate the stain of slavery as a cause of the Civil War and substitute the "lost cause" of state's rights.  There continues to be praise for Lee on the political right, as statues are taken down, and protests (by conservatives) against the use of Lee's name by white supremacists.  Serwer thinks otherwise.

            (From that same Post article:  "The tenets of the Lost Cause are that slavery was already dying before the war, that states’ rights were really the issue anyway, that the South did the best it could against a powerful killing machine (an early version of a participation trophy), and that Lee’s subordinates (especially James Longstreet) bungled the war, most notably the Battle of Gettysburg."  Military historians, including a Department of Defense research center, conclude that it was Lee, not Longstreet, who made disastrous errors at Gettysburg.

            Jamelle Bouie, Slate's political correspondent, rounds out the picture of the Lost Cause:

Confederate president Jefferson Davis and "polemical writers like Edward Pollard, who would give the name 'Lost Cause' to the movement [, aimed] to redeem and defend the former Confederacy.  Born out of grief and furthered by a generation of organizations (like United Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy), proponents of the Lost Cause would wage a battle for the nation’s memory of the war.  To them it was not a rebellion or a fight for slavery; it was a noble battle for constitutional ideals.  As [Jefferson] Davis put it in his two-volume memoir and defense of the Southern cause, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, slavery "was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident," and the South was fighting against "unlimited, despotic power" of the federal government and its "tremendous and sweeping usurpation" of states’ rights.

This sentimental picture of sectional rapprochement [about Lee] was spread by a cottage industry of writers and publishers; in academia, it was helped along in the early 20th century by scholars under the tutelage of historian William Archibald Dunning of Columbia University.  Following his lead, a generation of writers would bring the Lost Cause and its ideas into American historiography.  To the "Dunning School," Reconstruction was a terrible failure, a product of dangerous revolutionaries (the Radical Republicans) and an enfeebled, drunken, and corrupt President Grant.  Dunning and his students justified the proto-Jim Crow "Black Codes," and derided the entire project of the Republican Party as a dangerous experiment in "Negro rule.")

Beginning in the late 20th Century, a number of historians brought a much more critical eye to Lee, drawing heavily on his own words.

            Lee was a slaveowner, believed it an evil, but more so to whites than blacks, and believed Christianity justified slavery until blacks were advanced enough to be free (but he had no idea when that time, as determined by God, might come).  He had no interest in whether the blacks themselves thought they should be free.  He was also a malevolent owner, Serwer reports, who split up slave families, unlike Washington's and others' practice of not doing so.  Doing so exaggerated the anguish of the slaves.  At least in the case of slaves who escaped, Lee directed the infliction of heavy punishment.

            The argument that secession was about state's rights is put paid by the state declarations:  every one of them mentioned slavery as the cause of the rebellion, including Lee's home state of Virginia.  Serwer contends that Lee thus chose to fight for a continuation of human bondage.  When Lee's army captured black Union soldiers, they were sent to the South as property.  When Lee proposed to Grant an exchange of prisoners, Grant insisted blacks be included; Lee refused; "negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition."  Grant then refused the offer.

The presence of black soldiers on the field of battle shattered every myth the South’s slave empire was built on:  the happy docility of slaves, their intellectual inferiority, their cowardice, their inability to compete with whites.  As Pryor writes, "fighting against brave and competent African Americans challenged every underlying tenet of southern society."  The Confederate response to this challenge was to visit every possible atrocity and cruelty upon black soldiers whenever possible, from enslavement to execution.

Lee didn't change his views after the war.  He told a reporter "that unless some humane course is adopted, based on wisdom and Christian principles you do a gross wrong and injustice to the whole negro race in setting them free.  And it is only this consideration that has led the wisdom, intelligence and Christianity of the South to support and defend the institution up to this time."  Lee opposed giving blacks the vote and fought against Congressional efforts to enforce racial equality.

            Serwer concludes that Lee is no American hero.  "The white supremacists who have protested [the removal of Lee statues] on Lee’s behalf are not betraying his legacy.  In fact, they have every reason to admire him.  Lee, whose devotion to white supremacy outshone his loyalty to his country, is the embodiment of everything they stand for.  Tribe and race over country is the core of white nationalism, and racists can embrace Lee in good conscience."

            This evolution of views about Lee reflects how history itself can evolve.  All the time I was growing up and reading history, Lee was the subject of admiration.  As historians have taken a closer look, however, the picture isn't so positive.  So be careful who you admire.

* * *

            As the statue disputes continued, I liked the statement from the American Historical Association council in August.  The council takes what I think is a reasoned approach.  The closing paragraph of the statement sums it up.

Nearly all monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders were erected without anything resembling a democratic process. Regardless of their representation in the actual population in any given constituency, African Americans had no voice and no opportunity to raise questions about the purposes or likely impact of the honor accorded to the builders of the Confederate States of America. The American Historical Association recommends that it’s time to reconsider these decisions.

            The Association agreed with Mr. Trump's tweet that "You can't change history, but you can learn from it."  The statement urges that it is necessary to learn what happened, the chronology of the statues, and the context for why an individual is remembered in a statue.  The Association observes that "equally important is awareness of what we mean by 'history.'  History comprises both facts and interpretations of those facts.  To remove a monument, or to change the name of a school or street, is not to erase history, but rather to alter or call attention to a previous interpretation of history.  A monument is not history itself; a monument commemorates an aspect of history, representing a moment in the past when a public or private decision defined who would be honored in a community’s public spaces."

            Drawing on the work of historians who have focused on the South, the Association indicts the motivation for the statues, something I am sure we've all read about. 

Drawing on their expertise enables us to assess the original intentions of those who erected the monuments, and how the monuments have functioned as symbols over time.  The bulk of the monument building took place not in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War but from the close of the 19th century into the second decade of the 20th.  Commemorating not just the Confederacy but also the "Redemption" of the South after Reconstruction, this enterprise was part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South.  Memorials to the Confederacy were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life.  A reprise of commemoration during the mid-20th century coincided with the Civil Rights Movement and included a wave of renaming and the popularization of the Confederate flag as a political symbol. Events in Charlottesville and elsewhere indicate that these symbols of white supremacy are still being invoked for similar purposes.

            As one would expect of an association of historians, it doesn't believe in either trying to change or erase history.  (The only "change" comes with the evolution of historical thinking on any part of history, the normal evolution of the discipline of history.)  The question, rather, is what is worthy of honor in public places; the Association urges public discussion of the subject, drawing on the evidence and the historians to help interpret that evidence.

We also encourage communities to remember that all memorials remain artifacts of their time and place. They should be preserved, just like any other historical document, whether in a museum or some other appropriate venue.  Prior to removal they should be photographed and measured in their original contexts. These documents should accompany the memorials as part of the historical record.

            The Association also rebuts the claim that if it's Confederates now, next it will be Jefferson and Washington. 

There is no logical equivalence between the builders and protectors of a nation—however imperfect—and the men who sought to sunder that nation in the name of slavery.  There will be, and should be, debate about other people and events honored in our civic spaces.  And precedents do matter.  But so does historical specificity, and in this case the invocation of flawed analogies should not derail legitimate policy conversation.

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