German Joys

Status Reproduction in the U.S. and Europe

In a New York Times article about the American electorate's allergy to elitism, we find the following quotation:

In a nation without a titled aristocracy, an elite education may well be the most important membership card. “American elites have a problem that the Europeans don’t, which is how to assure that their children and their children’s children retain their elevated social position,” said Jason Kaufman, a Harvard sociologist who has written on elites and American culture. “Americans do this through cultural institutions and exclusion — art museums, classical music and tremendously elitist universities.”

Shouldn't read too much into a stray quotation, but, unlike Kaufman, I don't think there's much difference in the way American and European elites reproduce their status.

European countries have abolished privileges attaching to hereditary titles.  Your name may have a "von" or a "de" in it, but that doesn't get you any formal, explicit privileges, except in the very highest reaches of the nobility.  Most of the titled Europeans I know work in ordinary jobs, and have the same concerns as the rest of us.  Of course, noble families do tend to be richer than others, which always helps.  And, as an acquaintance of mine who's a baroness recently told me, the title helps in everyday transactions with government bureaucrats and suspicious landlords.  But if you get poor grades or have no talent, even the most august title isn't going to help you rocket to the top of any hierarchy.  At most, it'll prevent you from dropping out of sight.

In one way, young members of the European nobility have it worse than wealthy Americans: Europe's state-dominated education system has no real counterpart to America's sprawling network of non-selective private colleges of the dumb rich, who will happily accept giant tuition checks to make sure junior gets some college degree, and will even arrange discreet rehab-clinic stays if necessary.  In Europe, a wealthy 19-year old with a glittering title will have to compete against the hoi polloi to get into a state university, because those are the only institutions that confer real prestige.  Most of them do get in, of course, since the less...er, diligent young viscounts will get help from tutors and boarding schools.  But if even that doesn't get them into university, there's no real fall-back option available to them in Europe -- which is why they are often to be found at American colleges of the dumb rich.

Aside from the universities, then, the things Kaufman identifies as markers of cultural cachet for Americans -- museums and classical music -- are used exactly the same way in Europe.  Bourdieu's Distinction says it all here; in fact, one of the main themes of Distinction is that the importance of refined tastes as a sign of social status steadily increased in Europe at the same time as, and because, traditional hereditary privilege was being dismantled.  Especially in Germany, drawing excess attention to your title or wealth is taboo, so in order to establish status distinction, you'll have to sit through a few boring classical concerts, get that precious doctorate (g), and read some books about art and philosophy now and then, just like all your non-titled friends.  (There are also a lot of people who genuinely love art and classical music, bless  their souls, but here, I'm talking about the multitudes who use these things mainly as status markers.)

Private Donation to Private University

German universities, almost all of which are state-run, are now taking little baby-steps to begin soliciting funds from corporations and individuals to supplement their strapped budgets.

These efforts are often poorly managed. One example: almost none of the universities realize that professional full-time fundraisers are needed to develop marketing campaigns and maintain contacts. Instead, universities often ask, or expect, professors to do this job. This is counter-productive, since professors are supposed to be there to teach and write, not glad-hand with wealthy patrons. Besides, professors are generally fairly odd, and most have no desire to spend a large amount of time at social functions talking with rich businesspeople. If they were good at that sort of thing, they probably wouldn't have become professors.

Second, because the professors and (more occasionally) fund-raisers who arrange these donations have little experience negotiating such contracts, the paltry donations that do come in often have strings attached. For complex reasons, it's very difficult to arrange "naming opportunities" in return for donations (i.e., give us $50,000 and we'll name the physics building after you, but that's all you'll get), so the donors often request return favors for the money, such as privileged access to research results, or inside information about who the best students are. I'm not saying the universities agree to these conditions, since they are probably illegal under German law, but they are often pressured to do so. Further, most of the contributions that come in as a result of professor-gladhanding benefit that professor. She'll get a 10,000 Euro contribution to establish an institute in her field of research that bears the main sponsor's  name. This does little or nothing to help universities with their day-to-day budget and infrastructure problems.

One university, though, appears to have gotten more proactive about this. According to the New York Times Klaus Jacobs, a Bremen-born food-industry billionaire who lives in England, just donated $250 million to the International University Bremen, which from now on will be known as the Jacobs University Bremen.

The Times article provides some context: 

Now restored with the money from Mr. Jacobs, this fledgling institution is determined to chart a new course in a country that helped pioneer the modern research university in the 19th century but has lost its edge in recent decades.

Mr. Jacobs, a Swiss citizen who was born in this bustling northern German city, said he hoped his gesture would encourage more large-scale philanthropy in a land where it is largely unknown.

University of Goettingen in the News for the Wrong Reasons

If there's anything more tiresome than faculty politics and infighting at American universities, it's faculty politics and infighting at German ones.

Sometimes, however, the fights make the headlines. Syrian-born Islam researcher Bassam Tibi, a professor at the University of Goettingen, has written many books on political Islam in English and German (here, conservative scholar Daniel Pipes calls a 1998 Tibi tome warning about the dangers of political Islam stylistically "verbose and verging on the pompous," but "brave and brilliant"). Tibi has decided to leave the University and resettle permanently in the United States. He claims the University leadership called his discipline a "weak point" that had to be "eliminated." His blistering, hold-no-punches account (G) of the many indignities he claimed he suffered at Goettingen can be found here. According to him, it will shortly be expanded into an autobiography and published under the English title: "A Life of Suffering as an Alien in Germany"(!) I may translate a few excerpts in the next days, as time permits.

Although the background is very, very complex, it seems that the main reason for the decision, according to this article (G) in Die Welt, is the attitude of the current University president, a natural scientist who, according to certain sources, consideres political science to be "frivolous philosophizing" and who judges disciplines mainy by the amount of outside funding they bring in.

Background: Although German universities are strapped for cash, the idea of hiring competent, professional fund-raisers to bring in outside funding for the University as a whole is still nowhere near as advanced here as in the U.S. Therefore, it falls to professors personally to glad-hand and network to bring in extra funds for the special institutes and research programs which increase a university's prestige. Natural scientists obviously have the fund-raising advantage, because their research often yields practical applications. That explains the tensions between natural scientists and the liberal arts when it comes to fund-raising and administration -- one of the hundreds of fault-lines of envy and resentment fracturing the German university landscape.

I would comment further on the light this affair shines on the deep structural problems confronting higher education in Germany, but that would just be too depressing. Besides, I hear the thud and scratch sense of egos have been getting injured, which can mean only one thing: lawsuits for violations of honor and dignity! Yours truly has better things to do than get involved in one of those. But it will be amusing to watch the fur fly...

Water-Mills and Boring Jobs

I subscribe to a German-language mailing list for the humanities called H-Soz-U-Kult. It sounds ugly but is harmless. It delivers to my inbox conference reports, calls for papers, book reviews, and announcements of upcoming conferences. That's how I became aware of this upcoming important conference (G): "Symposium on Water-Power Use in the Cologne/Bonn Region." Among the presentations: "Historical Development of So-called Industrial Mills"; "Mills and Hammers as Formative Elements of the Cultural Landscape."

However, I'm sure the presentation that will provoke the most controversy -- even more controversy than the explanation of why "Industrial Mills" should really be thought of as "So-called Industrial Mills" -- will occur at 3:20, when the Director of the Rhine-Erft Mill Society presents her "Conceptual Outline for a Documentation Center Concerning Rhenish Mill Culture."

What kind of person would even try to capture the juicy majesty of watermills in a dry, bloodless "outline"? I'm tempted to engage in the favorite pastime of a many marginally-employed Germans. That is, travel to a conference, sit impatiently in the audience until questions are allowed, run up to the microphone, and deliver a 5-minute long, rambling, question-free tirade in which I accuse the speaker of unconscionably ignoring the 'philosophical aspects' or 'social consequences' of the question under discussion.

German Film Teacher on Harvard Students

German director Jan Schütte, who directed the 1987 immigrant drama Drachenfutter ("Dragon Chow") and Auf Wiedersehen, Amerika, is teaching film at Harvard for one year. The German campus freebie magazine Unispiegel asked him what how he would compare German to U.S. students:

There are no bad students in Harvard," said [Schütte], "the bottom third [of unmotivated students] is simply missing." However, Harvard's level is hardly out of reach. A good German student, Schütte says, can compete without special preparation.

[Unispiegel 4/2006, p. 19].

German Joys Uncut: Class Struggle

I'm introducing a new feature on German Joys, which I'll call 'German Joys Uncut.' One news story from a German newspaper, translated into English by yours truly, without cuts or changes. I’ll provide a short introduction to clarify things that might be unfamiliar to non-Germans, but no commentary.

The first German Joys Uncut comes from last week’s Die Zeit, Germany’s leading broadsheet newspaper. The article (G) address social tension among high-school students in a town in Saxony-Anhalt, a part of the former East Germany.

To understand the piece, it’s important to understand that fairly early in their school careers, students are separated into different skill groups, and then sent to different sorts of high schools. The top 1/3 of students are allowed to go to a Gymnasium high school (nothing to do with exercise), which provide the best chance of getting into universities. Less-prestigious high schools, which I've translated as “secondary schools,” lead to trade careers. This is oversimplified, but it's all you need to know to understand the piece. If you're interested, you can learn more here.

The article appeared in the “Life” section of Die Zeit, accompanied by a picture of the Karl Marx school and of two female Karl Marx students, who wore t-shirts, apparently printed in celebration of their graduation, which read “Even if we’ve missed out on a lot and done some things wrong, we still have chances.”

Class Struggle

In Gardelegen, in Saxony-Anhalt, secondary schoolers attacked a Gymnasium after their graduation celebration – among other things, out of anger over their disadvantages.

by André Paul

The celebrated their graduation on June 8, 2006, although most of them really didn’t have much reason to celebrate. 153 boys and girls ended their stay at the Karl Marx Secondary School in Gardelegen, Saxony-Anhalt. Most of them had an ordinary secondary school certificate in their pocket, some of them a qualified certificate. They could start their careers. But for 100 of the young people, the key word was: “could”. They had no apprenticeship slot. The employers in the local region Salzwedel can take whom they want, and they preferred others. They wanted better-qualified people, even when education ministers, teachers, employers, and parents all shy away from this word. The apprenticeship slots and the jobs, the money and the careers, don’t go to Karl Marx School students, they go to others. And the young people wanted to pay a visit to these “others” on that very morning. At the end of the day, the results were: severe property damage and aggravated assault. Their little town made it into the headlines: Secondary School Students Attack Gymnasium.

Why Not European Graduation Ceremonies?

When I got a graduate degree from an American university a couple of years ago, I had a lot of international friends who'd come to study. We all went to the graduation ceremony together.  Everybody who had graduated gathered outside in their caps and gowns, ouside in a huge field.  A few odd customs were observed, then various college officials gave speeches, then came the speech by the invited guests. 

Everybody then retired to separate cerremonies in other parts of campus for the actual handing-out of the degrees. Everyone who graduated in, say, law got together and waited for their name to be called. The foreign students were asked to email pronunciation hints before the ceremony to help the announcer. Those who forgot heard "Bu-La-Ti, uhh, Goo-lik-ma-norp.  I think."  The dean personally handed you your college diploma, bound with a red ribbon, then shook your hand, and congratulated you for a job well-done. Photographers took pictures at the exact moment when the degree changed hands. Large families gathered, everybody beamed with pride, some people cried.

My European friends were impressed (not always positively) by several things about American universities: how much they cost; the competition among the students; how shiny, new, and high-tech the buildings were; and the fact that students spent a lot of time studying, didn't cheat, and respected the brightest classmates instead of envying them.

But all of them loved the graduation ceremony. I was stunned to find out that such things didn't exist in Europe, but it's true, they largely don't. I was reminded of this intercultural experience by a recent encomium to graduation ceremonies, from American blogger Siva Vaidhyanathan:

...if you are ever too down or frustrated about the state and direction of our nation, just spend a day hanging around Florida International University in Miami.  Or, better yet, slip in to a graduation ceremony there, as I did yesterday.  I have been to dozens of university commencements.  And this was by far the best.

Florida International is a 34-year-old public university that sits west of downtown Miami.  It has one of the most ethnically diverse populations of any university I have ever seen.  It started out as a commuter school but has grown into an ambitious residential research university.  ...Living up to its name, it attracts students from hundreds of national origins and represents the vitality and diversity of South Florida very well.

Eerie Parallel Communist Worlds

While in France, I bought a copy of La Mythologie Scientifique du Communisme, by Romanian history professor Lucian Boia.  As its title suggests, it treats Communism as a sort of mythology, and explores the similarities Communism has with other mythologies.  I'm about halfway through it now (goes a little slow, since it's French), I'll be sure to post something when I'm done.

I the parallel world Communist countries created fascinating.  In the most advanced and isolated ones (such as East Germany or the Soviet Union), the authorities worked hard to create versions of everything the West had.  Televisions shows, highways, car brands, Westerns, instant coffee, dance crazes, rock bands, psychotherapists, office buildings, package vacations -- there was a socialist version of them all.  I always imagine that, for someone from a non-socialist country, visiting East Germany would be like some sort of Star Trek episode.  You visit a remote planet, walk through a shimmering portal, and end up in a world very much like your own -- but with eerie differences (everyone's driving the same brand of car!).

And it goes deeper.  The most doctrinaire socialist countries also created parallel thought-worlds.  Between them, Marx and Engels wrote something about just about every single aspect of human history and society, and even the most casual remark from one of their works (plus, of course, the underlying 'dialectical' structure of Marxist ideology) could end up having decisive influence on some branch of the sciences or liberal arts.

Here's an example: while in Berlin a while ago, I bought a book called Intimverhalten, Sexualstörungen, Persönlichkeit ("Intimate Behavior, Sexual Difficulties, and Personality"), by Dr. Siegfried Schnabl, who was a popular East German relationship counselor and sex therapist.  The book is mainly a report of a study of 3,500 East German citizens about their sexual behavior.  It's full of fascinating tidbits.  Did you know that in East Germany, the more educated you were, the more likely you were to masturbate?  Among university graudates, fully 60% of the women, and 92% of the men reported engaging in self-satisfaction (p. 180).

Brains...brains...Germany want BRAINS!

German universities are pretty, uh, mediocre.  They get the job done, and clever people can get a great education, but they're not generating world-changing ideas, or fascinating press coverage.  For complex historical reasons (including a rather pronounced sense of egalitarianism), none of them has been able to develop into a world-class institution, where the best students and professors mingle in a hothouse environment. 

Now there's a plan to create "top universities" that will attract the best students and professors. 
Because this is Germany, it's all being run by the Federal Education Ministry as a coordinated, highly-regulated program.  The program even has a motto: "Brain Up!  Deutschland sucht seine Spitzen-Unis"  ("Brain Up!  Germany's looking for its top universities").  Yes, "Brain Up !" is in English. 

One interesting aspect of the policy is -- whoa, hold on a second: "Brain Up !"?!  Trust me when I say that English knows no expression "Brain Up!" (The German equivalent must be something like Aufgehirnt!).  The sarcastic remarks practically write themselves.  Nor is the second part of the motto particularly, er, elite.  It seems to imply that (1) German already has a top university; but (2) lost it somewhere.  "Excuse me very much, please.  I am Germany, and I seem to have lost my exclusive elite university.  I think I last saw it around Rome, but I was also showing it to a few people near Bristol.  Listen for many people using words like Verdinglichung, or young people protesting against tuition fees.  If you find it, very big reward!  Big medal for chest, we call it Bundesverdienstkreuz!" 

Brains...brains...Germany want BRAINS!

German universities are pretty, uh, mediocre.  They get the job done, and clever people can get a great education, but they're not generating world-changing ideas, or fascinating press coverage.  For complex historical reasons (including a rather pronounced sense of egalitarianism), none of them has been able to develop into a world-class institution, where the best students and professors mingle in a hothouse environment. 

Now there's a plan to create "top universities" that will attract the best students and professors. 
Because this is Germany, it's all being run by the Federal Education Ministry as a coordinated, highly-regulated program.  The program even has a motto: "Brain Up!  Deutschland sucht seine Spitzen-Unis"  ("Brain Up!  Germany's looking for its top universities").  Yes, "Brain Up !" is in English. 

One interesting aspect of the policy is -- whoa, hold on a second: "Brain Up !"?!  Trust me when I say that English knows no expression "Brain Up!" (The German equivalent must be something like Aufgehirnt!).  The sarcastic remarks practically write themselves.  Nor is the second part of the motto particularly, er, elite.  It seems to imply that (1) German already has a top university; but (2) lost it somewhere.  "Excuse me very much, please.  I am Germany, and I seem to have lost my exclusive elite university.  I think I last saw it around Rome, but I was also showing it to a few people near Bristol.  Listen for many people using words like Verdinglichung, or young people protesting against tuition fees.  If you find it, very big reward!  Big medal for chest, we call it Bundesverdienstkreuz!" 

Crime has an Ontology? I missed that memo.

Hello Joysters!  As we all know, things pretty much shut down in Germany as August approaches, since Germany is not yet a part of the Anglo-Saxon 24/7 Economic Productivity Coercion Zone.  Why, just today, as I shopped for furnitute on the Koenigsallee in Duesseldorf in the middle of the afternoon, I was surrounded by thousands of other people doing the same thing.  Most of them were well-dressed and of working ago, and many of them were not only not working, they were also not shopping.  They were doing absolutely nothing at all!  I thought: "hey, shouldn't a lot of you be in an office somewhere?  After all, doesn't someone have to actually produce something of value in this country to pay for goof-offs like me?"  Perhaps not -- at least until the conservatives come to power.  Let's enjoy it while it lasts. 

Reforming German Universities Part I

A few weeks ago I delivered a few thoughts on German universities at a meeting in Lübeck. I was invited, I suppose, because I've taught and studied at U.S. universities, and have now taught at a German university for several years, and therefore have a base of comparison. The friendly folks at Lübeck suspected I might have some opinions about how German universities are structured and run.  They weren't wrong.  Instead of just letting these brilliant nuggets of enlightenment fade in the memory of the conference attendees, I'd put some flesh on my notes and share them with the world.

For you busy executives who need my comments in summary form, here they are: German universities, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, set themselves the admirable goal of providing a free higher education to all students who qualified, regardless of the students' race, gender, or economic or social class. That's right, I said 'free.' The student need never pay any tuition, and receives a subsidy from the State to cover basic needs. To anyone concerned with social stratification, this appears to be - and really is - a noble endeavor.

On the way from articulation of noble principles to actual real-world practice, though, a few things went wrong. The political and social necessity of opening up the universities (or at least the prospect of a university education) to ever-larger numbers of young people led to chronic overcrowding. Because there are essentially no private German universities, all these new students came streaming into the existing public institutions, which had to be expanded at breakneck pace. The student binge also led to a poorly-planned expansion of the existing universities' administrative apparatus. Now, universities are run like bloated bureaucracies. Finally, the over-admission has resulted in a "go-it-alone" atmosphere for students. Because the university must spread its resources over such a large cohort of students (including at least 25% who will never graduate), it sometimes fails to single out and nurture the best students.

German Professor Blog Found!

To those of you not acquainted with the thrilling story, I offered everyone 10 Euro if they could find me a blog by a German professor here, and then responded to a European fellow who questioned the worth of blogs here.

My good, and obviously technically gifted, friend Ralf Lesser has found a blog run by a German law professor.  He wins the first 10 Euro, which I will pour down his throat soon enough, since he lives here in good old Duesseldorf. 

The blog is run by Professor Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz, who appears to be a German professor living and teaching in Japan who specializes in intellectual property matters.  At first glance, it actually looks rather interesting -- the entry for October 14, 2004 asks whether terrorists could conceivably have intellectual property rights in videos made of their actions.  Unfortunately for English-speakers, it's only in German.  And unfortunately for us all, it hasn't been updated recently. 

Won't you please join me in emailing Professor Lenz and asking him to put the pajamas on and get back to the keyboard?

Show me a blog & Make 10 Euro!

German universities are encrusted with bureaucracy -- a fact everyone here complains about but nobody tries to remedy. New books take months to arrive in libraries, after which they are immediate whisked away to some undisclosed location for the process of labeling and classification, which for some reason also takes months. (I have a mental picture of a German librarian carefully reading the entire book, and then, pondering for a good several weeks exactly what sort of book it is). What's worse, you can't just turn to the Internet to get your hands on good academic work. Only a small amount of research is published online, and that which is is rarely available in one centralized, catalogued index or databank.

I wondered whether the professors themselves were more tech-friendly than the institutions they worked in. Were German professors were using blogs to broadcast and exchange ideas?  I had in mind something like Crooked Timber, Language Log, or the Volokh Conspiracy, where professors (in the humanities, linguistics, and the law) mix off-the-cuff insights with occasional deeper discussions.

I exhausted my meager German skills trying to find one blog – just one blog – run by any German professor or group of professors. I couldn’t find a single one. I was surprised since I'd always thought professors and blogs were a natural combination. After all, professors have lots to say and generally love to spout off. A blog, especially one written by several profs in collaboration, is a natural medium for the exchange and refinement of ideas. The idea behind such blogs is that you trade ideas and thoughts in raw form, expose them to criticism, and then perhaps later release them more formally, burnished and refined in some article somewhere. [Which will probably be read by many fewer people than the blog posts were.] As bloggin' professor David Dow puts it, "blah blah blah. it's the modern public square."

Can it really be that not a single one of the thousands of professors in Germany has hit upon the idea of running a blog?  Not one?

To test this theory I came up with a bet -- one that everyone -- yes, even you! -- gets to take part in [details and important restrictions below the fold]