Recent coverage of Shimer

A few days ago, Jon Ronson published a piece in the Guardian about Shimer. It may be the best and most Shimerian publicity that Shimer has ever received. You should read it.

The article was prompted by the pushback against the Washington Monthly's recent rating of Shimer as "worst college in America" for a certain set of criteria (which are worthy of separate discussion). Since nobody was coming out of the woodwork to defend any of the other "worst colleges," Ronson decided to visit Shimer to find out what it was all about.

What happened next was kind of epic.

I get talking to Albert Fernandez, a professor of cultural history and humanities. He has the intense demeanor and indeterminate European accent of a Slavoj Žižek. He leads me into a classroom as austere as he is and tells me how angry he is about the list.

“What we do at Shimer,” he says, “is difficult. It’s difficult to sit in a small room with six or eight students and have your beliefs challenged. If a school is hard to graduate from for reasons to do with an attempt at educational quality – that should be taken into account. The writer said nothing about that.”

A look of fury crosses his face, at the thought of Shimer being penalized for what makes it great. He says a lot of places that top those best colleges lists are the opposite of difficult. They’re undemanding. “If you’re going to take education seriously you can’t have a system where the objective is to make it as easy as possible to get through.”

At this writing, the article has received more than 14,000 interactions on social media, including more than 900 Tweets and more than 140 LinkedIn shares. The article itself has 343 comments, which are also well worth reading.

For a time it was the Guardian's #3 article sitewide:







The article was tweeted by Neil Gaiman (he of 2.1 million Twitter followers), who followed up with a personal greeting to the people of Shimer:











The article has since been picked up by Longreads, The Baffler, Gapers Block and others, and is continuing to spread. At this writing, some 4 days after it was posted, new tweets of the article are still coming in at about 3-5 per hour.

Here are some notable response pieces by Shimerians and others:

• Chicago's own #bestworstcollege, by Shimer prez Susan Henking
• Shimer College in the Guardian, by Shimer prof Adam Kotsko
• How statistics turns best into worst, by St. John's prez and longtime friend of Shimer Chris Nelson
• Mugged by a ratings system designed for someone else, by David Mills
• The Fiction of College Rankings: Meet America’s 'Best Worst College', by David Wieneke (Shimer '83)
• The value of a Great Books education, by Peter Piper (Shimer '98)
• Shimer College should not be condemned for untraditional teaching methods, by Sabiha Masud  
• How to think, not what to think, by Dave Trott, author of Creative Mischief
• Bah humbug, numbers never tell the entire story, by ChicagoNow gifted education blogger Rhonda Stern

... and on the matter of response pieces: although unworthy of a link, one of our old friends from 2010 is apparently still nursing old grudges:



If Joe Bast is still mad at Shimer, we must be doing something right.

Please share the Ronson article with anyone you think might be interested in Shimer!


(updated to include new response pieces -- December 18, 2014)

After-action reports on climate rally

Here are some reports from the "Turn up the Heat" rally in downtown Chicago on Tuesday:

Daily Kos

Atlanta Progressive News

People's World

Video from Samwise

Photos on Facebook

More photos on Examiner

If you're feeling the need for alternative perspectives, you can also sift the dregs of the right-wing blogosphere, where you'll find some views from the other side. These are always informative reading, although I think I'll refrain from honoring them with any direct links. One report is on the Forbes website, of all places, and can be located by Googling the phrase "the Heartland Institute, for whom I work".

For credible reports from inside the Hilton, check out Suzanne Goldenberg's pieces in The Guardian: "Heartland Institute in financial crisis after billboard controversy", "Heartland reflects on its beating".

(In particular, the remarkable late-breaking news that Heartland is suspending these conferences indefinitely, due to insufficient funds and poor attendance, deserves special mention.)

Rally for climate science in Chicago, Tuesday 5/22 -- updated with poster

Shimer's very own student activist group, SMELT (Students Mobilized for Equality Liberation & Transparency), will be taking a leading role in a rally to be held against the Heartland Institute's denialist anti-science conference in downtown Chicago this coming Tuesday, May 22.

With Heartland's brand growing increasingly toxic after  its impressively ill-advised billboard campaign -- apparently too toxic even for the likes of renowned douchebag James Sensenbrenner -- this could be your last chance to heap well-deserved opprobrium on the hapless Joe Bast, extremely former member of the Shimer Board of Trustees.  So don't miss it! Come one, come all!

Here is the event description, from co-organizer Ben Bornstein:

ITINERARY:

10am-- Meet-up at the "Bean" in Millennium Park to rally and begin a march to...

11:00am-- the Hilton Hotel and the Heartland Institute's Conference on Climate Change Denial at 720 S Michigan Ave.

11:15am-- Speakers will begin the Local Conference on Climate Change in the park across the avenue from the Hilton.

12:30/1:00pm--March from 720 S Michigan to the Heartland Institute's headquarters at 1 S Wacker in the Loop.


We, the climate change believers, will be holding an impromptu conference on a Local Assuredness that Climate Change Exists Conference outside of the Heartland Institute's International Climate Change Conference in the Hilton next Tuesday, May 22nd, from the late morning until the early afternoon.

The Heartland Institute began an effort to forward climate change skepticism a number of years ago and have been holding an International Conference on Climate Change ever since. Topics addressed include implications for the catastrophe insurance industry in accepting or denying aspects of climate change, the overbearing attitude of the federal government in dealing with global warming, and the negative effects of alternative energy on free-market enterprises.

In short, it's a conference dedicated to affirming the worldview that alternative energy is a bad idea, capitalism and free-market principles protect the environment, and a conspiracy is afoot to keep the general population worried about “human-made climate change”... Capitalist and their lawyers...

Come out and yell about the REAL climate change you learned about in SCHOOL.
Chalk the sidewalk, hand out leaflets, listen to local experts, and make sure the corporate toadies hear you inside the Hilton. 

Update: Poster: 

For updates or to RSVP, see the event page on Facebook.

Columbia Chronicle article

Thanks to Stephanie Saviola of the Columbia Chronicle for shedding a bit of public sunlight on the events at Shimer.


It's good to see Nate Lefebvre and Allie Peluso getting some well-deserved media coverage.

“[The mission statement] did need to evolve and the school and community acknowledged that, but we were worried because we weren’t getting the whole picture,” Lefebvre said. “They had this secret contract about the statement and we weren’t told the stipulations.”

Allie Peluso, a second-year student at Shimer, discovered the identity of the anonymous donor through her own research of public records.“I’ve done a lot of research and looked into donations and money the school has received,” Peluso said. “I identified this man as Barre Seid through 990s [a tax form].”

The unwillingness -- or inability -- of Lindsay and his ilk to defend their actions speaks volumes.

Numerous attempts were made by The Chronicle to get in touch with Lindsay, but he could not be reached for comment.

Several messages were left for Joe Bast, board of trustee member and president of Heartland Institute, 19 S. LaSalle St., but no calls were returned to The Chronicle.

Read the whole thing.

Shimer College Fact Check: The Odd Lies of Joe Bast, Volume I

Heartland Institute president Joe Bast is among the many trustees with no prior ties to Shimer College who recently joined the Shimer board while enjoying the undisclosed backing of Barre Seid. Since joining the Board, Mr Bast has become an ardent member of absentee president Thomas Lindsay's political wrecking crew. As one friend of the college recently said, "He runs a zombie think tank; why not a zombie college?"

In addition to his fondness for zombie philanthropy, it seems that somewhere in his rise to wealth, fame and Trusteeship, Mr Bast lost the ability to tell the truth. Today we begin what we fear will have to be a very long-running feature on Mr Bast's peculiar Shimer-related lies and distortions. Our first text is "Size Matters" by Jay Schalin, a Pope Center article published in October 2009 that cites Mr Bast as its sole source for information about Shimer College. The only falsehood not directly linked to Bast's name is also the most innocent:

Almost Harmlessly False: "It was founded as a women’s college in Mount Carroll, Illinois, during the 19th century. "

As even a casual student of Shimer history knows, Shimer was founded as a coeducational seminary in 1853. It became a women's seminary only 13 years later, under space constraints. For a reasonably accurate portrayal of the school's first 135 years, the interested reader is referred to the classic article "Big Ideas" by Harold Henderson. As noted above, it is possible that this error is simply a mistake on Mr Schalin's part, and not directly attributable to Mr Bast.

Just False: "At one point, Bast said enrollment dropped to less than 50 students. However, a subsequent move to the campus of Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago appears to have stabilized the school, and enrollment is now back up to 106. "

Enrollment was well over 100 in the late 1990s, when Shimer was still in Waukegan. Whatever the other merits of the move to IIT, it cannot be said to have had much positive impact on enrollment thus far.

Stupefyingly False: "Bast said the Board of Trustees hope to get it back up to 300 to 400 students, which they consider optimal size for a Great Books college (he added that the faculty and students would rather to keep it at its present size)."

This insult alone should be enough to wipe out any possibility that this man is operating in good faith. It boggles the mind that Bast could even imagine that anyone in the community, let alone a majority, does not want Shimer to grow to a healthy and sustainable size. There have been plans for a swift return to 300-500 students since at least the early 1980s. Thus far, every such plan has fallen maddeningly short. And thus far, there is little reason to believe that the absentee efforts of Thomas Lindsay will fare any better. Early indications are that recruiting for the
coming year is flat or down. It would seem that putting our school's curriculum and faculty to the torch may not have been the best recruiting tool after all. Who could have foreseen that?