Yes to Possible Worlds and "What Ifs?"

“Counterfactuals may be effective for political posturing, dramatic effect, or peddling outlandish pseudoscientific ideas, but they are not useful in advancing public discourse about race, gun violence, law enforcement, the criminal justice system, or any of the myriad issues our society faces.”
Rene Luis Alvarez

I could not disagree with this idea more. My co-blogger, a historian, argues for an empirically driven examination of the past as a guide for how we should construct policy for the future. I agree that looking at data and past events can help us avoid pitfalls and emulate ideas that have been proven to work; However, sometimes the ideas that we use are adopted and held on to because of tradition or politics, and may also have roots in pseudo-science.

A recent example of someone adhering to unsupported ideas in the creation of policy is Jason Richwine, the Harvard PhD who argued in his dissertation that Latinos are genetically intellectually inferior and thus are not worth investing in or even admitting into the country. The basis of his argument, scores on IQ tests, has long been called into question as true measures of intelligence. Such empiricism and “fact-based” arguments have been around for years and they have been shown to be of only limited validity for years. Even a member of Richwine’s dissertation committee thought so. George Borjas regarding his student's focus stated , "I don't find the IQ academic work all that interesting. Economic outcomes and IQ are only weakly related, and IQ only measures one kind of ability. I've been lucky to have met many high-IQ people in academia who are total losers, and many smart, but not super-smart people, who are incredibly successful because of persistence, motivation, etc. So I just think that, on the whole, the focus on IQ is a bit misguided.”

But we hang on to these failed ideas from the past, nonetheless. As Albert Einstein stated, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” But, to be more accurate, the results were the ones that xenophobes and supremacists desire—putting down minority groups and legally and culturally making it acceptable to do so. Many apologists for George Zimmerman have used “facts” to show that we really should profile African Americans given their higher incarceration rates, higher crime rates, and higher crime rates against whites compared to the rate of violence against blacks that whites commit. These are all facts, but they fail to entertain the world of possibilities. The problem is that African-Americans are seen as criminals and the perceived solution is that African-Americans should be treated as criminals. It is this logic that shows a real lack of imagination and empathy-two key reasons to use, “what if?” questions.

Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized scholar and educational advisor who promotes creativity, suggests that imagination and empathy are inextricably linked. By asking “what if?” questions, we place ourselves in the shoes of others, we imagine innovative solutions to deeply entrenched problems, and we have fun while doing it.

An article in The Atlantic points to the very idea of using creativity to encourage engagement and joy in learning. The article describes The Future Project, an organization that aims to encourage creative thinking and imagination in children. They argue that this is desperately needed given that we have become so limited in the way we teach children to adhere to standardized measures of their performance.

Daniel Pink, a writer who focuses on leadership and productivity in business, has argued that by giving people freedom and space to think and imagine, that they will actually become more efficient than if they were given incentives or punishments. He presents compelling evidence from social psychology and behavioral economics to show that this is true. 

So, having time to think, just like a history professor, or a blogger, or a journalist might, is really a great thing. That is where we have the potential to create the type of world that we really would like to live in. As Robert Kennedy stated, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

And to the question of “why not?” I would definitely add, “what if?”

One Year and Counting

My, how time flies!

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of The Mexican Intellectual.  Our blog launched on Friday, March 23rd 2012 with the very first post.  It seems as an appropriate time as any to reflect on what has happened on this site over the previous 12 months.

Celebrating one year of The Mexican Intellectual
March 22, 2013
Source: Author's private collection

Growing Popularity:  As of this writing, we have more than 3,100 total page views.  This figure may not seem like a lot when compared to Google, Amazon, or YouTube cat videos, but we think it is not too shabby for a two-man operation, especially considering we have full-time jobs and our own familial and other personal obligations.  Of these page views, 2,000 occurred during the first 11 months of the site.  More than 1,100 page views have come since the end of February.  We hope to keep up this pace and reach at least 5,000 page views by mid-summer.

More Production: Part of this growing popularity may be due to the fact that Dr. Gaytán and I are writing more.  We published only 15 posts from March to October 2012, with production declining first during the summer months and again beginning with the Fall semester’s mid-terms, which than ran through finals week, and spilled into the holidays.  Yet, we have published 17 posts during the first three months of 2013!  We hope to maintain this level of production from here-on-out.

What’s Popular: Of the Top Ten most viewed blog posts, Dr. Gaytán is the author of eight of them.  He also authored the most read post to date, “Why Does Everyone Hate Ruben Navarette?”  “Is the Unexamined Life Worth Hiring?” is my most popularly read piece in the Top Ten.  My other Top Ten entry is my more recent post about Pope Francis.  I really do not mind that Dr. Gaytán’s popular posts outnumber mine at a five-to-one ratio, since more people have viewed my “About Us” profile than his!

What’s Next:  We look forward to continue blogging our thoughts and opinions on a myriad of subjects.  We will continue to appreciate the support of all of you who read, comment about, and share The Mexican Intellectual.  In the coming months, you may see some changes to the site.  We expect these to be seamless and not to interfere with your enjoyment of the site.  We will be sure to keep you updated as we implement these changes.

Until then, thank you for your ongoing interest in and support of The Mexican Intellectual!

Minority Academics and Blogging: Why It Should and Does Matter

The Internet is fascinating for several reasons.  For one, it instantaneously conveys information over vast distances.  For another, it becomes this seemingly endless trove of artifacts to be uncovered at a later time, revealing new thoughts or new ideas.

I experienced both of these aspects earlier this week when an organization I “like” on Facebook shared an article from the website of the British newspaper, The Guardian.  More accurately, the shared content was a blog post, bearing the headline “Academic blogging: minority scholars cannot afford to be silent.”  This post by Denise Horn originally was published in July 2012, but only now had come to my attention.

In her post, Horn describes a situation on the blog site hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education from earlier that Spring, in which another blogger disparaged the academic integrity of recently-completed dissertations among the first cohort of graduate students in Northwestern University’s black studies doctoral program.  That blogger, Naomi Schaefer Riley, questioned the intellectual value of the new work based on “the sidebar [accompanying a news article about the students] explaining some of the dissertations.”  Based on this limited reading, Schaefer Riley called for the elimination of black studies programs.  The fury Schaefer Riley’s diatribe engendered led to her ultimate dismissal from The Chronicle.

Horn uses this event in her own post as a something of a wake-up call to think more deeply about herself as “an academic who blogs,” and more broadly about “minority academics who blog.”  That designation – a minority academic who blogs – resonated with me, to say the least.

When my friend and colleague, Prof. Frank Gaytán, and I started this blog last year, it was for the reasons described on our “About this Blog - FAQs” page – to discuss big ideas in big ways to a big audience from our particular points of view.  In doing so, we have strove to demonstrate the attitude and mindset Horn describes when she writes, “We [academic bloggers] invest a lot of time and effort into what we do.  For many of us, the care and attention we put into each of our blog posts reflects the attentiveness we have within our own research as a whole, and by extension reflects perhaps our training as scholars.”

Nevertheless, I do feel somewhat insecure at times in trying to engage big ideas in big ways with a big audience through this forum.  This mostly is due, I think, to aspects of higher education’s rewards systems.  Granted, I have some security through my tenure-track position, but that is a limited security given my rank as assistant professor.

Only recently I have begun to promote more my work on The Mexican Intellectual among other academics as a professionally-related creative endeavor, while being unsure if it will be perceived as a worthwhile pursuit or a quaint, but ultimately frivolous activity.  And yet, it is to some degree the nature of these higher educational structures that prompted our founding of this blog in the first place.  Fortunately, conversations are beginning at the graduate and professional levels of how to begin thinking about how to incorporate digital scholarship into tenure review processes.  After all, as Horn notes, “Blogging is, to an extent, different from journalism and from academic journals, but it still holds its own as a forum for ideas and for 'civil discourse' among academics."  "The emergence of many minority academic programs and departments," she continues, "is connected to a desire to make visible not just the work but also the culture of certain segments of the population that have been ignored, undervalued, oppressed.”

Admittedly, my graduate training was not in the kind of minority academic program or department Horn discusses; neither was Prof Gaytán’s.  We do, however, teach the courses we teach and conduct the kind of research and writing we do in order to make visible the previously invisible; to lift up the previously overlooked or undervalued.  And I do not think there is anything frivolous about that.