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You are here: Home / n+1 is full of it

n+1 is full of it

by Freddie deBoer|  June 19, 20126:14 pm| 57 Comments

This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing

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Being an American leftist on the fringes, in the socialist/internationalist vein, can be a lonely proposition, so it’s tempting to let lefty publications slide. But I simply have no patience for the parlor radicals at n+1, the post-Marxist (or whatever) band of literary types who deign to gift the world with their advanced commentary. Today, the editors published another screed against credentialism, elitism, and the university. The timing of their distaste for the elite and our higher educational system is convenient: they’ve discovered this distaste for the university after their Harvard, Columbia, and Wesleyan degrees have opened so many doors for them. The American Circus had them pegged months ago.

Convenient timing, that is, with a small exception: I happen to know, through the grapevine, that two of these he-man opponents of meritocracy and credentialism applied and were admitted to Harvard’s American Studies PhD program, which like all of Harvard’s doctorate programs is insanely competitive. This happened in just this past admissions cycle.

I wonder if their principled hatred of credentialism, meritocracy, and the university found its way into their statements of purpose.

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57Comments

  1. 1.

    Linnaeus

    June 19, 2012 at 6:19 pm

    Have you read Jacobin? You might like that one.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    June 19, 2012 at 6:19 pm

    Reminds me of all the times I’ve heard my bosses over the years lament “You don’t want my job.”

  3. 3.

    dr. bloor

    June 19, 2012 at 6:21 pm

    The bullshit, it is strong with them, it is.

  4. 4.

    Cydney

    June 19, 2012 at 6:23 pm

    I did not read the article, but as a community college instructor, I see a hell of a lot of people who just need jobs, but are forced to get degrees and go into debt to get jobs that used to be learned through experience. Now every job above Wal-Mart clerk requires accreditation. If everyone goes to college, then what is college worth? A BA becomes like a high school diploma. For the most part only scholars, scientists, doctors, lawyers, and techies need college. If this is what the n + 1 article is about then I agree with them.

  5. 5.

    Brachiator

    June 19, 2012 at 6:26 pm

    I’ll bet that the favorit tv show of n+1 is Girls.

  6. 6.

    BGinCHI

    June 19, 2012 at 6:28 pm

    The folks who wrote that n + 1 piece have not paid their dues, have not worked in the trenches, have not put themselves out there. They don’t know what they are talking about.

    A very small percentage of university work takes place at the levels they are talking about. People who went to expensive schools and only know other people who did too have no idea how other people live. They are blind to so much experience.

    I teach at an urban commuter university. We are the most diverse uni in the midwest and have the lowest, or almost lowest, debt burden of any uni in the country. Our population of students are working class, or all ages and nationalities, and they want one thing: a better life. They will work hard to get it and they are not playing games. Neither do we as faculty. We work hard, do lots of research like our peers at Research 1 schools, but the good of our students comes first.

    This is the most common higher ed experience in this country, and it outnumbers the Ivy League, the expensive privates, and the party schools.

    When privileged elites trash a system that produced and supports them, reach for your revolver.

    Fuck them.

  7. 7.

    BGinCHI

    June 19, 2012 at 6:30 pm

    @Cydney: High schools are MASSIVELY failing inner city young people, for example, and so higher ed gives them the skills they desperately need: reading, writing, thinking, public speaking.

    Your argument isn’t an argument.

  8. 8.

    FlipYrWhig

    June 19, 2012 at 6:36 pm

    I knew one of the n + 1 people when I was in grad school. His partner was on the faculty where I was a student, and he was still finishing up somewhere else. Across the board… Ivies.

  9. 9.

    Zifnab

    June 19, 2012 at 6:40 pm

    But I simply have no patience for the parlor radicals at n+1, the post-Marxist (or whatever) band of literary types who deign to gift the world with their advanced commentary. Today, the editors published another screed against credentialism, elitism, and the university. The timing of their distaste for the elite and our higher educational system is convenient: they’ve discovered this distaste for the university after their Harvard, Columbia, and Wesleyan degrees have opened so many doors for them.

    That’s not entirely fair. You likely wouldn’t be reading them to begin with if they didn’t have the paper to lend their opinions weight. This sounds like the kind of “Al Gore flies on planes so he can’t complain about Global Warming” talk we get from idiot wingers.

    The editors have a point. The American University system has always favored the privileged. You need money to afford the leisure time necessary for study. And you need money to get the personalized tutorship that provides the most educational benefit. So a meritocracy can slip into plutocracy when only the rich have the resources necessary to pass increasingly difficult tests.

    Of course, his “People’s Revolt” is a bit absurd. Never mind that you’re unlikely to organize a valedictorian’s revolt (you might as well try and organize everyone with a particular middle name), telling high school kids not to go off to college is just bad advice in general.

    A more sensible form of protest – and one that I think you really *could* get legs under – would be an appeal to employers. Stop putting such massive weight behind GPA and advance degrees. Give special consideration to the B+ student instead of the A+ student. Or perhaps go and create scholarships and offer internships for kids at the top of the bell curve instead of the far right end.

    And the authors could immediately practice what they preach by going out and rounding up a bunch of interns from the local community college. Then do exposes on their talents and their accomplishments, to demonstrate the untapped potential of that allegedly mediocre bunch. :-p

    I think they’ve got good points. Their solution is airy and utopian, but their problem is grounded in legitimate concerns.

  10. 10.

    Mnemosyne

    June 19, 2012 at 6:43 pm

    @Brachiator:

    I’ll bet that the favorite tv show of n+1 is “Girls.”

    Actually, I think a good part of the backlash that “Girls” is currently experiencing is that people like the ones at n+1 have finally realized that she’s making fun of them. They are the objects of Dunham’s mockery, and they do not like it one bit.

  11. 11.

    MaximusNYC

    June 19, 2012 at 6:49 pm

    Ah, don’t get me started on the n+1 guys. (They are pretty much all guys.)

    My wife wrote an essay last year about a famous, now deceased writer and his impact on the tone of contemporary writing, especially online writing. It was published in a very prominent magazine.

    In a recent unsigned column, the n+1 editors “borrowed” her thesis, lock, stock, and barrel, without any attribution whatsoever.

  12. 12.

    BGinCHI

    June 19, 2012 at 6:49 pm

    @Zifnab: You don’t think this mistakes the cause for the effect?

    Higher ed has evolved this way because of the priorities (financial and social) of our country. Higher ed isn’t causing it. The reforms are pretty simple: make education available by taking the cost=quality aspect out of it as much as is possible. American higher ed mostly worked this way before the 1980s. That has been steadily eroded since.

  13. 13.

    BGinCHI

    June 19, 2012 at 6:50 pm

    @MaximusNYC: Would you link to that piece? Curious. Not creepy curious; intellectually curious.

  14. 14.

    Liberty60

    June 19, 2012 at 6:51 pm

    The article exemplifies the reason why the left has had such a struggle in America. It has never found a way to engage and connect with the concerns of working class people, because all too often the voices of the left are not of the working class.

    So the voice of the left, while well meaning, often drips with condescension and noblesse oblige.

    There are alternatives of course; the unions are good at focusing the discontent of the middle class into action, and Occupy helps identify the true villians as Wall Street, not the strapping bucks.

  15. 15.

    schrodinger's cat

    June 19, 2012 at 6:59 pm

    I happen to know, through the grapevine, that two of these he-man opponents of meritocracy and credentialism applied and were admitted to Harvard’s American Studies PhD program, which like all of Harvard’s doctorate programs is insanely competitive. This happened in just this past admissions cycle

    Are you jealous?

  16. 16.

    BGinCHI

    June 19, 2012 at 7:02 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: What? I assume he’s pointing out the hypocrisy.

    WTF?

  17. 17.

    schrodinger's cat

    June 19, 2012 at 7:09 pm

    @BGinCHI: Well he is. And both things can be true, n+1 guys (no idea who they are) are hypocrites and FDB is jealous that one of them got into Harvard for grad school.

  18. 18.

    j

    June 19, 2012 at 7:10 pm

    Or as Frothy Santorum (3 degrees himself) said.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkjbJOSwq3A

    What a snob.

  19. 19.

    DougJ

    June 19, 2012 at 7:13 pm

    They aren’t all insanely competitive. Many are not in the top ten. It’s not Berkeley.

  20. 20.

    MattMinus

    June 19, 2012 at 7:25 pm

    Isn’t a PhD in American Studies the functional equivalent of a sign stating that you 1)Aren’t smart enough to hack it in a marginally rigorous liberal arts disciple 2) have a trust fund and 3)hate to work?

  21. 21.

    j

    June 19, 2012 at 7:28 pm

    @MattMinus: 4) are Tom Friedman

  22. 22.

    DougJ

    June 19, 2012 at 7:28 pm

    @MattMinus:

    Yes. Minus the hate to work. You try reading and writing all those footnotes.

  23. 23.

    DougJ

    June 19, 2012 at 7:34 pm

    @BGinCHI:

    Well said. Well said.

  24. 24.

    Dave

    June 19, 2012 at 7:42 pm

    To know n+1 is a shit magazine full of wall to wall awful, all you have to do is read the magazine for thirty seconds.

    “Harvard graduate student” must be the most densely shit-packed string of signifiers the English language has to offer.

  25. 25.

    MaximusNYC

    June 19, 2012 at 7:44 pm

    @BGinCHI:

    Exhibit A

    Exhibit B

  26. 26.

    doofus

    June 19, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    So n+1 is influential? I merely ask because I do not know.

  27. 27.

    FlipYrWhig

    June 19, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    @MattMinus: I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with American Studies as a field.

  28. 28.

    dporpentine

    June 19, 2012 at 8:06 pm

    I’m proud to say I hated n+1 from its first cloying issue. It’s intellectual commitment-lite.

  29. 29.

    Joel

    June 19, 2012 at 8:14 pm

    @Brachiator: Girls actually acknowledges the weaknesses of its main protagonists.

  30. 30.

    Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937

    June 19, 2012 at 8:23 pm

    Full disclosure: I subscribe to n+1 because I like a diversity of opinions and knowledge – most of what hey write about is not my field of expertise. However you link to an article that contains this:

    It’s not an easy sentence to read. It sounds a bit like n+1 attended a seminar on how to write a thesis sentence and this is what the teacher put on the chalkboard after taking too many suggestions from the class.

    and when I go to the home page of this article that you linked to, there is this:

    ClichĂ©s over quants: as the world of hockey slouches toward sabermetrics, the sport’s idiosyncrasies reveal the limits of a statistical revolution.

    Mostly I want to hurl. The wankery is thick among some people and professions.

  31. 31.

    Joel

    June 19, 2012 at 8:25 pm

    By the way, can we kill the out-of-context use of the word “SABRmetrics”? The term refers to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). When applied to other sports, it doesn’t make sense.

  32. 32.

    Omnes Omnibus

    June 19, 2012 at 8:28 pm

    @Joel: Kleenex. Xerox.

  33. 33.

    DougJ

    June 19, 2012 at 8:29 pm

    What the fuck do you expect from a publication called n+1?

  34. 34.

    Omnes Omnibus

    June 19, 2012 at 8:30 pm

    @DougJ: More than the simple n that I am getting.

  35. 35.

    Joel

    June 19, 2012 at 8:34 pm

    @DougJ: If you had started this thread, the title would have been “I’ve got two machines”.

  36. 36.

    schrodinger's cat

    June 19, 2012 at 8:35 pm

    @DougJ:Depends what n equals to. I took a quick look, seems like a lot of pretentious hot air. Bet they are totebaggers too.

  37. 37.

    BB

    June 19, 2012 at 8:43 pm

    Freddie or DougJ: please write a post on the shit going down at UVA — it’s unbelievable. The board is composed of Galtian hacks who schemed to throw out the president because they read a David Brooks piece in the NYT. I am not fucking kidding. The daily newspaper filed an FOIA on the board’s emails and is tweeting the contents @cavdaily. Take a look. The bastards are on their way out the door, but it will happen elsewhere.

  38. 38.

    E.

    June 19, 2012 at 8:47 pm

    Hey MaximusNYC, that was a hell of an article and I recalled it immediately when I read your first comment, so (wondering if I had guessed correctly) I was pleased to see you link to it. I am a big fan of DFW and of his SNOOT article in particular, but your wife’s critique hit the bull’s eye, and I admired it a great deal. In fact I used it (with attribution) in a legal writing class I teach.

    Those n+1 dudes, well, whatever, ignore them. Your wife’s article made a dent in all the right places and she did great work.

  39. 39.

    BB

    June 19, 2012 at 8:47 pm

    Sorry, that’s @cavalierdaily. Also, I know it wasn’t only a David Brooks piece, but they really did want to force the school to do some crazy shit and were sending each other Brooks articles and WSJ op-eds to psych each other up.

  40. 40.

    Omnes Omnibus

    June 19, 2012 at 8:51 pm

    @BB:

    [They] were sending each other Brooks articles and WSJ op-eds to psych each other up.

    Does not compute.

  41. 41.

    DougJ

    June 19, 2012 at 8:51 pm

    @BB:

    So, having been close to these things before, I have no fucking idea what is going on there.

    At my university, we had a president who raised no money and invested poorly for 20 years and we’re paying the price today. So the argument “wasn’t good with money” isn’t ridiculous to me. My initial reaction is to be pissed at the board. But I’ll need a lot of time to figure out what I think here.

  42. 42.

    DougJ

    June 19, 2012 at 8:52 pm

    @BB:

    All right, I’m reeling.

    I’ll come back to this topic when I come to.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    June 19, 2012 at 8:53 pm

    @DougJ:

    What the fuck do you expect from a publication called n+1?

    A lawsuit from Google claiming rights to the +1?

  44. 44.

    DougJ

    June 19, 2012 at 8:53 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    My reaction too.

    I mostly stay out of the academic threads — I come here to forget that shit — but I feel like you say all the stuff I would say, luckily.

  45. 45.

    BB

    June 19, 2012 at 8:57 pm

    DougJ, I have been following this pretty closely, and it’s right up your goddam alley. Read the latest articles from The Cavalier Daily and the Daily Progress to get a flavor of it, and with that context, the tweets from @cavalierdaily are like a finely mixed manhattan: bracing and delicious at the same time.

  46. 46.

    schrodinger's cat

    June 19, 2012 at 9:19 pm

    @DougJ: Thanks, DougJ of many names, that was a nice thing to say.

  47. 47.

    BGinCHI

    June 19, 2012 at 9:22 pm

    @MaximusNYC: Thanks man. That’s fucked up (the plagiaristic borrowing that is).

  48. 48.

    MonkeyBoy

    June 19, 2012 at 9:25 pm

    “the editors published another screed against credentialism, elitism, and the university.”

    Does anybody know what “n+1” is supposed to mean?

    In mathematics “n+1” and a starting point such as 0 or 1 defines the natural numbers which is a strict linear order – e.g. for any two things, one is always “greater” or “better” than the other. Is this really the idea behind a source of rants against meritocracy?

    Viewing the world as linear orders is absurd and results in chains (another word for linear order) where God is at the top and a king is penultimate. This view doesn’t even allow for a bushy hierarchical social order which might be a “tree” or even a “partial order” where branches may merge. In the worst case it doesn’t know about a “pre-order” where you can have a cycle of “greater relations” that start with A greater than B and winds up with “B greater than A” and it doesn’t make sense to collapse everything in the cycle to being equal and indistinguishable.

  49. 49.

    Gus

    June 19, 2012 at 9:35 pm

    To think I actually pondered a career in academe. I would have had to deal with wankers like these. Or not, considering I probably would have had no chance at an Ivy education.

  50. 50.

    Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God

    June 19, 2012 at 9:39 pm

    All the kool kidz read n++ anyway.

  51. 51.

    BGinCHI

    June 19, 2012 at 9:44 pm

    @Gus: There are wankers everywhere. At least the ones in academia mostly only hurt themselves.

  52. 52.

    schrodinger's cat

    June 19, 2012 at 9:44 pm

    @Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: I see you program in C++

  53. 53.

    RSA

    June 19, 2012 at 9:46 pm

    @MonkeyBoy:

    Does anybody know what “n+1” is supposed to mean?

    I checked the “About” page and couldn’t find anything. (I’ve never heard of n+1 before.) I imagine it’s a metaphor of some kind… but of what I don’t know.

    RSA + 2

  54. 54.

    DougJ

    June 19, 2012 at 9:50 pm

    @Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:

    Win.

  55. 55.

    MattMinus

    June 19, 2012 at 9:53 pm

    @MonkeyBoy:

    In my world, N+1 redundancy is a form of resilience that ensures system availability in the event of component failure. Components (N) have at least one independent backup component (+1).

  56. 56.

    schrodinger's cat

    June 19, 2012 at 9:57 pm

    Does anybody know what “n+1” is supposed to mean?

    My guess, it has something to do with proof by mathematical induction
    In a proof by induction, you prove that something is true for
    n=1 or n=0, then given n, if you prove that it is true for n+1, then it must be true for all n, where n is a natural number.

    For example the sum of an arithmetic progression

    1,2,3,….. is given by n(n+1)/2.

  57. 57.

    lacp

    June 19, 2012 at 10:08 pm

    I don’t have the chops to figure out what the n+1 thinkers are trying to get at re credentialism. The on-the-job credentialism I’ve seen in my working career, where most of my colleagues and I had degrees from East Bumfuck U. and Close-Cover-Before-Striking State, wasn’t about where you got a degree – employers want you to have a degree period because they think it means you know how to follow instructions. That’s why it’s a requirement for the assistant manager of keeping the shelves stocked, not because they want him/her to explore particle physics or to explain how De Rerum Natura is the guiding intellectual force behind the Rolling Stones.

    So, yeah, I can agree credentialism can be a bad thing when it’s used as a short-cut in place of genuine evaluation. The person with the advanced degree from Yarvard or Oxbridge might well be the ideal candidate for whatever role one has in mind, but it’s not immediately obvious just from the fact that the person has such a degree.

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