Luckily had booked 2 tickets before Mr Kamm's promotion of the event. Certainly hope he has managed to buy a ticket, so he can ask a (short) question if there's anything he wants to know. 😅👍
In my overlong experience with this humbug, he doesn't want to know anything except what he wants to know, and he's very good at demanding that everyone around him should be as stupid, closed minded, and ultimately offensive as he is.
I dunno, maybe invite Emma Smith as suggested. Or the Kammster. Not really into either of these buttinskys, but give them five minutes just for grins and giggles.
I might have guessed that following a "Wiki trail" would lead me to a scathing quotation based on direct, non-inferential first person experience of the attitude you are highlighting, starting with Kowlakowski to the one doctoral students of his mentioned, Gillian Rose, this is her summary:
**** {{Rose attended Ealing Grammar School and went on to St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she read PPE.[4] Taught philosophy by Jean Austin, widow of the philosopher J. L. Austin, she later described herself as bristling under the constraints of Oxford-style philosophy. She never forgot Austin remarking in class, "Remember, girls, all the philosophers you will read are much more intelligent than you are."[5]}} ****
Wow, just wow. I think the general "depth psychology" term for this is along the lines of "Internalized oppression," right? Anyway here is the quote:
In a late interview, Rose commented of philosophers trained at Oxford, "It teaches them to be clever, destructive, supercilious and ignorant. It doesn't teach you what's important. It doesn't feed the soul."[6] Sociologist Jean Floud helped keep Rose's passion for philosophy alive in her final year at Oxford.
I seriously can no longer understand "what gets into people," what motivates that level of condescending silliness?
Wouldn't it occur to even a bright teenage student of well, anything at all, to at least read - even to hurriedly scan the text for meaningful content, and to get some idea of the gist, the central theses and how they are supported - before slagging it off as utter bilge?
I must have also underestimated the level of institutional "group think" on the SAQ.
This extreme reaction stems from cognitive dissonance. We humans find it very painful and it can make one angry. If your belief is so solid that it you believe it to be ‘fact’ then you will think anyone who doesn’t believe it is an idiot.
Yeah, I ONLY escaped that via being (1) Raised in quasi-evangelical Methodist church tradition I (2) Soon despised and rebelled against in various ways, it was the early 1960s , ergo anyone who actually LISTENED to Bob Dylan and plenty of other folk singers realized they were were confronting "church doctrines" head on, but (3) Figured I better play along (overtly) and study it (The Bible) as partially brilliant poetry and insightful observations but ALSO "enemy propaganda, " so while (age 14-15-16) ransacking the Des Moines public library for literary sustenance and in particular (4) the philosophy and religion section, but also the 19th C. European novels (Shakespeare and British and American novels and plays were either assigned in English classes or also sought out or in films - before streaming, Olivier as Henry V and Hamlet was on network tv albeit generally late at night, so we stayed up late at night, simple!) I acquired a deep suspicion of all ideologies, that was not much of a problem for my entire generation, given the 1965-66-67-68-69-70 Vietnam War "on television every night," the massive urban riots, the civil rights movement, attending integrated schools (god knows what the course of my life and thinking would have been in some small town or much smaller city in Iowa, that is a game changer) so by the time I was eighteen years old, the first year at Macalester's "Existentialism and Theology" assigned readings bolstered my defenses against dogmatism: Sartre, Camus, Leszek Kolakowski* & other critics of the Marxist materialist "substitute religion," on through Rudolf Bultmann (heretical views, according to the RC church, he's great!) and to Martin Buber. Of course the easily available psychedelics and marijuana of that whole era (starting in 1966 in Iowa, which was 2-3 years `behind the coasts' as the folk wisdom maintained, anyway) didn't exactly slow the process of "existential alienation and searching" down!
Years later (1988) in gradual school I had a class on Polish Marxism, taught by visiting prof. from U. of Warsaw, Leszek K. is very much worth reading as source of critical thinking about
far more than just "political economy." Also helped getting me out of my naive `Trotskyist phase.' Yes, we had that too, even in the American Midwest, read this - explains a lot!
Of course if Mr Kamm were a woman I’m sure his diatribe would be completely ignored. I wonder if the said author were a female if he would be so negative. And to call you during your PhD. Wow. The arrogance of the man. Oh gosh I do so despair for my gender sometimes although on balance I hear today that Liz Truss is supporting Trump and wants to take the UK out of the Euro Conv on Human Rights so all is well with the world after all.
Take that, Oliver Kamm! Down with the Stratford unhistorical, unfactual stranglehold on Shakespeare (the original "cancel culture," or, that is, cancel cult).
Being new this as of a mere six or seven months ago, I am still capable of being shocked at the arrogance of the self-appointed protectors of Stratfordian orthodoxy.
LOL, my one and only experience on stage in Britain was as part of the Macalester College Drama Choros,* when we were the only group from the USA invited to the National Student Drama Festival of the British Isles, held that year ( January, 1972) in Bradford. Did manage through having a cousin living near London who acquired the tix, to see Alan Bates in Butley and Tom Courtenay in Charley's Aunt. All my understanding of academic British squabbles and more determined feuds is what one picks up as a philosophy major reading some "Oxford versus Cambridge" disputes from the last hundred years or so, and nothing quite as untethered to basic standards of relevant evidence as this!
I mean, you could at least read the damn book and then misunderstand it out of some honest mistakes or just out of the same set of biases identified above, correct? But read the book, come on!
* I did manage to get some poems from Crow by Ted Hughes into our regular program, this also due to same cousin giving me that book. We were already including a fair amount of British, Welsh and Irish poetry - including long stretches of Under Milkwood, for example. Showing my age!
I have a slight quibble with the claim that the book is on a “Harvard history course”. It's not part of mainstream Harvard-degree academia, more of an evening class type of thing.
James Norwood* taught a course for many years here in Minneapolis, at the U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities, on the Shakespeare authorship question, but it was after I had already graduated, sorry I missed it.
For years I thought in the University of Sussex’s Centre for Continuing Education - much the same thing. The quality of teaching was no less good and the courses were quality controlled. As another commenter suggests this is all a piecemeal process and we begin at the edges. This is progress worth noting and certainly the Harvard affiliation is meaningful even if it’s not yet part of the core curriculum.
Luckily had booked 2 tickets before Mr Kamm's promotion of the event. Certainly hope he has managed to buy a ticket, so he can ask a (short) question if there's anything he wants to know. 😅👍
I too hope he got his ticket in good time.
In my overlong experience with this humbug, he doesn't want to know anything except what he wants to know, and he's very good at demanding that everyone around him should be as stupid, closed minded, and ultimately offensive as he is.
I dunno, maybe invite Emma Smith as suggested. Or the Kammster. Not really into either of these buttinskys, but give them five minutes just for grins and giggles.
They don’t know anything about the authorship question. That’s the problem with denying something’s existence.
I might have guessed that following a "Wiki trail" would lead me to a scathing quotation based on direct, non-inferential first person experience of the attitude you are highlighting, starting with Kowlakowski to the one doctoral students of his mentioned, Gillian Rose, this is her summary:
**** {{Rose attended Ealing Grammar School and went on to St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she read PPE.[4] Taught philosophy by Jean Austin, widow of the philosopher J. L. Austin, she later described herself as bristling under the constraints of Oxford-style philosophy. She never forgot Austin remarking in class, "Remember, girls, all the philosophers you will read are much more intelligent than you are."[5]}} ****
Wow, just wow. I think the general "depth psychology" term for this is along the lines of "Internalized oppression," right? Anyway here is the quote:
In a late interview, Rose commented of philosophers trained at Oxford, "It teaches them to be clever, destructive, supercilious and ignorant. It doesn't teach you what's important. It doesn't feed the soul."[6] Sociologist Jean Floud helped keep Rose's passion for philosophy alive in her final year at Oxford.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Rose
I seriously can no longer understand "what gets into people," what motivates that level of condescending silliness?
Wouldn't it occur to even a bright teenage student of well, anything at all, to at least read - even to hurriedly scan the text for meaningful content, and to get some idea of the gist, the central theses and how they are supported - before slagging it off as utter bilge?
I must have also underestimated the level of institutional "group think" on the SAQ.
This extreme reaction stems from cognitive dissonance. We humans find it very painful and it can make one angry. If your belief is so solid that it you believe it to be ‘fact’ then you will think anyone who doesn’t believe it is an idiot.
Yeah, I ONLY escaped that via being (1) Raised in quasi-evangelical Methodist church tradition I (2) Soon despised and rebelled against in various ways, it was the early 1960s , ergo anyone who actually LISTENED to Bob Dylan and plenty of other folk singers realized they were were confronting "church doctrines" head on, but (3) Figured I better play along (overtly) and study it (The Bible) as partially brilliant poetry and insightful observations but ALSO "enemy propaganda, " so while (age 14-15-16) ransacking the Des Moines public library for literary sustenance and in particular (4) the philosophy and religion section, but also the 19th C. European novels (Shakespeare and British and American novels and plays were either assigned in English classes or also sought out or in films - before streaming, Olivier as Henry V and Hamlet was on network tv albeit generally late at night, so we stayed up late at night, simple!) I acquired a deep suspicion of all ideologies, that was not much of a problem for my entire generation, given the 1965-66-67-68-69-70 Vietnam War "on television every night," the massive urban riots, the civil rights movement, attending integrated schools (god knows what the course of my life and thinking would have been in some small town or much smaller city in Iowa, that is a game changer) so by the time I was eighteen years old, the first year at Macalester's "Existentialism and Theology" assigned readings bolstered my defenses against dogmatism: Sartre, Camus, Leszek Kolakowski* & other critics of the Marxist materialist "substitute religion," on through Rudolf Bultmann (heretical views, according to the RC church, he's great!) and to Martin Buber. Of course the easily available psychedelics and marijuana of that whole era (starting in 1966 in Iowa, which was 2-3 years `behind the coasts' as the folk wisdom maintained, anyway) didn't exactly slow the process of "existential alienation and searching" down!
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek_Ko%C5%82akowski#Career
Years later (1988) in gradual school I had a class on Polish Marxism, taught by visiting prof. from U. of Warsaw, Leszek K. is very much worth reading as source of critical thinking about
far more than just "political economy." Also helped getting me out of my naive `Trotskyist phase.' Yes, we had that too, even in the American Midwest, read this - explains a lot!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_general_strike_of_1934
THIS from teamster.org completely omits the role of the Trotskyists, which is "cognitive dissonance" on stilts!
https://teamster.org/about/teamster-history/the-minneapolis-strike/
This was LED by Trotskyists, it was after all, 1934, and the USA might have moved far more to the left but for FDR's New Deal politics.
Careful study beats demagoguery every time.
Of course if Mr Kamm were a woman I’m sure his diatribe would be completely ignored. I wonder if the said author were a female if he would be so negative. And to call you during your PhD. Wow. The arrogance of the man. Oh gosh I do so despair for my gender sometimes although on balance I hear today that Liz Truss is supporting Trump and wants to take the UK out of the Euro Conv on Human Rights so all is well with the world after all.
It was post PhD when I was already in post as a lecturer at Goldsmiths!
I did wonder how he knew…much more acceptable then! 🤣
Bravo, Ros!
Take that, Oliver Kamm! Down with the Stratford unhistorical, unfactual stranglehold on Shakespeare (the original "cancel culture," or, that is, cancel cult).
Being new this as of a mere six or seven months ago, I am still capable of being shocked at the arrogance of the self-appointed protectors of Stratfordian orthodoxy.
LOL, my one and only experience on stage in Britain was as part of the Macalester College Drama Choros,* when we were the only group from the USA invited to the National Student Drama Festival of the British Isles, held that year ( January, 1972) in Bradford. Did manage through having a cousin living near London who acquired the tix, to see Alan Bates in Butley and Tom Courtenay in Charley's Aunt. All my understanding of academic British squabbles and more determined feuds is what one picks up as a philosophy major reading some "Oxford versus Cambridge" disputes from the last hundred years or so, and nothing quite as untethered to basic standards of relevant evidence as this!
I mean, you could at least read the damn book and then misunderstand it out of some honest mistakes or just out of the same set of biases identified above, correct? But read the book, come on!
* I did manage to get some poems from Crow by Ted Hughes into our regular program, this also due to same cousin giving me that book. We were already including a fair amount of British, Welsh and Irish poetry - including long stretches of Under Milkwood, for example. Showing my age!
I have a slight quibble with the claim that the book is on a “Harvard history course”. It's not part of mainstream Harvard-degree academia, more of an evening class type of thing.
Slowly but surely, perhaps?
James Norwood* taught a course for many years here in Minneapolis, at the U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities, on the Shakespeare authorship question, but it was after I had already graduated, sorry I missed it.
*https://deveresociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/FINAL_NL_Apr2022-Norwood.pdf
For years I thought in the University of Sussex’s Centre for Continuing Education - much the same thing. The quality of teaching was no less good and the courses were quality controlled. As another commenter suggests this is all a piecemeal process and we begin at the edges. This is progress worth noting and certainly the Harvard affiliation is meaningful even if it’s not yet part of the core curriculum.