Author: Ophelia Benson

Anthony Grayling explains some things about the New College of the Humanities.

The cast of professors is stunning but will they actually spend much time on the new campus? “They won’t give tutorials, but they will be partners, bringing advice and expertise. I want to recreate the experience I had at Oxford. I was very intensively tutored in my college but could also go and hear some amazing and extraordinary lectures.”

That’s what I thought it was about. I thought that because it was one of the many things we talked about over tea a few weeks ago. We talked about the one-on-one tutorial – I from the point of view of one who had never experienced such a thing but only envied it, he from the point of view of one who had. I thought of that as soon as I read about the NCH on Sunday…unlike Terry Eagleton.

The master of the college will be public sage and identikit Islington Man, AC Grayling. …Anyway, why should anyone be surprised at the prospect of academics signing on for a cushy job at 25% more than the average university salary, with shares in the enterprise to boot?

What would prevent most of us from doing so is the nausea which wells to the throat at the thought of this disgustingly elitist outfit. British universities, plundered of resources by the bankers and financiers they educated, are not best served by a bunch of prima donnas jumping ship and creaming off the bright and loaded. It is as though a group of medics in a hard-pressed public hospital were to down scalpels and slink off to start a lucrative private clinic. Grayling and his friends are taking advantage of a crumbling university system to rake off money from the rich. As such, they are betraying all those academics who have been fighting the cuts for the sake of their students.

Oh are they; are they really. Simon Jenkins raises an eyebrow.

[Eagleton] omits to mention his own Grayling-ite credentials, as “excellence in English distinguished visitor” to America’s private Notre Dame Catholic university. There he gives three weeks’ teaching per semester for an undisclosed sum.

Downing scalpels and going off to a private (and Catholic, at that) university (that charges £27,000 a year) instead of staying home to fight the cuts. What a steaming self-righteous hypocrite Terry Eagleton is, and a bullying toady of the church into the bargain. He sneers at NCH for being unlikely to have a theology department. Yes really!

On a far more intelligent note, there’s Katha Pollitt’s conversation with Wajeha al-Huwaider. 

Katha asked

Some Muslim feminists are trying to reinterpret—they would say, correctly interpret—the Koran in a gender-egalitarian way. For instance, they point out the Koran says only that women should dress modestly, not that they need to be swathed from head to toe, or even cover their hair. Do you think there can be a feminist Islam?

The answer is definite:

There is a feminist Islam, mainly led by Muslim women in the West. But they tend to forget that none of the monotheistic religions treat men and women equally, and there’s a limit to what scholarship can do to change that. For example, daughters inherit half what sons inherit. Men are allowed to marry up to four wives. Two female witnesses equal one male. Secular society is a better bet for women—and men too.

There you have it.

Read the whole thing.

Oh lordy, it’s Cathy Lynn Grossman again. Again? Yes, there was once before. She’s a Templeton “Fellow,” too, class of 2005. Her schtick is to point in horror at some gnu atheist or other and say how shocking and evil it all is. This time it’s PZ. She’s hoping there’s going to be a Great Cracking of the Whip.

Now that online provocateur PZ Myers, the biologist whose popular Pharyngula blog features profane attacks on religion, is part of the ScienceBlogs lineup coming under National Geographic’s editorial control, will Myers have to evolve to new standards?

Ah the voice of censorious respectability and majority opinion – will someone at last be able to make PZ Myers stop saying things that Cathy Lynn Grossman doesn’t like? No. Grossman doesn’t get a veto, and she’ll just have to put up with that.

Just in case you’re wondering about whether Myers, who once outraged Catholics by calling the Eucharist just another cracker, frets over being offensive, here’s what he said in 2008 at Skepticon One, an event organized by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster:

“There’s no constitutional right that says you may not be offended.”

That’s right – there’s not. Grossman seems to think there is, or there should be. That’s silly.

Hemant Mehta interviewed Damon and Jerrett Fowler a few days ago. Jerrett wants people not to forget about it and move on to the next thing.

My biggest fear is that, since this is the Internet, people will find other places to focus their attention. This is going to be a long and drawn out battle and there is little we can do to make it go faster.

The support so far is amazing, more than I could have ever imagined, however, I hope that the support doesn’t go away. We need the community behind us so that we have the strength to follow this through. This isn’t just for us, this is for everyone out there as well. Anyone who’s hurting, marginalized, ignored because of their lack of religion or religious preference. My dream is to see this through and to have full support all the way.

That’s probably a lot of people.

Well here is something I would love to know more about – the early history of the Home of the Good Shepherd in Wallingford, in Seattle. I’ve been familiar with the building that housed it for years, indeed decades. It belongs to the city now, and houses various organizations; the grounds around it are a city park. I think I always vaguely knew it had been some kind of “homeforunmarriedmothers”…but I’ve been learning to treat that archaic term with more suspicion, plus “Good Shepherd” is one of the four orders that ran those houses of horror the Magdalene laundries, so…

So I finally got around to looking it up, and sure enough.

The Home of the Good Shepherd, located at 4649 Sunnyside Avenue in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood, opened in 1907 to provide shelter, education, and guidance to young girls. The Home generated revenue by operating a commercial laundry, as did many other Good Shepherd institutions. Girls were referred by the courts or brought in by their families from throughout Washington and sometimes Alaska.

Check. Check. Check.

The Sisters of the Good Shepherd believed that by providing the benefits of a stable and loving home, the girls could become responsible, moral, and caring women.

Bad syntax there, but you can tell what it’s trying to say. You can also read on and see that the sisters’ idea of a stable and loving home is rather…Catholic.

The south wing of the building housed the “penitent” girls, those whom society considered “wayward” and rooms for those nuns who worked with them…

The nuns frequently led the girls in religious song as they walked to and from meals and Mass. Spiritual quotations were posted on classroom walls and devotional statues of saints were found throughout the Home’s stairways, hallways, and grounds. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd demonstrated to the girls a pious and moral lifestyle.

Not altogether homey…plus it was a prison.

For the first half of the institution’s history, residents rarely were allowed to leave the grounds or hear news of the outside world. Thus, the residents’ most coveted privilege was “parlor” — receiving approved visitors every other Sunday…The girls could not be trusted and neither could the outside world. To prevent residents from seeing the outside world and leaving the Home, locked doors and opaque glass were used in the earlier years. A little later, barred windows, barbed wire fences, then window alarms were installed. Though these measures appeared harsh for some; for others, it offered protection and safety and enabled to them concentrate on rehabilitating and healing.

You bet.

If the account is accurate (and that’s a big if), it was overall less harsh than the Irish versions, but it was still a theocratic prison. The big difference seems to be that the sentence wasn’t for life. Other than that, it’s a nasty business.