live and let live is not the same as abuse your power and abuse people. i hope you can see the difference.
as for your colorful, purple prose, it certainly livens things up.
ken
Kenneth--
Campus sexual harassment bill is all about deploying the sexual organs to achieve extra-marital pleasure and to attain meritorious and non-meritorious goals. Why should it be a taboo for you to name the sexual organs that are being illicitly used? Many people think sex outside of marriage is just fine. Live and let live, you wrote. It is the same thought that makes Lecturers and Professors to demand sexual intercourse with female students in lieu of failing them meritoriously or not in exams.
If extra-marital sex is legal, why did the US Congress want to impeach President Bil Clinton in the famous Monica Lewinsky affairs? May I remind you that after Bil Clinton had told the Congress on oath that he had never had sexual intercourse with Monica Lewinsky that the FBI uncovered her gown stained with splashes of sperms of Clinton which Monica had kept as souvenir. Thus the Congress wanted to impeach him for lying on oath. However, Bil Clinton explained to the Congress that he only stocked his penis inside the mouth of Monica and subsequent ejaculation resulted in flushing her mouth with sperm and on withdrawing his penis from her mouth, drops of sperms fell on her gown. Congress freed Bil Clinton from impeachment on the ground that counterfeit sex as performed by Clinton was immoral but did not constitute sexual intercourse since his penis never touched or penetrated Monica Lewinsky's vagina. Many people think stealing money is capitalism and therefore, stealing money should not be criminalised. I beg to disagree.
S.Kadiri
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - No Surprise: ASUU Opposing Campus Sexual Harassment Bill
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
From: harrow@msu.edu
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 09:27:46 -0400
salimonu
you have a droll way of deploying sexual organs here in making your argument. why complicate things so much? many people think sex outside of marriage is just fine. live and let live. if you want to impose your order on them, you will be turning yourself into an executioner. is that what you want?
most executioners these days say, this is what god wants, or what the law says. thus they render life for most people a misery. surely human beings can do a better job than that.
ken
On 6/24/16 7:53 AM, Salimonu Kadiri wrote:
Kenneth and Toyin may wish to know that in some countries of Europe and the US it is criminal to "buy sex." In this wise "the seller, a female," is not criminalised but the "buyer, a male." The law is wrong in the sense that "Vagina," the female sexual organ cannot be sold or bought. What actually happens is that a female rents out her vagina to a male person to tenant with his penis, in exchange for fee, for a momentary pleasure after which the male withdraws and the female retains her vagina. If the male person has bought the vagina, the vagina becomes his personal property. Thus, if a man in the US or some parts of Europe can be criminalised for being "a vagina tenant to a vagina-lord," why then should it be puritan to criminalise a man for having sexual intercourse with a woman to whom he is not married?--
In Nigeria (just like in Europe and the US), not only lecturers and Professors engage in illicit sexual intercourse. Thus, if sexual intercourse by a man with a woman to which one is not married is treated in law as a rape, neither lecturers nor professors would be able to intimidate, harass and demand sex in exchange for good examination results. Since sexual intercourse is not like the air we breath, food that we eat and water that we drink, Toyin and Kenneth should please enlighten me on why a man should have sexual intercourse with a woman to which he is not married. This is not a question of religion but that of the sanctity of marriage institution.
S.Kadiri
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - No Surprise: ASUU Opposing Campus Sexual Harassment Bill
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
From: harrow@msu.edu
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 17:36:15 -0400
good succinct response toyin.
i read just today that the cameroonian legislature is contemplating passing legislation that makes it illegal for men to commit adultery, it already being illegal for women to do so. i couldn't help but laugh at this law. i mean, it is really funny. no disrespect, but if it were carried out it would leave the question, where would we find the jailers to keep in all the prisoners!
ken
On 6/23/16 4:57 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
toyinMagnificent puritanism:
'... Sexual intercourse should be restricted in law within married couples and a man who has sexual intercourse with a woman with whom he is not married should in law be treated as a rapist. ...In sexual intercourse, the penetrating ability and power is with the man and if the man refuses to be enticed or induced by a woman to perform sexual intercourse with her, no sexual harassment will take place. Therefore, if it is generally forbidden in law that no man (male) should have sexual intercourse with a woman (female) with whom he is not married, it will not matter if that law is violated in the Universities, Ministries or Corporations.
S. Kadiri
Eleda gba wa, May the Creator save us, as the Yoruba would say.
--
On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 8:33 PM, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
--.... we learn that Kine was made pregnant by her high school professor, who then denied the paternity and had her booted out of school because she was pregnant - Kenneth Harrow.
Was there no DNA test to confirm the paternity?
However, I do not see any need for specific law against sexual harassments only in the institutions of learning in Nigeria when sexual harassments occur in all facets of the society. Although females may induce males with sexual service in exchange for favours, males should be self-disciplined enough to reject such temptation. That is why I think males should be held responsible for any illicit sexual intercourses that occur with females. Sexual intercourse should be restricted in law within married couples and a man who has sexual intercourse with a woman with whom he is not married should in law be treated as a rapist. The Nigerian Penal Code (Nigerian Laws Cap 89), which is applicable in the Northern part of Nigeria, criminalises rape and defines it thus, "a man who, save in the case referred to in subsection (2), has sexual intercourse with a woman in any of the followings : Against her will; without her consent; with her consent, when her consent has been obtained by putting her in fear of death or hurt; with her consent WHEN THE MAN KNOWS THAT HE IS NOT HER HUSBAND.." In sexual intercourse, the penetrating ability and power is with the man and if the man refuses to be enticed or induced by a woman to perform sexual intercourse with her, no sexual harassment will take place. Therefore, if it is generally forbidden in law that no man (male) should have sexual intercourse with a woman (female) with whom he is not married, it will not matter if that law is violated in the Universities, Ministries or Corporations.
S. Kadiri
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - No Surprise: ASUU Opposing Campus Sexual Harassment Bill
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
From: harrow@msu.edu
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 08:29:27 -0400
oh gee, i made a unfortunate mistake in what i wrote below. thee imam and elderly men closed ranks around the father who had impregnated his own daughter, in Vehi Ciosane. sorry about that
ken
On 6/22/16 10:32 PM, kenneth harrow wrote:
it is an outrage, and i wonder how it can be changed.
it reminds me of one of sembene ousmane's earliest writings, Vehi-ciosane. the gist of the story concerns a young woman who was made pregnant by her father. the story is set in a traditional village, and the father is respected by the other men in the community and especially in the mosque. the mother learns of the scandal. here is the wiki summary: A teenager's pregnancy is beginning to show. This causes her mother much grief, as the girl will not name the father. Suspicion in the village rests on a navetanekat, or migrant laborer. He denies any involvement. Nevertheless, one of the brothers of Khar Madaiagua Diob (the expectant mother) tramples the laborer's crops. An angry mob searches for the navetanekat for a few days. Eventually, the girl tells her mother the truth: her own father is also the father of her child.
the novelette ends with the girl heading out for the big city. the great scandal the novel provoked was its attack upon the imam and elderly men of the mosque who protected the girl. the patriarchy closed ranks.
sembene repeated this indictment of the abusive men throughout his life. Consider, for instance, the story of Faat Kine, the modern, successful businesswoman who embodied the transformation of society wrought by women, by feminism if you will. The movie includes flashbacks in which we learn that Kine was made pregnant by her high school professor, who then denied the paternity and had her booted out of school because she was pregnant. kine's father blamed the mother, beat his wife and daughter and threw them both out.
i could repeat this theme in so many films, from the cameroonians dikongue-pipa in the 1970s, to variants like campus queen from nollywood.
the efforts of novelists and filmmakers like sembene to condemn this outrage matters, because the whole social pattern of deference to abusive patriarchy has to be challenged. And i think we need to frame this struggle so that it isn't simply put down to western feminism. In this light, how does one teachThe Lion and the Jewel??
another example is the early short story of ama ata aidoo about the girl who gets pregnant and has to leave for the big city. many many women authors and filmmakers evoke the theme.
ken
On 6/22/16 8:12 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
Here is a story that illustrates both the depth of the problem and the impunity that enables it to endure and grow. It was shared by Adeleke Adeeko, a respected senior colleague who contributed to our discussion of this issue on Shola Adenekan's Facebook page.
Let me tell you the case of a family member in a southern university. An instructor in a state university asked his brilliant 20 year old student for sex in exchange for signing off on the young woman's final year research project. The student refused. The instructor withheld his approval, as threatened. On hearing what was going on, the father called a lawyer to hunt down the dog. The lawyer found things to be as reported. Do you know what the lawyer advised? Chief, if you want your daughter to graduate this year, we have to pay off the lecturer! They paid the lecturer 100,000 naira! The End.
Imagine paying off the sexual harasser instead of hauling his behind to jail where he belongs. They have constituted themselves into an untouchable cult of sexual predators. It is a culture sustained by the fact that many lecturers have dirt on them in this regard. This sustains the spiral of silence and impunity. Some of the rapists even boast openly that this is their fringe benefit for being lecturers. What an outrage!--
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 5:13 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
Toyin Adepoju,The thrust of your lengthy post, save for the digressions into tangential and unrelated matters, can be distilled to two tragically flawed and shockingly misogynistic arguments on your part:
1. You do not believe that patriarchy, male power, and the marginality of women in the Nigerian society at large and in Nigerian universities in particular engenders the sexual victimization of female students.
2. You do not believe that the power asymmetries between lecturers and their students, the fact that the former have so much deterministic power over students they teach and mentor, make lecturers' sexual predation more serious, more egregious, and therefore deserving of an appropriately harsher punishment than the manipulative behavior, sexual or otherwise, of students. You are insisting on equivalency.
So, in your world, neither patriarchy nor professorial authority exists or privileges male lecturers and gives them oppressive powers over their female lecturers.
You, sir, are not worthy of serious engagement if you truly believe this fiction.
And NO American university equates the sexual misconduct of professors over their students with the misconduct or manipulative behavior, sexual or otherwise of students--NONE. Yours is a blatant lie and I challenge you to demonstrate otherwise. Universities, both in the US and Nigeria, of course, have disciplinary codes for students who engage in a wide range of stipulated misconducts, including sexual ones, but we would live in a world that venerates and justifies might, ignores its responsibilities, and forgives its excesses, if they were to equate those misconducts with those of professorial authority figures. Thankfully that is not the case, and EVERY campus in the US recognizes the immense power differential at the heart of the professor-student relationship and takes care to make sure that its guidelines for dealing with ethical violations in that relationship reflects that power discrepancy. When it's a male-female situation, that power differential is magnified multiple folds. Professors are placed in a position of responsibility over students, not the other way round.
And by the way, since you cited the US system, can you tell us how many cases there have been of students sexually harassing their professors? As far as I know, the number is statistically negligible. Even in Nigeria, where lecturers have even more power, how many such cases occur relative to lecturers' sexual predation? If a student does something unethical with or to you, you as an authority figure will have no trouble getting that student punished, so why should that be a problem? Your example of students flashing their professors is analogous to the risible excuse that some rapists give: that their victims dressed provocatively and thus asked for it.
It seems to me that we are obsessing over a negligible and easily punished and discouraged problem of female student manipulative behavior. The power and authority of professors serve as adequate deterrent and keeps the incidents down. Even so, all universities have mechanisms for dealing with students who cross the line into sexually harassing behavior. Let's focus on professors/lecturers who abuse their authority to commit rapes against their students. Making this about students' manipulative behavior, which is much rarer and can easily be punished, muddles the professorial sexual crimes we are discussing.
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <oluwakaidara1@gmail.com> wrote:
While recognizing this as important, particularly in the context of the development of the culture of academic journal publication as developed in the globally dominant Western academy and questionable practices demonstrated by a number of Nigerian based journals across time, along with the lack of sustainability demonstrated by some of the better academic journals based in Nigeria which developed an international reputation in what may be described as a high point in Nigerian tertiary education in the 60s, such as Odu-on philosophy, Okike and Black Orpheus-on literature and art, I would be wary of dismissing ASUU or its staff on such grounds bcs the conditions vital for developing a thriving culture of academic journal publishing in the same manner as the Western academy might not have existed in Nigeria since the social and economic upheavals recurrent in Nigeria with and after the civil war.In an earlier discussion on ASUU, indirectly referenced by Moses' dismissal of ASUU in his first post as a 'mediocrity promoting body', a perspective I think it would be difficult to substantiate, he made a very important point about what he described as 'bean counting', which I understand him as describing as the practice of substituting number for quality in assessing academic publications in Nigerian universities. He pointed out that journal articles are not weighted in relation to the quality/prestige of the journals in which they are published but are simply counted in numerical terms.On ASUU and Academic Standards in Nigerian UniversitiesIs a more realistic option not to recognize the inevitability of consensual amorous relations between students and lecturers and create formal rules and informal guidance for managing these?I think so. Such rules could involve a contracting circle of limitations in relation to the level of power the lecturer enjoys over the student, with students one teaches being those most vulnerable, those one is not teaching but may teach and those one will not teach representing degrees of decreasing vulnerability requiring different strategies of managing relationships with.This balance is necessitated by the fact that a university is an environment for adults, not children. University education requires a high degree of responsibility for one's success in navigating both academic and social challenges away from family supervision, and all participants in that environment need to enjoy both the opportunities and the protection vital for such an environment to work adequately. No one should be penalized for choosing to work or study in a university in the guise of being an adult dealing with youth, or being a female dealing with men among other framers equivalent to penalization. At the same time, it may be ideal if lecturers are able to treat such erring students as people who need guidance and pastoral care.Any student who does that, and if adequate evidence can be provided to indict her, if the lecturer chooses to so proceed, should be punished in terms of the full weight of the law as such a lecturer should also be punished if he were to seek to exchange sex or any other unlawful personal satisfaction for marks.He insists that students trying to seduce lecturers is youthful behavior that should not be criminalized. At what point did deliberate use of sexual power become merely youthful behavior? Is sexual awareness not central to the points of transition from childhood to adulthood? Is he aware of the level of student initiated criminality at play in the history of Nigerian campuses , from prostitution to terrorism through arson targeted at university records and lecturers' offices to mass and individual murder, with the institutionalization of student cultism, these cults becoming infamous for carrying out group and individual assassinations across the years?He begins with an opening post demonizing ASUU and its supporters on this forum :Interesting.Moses Ebe Ochonu has made some valuable points, but as usual he projects his anti-ASUU, anti-Nigerian university lecturers in Nigeria bias that dilutes his stance so significantly.
'the usual noisemaking ASUU-affiliated members of this list, who impulsively flock, like flies to spoilt food, to defend ASUU when it comes to matters of the pocket and the union's perennial financial blackmails misnamed strikes'.
'ASUU...That mediocrity-promoting, money-grabbing body of enablers and perpetrators is, alas, opposed to any effort to hold the large gang of rapist-lecturers and sexual abusers on our campuses accountable.
Sahara Reporters' summation of the outcome of the scandal, "Sexual Harassment Audio Tape Forces Top Unilorin Lecturer Out Of Job"not only makes it clear the university is taking action on the issue but that the university has issued a statement on it. The new medium states that "Investigations show that the university failed to take the case seriously until the video went viral on social media, suggesting that the institution is normally negligent in such matters". It would be helpful if ASUU were to make a strong statement on the story but does the union not doing so provide grounds to condemn the corporate body?
Internal vs External Disciplinary Mechanisms
I understand the report on ASUU's stance about the proposed bill as stating the union describes its members as being negatively profiled by the law in question and as ambiguously worded in a way that opens them to victimization, stating that universities have their own laws and processes for dealing with the challenges of sexual harassment of students by lecturers, mechanisms which exist and do demonstrate a degree of effectiveness in Nigerian universities, although I dont know how effective they are across the board. Is there not therefore a world of difference between the explicit and implicit meanings of the statement attributed to ASUU and Moses's summation that ASUU is "opposed to any effort to hold the large gang of rapist-lecturers and sexual abusers on our campuses accountable?".
Bolaji Aluko provides a very commendable summation of the issue from the perspective of administrative experience within the system being discussed. I wonder though,why he thinks an agreement has to be renewed in this instance to remain relevant. Does the agreement have an expiration date? Even if it does, which I doubt, should the relevant systems the agreement is meant to guide operate in a vacuum until this renewal takes place? As for the agreement being violated, if it has, does that mean it should be ignored? As for the autonomy/independence distinction, I would like to know what exactly that is supposed to mean and how it applies here.
Current Nigerian Govt and Anti-Corruption
As for those invoking the name of someone called Buhari into this subject and hoping for a positive legacy on the issue to be effected by a terrorist [ 'the use of violence or threatened use of violence (terror), often targeting civilians, in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological aim- Wikipedia], a person who threatened that 'the dog and the baboon', metaphorical for opposing politician contestants, would be bathed in blood if he lost the 2015 elections and who has been the chief supporter of the mass murdering Fulani terrorism and colonization drive across Nigeria, support given through his strategic silence at the mass murders and tardy speech when forced to comment by national outcries, as well as justifying the attacks by the Fulani herdsmen by claiming farmers have taken over grazing routes marked out in other people's property for the herdsmen as he uses foreign exchange unavailable for education and business in buying grass to feed the cows of his ethnic/religious herdsmen killers, a dictator whose anti-corruption war is primarily an instrument for enthroning an ethnic hegemony while ignoring glaring corruption cases in his own party, whose replacement of VCs on assuming office recapitulated in tertiary education his ethnically centred strategy in the intelligence services, the electoral office, the armed forces and other control centres of the nation, I wonder why you think you should expect anything substantial from a character whose primary interest is ethnically centered power consolidation and internal colonization and who has no conclusive personal exposure to even the lower levels of the educational system being discussed, as witnessed by the ongoing court case where he is using the nation's money in hiring the most expensive lawyers rather than produce the secondary school leaving certificate he claimed to have as a prerequisite for the scandalously low level of education required to run for the Presidency of Nigeria.
Need for Protection from Sexual Harassment for Students and Lecturers
Moses is eager to project a face of moral indignation and challenge but refuses to recognize what I would describe as its implications within the psycho-social network of a university and the Nigerian university in particular.
In response to Olajumoke's position, I argue that all forms of predatory behavior must be penalised. A student should not try to take advantage of a male lecturer by showing him her breasts in the process of requesting that he pass her in a course he is teaching, nor come to his office after school hours or on holidays to try to make herself available for marks, nor come uninvited to his house in pursuit of such a goal, nor indicate in an exam paper that she is available so she may be passed.
Moses sums up the reality across the workplace-'they will need plenty of luck to find another profession where sexual and other temptations requiring maturity and self-restraint are absent. The academia is a professional arena fraught with sexual tensions' and is eager to point to US policy on sexual harassment, but does not add that in US workplaces, predators are punished across the board regardless of their levels of institutional power, meaning students who prey on lecturers and lecturers who prey on students are both punished, with a US university whose rules I quoted in a debate on this topic in this forum spelling out this point out very clearly.
Bode's response says much on this "I understand the absolute need to punish the powerful especially with the endemic nature of abuse by teachers but we shouldn't fall into the opposite danger of romanticizing and normalizing reprehensible behavior simply because the persons involved are powerless students etc, what is the value of education that does not make students and faculty bear full responsibility for their actions no matter how differently we weight the actions as we should".
The Morality of Consensual Sexual Relations Between Students and Lecturers
As for the claim that sex between lecturers and students is always wrong as made by Olajumoke, I am wary of such unrealistic summations. The human being is primarily an embodied entity, and central to that embodiment is human sexuality. I consider it unrealistic for adult men and women-describing all university students as adults- to congregate in such large numbers, in an environment that provides such freedom as a university, and not engage in sexual relations across lines of authority. I expect it is practically impossible. Students and lecturers have been known to engage in relationships that led to marriage, for example. Are such relationships to be outlawed? Are we going to argue that its okay as long as they dont have sex while the student is still studying in the university ? Would the absurdity of such a position not be clear to practically everyone? Are we going to insist that for such relationships to be valid they must occur within the context of intentions to set up a home together? Is that not unrealistic since the lines of progression in relationships that lead from friendship to intimate relations and beyond are often subtle and unpredictable?
Academic journal publishing and academic publishing in general are particularly time and energy consuming, even more so since they require a strong economy or creative marketing and publishing strategies for them to be economically viable for the publishers. This viability includes the ability to make enough money across the spectrum of publications running from textbooks vital for providing insight across subjects and more specialized works addressing breakthroughs in aspects of particular subjects. Along those lines, a member of the staff of Oxford UP once stated that his publishing house never runs at a loss unlike a number of academic publishers, not surprising given the scope of strategies Oxford UP employs to reach a broad readership, the most striking perhaps being their Very Short Introductions series which presents the latest research on particular broad fields in ways that the average reader can follow easily, a strategy I dont know any other academic publisher doing as successfully, with Cambridge's Canto Classics series, impressive at it is, not approximating the visual and practical, colorful, pocket sized appeal and breadth of subjects as the Oxford series. I read of a related effort from a US academic publisher but still not at the level of balance of plus factors as the Oxford approach.
Academic journal publication at present also operates in terms of access to a large workforce of academics who are prepared to work for free as assessor of journal articles. I wonder the likelihood of building such a workforce in large numbers in an environment like that of Nigeria bedeviled by system failure- low levels of access to public services such as electricity and water, recurrent loss of priceless energy and time in seeking fuel for cars and generators, political instability leading to instability in the educational system, demonstrated in graphic terms by the recent controversial replacement of vice-chancellors in the universities founded by the past administration, further entrenching a culture of subservience to political powers outside the university to whom vice-chancellors are primarily beholden for their offices, perhaps contributing to the temptation for the VCs to become overlords within their constituencies, lording it over those constituencies from within as the VCs are lorded over from outside.
It can be argued that academic journals are largely international organs transcending national or cultural boundaries, making it unnecessary to argue that a nation needs to have journals run by its nationals if it is to maximize its academic productivity, but is that international vision at best not a yet unrealised ideal? As far as I can see in the humanities, although I have not examined the subject systematically, I get the impression, that to a significant degree , the editorial policies of journals are not always representative of possibilities that may emerge from the various parts of the world where the discipline is studied, with Analytical Philosophy described as being dominant in England and the US and Continental philosophy in non-English speaking Europe, with Indian philosophy only relatively recently being discussed as a partner in addressing philosophical questions in such books from Western academic publishers as Self, No Self? : Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions (2010) published by Oxford UP ( whom I particularly admire) rather than being treated as books for area studies scholarship outside the mainstream of philosophy as understood in the West, although Oxford UP's Art History and Art Theory volumes in the Very Short Introductions series briefly discuss non-Western art and thought, but from within the perspectives of and from an emphasis on Western art and thought.
Operating at the highest level of scholarship represented by the most demanding journals and academic publishers requires access, over years, for an academic, and for a university or group of universities, across generations, to the latest developments in the fields in question as they emerge in academic journals and books, and taking active part in those developments, a task the Western universities stretch themselves to enable for their staff and students, with even Harvard, perhaps the world's richest academic institution, recently declaring its difficulties in maintaining its subscription to its traditional corpus of academic journals and Timothy Gowers, Field Medal Prize winner at Oxford, leading a boycott of Elsevier to protest what many describe as unrealistically high subscription costs from the publisher even though the academics the publisher relies on for the academic work that makes the journals possible are doing the work for free, developments fueling the move to open access publishing, at times using media that require no input from publishers, such as blogs.
How would Nigerian universities and academics cope in a world in which even Harvard is complaining of high subscription costs of journals? Compounding such developments , academic books are among the most expensive in the world. Two of the latest books in Yoruba art are Rowland Abiuodun's Yoruba Art and Language : Seeking the African in African Art, an indispensable work in Yoruba and African aesthetics, and Suzanne Preston Blier's Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba : Ife History, Power, and Identity, c.1300, both published by Cambridge UP. The cheapest price for Blier's book, quoting prices for purchase and delivery delivery to Nigeria, on Bookfinder , the best book selling site I know and which gathers info from book sellers in the West and Asia, is $86.00 while that for Abiodun's book is $140.33 with such books being published on a daily basis by Western academic presses.Those who are better informed about individual and institutional purchasing capacities in Nigeria are in a better position to assess the implications of these prices and the volume of production they represent in relation to keeping abreast with the disciplinary developments these books demonstrate.
Another challenge Nigerian academics might be facing is a disincentive to publish books since books might not be given assessment in weighting for promotion in Nigerian universities relevant to the effort it takes to prepare them, a situation exacerbated by a publishing industry challenged by operating costs increased by systemic problems ranging from access to electricity to low or non- production of publishing machines and difficulties in acquiring these machines on account of low purchasing power from within the Nigerian economy contributing to a situation in which I have observed that almost all the best books on African art I know of are not published in Africa because the mobilization of the scholarly and material resources vital for the research and publication that produces such books seems to be best achieved outside Africa with the aid of wealthy institutions that can finance such research and publication.
Yet books are indispensable on account of the level of elaboration they involve and can't be replaced by the briefer remit of academic articles, vital as those are. A way out of the challenges of paper based publishing is represented by the Internet, which needs to be maximized in spite of challenges of Internet access in Nigeria. A beautiful example of such maximization is Critical Interventions : Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture , the journal begun and run independently, to the best of my knowledge, by Sylvester Ogbechie for some years, although he did it from his US base, and it was readily affordable, charging £5 to download an article, until perhaps after the journal's very successful outing of bringing together a consortium of scholars in addressing the subject of African fractals across an interdisciplinary spectrum,with the major writer in that field Ron Eglash as guest editor, its publication became managed by a traditional academic publisher, Taylor and Francis, and one now needs £83 per issue as an individual to read articles in that journal. Ogbechie discusses issues of journal costs and open access in "Proliferation of Academic Journals".
Another problem I observe, in Nigerian academic assessment, though I dont have a broad overview on the subject, is the idea that the professor does not need to publish, leading to stagnation that could inspire the temptation to make professors insistent on keeping younger staff from rising to meet them at their level of stagnation and hypocritically raising the bar for assessment while not making any effort to provide any incentives for members of the professoriate to perform at a higher level than the lower standards at which they got their professorships in the first place. A method has to be found to re-describe the professorship as a level of expanding creativity, perhaps borrowing from the older German conception of the professor as I seem to have read it somewhere, as a person professing on a subject at a level of achievement equal to a unique world view, or something like that.
Summation- Nigerian academia needs to be understood and engaged with in terms of its challenges and prospects if its potential is to be maximised.
thanks
toyin
--
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:32 AM, bcultral <bcultral@gmail.com> wrote:
Sent from my Boost Mobile Phone.
Bode <ominira@gmail.com> wrote:
The members of the House of Representatives whose visas were revoked by the US recently show how widespread this abusive behavior is. I suppose sexual predatory behavior in high Schools must be as bad if not worse given the vulnerability of the much younger kids.
I recall a friend about two decades ago who told me she went into an office to inquire about vacancies and employment. she had just graduated from college. The man she met at the personnels brought out condoms of different colors and asked to pick her favorite color! There should not just be laws protecting kids and women in workplaces and schools, as the Nigerian Universities Commission is pushing for, there should also be awareness programs and compensations for victims .
More importantly, none of this would matter if no one goes to jail for bankrupting the country. The singular most important legacy Buhari can leave is to be the president who instituted the rule of law. Everything else is contained in this act. Without the rule of law, there will be no justice for our girls, or the poor, or our friends ....
If no one goes to jail, Buhari has failed! The country has failed! Yes, everything comes down to this!!
Bode
--I posted the link to a tape of a University of Ilorin HOD attempting to rape one of his students in his office and boasting about previous rapes of the same student as well as others. There was no reaction from the usual noisemaking ASUU-affiliated members of this list, who impulsively flock, like flies to spoilt food, to defend ASUU when it comes to matters of the pocket and the union's perennial financial blackmails misnamed strikes. They avoided the topic like a plague. Even our honorable home-based colleagues, who are usually the lone voices of rectitude from the other side of the Atlantic, stayed away from the topic.--
The scandal has been raging for several weeks now but ASUU, whether national or the local UniIlorin branch, has yet to issue even a statement. Now we know why. That mediocrity-promoting, money-grabbing body of enablers and perpetrators is, alas, opposed to any effort to hold the large gang of rapist-lecturers and sexual abusers on our campuses accountable. Read the story below and weep for higher education or what's left of it in Nigeria. As usual, when it comes to being held accountable, they shamelessly run and hide under "university autonomy." But somehow, the narrative of autonomy never extends to monetary and compensation issues. ASUU exists simply to help its members to a bigger share of the proverbial national cake while protecting them from having to actually do their jobs and from being held accountable for this failure and for crimes against students.What a shame! Nonsense!
'Sex-for-marks bill' is a violation of our rights, say lecturers
June 2020:562016AdvertisementThe Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says the 2016 sexual harassment bill before the senate will undermine the autonomy of universities.
Biodun Ogunyemi, president of the union, said this at a public hearing on the bill, organised by the senate committee on judiciary, human rights and legal matters.
The sexual harassment bill was sponsored by Ovie Omo-Agege (LP- Delta Central) and co-sponsored by 57 other senators.
The bill seeks to criminalise sexual harassment in tertiary institutions and among other things, proposes a five-year jail term for lecturers found guilty of sexual harassment of students.
Ogunyemi said universities were established by law as autonomous bodies, adding that there were laws that clearly articulated redress procedures.
"As a global norm, universities and other tertiary institutions are established by law as autonomous bodies and have their own laws regulating their affairs," he said.
"This includes misconduct generally among both staff and students, with clearly articulated appropriate redress mechanism.
"Any law or bill which seeks to supplant these laws violates the university autonomy.
"In this particular instance, the bill violates the federal government of Nigeria and ASUU agreement of 2009 and as such should be rejected."
He said that the bill was discriminatory because it was targeted at educators.
According to Ogunyemi, it is unfair to come up with such a bill; sexual harassment is a societal problem and not peculiar to tertiary institutions.
He also said that the bill was a violation of section 42(1) of the 1999 constitution, adding that it was embarrassing that the legislative arm could seek to make such law that would violate the constitution.
Ogunyemi also pointed out that besides violating the constitution, the bill failed to take cognizance of various extant legislation that adequately dealt with sexual offences.
Faulting the bill, he said it failed to provide convincing evidence to show that sexual harassment in tertiary institutions had attained a higher magnitude than other spheres of the society.
"The bill is discriminatory, selective, spiteful, and impulsive and lacks logic and any intellectual base by attacking the character and persons of those in tertiary institutions rather than addressing the issue holistically," he said.
"Furthermore, the bill is dangerous and inimical to the institutions as it contains several loose and ambiguous words and terms which could also be used to harass, intimidate, victimise and persecute, especially lecturers, through false accusation."
The National Universities Commission (NUC), on the other hand, supported the introduction of the bill "in view of its relevance" and called for its passage.
Julius Okogie, executive secretary of the commission, said while federal and state universities had administrative structures for handling grievances, there was nothing wrong in having a legislation to help with that.
"University miscellaneous provision act gives them power to formulate policies and by-laws to guide them and most institutions have structures to handle these incidences," he said.
"However, there is nothing wrong if there is a legislation to add to what is on ground. We are only saying that universities are doing something about sexual harassment, which may not be enough".
Okojie called on the senate to extend the scope of the bill to cover primary and secondary schools.
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