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Contesting Globalization and Internationalization of Higher Education: Discourse and Responses in the Asia Pacific Region Deane E. Neubauer
Gender and the Changing Face of Higher Education in Asia Pacific
Edited by Deane E. Neubauer & Surinderpal Kaur
International and Development Education
Series Editors
John N. Hawkins
University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA, USA
W. James Jacob
University of Memphis Collierville, TN, USA
The International and Development Education series focuses on the complementary areas of comparative, international, and development education. Books emphasize a number of topics ranging from key international education issues, trends, and reforms to examinations of national education systems, social theories, and development education initiatives. Local, national, regional, and global volumes (single authored and edited collections) constitute the breadth of the series and offer potential contributors a great deal of latitude based on interests and cutting-edge research.
International Editorial Advisory Board
Clementina Acedo, Webster University, Switzerland
Philip G. Altbach, Boston University, USA
Carlos E. Blanco, Universidad Central de Venezuela
Oswell C. Chakulimba, University of Zambia
Sheng Yao Cheng, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan
Edith Gnanadass, University of Memphis, USA
Wendy Griswold, University of Memphis, USA
Ruth Hayhoe, University of Toronto, Canada
Yuto Kitamura, Tokyo University, Japan
Wanhua Ma, Peking University, China
Donna Menke, University of Memphis, USA
Ka Ho Mok, Lingnan University, China
Christine Musselin, Sciences Po, France
Deane E. Neubauer, University of Hawaii and East–West Center, USA
Yusuf K. Nsubuga, Ministry of Education and Sports, Uganda
Namgi Park, Gwangju National University of Education, Republic of Korea
Val D. Rust, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Suparno, State University of Malang, Indonesia
John C. Weidman, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Husam Zaman, UNESCO/Regional Center of Quality and Excellence in Education, Saudi Arabia
More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14849
Deane E. Neubauer · Surinderpal Kaur Editors
Gender and the Changing Face of Higher Education in Asia Pacifc
Editors
Deane E. Neubauer
Asia Pacifc Higher Education
Research Partnership Honolulu, HI, USA
Surinderpal Kaur
University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
International and Development Education
ISBN 978-3-030-02794-0 ISBN 978-3-030-02795-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02795-7
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
S erie S e ditor S ’ i ntroduction
We are pleased to introduce another volume in the Palgrave Macmillan International and Development Education book series. In conceptualizing this series we took into account the extraordinary increase in the scope and depth of research on education in a global and international context. The range of topics and issues being addressed by scholars worldwide is enormous and clearly refects the growing expansion and quality of research being conducted on comparative, international, and development education (CIDE) topics. Our goal is to cast a wide net for the most innovative and novel manuscripts, both single-authored and edited volumes, without constraints as to the level of education, geographical region, or methodology (whether disciplinary or interdisciplinary). In the process, we have also developed two subseries as part of the main series: one is cosponsored by the East West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, drawing from their distinguished programs, the International Forum on Education 2020 (IFE 2020) and the Asian Pacifc Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP); and the other is a publication partnership with the Higher Education Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society that highlights trends and themes on international higher education. The issues that will be highlighted in this series are those focused on capacity, access, and equity, three interrelated topics that are central to educational transformation as it appears around the world today. There are many paradoxes and asymmetries surrounding these issues, which include problems of both excess capacity and defcits, wide access to facilities as well as severe
restrictions, and all the complexities that are included in the x Series Editors Introduction equity debate. Closely related to this critical triumvirate is the overarching concern with quality assurance, accountability, and assessment. As educational systems have expanded, so have the needs and demands for quality assessment, with implications for accreditation and accountability. Intergroup relations, multiculturalism, and gender issues comprise another cluster of concerns facing most educational systems in differential ways when one looks at the change in educational systems in an international context. Diversifed notions of the structure of knowledge and curriculum development occupy another important niche in educational change at both the precollegiate and collegiate levels. Finally, how systems are managed and governed are key policy issues for educational policymakers worldwide. These and other key elements of the education and social change environment have guided this series and have been refected in the books that have already appeared and those that will appear in the future. We welcome proposals on these and other topics from as wide a range of scholars and practitioners as possible. We believe that the world of educational change is dynamic, and our goal is to refect the very best work being done in these and other areas. This volume meets the standards and goals of this series and we are proud to add it to our list of publications.
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Memphis, TN, USA
John N. Hawkins W. James Jacob
This volume is dedicated to Professor John N. Hawkins whose vision and sound guidance has been a vital factor in the East–West Center engagement of higher education research, of which this volume is a part.
A cknowledgement S
The editors wish to acknowledge the staff of Lingnan University, Hong Kong, SAR for providing support at many levels that enabled this endeavor to go forward. In addition, Audrey Minei of the East–West Center worked tirelessly to ensure that the full range of details related to travel and communication with contributors was accomplished in a timely manner and with an abundance of good cheer. Further, staff at the University of Malaya are to be thanked as well for their comprehensive support. Finally, Ellen Waldrop is to be thanked for her careful and essential editing of manuscripts throughout the process.
In specifc, we would like to acknowledge the support of Professor Mok Ha Ho, Vice President Lingnan University, for his long-standing encouragement and contribution of the physical means for this meeting to take place. Professor Mok has been a supporter from the beginning of the Asia Pacifc Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP) which is the organization through which this research seminar was organized and conducted. Professor Jin Jiang was also importantly instrumental in seeing to a wide range of important arrangements for the seminar and its aftermath.
7 Thinking of Gender: On the Way to Emancipatory Higher Education in the Globalizing China
8 Gender, Higher Education, and Earnings: The Case of Hong Kong
Linda Chelan Li and Iris Chui Ping Kam
9 Gender and Leadership in Research Universities in Malaysia: The Case of University of Malaya
Surinderpal Kaur
10 Changing Landscape of the Malaysian Higher Education: An Overview of Women’s Glass Ceiling
Hazri Jamil, Ahmad Firdaus Ahmad Shabudin, Santhiram R. Raman and Ooi Poh Ling
11 The Beginning of the End? Changes in Junior Colleges in Japanese Female
Shangbo Li
12 Gender Equality in Higher Education Institutions: Current Status and Key Issues in South Korea
Minho Yeom
13 Women in Higher Education: A Vase-Breaking Theory by Female Technologists in Taiwan
Ya-Hsuan Wang
E. Neubauer and Surinderpal Kaur
n ote S on c ontributor S
Ahmad Firdaus Ahmad Shabudin is a social research offcer at the National Higher Education Research Institute, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Before starting works at the institute, he has spent fve years as a social research offcer at Centre for Global Sustainable Studies. His research interests include policy and governance, sustainable development, internationalization, and contemporary issues in higher education. His current responsibilities include research and publication activity, event management (conference/seminar/workshop, etc.), and outreach program.
Prompilai Buasuwan is an Associate Professor in the Program of Educational Administration and Head of Department of Education, Faculty of Education at Kasetsart University. Her main research interests are quality of education, partnership in education, internationalization of education, and educational policy analysis and evaluation. She has done various projects with international organizations, research funding agencies, universities networks, and consortiums. Presently, she is the President of the Thailand Evaluation Network and a core member of the Comparative and International Education Society of Thailand.
Denise Cuthbert is the Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research Training and Development at RMIT University. Melbourne, Australia. She has published widely on higher education policy and practice, with a focus on research policy, practice, and development. Her research appears in journals including Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, Studies in International Higher Education, and Gender and Education.
Weiling Deng at the time of the seminar that produced this volume was a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Education at UCLA from which she graduated with her doctorate in June 2018. She began her doctoral program with a broad interest in comparative and international education with a focus on mainland China. Currently, she specifcally concentrates on the educational meanings of and knowledge production within the Chinese women’s/feminist movement in the twentieth and twenty-frst centuries. Her dissertation research develops on the question of how education can be envisioned and practiced as a method of emancipation even if it is situated in a rigidly hierarchical and non-democratic society like China. Meanwhile, she keeps her writings on Chinese higher education from the view of the East–West encounter and published a chapter (“Chinese Higher Education Model in Change: Negotiation with Western Power”) in Chinese Education Models in a Global Age in 2016. These two main research interests combined, she expects her future projects to expand on the intersected analysis of higher education and gender studies in the broader Asia area.
Hazri Jamil is an Associate Professor specializing in the areas of Educational Policy Study, and Curriculum and Pedagogy. Currently, he is a Director at National Higher Education Research Institute, Universiti Sains Malaysia. He has been a project leader in a number of national and international research and collaboration projects with Asia-Africa Universities Network for Education Development, UNESCO Bangkok, The Head Foundation Singapore, Asia Pacifc Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP), and Australasia Research Project.
Dr. Iris Chui Ping Kam is teaching at Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong. She is interested in applied research and enjoys investigating everyday life phenomenon through the lens of Gender Studies and Critical Theory. Her recent research interests include personal development, sexuality education, ethical minority youth, and inquiry-based learning.
Surinderpal Kaur is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya. Her areas of expertise are critical discourse studies, multimodal analysis, and gender studies. Her research interests lie in gender and sexuality issues, migration issues, and political discourse as well as jihadi discourse. She has worked on an ESRC funded research project exploring gender and leadership in middle management
in the UK at Aston University, Birmingham. She is currently the Deputy Dean of Postgraduate Studies at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya.
Dr. Molly N. N. Lee is the recently retired (Dec. 2011) Coordinator of the Asia-Pacifc Programme of Educational Programme for Development (APEID) and Programme Specialist in Higher Education at UNESCO Asia and the Pacifc Regional Bureau for Education in Bangkok. As the Coordinator of APEID, she ran programs on higher education, technical and vocational education, education for sustainable development, and ICT in education. Prior to joining UNESCO Bangkok, she was a Professor of Education at the University of Science, Penang, Malaysia.
Dr. Lee has a Ph.D. in International Development Education, a Master’s degree in Sociology from Stanford University, and a Master’s in Education Planning and Development from University of London Institute of Education. Her research interests are higher education, teacher education, ICT in education, and education for sustainable development. Her publications include: “Restructuring Higher Education in Malaysia”, “Private Higher Education in Malaysia”, “Malaysian Universities: Towards Equality, Accessibility, Quality”, “The Corporatisation of a Public University: Infuence of Market Forces and State Control”, and “Global Trends, National Policies and Institutional Responses: Restructuring Higher Education”.
Linda Chelan Li is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong. Professor Li stresses the role of collaboration as well as confict in understanding politics and public policy. Her major areas of research include intergovernmental relations, government reforms, public fnance, cross-border relations, and sustainable development. She is the founding director of the Research Centre for Sustainable Hong Kong (CSHK) at City University of Hong Kong, which espouses the aim of meeting real-life challenges in Hong Kong and the Region through cross-disciplinary and cross-sector applied research.
Shangbo Li (Ph.D., Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2004) is a Professor at the University of International Business and Economics of China in Beijing and Specially Approved Research Fellow at J. F. Oberlin University in Tokyo. She specializes in Higher Education and Japanese Studies.
Ooi Poh Ling is a social research offcer at the National Higher Education Research Institute (IPPTN), Universiti Sains Malaysia. She has ten years experience in higher education. Her areas of interest are higher education and teaching English as a Foreign Language.
Manasi Thapliyal Navani is Assistant Professor with the School of Education Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Her doctoral work in the domain of sociology of higher education engages with academic reforms and dynamics of change in universities. Her research interests include higher education reforms: policy and practice, dynamics of institutional change, academic cultures, Peoples’ Science Movement, and education for social transformation.
Deane E. Neubauer is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, Manoa and for the past decade has served within the East–West Center’s program the International Forum for Education 2020 (IFE 2020) which before it ended in 2013 was responsible for numerous edited volumes on Asia Pacifc Higher Education Policy for Palgrave Macmillan. From 2013 until the present he has served as the co-director of the Asia Pacifc Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP) which in 2017 moved from the East–West Center to Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
Ratikorn Niyamajan received his Bachelor degree in International Economics from Bangkok University and his Master’s degree and Doctoral degree in Educational Administration from Kasetsart University. He has seven years of experience in education, teaching, and research. His expertise is in the area of higher education and quality assurance.
Prof. Santhiram R. Raman received his doctorate in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. He is currently the Dean of the School of Education, Languages and Communications, Wawasan Open University, Penang, Malaysia. His research interests are in the areas of education for ethnic minorities, educational policy analysis, and history of education. He has written extensively on issues of minority education in Malaysia, especially about the Indians and Tamil education.
Leul Tadesse Sidelil is a Ph.D. candidate at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Prior to his doctoral studies, he was a lecturer at Ambo University, Ethiopia. His research interests include gender
equality in science and technology education, higher education and social justice and inclusion in higher education.
Dr. Hei-hang Hayes Tang a sociologist is interested in the felds of higher education, academic profession, and youth studies. His research focuses on the sociological role of education in entrepreneurial society and global city. He is committed to create new knowledge in application for better education governance and policy innovation in the age of global inequalities. Currently, he conducts mixed-methods academic researches on graduate entrepreneurship and research-intensive universities. Working toward the conceptualization of “citizenship as process,” he is developing an international research network for the topic of enterprising citizenship, professionals and higher education in global cities (Hong Kong, London, New York City).
Ya-Hsuan Wang received her Ph.D. in sociology of education from University of Cambridge, UK, in 2004. She is currently a professor of Education at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. She majors in sociology of education, gender education, and multicultural education. Prior to her 15 years on the university faculty, she previously had 7 years of teaching experiences in primary school. In terms of her academic work, she had completed two 2-year NSC research projects: “Gender boundary and gender mobility in technology,” and “Contextual analysis of issues in curriculum policy formation and implementation”, a 3-year NSC research project: “Becoming multicultural science teachers”, and a 2-year NSC research project: “New Taiwan Image”. She is recently involved with a 3-year NSC research project: “Transcultural Knowledge Reform for Pluricultural People in Taiwan”.
Prof. Wang currently serves as an advisor for the Committee of Women’s Right Promotion and Gender Equality Committee. She is a frequent educational speaker, presents papers internationally, and is widely published in academic and professional journals in Chinese and English. Her research was often awarded NSC Special Outstanding Talent Awards.
Minho Yeom is Professor and former director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Chonnam National University, South Korea. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Policy from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He has written widely on issues of higher education reform at the micro- and macro-levels. His recent
English publications include An Uncertain Future: Leading National Universities in South Korea and the Flagship Model (2017, co-authored with Stephanie K. Kim), The Rapid Growth of Higher Education in South Korea: Achievements, Dilemmas, and Resolutions (2016), and Critical Refection on the Massifcation of Higher Education in Korea: Consequences for Graduate Employment and Policy Issues (2015).
l i S t of f igure S
Fig. 8.1 Population aged 15 and over by sex and educational attainment (1996 vs. 2015) (Source Census and Statistics Department 2016, 63)
Fig. 8.2 Sex ratios of population aged 15 and over with post-secondary degree education [men per 1000 women] (Source Census and Statistics Department 2016, 66)
Fig. 8.3 Hourly wage levels and distribution of employees by sex and educational attainment (Source Census and Statistics Department 2016, 274–275)
Fig. 10.1 Number of students enrolled in Malaysian public HEIs from 2012 to 2016, by gender (in 1000) (Source The Statistics Portal, n.d.)
Fig. 10.2 Percentage of STEM enrollment in Malaysian HEIs for 2016 (the current data available) (Source Ministry of Higher Education Statistics 2016)
Fig. 10.4 Gender distribution of senior positions (professor and associate professor) in Malaysia public universities (Source Ministry of Higher Education Statistic 2016)
Fig. 12.1 Percentage of Female Students in Higher Education Institutions (Source Ministry of Education and Korean Educational Development Institute (2017). Statistical Yearbook of Education (each year))
110
110
116
149
152
157
158
184
Fig. 12.2 Percentage of Female Graduate School Degree (Source Ministry of Education and Korean Educational Development Institute (2017). Statistical Yearbook of Education (each year))
Fig. 12.3 Percentage of Female Professors in Higher Education Institutions (Source Ministry of Education and Korean Educational Development Institute (2017). Statistical Yearbook of Education (each year))
Fig. 12.4 Percentage of Female Professors in four-year Universities (Source Ministry of Education and Korean Educational Development Institute (2017). Statistical Yearbook of Education (each year))
Fig. 13.1 Vase-breaking theory
Fig. 14.1 Female tertiary graduates (Source UNESCO 2016)
Fig. 14.2 Percentage of female graduates with doctoral degree equivalent (Source UNESCO 2016)
185
186
187
Fig. 14.3 Academic position by gender (Source Offce of the Educational Council 2014) 219
Fig. 14.4 Comparing the number of women in HE leadership positions
Fig. 14.5 Numbers of female deans in social science and natural sciences 220
Table
Table
Table
Table 3.9
l i S t of t A ble S
Table
Table
Table
Table
Table 8.1 Percentage of female students enrolled in governmentfunded higher education programs in 2015/16
Table 8.2 Students enrolled in programs funded by University Grants Committee by academic program category and sex
Table
Table 8.4 Labor force participation rates by educational attainment (with post-secondary degree) and sex
Table 8.5 Employed persons by selected industries, educational attainment (with post-secondary level), and sex 113
Table 8.6 Median monthly employment earnings of employed persons and median hours of work by sex 115
Table 8.7 Median monthly employment earnings and medium hourly wage (MHW) in community, social, and personal services by sex 117
Table 8.8 Estimated number of female in Offce of the President, Council, and Senate women in the eight government-funded universities in Hong Kong (as of October 2016)
122
Table 10.1 Total male and female intake, enrollment, and output in Malaysian public and private HEIs (public university, private HEI, polytechnic and community college), 2016 149
Table 10.2 Women researchers in Malaysia, (%)
Table 11.1 Numbers of junior colleges 169
Table 11.2 The number of university students and junior college students and the share of female students (2001 2016) 170
Table 11.3 Composition by discipline of four-year universities and junior colleges students (May 1, 2001) 175
Table 13.1 Object of study
Table 13.2 BEM’s gender role scale results by university teachers
Table 13.3 BEM’s gender role scale results by university students
Table 13.4 BEM’s gender role scale results
Table 14.1 Fields of study by gender in Thailand
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Deane E. Neubauer and Surinderpal Kaur
This volume of essays was developed from a seminar held at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, on October 2016. The contributors were representatives from a higher education policy organization named the Asia Pacifc Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP). The modality of this group has been to develop two “seminars” per year, convened somewhere in Asia, organized by a common thematic which in turn is “triggered” by a brief concept paper to which participants are encouraged to frame their contributions including contesting any of its presumptions. The relative success of this methodology has been demonstrated over a number of years and served to organize the development of the 2016 meeting focused on gender issues. The primary substance of that so-called concept paper appears in a somewhat revised version as Chapter 2 of this volume. In addition, those contributing to this effort are also encouraged, if they are so moved, to develop their own
D. E. Neubauer and S. Kaur (eds.), Gender and the Changing Face of Higher Education in Asia Pacifc, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02795-7_1
independent contributions to the seminar and its subsequent publication. For this volume, this has been the case for the additional chapters provided by Neubauer, Deng and Cuthbert. The overall organization of the book in general follows the major themes introduced within Chapter 2. In the following chapter, Neubauer examines a range of empirical studies conducted throughout the region over the past several years and in doing so seeks to illustrate with these studies a range of issues introduced in the previous chapter. Additionally, he looks at several empirical studies that go beyond the mere reporting of the data to suggest methodologies and pathways that HEIs and ministries within the region could pursue to further meet patterns of inequality frames in and around gender issues. In seeking out such studies, he has located several that go beyond the manner in which gender is framed within specifc institutional contexts, even as they are distributed over broad organizing categories such as gender distributional issues across academic felds and endeavors. In one such study, he cites a broad range of factors that the authors offer as “enabling practices” that HEIs of widely varying hues could pursue to promote greater gender equity. In yet another, he cites an intense study of good practices that may be promoted to address a wide range of gender discriminators within Agriculture, Education and Training programs to render them both more available to women as well as also more effective in their successful pursuit of degrees and placement. In a fnal study cited, he reviews recent research on the relative success rate by gender of both publication and grant submissions when submission processes are both open and blind, studies that document the extent to which gender distinctions can and do affect the relative academic success rates of candidates and participants in all aspects of such structures.
Hei-hang, Hays Teng follows the more generalized chapters with the frst of others that focus on gender issues within a national or regional setting, in this case focusing on better-know “world class” universities including: National Taiwan University, the National University of Singapore, Peking University, Seoul National University, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo. In this review, he underlines a major issue that is to be repeated throughout subsequent chapters, namely the relatively constant phenomenon of a signifcant gender imbalance in higher leadership positions, and he explores the range of factors that lead female academics at all levels to experience greater
relative burdens within the academy than that of their male counterparts, of which family and household responsibilities continue to loom large.
In Chapter 5, Denise Cuthbert and Leul Tadessi focus on a theme that is constant through the whole of the volume, namely the role of women within Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) felds. While the relative imbalance of women in such felds appears to stretch across countries and their various levels of HEIS, in this particular instance the authors focus on the specifc needs Australia has had over the last several decades in building out its innovation sector to remain an internationally competitive economy. Whereas historically, the country has focused actively and signifcantly on in-migration to fll its growing needs for such talent, over more recent years in a climate in which an “ideas economy” is viewed as a necessary alternative to its “historical dependence on extractive industries” specifc governmental policy has sought both to underscore the importance of STEM felds within graduate education and to emphasize increasing both the recruitment and success of women in such felds. The authors provide an extensive review of the “reframing” of such issues within Australian HE.
In the following chapter, Manasi Thapliyal Navani provides an extensive overview of the HE system in India, which like China, fnds itself in the midst of a signifcant and continuing increase in the number HEIs and the postsecondary sector itself, fueled by a continuing increase in the number of students engaged in both tertiary and postsecondary institutions. This transition has been further complicated by India’s aggressive embrace of economic liberalization since the 1990s, resulting in a society that continues to be further challenged by continued demographic expansion. Despite the country’s overall renewed attention to gender education spurred by the reality of the large number of illiterate women in the country at its “neo-liberal” turn, two daunting challenges remain: The continued disparity between genders within higher education and especially at higher levels, and that affecting women from the most disadvantaged sections of communities to reach higher education who at that attainment “will fnd fewer public institutions to sustain and support them through their educational journeys.” These themes are played out in a detailed analysis of contemporary higher education in India, replete with abundant supporting empirical data.
Chapter 7 provided by Weiling Deng complements many of the critical perspectives introduced in the preceding chapter and allows them to become a defning framework for the reach across the many decades
since the late Qing Dynasty. This becomes the location point for the emergence of “the women’s problem” in modern China which continues to play out in its current manifestations within the society as a whole and in this case, specifcally within higher education environments. As the dynamic of the creation and articulation of sexual differences and gender continues through the extraordinary interactive complexities of modern China, fueled by the forces of intense economic development and a continued process of emergent political defnition and institutional change, difference, gender and education become a complex vortex for the realization of new and changing notions of all three. Deng provides both a historical and critical setting for her analysis that seeks to provide the reader with useful perspectives and tools for comprehending both the reach and signifcance of such changes as well as emphasizing both the importance of recognizing gender as a social construction that in many cultural settings (echoed in other Asia settings as well) is contested with its historical confation of a sexual differentiation.
The subsequent chapter by Kam and Li provides another window on gender and society, examining the relationship of earnings, HE and gender within the case study of Hong Kong. They point out that in the past several decades the enrollment of female students enrolled in Hong Kong HE has come to exceed that for males. However, in a pattern that, again, is observable throughout the rest of Asia and Australia, they fare less well in both employment opportunities and placement, and in employment earnings. In reviewing these data for the past several decades for Hong Kong, they focus on both the trends that have emerged and seek to explore the kinds gaps that exist in employment earnings for women as well as identify other factors that also affect employment.
In Chapter 9, Surinderpal Kaur reprises a theme that has occurred previously in multiple chapters, namely the gender imbalance prevalent in HE leadership roles, in this instance those within Malaysian HE. In line with data reported previously in other chapters, women are “far from being underpresented” in those structures. Indeed, in line with data reported in previous chapters in many respects Malaysia is a leader among Asian countries in the numerical representation of women across a variety of felds, most especially social sciences, linguistics and business. This trend includes the nation’s leading universities. However, this is not the case in both the upper professorial ranks or within top university leadership positions. In this chapter, Kaur seeks to provide both a broad but inquiring frame for the complex relationships between leadership and gender.
Issues of the gender transformations current in Malaysian HE are continued in the following chapter in which Jamil Hazri, Ahmad Firdaus Ahmad Shabudin, Santhiram Raman and Ooi Poh Ling examine the overall pattern of gender relations throughout the whole of the HE system. Their analysis points to the close intersect between social and economic transformations in general and their manifestations within HE systems. Thus, while pointing to similar data to those cited by Kaur in the previous chapter, they highlight the emergence of a quite different situation from its historical predecessor in the emergent shortage of men following an earlier period of overall social development and progress into an extended engagement with HE. They point to several recent studies that underline this trend and seek to Illuminate some of the factors that account for it, and to related concerns about the social and economic consequences that may result from it. One take away from the pairing of these two chapters is a clear demonstration of the volatility and structural complexities of the factors that make up HE environments in the rapidly changing societies of Asia and indeed the world as a whole, and to remind us that within all of our efforts to supply generalizations about these processes, the intersect between broader (often global) forces and those present in discrete environments is complex in both kind and manifestation.
Chapter 11 moves to Japan where Shangbo Li has placed the gender discussion within the particular context of the role that Junior Colleges played in facilitating the social transformation of the role of women within Japanese society in its sequential transformations from the onset of the Meiji Period (1868–1912) into the present. As the social framing for women evolved from that of “good wife, wise mother” dominant during that period into its more contemporary manifestations, the role of education for women shifted from that of essentially preparing women for a good marriage into more socially diverse and economically related roles, the particular role of the junior college, which had largely been the site of postsecondary female education, itself shifted. The result has been a signifcant decline in the social role and rationalization for such institutions and the subsequent withdrawal of national governmental support as the proportion of female enrollment continued to erode. Li uses these data to suggest a signifcant dimension of the female contribution to overall economic and social productivity.
Minho Yeom moves the site of analysis once again in Chapter 12 in his analysis of the role of women in Korean higher education. Here in a
manner that echoes those of other national societies in the region that we have observed in previous chapters, even as the demographic participation of women has risen dramatically over the past three decades, the distribution of “gender equity” within such institutions continues to lag. His analysis points to three major trends in the relevant research: One set of studies examines the current status of gender equity in Korean higher education and suggests alternative modes of realization for this continually changing environment; a second set of studies focuses on the role women have come to play within such institutions and again we fnd a familiar pattern of a “winnowing” of participation at the higher levels of academic involvement; and third, he examines yet another set of studies that focus on issues of sexual violence and harassment at both student and faculty levels.
In Chapter 13, Ya-Hsuan Wang illustrates a rather different pattern of gender manifestion within Taiwan given that at the participation level women are very well represented. She points out that largely because of an open and welcoming climate for women within science and technology felds, enrollment in these felds has continued to increase. However, she pointedly emphasizes, the entailment of such a gender distribution has within Taiwan not had the effect so commonly supposed for such a development. Rather than “liberalizing” the society by rendering it more open and susceptible to egalitarian norms of performance, “gender inequality is still pervasive in implicit and subtle ways” as the patriarchal and conservative values of the society continue to be expressed in institutional values and practices.
Our range of regional selections concludes with an examination of gender practices in Thailand, provided by Prompilai Buasuwan and Ratikorn Niyamajan as they explore that seemingly ubiquitous glass ceiling as represented in Thai higher education. They point initially to the fact that demographically Thailand has recently moved in a counterglobal trend: Whereas globally the proportion of women to men has declined slightly over the past decade, from 1960 to 2015 in Thailand, it has increased, notably to constitute 50.7% of the population and they have longer life spans. Yet, throughout Thai society as a whole, even while signifcant steps have been taken to expand the social role of women, their social status remains lower than that of men as judged by several indicators (and refecting the strong historical gender bias of Thai society). Thus, perhaps not surprisingly and in the pattern we have observed in other Asian and Southeast Asian examples, while the
participation rate of women within higher education has expanded signifcantly, this is not refected in their participation in the higher ranks and administrative structures of higher education. They conclude their analysis with a multifactor analysis of the ways in which the glass ceiling operates within Thai higher education.
The volume concludes with Neubauer and Kaur providing commentary on the more recently emerging stresses within the prevailing pattern of globalization that has affected and acted to structure higher education throughout the past several decades. Focused on an increasing set of nationalism-centered actions occurring in a variety of nations, these events will undoubtedly impact both the structure of higher education within nations, and in our view, trigger others that may move the overall pattern of higher education engagement across national borders into a more nationalist-sensitive framework. Should such be the case, we suggest that given one set of circumstances, such events might act to slow actions that have led to greater national participation at all levels for women. At the same time, it appears that the forces already apparent in some societies to challenge existing notions and patterns of gender identity and norms will continue to grow apace and act to confront previously dominant discourses and social structures.
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over 1,000 volumes of Nietzsche, and I am sure I speak moderately. If this boy is to blame for this, where did he get it? Is there any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life on it? And there is no question in this case but what it is true. Then who is to blame? The university would be more to blame than he is. The scholars of the world would be more to blame than he is. The publishers of the world—and Nietzsche’s books are published by one of the biggest publishers in the world—are more to blame than he is. Your honor, it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.”... Your honor, we first pointed out that we do not need any experts in science. Here is one plain fact, and the statute defines itself, and it tells the kind of evolution it does not want taught, and the evidence says that this is the kind of evolution that was taught, and no number of scientists could come in here, my friends, and override that statute or take from the jury its right to decide this question, so
that all the experts they could bring would mean nothing. And when it comes to Bible experts, every member of the jury is as good an expert on the Bible as any man they could bring, or that we could bring.
T D
Mr. Malone: Are we to have our children know nothing about science except what the church says they shall know? I have never seen any harm in learning and understanding, in humility and open-mindedness, and I have never seen clearer the need of that learning than when I see the attitude of the prosecution, who attack and refuse to accept the information and intelligence, which expert witnesses will give them.
T P
Mr. Stewart: Now what could these scientists testify to? They could only say as an expert, qualified as an expert upon this subject, I have made a study of these things and from my standpoint as such an expert, I say that this does not deny the story of divine creation. That is what they would testify to, isn’t it? That is all they could testify about.
Now, then, I say under the correct construction of the act, that they cannot testify as to that. Why? Because in the wording of this act the legislature itself construed the instrument according to their intention.... What was the general purpose of the legislature here? It was to prevent teaching in the public schools of any county in Tennessee that theory which says that man is descended from a lower order of animals. That is the intent and nobody can dispute it under the shining sun of this day.
T C
Now upon these issues as brought up it becomes the duty of the Court to determine the question of the admissibility of this expert testimony offered by the defendant.
It is not within the province of the Court under these issues to decide and determine which is true, the story of divine creation as taught in the Bible, or the story of the creation of man as taught by evolution.
If the state is correct in its insistence, it is immaterial, so far as the results of this case are concerned, as to which theory is true; because it is within the province of the legislative branch, and not the judicial branch of the government to pass upon the policy of a statute; and the policy of this statute having been passed upon by that department of the government, this court is not further concerned as to its policy; but is interested only in its proper interpretation and, if valid, its enforcement.... Therefore the court
is content to sustain the motion of the attorney-general to exclude expert testimony.
T P
Mr. Stewart (during Mr. Darrow’s cross-examination of Mr. Bryan): I want to interpose another objection. What is the purpose of this examination?
Mr. Bryan: The purpose is to cast ridicule upon everybody who believes in the Bible, and I am perfectly willing that the world shall know that these gentlemen have no other purpose than ridiculing every Christian who believes in the Bible.
T D
Mr. Darrow: We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States, and you know it, and that is all.
Statements of Noted
Scientists as Filed into Record by Defense Counsel
Charles H. Judd, Director of School of Education, University of Chicago: It will be impossible, in my judgment, in the state university, as well as in the normal schools, to teach adequately psychology or the
science of education without making constant reference to all the facts of mental development which are included in the general doctrine of evolution.... Whatever may be the constitutional rights of legislatures to prescribe the general course of study of public schools it will, in my judgment, be a serious national disaster if the attempt is successful to determine the details to be taught in the schools through the vote of legislatures rather than as a result of scientific investigation.
Jacob G. Lipman, Dean of the College of Agriculture, State University of New Jersey: With these facts and interpretations of organic evolution left out, the agricultural colleges and experimental stations could not render effective service to our great agricultural industry
Wilbur A. Nelson, State Geologist of Tennessee: It, therefore, appears that it would be impossible to study or teach geology in Tennessee or elsewhere, without using the theory of evolution.
Kirtley F. Mather, Chairman of the Department of Geology, Harvard University: Science
has not even a guess as to the original source or sources of matter. It deals with immediate causes and effects.... Men of science have as their aim the discovery of facts. They seek with open eyes, willing to recognize it, as Huxley said, even if it “sears the eyeballs.” After they have discovered truth, and not till then, do they consider what its moral implications may be. Thus far, and presumably always, truth when found is also found to be right, in the moral sense of the word.... As Henry Ward Beecher said, forty years ago, “If to reject God’s revelation in the book is infidelity, what is it to reject God’s revelation of himself in the structure of the whole globe?”
Maynard M. Metcalf, Research Specialist in Zoology, Johns Hopkins University: Intelligent teaching of biology or intelligent approach to any biological science is impossible if the established fact of evolution is omitted.
Horatio Hackett Newman, Professor of Zoology, University of Chicago: Evolution has been tried and tested in every conceivable way for
considerably over half a century. Vast numbers of biological facts have been examined in the light of this principle and without a single exception they have been entirely compatible with it.... The evolution principle is thus a great unifying and integrating scientific conception. Any conception that is so farreaching, so consistent, and that has led to so much advance in the understanding of nature, is at least an extremely valuable idea and one not lightly to be cast aside in case it fails to agree with one’s prejudices.
Thus the two sides lined up as dialectical truth and empirical fact. The state legislature of Tennessee, acting in its sovereign capacity, had passed a measure which made it unlawful to teach that man is connatural with the animals through asserting that he is descended from a “lower order” of them. (There was some sparring over the meaning of the technical language of the act, but this was the general consensus.) The legal question was whether John T Scopes had violated the measure. The philosophical question, which was the real focus of interest, was the right of a state to make this prescription.
We have referred to the kind of truth which can be dialectically established, and here we must develop further the dialectical nature of the state’s case. As long as it maintained this dialectical position, it did not have to go into the “factual” truth of evolution, despite the outcry from the other side. The following considerations, then, enter into this “dialectical” prosecution.
By definition the legislature is the supreme arbiter of education within the state. It is charged with the duty of promoting enlightenment and morality, and to these ends it may establish common schools, require attendance, and review curricula either by itself or through its agents. The state of Tennessee had exercised this kind of authority when it had forbidden the teaching of the Bible in the public schools. Now if the legislature could take a position that the publicly subsidized teaching of the Bible was socially undesirable, it could, from the same authority, take the same position with regard to a body of science. Some people might feel that the legislature was morally bound to encourage the propagation of the Bible, just as some of those participating in the trial seemed to think that it was morally bound to encourage the propagation of science. But here again the legislature is the highest tribunal, and no body of religious or scientific doctrine comes to it with a compulsive authority. In brief, both the Ten Commandments and the theory of evolution belonged in the class of things which it could elect or reject, depending on the systematic import of propositions underlying the philosophy of the state.
The policy of the anti-evolution law was the same type of policy which Darrow had by inference commended only a year earlier in the famous trial of Loeb and Leopold. This clash is perhaps the most direct in the Scopes case and deserves pointing out here. Darrow had served as defense counsel for the two brilliant university graduates who had conceived the idea of committing a murder as a kind of intellectual exploit, to prove that their powers of foresight and care could prevent detection. The essence of Darrow’s plea at their trial was that the two young men could not be held culpable—at least in the degree the state claimed—because of the influences to which they had been exposed. They had been readers of a system of philosophy of allegedly anti-social tendency, and they were not to be blamed if they translated that philosophy into a sanction of their deed. The effect of this plea obviously was to transfer guilt from the two young men to society as a whole, acting through its laws, its schools, its publications, etc.
Now the key thing to be observed in this plea was that Darrow was not asking the jury to inspect the philosophy of Nietzsche for the purpose either of passing upon its internal consistency or its contact with reality. He was asking precisely what Bryan was asking of the jury at Dayton, namely that they take a strictly dialectical position outside it, viewing it as a partial universe of discourse with consequences which could be adjudged good or bad. The point to be especially noted is that Darrow did not raise the question of whether the philosophy of Nietzsche expresses necessary truth, or whether, let us say, it is essential to an understanding of the world. He was satisfied to point out that the state had not been a sufficiently vigilant guardian of the forces molding the character of its youth.
But the prosecution at Dayton could use this line of argument without change. If the philosophy of Nietzsche were sufficient to instigate young men to criminal actions, it might be claimed with even greater force that the philosophy of evolution, which in the popular mind equated man with the animals, would do the same. The state’s dialectic here simply used one of Darrow’s earlier definitions to place the anti-evolution law in a favorable or benevolent category. In sum: to Darrow’s previous position that the doctrine of Nietzsche is capable of immoral influence, Bryan responded that the doctrine of evolution is likewise capable of immoral influence, and this of course was the dialectical countering of the defense’s position in the trial.
There remains yet a third dialectical maneuver for the prosecution. On the second day of the trial Attorney-General Stewart, in reviewing the duties of the legislature, posed the following problem: “Supposing then that there should come within the minds of the people a conflict between literature and science. Then what would the legislature do? Wouldn’t they have to interpret?... Wouldn’t they have to interpret their construction of this conflict which one should be recognized or higher or more in the public schools?”
This point was not exploited as fully as its importance might seem to warrant; but what the counsel was here declaring is that the legislature is necessarily the umpire in all disputes between partial universes. Therefore if literature and science should fall into a
conflict, it would again be up to the legislature to assign the priority It is not bound to recognize the claims of either of these exclusively because, as we saw earlier, it operates in a universe with reference to which these are partial bodies of discourse. The legislature is the disposer of partial universes. Accordingly when the Attorney-General took this stand, he came the nearest of any of the participants in the trial to clarifying the state’s position, and by this we mean to showing that for the state it was a matter of legal dialectic.
There is little evidence to indicate that the defense understood the kind of case it was up against, though naturally this is said in a philosophical rather than a legal sense. After the questions of law were settled, its argument assumed the substance of a plea for the truth of evolution, which subject was not within the scope of the indictment. We have, for example, the statement of Mr. Hays already cited that the whole case of the defense depended on proving that evolution is a “reasonable scientific theory.” Of those who spoke for the defense, Mr. Dudley Field Malone seems to have had the poorest conception of the nature of the contest. I must cite further from his plea because it shows most clearly the trap from which the defense was never able to extricate itself. On the fifth day of the trial Mr. Malone was chosen to reply to Mr. Bryan, and in the course of his speech he made the following revealing utterance: “Your honor, there is a difference between theological and scientific men. Theology deals with something that is established and revealed; it seeks to gather material which they claim should not be changed. It is the Word of God and that cannot be changed; it is literal, it is not to be interpreted. That is the theological mind. It deals with theology. The scientific mind is a modern thing, your honor. I am not sure Galileo was the one who brought relief to the scientific mind; because, theretofore, Aristotle and Plato had reached their conclusions and processes, by metaphysical reasoning, because they had no telescope and no microscope.” The part of this passage which gives his case away is the distinction made at the end. Mr. Malone was asserting that Aristotle and Plato got no further than they did because they lacked the telescope and the microscope. To a slight extent perhaps Aristotle was what we would today call a “research scientist,” but the conclusions and processes arrived at by
the metaphysical reasoning of the two are dialectical, and the test of a dialectical position is logic and not ocular visibility. At the risk of making Mr. Malone a scapegoat we must say that this is an abysmal confusion of two different kinds of inquiry which the Greeks were well cognizant of. But the same confusion, if it did not produce this trial, certainly helped to draw it out to its length of eight days. It is the assumption that human laws stand in wait upon what the scientists see in their telescopes and microscopes. But harking back to Professor Adler: facts are never determinative of dialectic in the sense presumed by this counsel.
Exactly the same confusion appeared in a rhetorical plea for truth which Mr. Malone made shortly later in the same speech. Then he said: “There is never a duel with truth. The truth always wins and we are not afraid of it. The truth is no coward. The truth does not need the law. The truth does not need the forces of government. The truth does not need Mr. Bryan. The truth is imperishable, eternal and immortal and needs no human agency to support it. We are ready to tell the truth as we understand it and we do not fear all the truth that they can present as facts.” It is instantly apparent that this presents truth in an ambiguous sense. Malone begins with the simplistic assumption that there is a “standard” truth, a kind of universal, objective, operative truth which it is heinous to oppose. That might be well enough if the meaning were highly generic, but before he is through this short passage he has equated truth with facts—the identical confusion which we noted in his utterance about Plato and Aristotle. Now since the truth which dialectic arrives at is not a truth of facts, this peroration either becomes irrelevant, or it lends itself to the other side, where, minus the concluding phrase, it could serve as a eulogium of dialectical truth.
Such was the dilemma by which the defense was impaled from the beginning. To some extent it appears even in the expert testimony. On the day preceding this speech by Malone, Professor Maynard Metcalf had presented testimony in court regarding the theory of evolution (this was on the fourth day of the trial; Judge Raulston did not make his ruling excluding such testimony until the sixth day) in which he made some statements which could have been of curious
interest to the prosecution. They are effectually summarized in the following excerpt: “Evolution and the theories of evolution are fundamentally different things. The fact of evolution is a thing that is perfectly and absolutely clear.... The series of evidences is so convincing that I think it would be entirely impossible for any normal human being who was conversant with the phenomena to have even for a moment the least doubt even for the fact of evolution, but he might have tremendous doubts as to the truth of any hypothesis....”
We first notice here a clear recognition of the kinds of truth distinguished by Adler, with the “fact” of evolution belonging to the first order and theories of evolution belonging to the second. The second, which is referred to by the term “hypothesis,” consists of facts in an elaboration. We note furthermore that this scientist has called them fundamentally different things—so different that one is entitled to have not merely doubts but “tremendous doubts” about the second. Now let us imagine the dialecticians of the opposite side approaching him with the following. You have said, Professor Metcalf, that the fact of evolution and the various theories of evolution are two quite different things. You have also said that the theories of evolution are so debatable or questionable that you can conceive of much difference of opinion about them. Now if there is an order of knowledge above this order of theories, which order you admit to be somewhat speculative, a further order of knowledge which is philosophical or evaluative, is it not likely that there would be in this realm still more alternative positions, still more room for doubt or difference of opinion? And if all this is so, would you expect people to assent to a proposition of this order in the same way you expect them to assent to, say, the proposition that a monkey has vertebrae? And if you do make these admissions, can you any longer maintain that people of opposite views on the teaching of evolution are simply defiers of the truth? This is how the argument might have progressed had some Greek Darwin thrown Athens into an uproar; but this argument was, after all, in an American court of law.
It should now be apparent from these analyses that the defense was never able to meet the state’s case on dialectical grounds. Even
if it had boldly accepted the contest on this level, it is difficult to see how it could have won, for the dialectic must probably have followed this course: First Proposition, All teaching of evolution is harmful. Counter Proposition, No teaching of evolution is harmful. Resolution, Some teaching of evolution is harmful. Now the resolution was exactly the position taken by the law, which was that some teaching of evolution (i.e., the teaching of it in state-supported schools) was an anti-social measure. Logically speaking, the proposition that “Some teaching of evolution is harmful,” does not exclude the proposition that “Some teaching of evolution is not harmful,” but there was the fact that the law permitted some teaching of evolution (e.g., the teaching of it in schools not supported by the public funds). In this situation there seemed nothing for the defense to do but stick by the second proposition and plead for that proposition rhetorically. So science entered the juridical arena and argued for the value of science. In this argument the chief topic was consequence. There was Malone’s statement that without the theory of evolution Burbank would not have been able to produce his results. There was Lipman’s statement that without an understanding of the theory of evolution the agricultural colleges could not carry on their work. There were the statements of Judd and Nelson that large areas of education depended upon a knowledge of evolution. There was the argument brought out by Professor Mather of Harvard: “When men are offered their choice between science, with its confident and unanimous acceptance of the evolutionary principle, on the one hand, and religion, with its necessary appeal to things unseen and improvable, on the other, they are much more likely to abandon religion than to abandon science. If such a choice is forced upon us, the churches will lose many of their best educated young people, the very ones upon whom they must depend for leadership in coming years.”
We noted at the beginning of this chapter that rhetoric deals with subjects at the point where they touch upon actuality or prudential conduct. Here the defense looks at the policy of teaching evolution and points to beneficial results. The argument then becomes: these important benefits imply an important beneficial cause. This is why
we can say that the pleaders for science were forced into the nonscientific role of the rhetorician.
The prosecution incidentally also had an argument from consequences, although it was never employed directly. When Bryan maintained that the philosophy of evolution might lead to the same results as the philosophy of Nietzsche had led with Loeb and Leopold, he was opening a subject which could have supplied such an argument, say in the form of a concrete instance of moral beliefs weakened by someone’s having been indoctrinated with evolution. But there was really no need: as we have sought to show all along, the state had an immense strategic advantage in the fact that laws belong to the category of dialectical determinations, and it clung firmly to this advantage.
An irascible exchange which Darrow had with the judge gives an idea of the frustration which the defense felt at this stage. There had been an argument about the propriety of a cross-examination.
The Court: Colonel [Darrow], what is the purpose of crossexamination?
Mr. Darrow: The purpose of cross-examination is to be used on trial.
The Court: Well, isn’t that an effort to ascertain the truth?
Mr. Darrow: No, it is an effort to show prejudice. Nothing else. Has there been any effort to ascertain the truth in this case? Why not bring in the jury and let us prove it?
The truth referred to by the judge was whether the action of Scopes fell within the definition of the law; the truth referred to by Darrow was the facts of evolution (not submitted to the jury as evidence); and “prejudice” was a crystallized opinion of the theory of evolution, expressed now as law
If we have appeared here to assign too complete a forensic victory to the prosecution, let us return, by way of recapitulating the issues, to the relationship between positive science and dialectic. Many
people, perhaps a majority in this country, have felt that the position of the State of Tennessee was absurd because they are unable to see how a logical position can be taken without reference to empirical situations. But it is just the nature of logic and dialectic to be a science without any content as it is the nature of biology or any positive science to be a science of empirical content.
We see the nature of this distinction when we realize that there is never an argument, in the true sense of the term, about facts. When facts are disputed, the argument must be suspended until the facts are settled. Not until then may it be resumed, for all true argument is about the meaning of established or admitted facts. And since this meaning is always expressed in propositions, we can say further that all argument is about the systematic import of propositions. While that remains so, the truth of the theory of evolution or of any scientific theory can never be settled in a court of law. The court could admit the facts into the record, but the process of legal determination would deal with the meaning of the facts, and it could not go beyond saying that the facts comport, or do not comport, with the meanings of other propositions. Thus its task is to determine their place in a system of discourse and if possible to effect a resolution in accordance with the movement of dialectic. It is necessary that logic in its position as ultimate arbiter preserve this indifference toward that actuality which is the touchstone of scientific fact.
It is plain that those who either expected or hoped that science would win a sweeping victory in the Tennessee courtroom were the same people who believe that science can take the place of speculative wisdom. The only consolation they had in the course of the trial was the embarrassment to which Darrow brought Bryan in questioning him about the Bible and the theory of evolution (during which Darrow did lead Bryan into some dialectical traps). But in strict consideration all of this was outside the bounds of the case because both the facts of evolution and the facts of the Bible were “items not in discourse,” to borrow a phrase employed by Professor Adler. That is to say, their correctness had to be determined by scientific means of investigation, if at all; but the relationship between the law and
theories of man’s origin could be determined only by legal casuistry, in the non-pejorative sense of that phrase.
As we intimated at the beginning, a sufficient grasp of what the case was about would have resulted in there being no case, or in there being quite a different case. As the events turned out science received, in the popular estimation, a check in the trial but a moral victory, and this only led to more misunderstanding of the province of science in human affairs. The law of the State of Tennessee won a victory which was regarded as pyrrhic because it was generally felt to have made the law and the lawmakers look foolish. This also was a disservice to the common weal. Both of these results could have been prevented if it had been understood that science is one thing and law another. An understanding of that truth would seem to require some general dissemination throughout our educated classes of a Summa Dialectica. This means that the educated people of our country would have to be so trained that they could see the dialectical possibility of the opposites of the beliefs they possess. And that is a very large order for education in any age.
Chapter III EDMUND BURKE AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CIRCUMSTANCE
We are now in position to affirm that the rhetorical study of an argument begins with a study of the sources. But since almost any extended argument will draw upon more than one source we must look, to answer the inquiry we are now starting, at the prevailing source, or the source which is most frequently called upon in the total persuasive effort. We shall say that this predominating source gives to the argument an aspect, and our present question is, what can be inferred from the aspect of any argument or body of arguments about the philosophy of its maker? All men argue alike when they argue validly because the modes of inference are formulas, from which deviation is error. Therefore we characterize inference only as valid or invalid. But the reasoner reveals his philosophical position by the source of argument which appears most often in his major premise because the major premise tells us how he is thinking about the world. In other words, the rhetorical content of the major premise which the speaker habitually uses is the key to his primary view of existence. We are of course excluding artful choices which have in view only ad hoc persuasions. Putting the matter now figuratively, we may say that no man escapes being branded by the premise that he regards as most efficacious in an argument. The general importance of this is that major premises, in addition to their logical function as part of a deductive argument, are expressive of values, and a characteristic major premise characterizes the user.
To see this principle in application, let us take three of the chief sources of argument recognized by the classical rhetoricians. We may look first at the source which is genus. All arguments made through genus are arguments based on the nature of the thing which
is said to constitute the genus. What the argument from genus then says is that “generic” classes have a nature which can be predicated of their species. Thus man has a nature including mortality, which quality can therefore be predicated of the man Socrates and the man John Smith. The underlying postulate here, that things have a nature, is of course a disputable view of the world, for it involves the acceptance of a realm of essence. Yet anyone who uses such source of argument is committed to this wider assumption. Now it follows that those who habitually argue from genus are in their personal philosophy idealists. To them the idea of genus is a reflection of existence. We are saying, accordingly, that arguments which make predominant use of genus have an aspect through this source, and that the aspect may be employed to distinguish the philosophy of the author. It will be found, to cite a concrete example, that John Henry Newman regularly argues from genus; he begins with the nature of the thing and then makes the application. The question of what a university is like is answered by applying the idea of a university. The question of what man ought to study is answered by working out a conception of the nature of man. And we shall find in a succeeding essay that Abraham Lincoln, although he has become a patron for liberals and pragmatists, was a consistent user of the argument from genus. His refusal to hedge on the principle of slavery is referable to a fixed concept of the nature of man. This, then, will serve to characterize the argument from genus.
Another important source of argument is similitude. Whereas those who argue from genus argue from a fixed class, those who argue from similitude invoke essential (though not exhaustive) correspondences. If one were to say, for example, that whatever has the divine attribute of reason is likely to have also the divine attribute of immortality, one would be using similitude to establish a probability. Thinkers of the analogical sort use this argument chiefly. If required to characterize the outlook it implies, we should say that it expresses belief in a oneness of the world, which causes all correspondence to have probative value. Proponents of this view tend to look toward some final, transcendental unity, and as we
might expect, this type of argument is used widely by poets and religionists.[26] John Bunyan used it constantly; so did Emerson.
A third type we shall mention, the type which provides our access to Burke, is the argument from circumstance. The argument from circumstance is, as the name suggests, the nearest of all arguments to purest expediency. This argument merely reads the circumstances —the “facts standing around”—and accepts them as coercive, or allows them to dictate the decision. If one should say, “The city must be surrendered because the besiegers are so numerous,” one would be arguing not from genus, or similitude, but from a present circumstance. The expression “In view of the situation, what else are you going to do?” constitutes a sort of proposition-form for this type of argument. Such argument savors of urgency rather than of perspicacity; and it seems to be preferred by those who are easily impressed by existing tangibles. Whereas the argument from consequence attempts a forecast of results, the argument from circumstance attempts only an estimate of current conditions or pressures. By thus making present circumstance the overbearing consideration, it keeps from sight even the nexus of cause and effect. It is the least philosophical of all the sources of argument, since theoretically it stops at the level of perception of fact.
Burke is widely respected as a conservative who was intelligent enough to provide solid philosophical foundations for his conservatism. It is perfectly true that many of his observations upon society have a conservative basis; but if one studies the kind of argument which Burke regularly employed when at grips with concrete policies, one discovers a strong addiction to the argument from circumstance. Now for reasons which will be set forth in detail later, the argument from circumstance is the argument philosophically appropriate to the liberal. Indeed, one can go much further and say that it is the argument fatal to conservatism. However much Burke eulogized tradition and fulminated against the French Revolution, he was, when judged by what we are calling aspect of argument, very far from being a conservative; and we suggest here that a man’s method of argument is a truer index in his beliefs than his explicit profession of principles. Here is a means whereby he is
revealed in his work. Burke’s voluminous controversies give us ample opportunity to test him by this rule.
There is some point in beginning with Burke’s treatment of the existing Catholic question, an issue which drew forth one of his earliest political compositions and continued to engage his attention throughout his life. As early as 1765 he had become concerned with the extraordinary legal disabilities imposed upon Catholics in Ireland, and about this time he undertook a treatise entitled Tract on the Popery Laws. Despite the fact that in this treatise Burke professes belief in natural law, going so far as to assert that all human laws are but declaratory, the type of argument he uses chiefly is the secular argument from circumstance. After a review of the laws and penalties, he introduces his “capital consideration.”
The first and most capital consideration with regard to this, as to every object, is the extent of it. And here it is necessary to premise: this system of penalty and incapacity has for its object no small sect or obscure party, but a very numerous body of men—a body which comprehends at least two thirds of the whole nation: it amounts to 2,800,000 souls, a number sufficient for the materials constituent of a great people.[27]
He then gave his reason for placing the circumstance first.
This consideration of the magnitude of the object ought to attend us through the whole inquiry: if it does not always affect the reason, it is always decisive on the importance of the question. It not only makes itself a more leading point, but complicates itself with every other part of the matter, giving every error, minute in itself, a character and a significance from its application. It is therefore not to be wondered at, if we perpetually recur to it in the course of this essay.[28]
The Tract was planned in such a way as to continue this thought, while accompanying it with discussion of the impediment to national
