Producing Doctorates

Martin Kramer has a new post about the Title VI controversy in which he uses all the predictable loaded terms to attack a pro-Title VI op ed in the Los Angeles Times. A lot of his arguments are things I've refuted before, but one I haven't gotten around to yet is the argument that because Title VI money partly provides fellowships for doctoral students, it is useless in producing people who go into government service. A couple of easy points, however:

1.) Kramer says interviews of doctoral students reveal they don't plan on going into careers in government. Fine, but do they wind up going into government anyway? After all, the academic job market is notoriously harsh, and many people wind up outside their preferred careers.

2.) Those who do remain in academics don't exactly leave this plane of existence. They work in universities teaching and developing courses in Middle East Studies. As I mentioned here, part of the problem finding Arabic translators is the lack of Arabic instructors, who are ideally people with a Ph.D. in Arabic. The same goes with any other area of cultural knowledge we might need. Kramer and his associates regularly conflate scholars' research interest with what they teach, but in the real world those people examining 19th-century Arabic poetry probably have jobs where they teach the Arabic language - this is true with all Arabic lit people at UW-Madison.

I have two friends from grad school who took a terminal masters and went into the military, armed with language and important cultural knowledge that will serve them well on the ground. And they have it because of dedicated faculty who, regardless of political views, taught them what they needed to know. Let's support programs which help our troops, not take advantage of the situation to attack them for political purposes.

UPDATE: Although Kramer links to the LA Times piece, he has it set up so it's tough to link to. You can read it here.

UPDATE II: See also the discussion at Daily Kos.