Yale and BYU in the News

It is not often that two of my alma maters appear prominently in the same piece of legal analysis. Eugene Volokh uses both in his argument against secondary boycotts.

A secondary boycott is one where rather than boycott an individual or organization whom one sees as a problem, one boycotts an individual or group associated with the individual or organization whom one sees as a problem. I suppose that one can also boycott both. 

In this case, the problem is Yale's Law School's policies and their implementation go against the free speech rights of certain students but not others. (Institutionally Yale has been leaning this direction for a long time and I noticed earlier stages when I was a student there thirty years ago.) Earlier this year, Yale law students disrupted the presentation of a speaker with whom they disagreed. Yale excused the law students' bad behavior. Recently several judges have called for a boycott of hiring clerks who have graduated from Yale Law School. For a law school that has prided itself on being the number one law school in the country, having your students ineligible from receiving a clerkship based solely on attending your school is a severe blow, at least to one's pride.

As Volokh points out, this is a secondary boycott. It cannot possibly punish the perpetrators of bad policy. Instead it punishes those who are guilty of association with the perpetrators, and may be involuntary associates. I wonder how many law students decide which law school to attend based on who the dean is.

Yale's policies, however, seem to work against the preparation of effective lawyers. Law, by its nature, is an adversarial occupation. A lawyer may have to work for clients who hold opinions he or she personally is opposed to. He or she will certainly have to face legal opponents with whom he or she disagrees. Many lawyers laudably pursue conciliatory courses designed to minimize disagreements, but such a course of action may not be available in every case. Usually suppression of one's legal opponent and their right to present their case is not an option. Law schools do their students a disservice if they allow them options in law school that they are not allowed in court.

Yale Law School has since claimed to have made changes in the direction of free speech. Whether they actually have remains to be seen.

Even if Professor Volokh's understanding of the situation at BYU does not match facts on the ground (and to be fair, he proposes it as a hypothetical), his points about the problems of secondary boycotts remain.

Some Thoughts from the Cancelled

Two thoughtful pieces on cancel culture appeared recently, both written by individuals who have been cancelled. 

The first is by Dorian Abbot, a professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He tells about how a group of graduate students in his department decided to attack him behind his back and “demanded that my teaching and research be restricted in a way that would cripple my ability to function as a scientist.”

Then:

my detractors developed a new strategy to try to isolate me and intimidate everyone else into silence: They argued on Twitter that I should not be invited to give science seminars at other universities and coordinated replacement speakers. This is an effective and increasingly common way to ratchet up the cost of dissenting because disseminating new work to colleagues is an important part of the scientific endeavor.

Sure enough, this strategy was employed when I was chosen to give the Carlson Lecture at MIT — a major honor in my field. It is an annual public talk given to a large audience and my topic was “climate and the potential for life on other planets.” On September 22, a new Twitter mob, composed of a group of MIT students, postdocs, and recent alumni, demanded that I be uninvited.

It worked. And quickly.

MIT caved.

The root of Professor Abbot's problem was that he advocated that individuals should be rewarded for merit rather than the superficial and irrelevant classification to which they belonged. This diversity from the students' ideology cannot be tolerated.

The second piece was written by Philip Carl Salzman, an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McGill University. He argues that the urge to cancel is influenced by a number of contributing factors:

One is that the targets tend to be successful, high-ranking, and often popular, boasting achievements in scholarship and teaching. A second is that they make some people uncomfortable by being too demanding, or too forthright in expressing opinions, or too friendly. Lower-status individuals, students, and colleagues gain prominence by attacking high-status individuals, especially if the attack is in the name of some imaginary application of “social justice.” “Once it becomes clear that attention and praise can be garnered from organizing an attack on someone’s reputation, plenty of people discover that they have an interest in doing so.”

From what I have seen, this seems to be true. I have also noticed, however, that those who attempt to gain attention and praise for attacking others quickly lose that attention and praise because they have no actual accomplishment to stand on. It reminds me of some lines from Pindar:

σοφὸς ὁ πολλὰ εἰδὼς φυᾷ· μαθόντες δὲ λάβροι 

παγγλοωσσία, κόρακες ὥς, ἄκραντα γαρύετον 

Διὸς πρὸς ὄρνιχα θεῖον. 

The nature of the wise is readily apparent, but the violent ravings of the student, is like crows uselessly cawing at the divine bird of Zeus. (Pindar, Olypmian Odes 2.86-88)

The administrators who cave to this remind me of a story that Herodotus told of Thrasybulus:

πέμψας γὰρ παρὰ Θρασύβουλον κήρυκα ἐπυνθάνετο ὅντινα ἂν τρόπον ἀσφαλέστατον καταστησάμενος τῶν πρηγμάτων κάλλιστα τὴν πόλιν ἐπιτροπεύοι. Θρασύβουλος δὲ τὸν ἐλθόντα παρὰ τοῦ Περιάνδρου ἐξῆγε ἔξω τοῦ ἄστεος, ἐσβὰς δὲ ἐς ἄρουραν ἐσπαρμένην ἅμα τε διεξήιε τὸ λήιον ἐπειρωτῶν τε καὶ ἀναποδίζων τὸν κήρυκα κατὰ τὴν ἀπὸ Κορίνθου ἄπιξιν, καὶ ἐκόλουε αἰεὶ ὅκως τινὰ ἴδοι τῶν ἀσταχύων ὑπερέχοντα, κολούων δὲ ἔρριπτε, ἐς ὃ τοῦ ληίου τὸ κάλλιστόν τε καὶ βαθύτατον διέφθειρε τρόπῳ τοιούτω: 

For, having sent a herald to Thrasybulus, he wanted to learn the way he might most safely arrange affairs in his city for the best results. Thrasybulus went and led the messenger from Periander out of the city, and when he had entered a sown field, he went through the crop asking and interrogating the messenger the reason he had left Corinth, and he was always cutting down the ears of grain that were taller, and having cut them off, cast them away, and this fashion he destroyed the best and most abundant of the crop. (Herodotus, Histories 5.92F.2)

That may be the preferred way to keep order, but it also promotes mediocrity. But this is standard fare. Hermodorus was expelled from Ephesus for excelling at something: “If he must excel, let him go and excel over somebody else!” Thus we are back to Hugh Nibley's prescient piece “How to Have a Quiet Campus, Antique Style.”

Princeton Eliminates any Reason to Hire its Classics Students

A friend sent me notice of a (slightly garbled) news report from Princeton. Apparently it is true. According to the Princeton Alumni Weekly, Princeton has eliminated "the requirement for classics majors to take Greek or Latin." 

In classics, two major changes were made. The “classics” track, which required an intermediate proficiency in Greek or Latin to enter the concentration, was eliminated, as was the requirement for students to take Greek or Latin. Students still are encouraged to take either language if it is relevant to their interests in the department. The breadth of offerings remains the same, said Josh Billings, director of undergraduate studies and professor of classics. The changes ultimately give students more opportunities to major in classics. 

Since Greek and Latin are the basis for any major in classics, a classics major who graduates knowing neither does not qualify as a classics major.

Back in the nineteenth century, both Greek and Latin were required to be admitted to college. First, the general requirement for entrance was dropped, but one could at least expect a classics major to know them. Now, apparently, Ivy League classics graduates can graduate without knowing either. Does this mean that Princeton classics graduates are guilty of false advertising, or is it Princeton itself that is?

Many years ago, BYU had that problem (long ago rectified) and Hugh Nibley had a withering critique of it:

The indispensable key to the past is language, and in our Utah schools we have always affected a unique and intense interest in the ancient world. We have tried to open the lock without the key: only in Utah can you take advanced courses in the fine points of Greek literature from a man who does not know a word of Greek, but who, in the name of scholarship, has driven hundreds of young people from the Church (I have run into them everywhere); only here can you attend public lectures on the Dead Sea Scrolls by savants who cannot read a line of them; only here can you study classical and Near Eastern civilization and thought under experts to whom a line of Horace or the Talmud might as well be Chinese; only here can you listen to discourses on the philology of the Tower of Babel by authorities who know no language but English, and so on and so on--it is unbelievable. (Hugh Nibley, "Nobody to Blame," Eloquent Witness [Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2008], 132-33).

This may not necessarily be true of BYU now (though it is still true of Mormon historians), but apparently, this will now be true of Princeton and Princeton graduates.

You speak for others when you protest that you are wasting your time taking required courses that never go very deep and keep you from learning the things you should. Such courses exist in all graduate schools--for the sake of the teachers, not the students. The idea is that a large number of courses and a large staff teaching them make a good college. But forty sparrows do not make an eagle, forty house cats do not make a lion, and forty survey courses do not make a scholar. Moreover, if you bring together forty men, each of whom knows a little Latin or math, the result is not the equivalent of consulting just one person with a good knowledge of those subjects. (Nibley, "Nobody to Blame," 135.)

Apparently consulting forty Princeton grads will not be the equivalent of consulting just one person with a good knowledge of Greek or Latin.

Perhaps the Princeton alumni had the most interesting comments. Mark Davies noted:

“Classics lite” would be a good description of this major, but perhaps “classical civilization” would do, in order to distinguish the “classics” majors who are literate in both Greek and Latin. How elitist! Pardon my cynicism, but a classics faculty about three times as large as the one I knew clearly aims to increase enrollments for its own benefit. The paucity of minorities in traditional classics is a matter of economics, not racism.

Stephen William Foster claimed:

It is difficult indeed to understand how that change would “provide new perspectives” or “make the field better.” Apart from keeping these languages as our collective cultural heritage, attracting students who have not had Greek or Latin in high school is no argument for the change; many high schools have not offered those languages in decades, while this change would make that even less likely due to fewer people being able to teach it. . . .

Eliminating the language requirement is a deterioration of rigor rather than an improvement. It undermines Princeton’s mission as a standard-bearer of excellence in scholarly endeavor. Shame on the faculty for its shortsightedness.

J. David Garmon argued:

Undoubtedly, the humanities have faced increasing challenges over the years attracting students; and the rigors of even intermediate proficiency in Latin or Greek are well known to anyone who has attempted it. However, for the classics department to abandon the foundation of its discipline is like an engineering department abandoning mathematics and physics — two notoriously rigorous areas of study — in hopes of creating a “more vibrant intellectual community.”

A truly vibrant and intellectually honest community must always demand rigor and integrity in its self-examination, which in this case would require acknowledging, however heartbreaking it might be, that the classics department is no longer able to attract the intellectual horsepower it once did and that it is dumbing down its curriculum in keeping with the current “tastes” of undergraduates. Evading a clear statement of this difficult realty is a departure from the values of integrity and honesty that are the bedrock of any intellectual endeavor and is a disservice to the community of scholars who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of truth.

In my experience, "creating a vibrant intellectual community" is a euphemism for "a wholesale abandoning of intellectual rigor in pursuit of a political ideology."

Then again, this is the classics department at Princeton, whose classics professors have been involved in questionable conduct (here, here, here, here, and here), and accused of sexual harassment. So perhaps one should not be surprised.

I can list some of my own reasons why Greek and Latin are worth learning.

1. There are only a handful of languages which will unlock the key to thousands of years of history in multiple locations (which sadly eliminates Egyptian): Akkadian, Greek, Latin, Chinese, and Arabic.
2. If you know Latin, you can wander all over Europe and actually read inscriptions left at places.
   
3. When your child comes up to you and asks the meaning of this song that he is singing, you might be able to answer him.
4. In graduate school, we were assigned to read a particular manuscript, the introduction to which was written two hundred years ago, and so, of course, was in Latin. As the only Egyptologist in the room who had had any Latin, I had to provide a translation at sight.
5. I use Greek constantly. Working in Greco-Roman Egypt, Greek is simply a necessity.
6. While many of the texts are translated, it is usually more difficult to find a translation than the original text. For some texts, however, there are no translations.
7. Knowing the original language makes it possible to determine when some of the translations are wrong, or suspect. 
8. When working with a text like the Septuagint (which is an ancient translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek), every reason that one would want consult the Septuagint is only available in Greek.
   

I recommend studying Greek and Latin given the chance. I cannot recommend doing so at Princeton.

My reaction to the news was to go do the one thing that a Princeton classics graduate will not be able to do. Go read some Latin.

Study as Complaining

The following quotation identifies what academics are doing when they engage in various disciplines that end in "studies." Note that the authors of this quotation are not the usual suspects. They come from the academy, not outside it.

These fields vary widely, though they have enough in common to be readily identifiable: they are usually entitled "critical X" or "X studies," where X is whatever they want to complain about, disrupt, and modify, in accordance with the postmodern knowledge and political principles. (Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories [Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020], 180.)

This leads to an important observation that those involved in such "studies" fields are engaged in "an approach that otherwise very much resembles that of a support group that asserts itself as rigorous" (ibid., 179). I have sat through a number of those "support group" meetings. Fortunately, my current position allows me to avoid them.

Rumaging Through Some Reports

I recently went through the 2020 SAT Suite of Assessments Annual Report. On page 6 of this document is a list of average SAT scores broken down by the proposed major that students claim to want to enter. What would really be interesting is to look at SAT scores of students based on what they actually graduate in. Nevertheless there are a number of surprises in the data.

It is no surprise that the average Math score for a presumptive math major (648) is higher than the average Math score for a presumptive English major (535). What might be surprising is that the average Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (ERW) score for prospective math majors (599) also beats that of the average prospective English major (587). One expects the English majors to own that category, but the average prospective Physical Science major (598), Social Science major (595), and Humanities major (589), all do better, though perhaps not significantly so.

The 2020 report was not as informative as the SAT 2016 College-Bound Seniors Total Group Profile Report. So the rest of this information will be taken from the earlier report.

If one wants to do well on the SAT, what sorts of classes help one prepare?

• Take as much English as you can. On average every year of English was worth an additional 25 points on the Mathematics portion of the exam. But it was also worth about the same on Critical Reading and the Writing. (The test has been restructured in the intervening time.) This is not terribly surprising since the tests have always been heavily weighted towards English majors.
• Every year of a foreign language was worth about 30 points on Critical Reading, 20-40 points on Writing, and about 40 points on Mathematics.
• The best language to take for Critical Reading was Latin, followed by Chinese and German. The best language for Mathematics was Chinese, followed by Latin and Japanese. The best language for writing is Latin, followed by Chinese and Greek.
• Taking two years of math is better for the average Mathematics score than taking three years, but it is much better to take at least four. More math courses also help on all other portions of the SAT.
• Surprisingly, natural science courses do not help in the Mathematics section but Social Science courses do slightly.
  

One can take the totals scores of prospective majors and rank majors by the perceived intelligence needed to get into the major. (Again, it would be more interesting to see the scores of those who actually graduated in a given major). This does not predict the intelligence of any given individual who proposes to major in a subject, but rather the average ability of an aspirant:

• In the 1700s range were: Interdisciplinary studies and Mathematics.
• In the 1600s range were: English, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences, Foreign Languages, Humanities, Engineering, Computer Science, and Biology.
• In the 1500s range were: Library Sciences, Philosophy, Area Studies, History, Theology, Environmental Sciences, Law, Communications, and Business.
• In the 1400s range were: Performing Arts, Architecture, Psychology, Health, Education, Transportation, and the Military.
• In the 1300s range were: Agriculture, Administration, Family Science, Security, Recreation, and Culinary Services.
• In the 1200s range were: Construction and Technicians.

What should we make of the fact that prospective bureaucrats did worse on the SAT than prospective farmers?

Sacrifice, Entitlement, and Higher Education

I have noticed two trends in higher education that may be correlated.

The first trend has to do with the exorbitant cost of higher education which has been generally rising at a much higher rate than inflation, and has been for decades.

The trend I am interested in, however, is a by-product of this larger trend. Because the cost of higher education, particularly of an advanced degree, has been rising so quickly it has resulted long ago in the phenomenon that individuals who got advanced degrees in certain subjects, like the humanities, being incapable of getting a job upon graduation that would allow them to pay back their student loans. The problem became so severe that many graduate schools did something about it.

About fifteen to twenty years ago, most graduate schools moved to the model of not accepting any student unless they could fully fund them. This seemed to be the socially responsible thing to do. It is, on a certain level. There are two problems with it, however.

The first problem is that a number of students are denied the opportunity to get an education that might otherwise benefit them because the graduate schools will only admit students it can fully fund. These students cannot reach their full potential because access to the education is denied them.

Unfortunately, not all graduate schools are wise in their selection of graduate students. For example, during the time that I was a graduate student at Yale, every student selected to receive the top scholarship failed to finish their graduate program. There were all sorts of reasons given for the problem and probably a different reason could be given for each student. I mention it merely to point out that the track record of selecting graduate students to receive money at that particular school at that particular time was not great.

The second trend I am interested in is the much discussed sense of entitlement supposedly found among millennials. I do not think this is necessarily accurate because I do not think it is necessarily a generational thing. I know a number of individuals from earlier generations (including early boomers) that also manifest a sense of entitlement disproportionate to their accomplishments. Whether the sense of entitlement is increasing or not, those who have the misfortune of working with those who are entitled generally agree that having a sense of entitlement is not a good thing.

I do not have data at the moment to support a correlation, but it seems to me that the first trend directly feeds into the second trend. That is, fully funding graduate students without their having to work for it might promote a sense of entitlement in them. It is a hypothesis that at least can be tested.

With that in mind, some time ago, I encountered a little essay about the sacrifices that some people still make to get an education. Having made some sacrifices for my education I appreciate stories like this of the sacrifices made. We need more of them.

An Observation from Agatha Christie

Over seventy years ago, Agatha Christie made the following observation in an exchange between her protagonist and a scientist:

I said, "You mightn't want money for yourself--but wisely directed, money may do a lot of interesting things. It can endow research, for example."

I had supposed that Clemency might be a fanatic about her work, but she merely said:

"I doubt if endowments ever do much good. They're usually spent in the wrong way. The things that are worth while are usually accomplished by someone with enthusiasm and drive--and with natural vision. Expensive equipment and training and experiment never does what you'd imagine it might do. The spending of it usually gets into the wrong hands."

(Agatha Christie, Crooked House [New York: Pocket Books, 1951], 131.)

The copyright date on the book is 1948, but the sentiment sounds very modern.

Four years ago, Elder Dale G. Renlund shared an insight into why Agatha Christie's observation holds true:

“The greater the distance between the giver and the receiver, the more the receiver develops a sense of entitlement.”

I have seen that his insight is true.

News on Donor Intent

This article is about a month old but tells an interesting story about what happened when Sherlock Hibbs tried to pass on what he learned to the rising generation (another report here, the other side here). Hibbs set up an endowment at his alma mater, the University of Missouri, to teach the Ludwig von Mises Austrian School of Economics that helped him become so successful. Von Mises advocated for free markets and the role of the entrepreneur. Apparently, the University of Missouri was happy to accept Hibbs's millions but was not so enamored with von Mises and his economics and so was using the money for other purposes. Many academics follow economic theories along the following lines: What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too.

Hibbs, however, was wiser than many philanthropists and gave an outside organization power to police the use of the funds. When that outside organization discovered that the University of Missouri was not following the donor intent, they sued the University of Missouri. The court ruled that the University of Missouri was not following donor intent and must surrender the funds. There is probably a lesson in here somewhere.

Growing the University

A growing university needs expanded facilities. So it was with the new University of Heidelberg. The University was founded in 1386, but benefited from actions of its benefactor in 1392. That was the year that Ruprecht II expelled the Jews from Heidelberg. So the university took what others had built and used it for their own, very different, purposes. Their synagogue became a chapel to Mary and a lecture hall. The university took over the other possessions of the Jews, particularly their land, for their own purposes. The current Marstallhof seems to be on this land.

The Right to Bear Arms

The last couple of years, some of my American colleagues have protested the existence of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Some states had passed laws allowing people to carry concealed weapons on campus. These colleagues have determined to punish these states by boycotting them on the grounds that they would not feel safe on campuses in those states.

How things have changed! In fourteenth century Heidelberg the right to bear arms was also a source of tension between the students and professors at the university and the citizens of the city. But at that time, the citizens were not allowed bear arms, while the students and professors were!

The Idea of a University

In 1386 the ruler of Heidelberg, Ruprecht I, founded the university in Heidelberg. It was the third university in the Holy Roman Empire, following after Prague (founded in 1348) and Wien (founded in 1365). It was modeled after the Sorbonne in Paris. It was inaugurated on 18 October 1386 with a mass in the chapel at the Marktplatz in Heidelberg. The first classes were held the next day, covering Paul’s epistle to Titus, Aristotle’s Physics, and Logic. The university had three faculty members, led by the Dutch scholar, Marsilius von Inghen. It was not unusual for students to be as young as twelve.

The founding documents of the university called for four faculties: theology, law (both civil and canonical), medicine, and the arts. What distinguished the university from other institutions of learning is that students were expected to study in all the subjects and to be universal in their knowledge rather than specialists in one narrow subject. Echoes of both the subjects and the approach can be seen in the opening lines of Faust in Goethe’s play by that name:

Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerei und Medizin,
Und leider auch Theologie!
Durchaus studiert, mit heißem Bemühn.
Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor!
(Goethe, Faust, 354-359) 

Modern universities have strayed rather far from the original intent of a university. It is typical to emphasize the students becoming specialists rather than generalists. That narrowness of vision is exactly the kind of thing that a university was originally designed (and designated) to combat.

On Supposed Tips for LDS Graduate Students

A recent blog post over on the ironically named "Faith Promoting Rumor" blog purports to give advice to prospective graduate students in "in Religious Studies (broadly conceived), the Ancient Near East, Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Early Christian Lit., Late Antique, Patristics, etc." This has caused some concern in certain quarters, though perhaps not for the reasons someone might think. I have a few comments to make in general and some on the specific recommendations made.

In the first place, the recommendations are made by someone who writes anonymously, apparently with no qualifications whatsoever. How would she know what a graduate school is looking for? Has she even been to graduate school? Anonymous recommendations on the internet should have no credibility. If someone is not willing to sign their real name to something, why should anyone trust it?

There are some clear indications that the author of the blog post does not know what she is talking about. Thus it is the product of some ignorant ideological biases.

I write this post as someone who successfully was admitted to graduate school, successfully completed graduate school and has successfully gotten a job in academia, who advises prospective graduate students, who has sat on graduate degree committees and on committees that award graduate school funding, and who has actually talks with people who are involved in graduate school admissions.

Committees are not monolithic entities. They are composed of individuals who come to the committee with their own ideas, qualifications, and biases. All it may take is one wrong person to change the entire committee. For example, I once sat on a committee where one individual insisted that money be given to a candidate who did not even meet the minimal qualifications for it. Sometimes success or failure is simply a matter of who is sitting on the committee.

1. The first piece of advice is to avoid Studia Antiqua. Studia Antiqua is a student journal. The papers are usually suggested by professors who thought that the paper was promising. The papers are peer reviewed and authors work with a faculty mentor and a faculty editor to get the paper ready for publication. Our anonymous author thinks that this is a bad thing, saying: "I would avoid it." After all, who needs intensive help on your writing or experience with the academic publication process? I looked through the past issues of Studia Antiqua and see that many of the students who published in its pages in the past not only made it into graduate school but now have academic jobs. Obviously, this is the kind of thing that our anonymous author wants to avoid.


2. The second and third pieces of advice deals with being a professor's research assistant or co-authoring a paper with a professor. "Avoid this," our anonymous author advises. I have not had many research assistants but half of them made it into top graduate programs. If that is a consequence that you want to avoid, please do so.


3. See point two.


4. The fourth piece of advice has to do with starting a personal blog. Don't do this. If you need any reasons not to do it, look no further than our anonymous blog author. I have seen many graduate students sink their careers with blogs.


5. The fifth point advises students against working with FAIR or Interpreter. Our anonymous author advises: "DO NOT DO THIS." Actually, FAIR prefers to work with people who already have finished their schooling, like Michael Otterson, Richard Bushman, Terryl Givens, and so on. Surely that must be disreputable company. The last graduate student I knew of to publish with Interpreter just got a tenure-track job. If you do not want that to happen to you, then by all means avoid Interpreter and FAIR. There are publications that will seriously damage your job prospects. I have known individuals whose involvement with Sunstone and Dialogue have cost them jobs that otherwise they would have gotten.


6. The last piece of advice has to do with accepting jobs on academic projects. Our anonymous adviser says, "DO NOT DO THIS unless you really, really need the job." Well, yes, someday you probably will need the job. I am reminded of a certain non-Mormon academic who really, really needed the job. She took a job doing research on one of these Mormon projects. Later she got a job at a certain Ivy League school and now runs one of the top graduate programs in the country. Going to "work with [Mormon apologists] on their latest project on something that only deals with LDS matters" certainly hurt her job prospects.

So our anonymous author advises:

Listen, friends, we know that you want to help your faith community, we know that these various opportunities and venues are incredibly enticing (and let’s be honest, flattering), but if you are applying or will be applying to grad school, you simply must watch out for number one. You are number one. Not the big name apologist, not the security of your faith community (it will be just fine!), not anyone else but you.

There is a word for this attitude, and it is selfish. What does it profit someone if they gain their degree and lose their soul? If personal integrity and your covenants mean nothing to you, you can follow the advice of someone who not only will not even sign her own name to her opinions, but will not even take her own advice. This individual is well-meaning but not necessarily well-informed. Somehow people who don't follow her advice have managed to get into graduate school, to earn degrees, and get jobs, sometimes precisely because they did not follow her advice.

Does Anyone Actually Believe This?

Recently a government website launched making comparisons between the cost of going to various universities. Looking at their data, something does not pass the smell test. Here are a number of universities and the government claims about how much it costs to go to each school for a year (arranged highest to lowest):

Catholic University of America $34,086

Emory University $28,463

Duke University $28,058

University of Notre Dame $27,845

University of Chicago $25,335

Columbia University $22,672

Yale University $16,743

Stanford University $15,713

University of Utah $14,114

Harvard University $14,049

University of California-Berkeley $13,769

Brigham Young University $13,070

University of Wyoming $11,292

Utah Valley University $9,642

I do not believe these numbers. Who seriously thinks that it is cheaper to go to Harvard or UC Berkeley than the University of Utah? Emory, Harvard, and Yale have roughly comparable tuition (in the $45,000 range). Something very strange is going on here.

Faking It

This news report covers another instance of an individual faking data in a widely-publicized study designed to advance a particular narrative. The lead author on the study, Columbia University Political Scientist Donald Green, has done the honorable thing upon finding that his co-author faked his data, and retracted the study. A full report can be found at Retraction Watch.

The upshot is that the individual who allegedly faked the data, Michael LaCour, has allegedly been hired as "an Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Politics at Princeton University."

The anthropologist Jonathan Marks makes some apposite remarks:

Incompetence is not a defense, and the end does not justify the means. . . . After all, once you have established that your colleague's work is not reliable, it really doesn't matter why. If some scientists don't do good research, it is difficult to maintain that they should nevertheless still be employed and receiving grants, much less that you want to continue collaborating with them!

The problem with the "incompetence defense," then, is that it implicitly raises a question about the rest of their work and about your own judgment in standing by incompetent work. To say someone is a sloppy researcher whose work is riddled with mistakes is not a compliment, and it immediately raises the questions of why you are associated with such a person, how competent the rest of their research has been, and why they should remain at work. I can think of no other profession in which that would be tolerated.

(Jonathan Marks, Why I am Not a Scientist (Berkeley: University of Californian Press, 2009), 189.)

Kudos to Professor Green for doing the right thing and to UC Berkeley graduate students, David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, and Yale professor, Peter Aronow, for bringing this fraudulence to light. As Marks notes: "it is not in anyone's interests to find fraud, and they will go to odd lengths to avoid it." (ibid.)

[Update: Apparently Michael LaCour made up information on his CV including funding sources, and awards. Here, is an interview with Donald Green about the whole affair. Green's comments about the role of faith in scholarship are worth quoting:

On the one hand, there’s obviously the potential for abuse in that sort of situation. On the other hand, in any professional settings, if we didn’t have certain baseline assumptions that our colleagues are acting honestly, or not making stuff, everything would grind to a halt. There’s no way to not have some degree of trust baked into the research process, right?

I agree. I think that one wants to be skeptical and build in checks, but without some degree of trust one would have to build in so many checks and so much redundancy into the system that nothing would be feasible except at very high cost. So there’s a cost of ratcheting up the level of mistrust.

Scholarship rests on a certain amount of faith in the trustworthiness of your colleagues.]

BYU's 2015 Commencement

Robert P. George delivered these remarks at the BYU Commencement yesterday. They are a good diagnosis of the situation facing religious institutions of higher education today. I am glad that he delivered them at BYU. They deserve to be read and pondered.

Becoming More Catholic?

In his recent book on Catholic higher education, Christian Smith praises the mission statement of Notre Dame, where he now teaches. He notes that at Notre Dame the ideal is to

seek to combine excellence in undergraduate education with maintaining a serious Catholic identity, character, and mission . . . [and] to engage in the highest quality original research, scholarship, and publishing in the sciences and humanities in an attempt to become a great research university.

(Christian Smith and John C. Cavadini, Building Catholic Higher Education [Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2014], xv.)

Smith notes that, "Realizing these three goals together is nearly impossible, though I refuse to say absolutely hopeless." (ibid.) Why? Smith explains:

Strong, almost irresistible sociological forces cause most religious colleges and universities to either (a) secularize on matters of faith (and prioritize research achievements--not that that necessarily leads to impressive results, as often it leads to mediocrity) or (b) become religiously sectarian (and sacrifice research achievements). Notre Dame can look to no successful existing models for realizing its combined goals in research, undergraduate education, and Catholic character.

(Smith and Cavadini, Building Catholic Higher Education, 39-40)

Smith thinks that this can only be done "by growing the Catholicism of both its academic programs and its faculty" (ibid., 28).

Smith garners hope from Notre Dame's recent(?) mission statement (ibid., 1-37). I wish Notre Dame the best and hope that Smith succeeds in his aspirations. There is reason to be somewhat dubious about the prospects though.

James T. Burtchaell in his impressive survey of seventeen representative Christian colleges that abandoned their faiths noted the following:

Almost without exception a rhetoric of concern began on these campuses just as the critical turn had been made. When the covenants and statements of purpose and conferences on the church relationship were produced, they served as a distraction from the fact that the turn had already passed the point of no return. It was common for educators and church executives to express their concern that their college could, or might, follow others into secularity, a decade or so after such misgivings had become useless. From another point of view they were not quite useless, because their real function was to provide cover and time for the new commitment to take hold. Also, these vision statements and preambles to bylaws invariably addressed outcomes instead of causes. For instance, they easily spoke of the college persevering in its offer of Christian values, but never of hiring those who could and would do the offering. While working on the menu they declined to hire a cook.

(James Tunstead Burtchaell, The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from their Christian Churches [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998], 833-34.)

I wish Notre Dame the best in keeping their university Catholic. Notre Dame deserves neither mediocrity nor secularism.

On a Sinking Ship and Its Captain

One of the biggest stories in higher education is that Sweet Briar College is closing its doors at the end of the academic year. It is a very sad tale. A couple of points in some of the stories are of some interest.

This story points to a number of signs that an institution of higher education is about to go belly-up:

What is the college’s tuition discount rate? Has it been increasing?

For those who do not know what it is, the tuition discount rate needs an explanation. Colleges charge a certain amount of tuition; it is one of their sources of revenue. Students offered scholarships or other financial packages pay a discounted tuition in comparison to those who pay full price. The tuition discount rate is the percentage of students whose tuition is discounted.

Has the college made its enrollment target the past few years?

Can the institution reach its basic goals? Does it do what it was set up to do?

Is the revenue the college receives from tuition after it awards financial aid (net tuition) going up, holding steady, or dropping? 

This is just basic economics. Institutions (higher-ed or not) whose expenses exceed their income are in trouble. When income streams close down, an institution is in trouble. Period.

How much debt has the college taken on in the past 10 years? What has that paid for? 

Where does the money go? Is it spent on luxury items or basic expenses? What sort of fancy remodeling has been done? Does the college fund junkets to hold conferences in an exotic locale as opposed to holding them on site? These can often be tricky judgment calls because some of these activities can be warranted under the proper circumstances but they can also be abused.

These questions are all the more pertinent as another article points out that the college's president had previously been involved in the misuse of university funds. So according to yet another article, while president of Trinity College, James F. Jones, Jr., tried to appropriate funds from one of Trinity's endowments, an endowed chair held by Gerald Gunderson, to fund other projects:

when James F. Jones, Jr. became president of Trinity College in 2004. Jones made no attempt to touch the portion of the endowment used to fund Gunderson’s chair, although at one point he threatened not to renew Gunderson’s contract (he does not have tenure). Jones tried to divert the assets of the Davis Endowment to other purposes, including funding scholarships for foreign students. In October 2008, according to a 2009 article in the Wall Street Journal, Jones had a particularly angry meeting with Gunderson where he called Gunderson “a liar and a bully” and said that he would, in the future, personally approve all expenditures “down to a box of paperclips.”

By this time, Gunderson had reported Jones to the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office, which regulates charities in that state. In February 2009, the attorney general’s office issued a ruling that declared that there was no evidence that Shelby Cullom Davis wanted either the college or his family to use the endowment’s income for any purpose “other than the study and promotion of the economic theories of the free enterprise system.”

In addition, the attorney general’s office found that Trinity College had illegally diverted $191,337 from the Davis Endowment to pay for an internship program. The regulators ordered Trinity College to restore the money to the endowment.

For the next four years, according to Gunderson, the battle over the Davis Endowment was “a stalemate,” with Jones proposing various schemes for diverting the endowment’s assets and the Connecticut attorney general’s office vetoing them. Gunderson praises the attorney general’s office—and in particular, Karen Gano, a career civil servant overseeing charities—for upholding the law and respecting donor intent.

Jones also managed to earn a red light for Trinity College from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and was forced to retire and thus move to his current position over Sweet Briar's $90 million endowment (or $84 million depending on the source). During Jones's time at Trinity, alumni donations plummeted; but fortunately they have rebounded after his departure, in part because the administration enacted changes to prevent Jones's abuses in the future:

The victory for donor intent at Trinity College has also spurred alumni giving. For their 25^th anniversary, the Trinity College Class of 1990 is establishing “The Alumni Fund for Trinity College,” a donor-advised fund independent of the college. The fund is established in honor of Gerald Gunderson, who the class says, “has labored tirelessly—and at personal expense—to ensure that the donor’s intent of the Shelby Cullom Davis Endowment was respected at Trinity College.”

Given the track record that Jones had at Trinity by some accounts, it is surprising that Sweet Briar would put him in charge of anything. Now Jones has a track record for destroying or nearly destroying two institutions of higher education. The spin that Sweet Briar put on his selection was that:

the search committee was impressed with Jones’ professional accomplishments, his commitment to collaboration and transparency at every level, and his understanding of the College.

According to the news release Jones was the "retiring president of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn."

According to Paul Rice, chair of the Sweet Briar College Board of Directors:

Jimmy’s twenty years of experience as a highly effective president of two distinguished liberal arts colleges, his academic credentials, his boundless energy, and his knowledge of Sweet Briar uniquely qualify him for this appointment. He will be a solid leader as we navigate the College’s immediate future and complete the research and planning already underway for long-term sustainability.”

Sweet Briar depicted Jones as a tremendously successful fund raiser while at Trinity:

During Jones’ decade as president, Trinity saw more than 30 percent growth in its overall College endowment and achieved significant annual fund growth. Today, annual fund contributions represent between 8 and 9 percent of the college’s operating budget — almost double the contribution 10 years ago.

The two accounts of Jones's tenure at Trinity do not sound the same at all. Sweet Briar omits all the red flags that appear in the other account.

I also find it interesting that Jones was appointed only as an interim president. Sweet Briar's previous president, Ellen Parker, claimed as she left:

Sweet Briar could not have found a more ideal interim president.

This was, of course, last year. Much has changed in the intervening time. For Sweet Briar the interim president would seem to be its last.

Sweet Briar seems to have had some problems before Jones came along and that nine months was not sufficient time for Jones to destroy the college by himself. If Sweet Briar has had a 60 percent discount rate on $47,000 tuition, then Jones simply has not had time to change anything in that regard; all those students were admitted under the previous administration. It may just be coincidence that Jones came on board in time to sink the ship, but his history as captain does not exactly inspire confidence.

Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell University Higher Education Research Institute, praised the decision of Sweet Briar's board, saying:

It seems like a very principled decision. If we can’t maintain our fundamental mission, we should get out of the business.

Apparently there were a number of proposals that would have required Sweet Briar to alter its mission but these were legally problematic.

So it appears as though Jones was brought in as an interim president because Sweet Briar thought he could work some sort of fund-raising magic at their college. The problems of his previous administration are unmentioned in the press announcement. Whatever Sweet Briar hoped he would accomplish, closing the doors was probably not on the list.

Notes on Modern Scribal Training II

In a previous post, I looked at the requirements to get a doctoral degree in Hebrew Bible from a good school. A number of people thought I was looking down at those programs. Not at all. They are good programs. They may not require everything but they require some good things. To see this, lets take a look a what it takes to get a doctoral degree in biblical studies from other schools.

Concordia Seminary

Concordia Seminary is a fine Lutheran school with a distinguished list of alumni including Martin E. Marty, Frederick W. Danker, Jaroslav Pelikan and Richard John Neuhaus. According to their catalog to get a degree in Hebrew Bible requires the following coursework:

A total of 36 quarter hours of classroom work for credit at the 800 level, generally, two courses per quarter for two years.

They must demonstrate command of Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, German and one other language. And they must take the following courses:

EO804 Advanced Hebrew Readings
EN804 Advanced Greek Readings
EO80X Old Testament Issues
EN80X New Testament Issues
E8XX Advanced Biblical Theology
Two Major Figures Courses (6 credits)
One Old Testament and one New Testament course (6 credits) 

Neither history nor archaeology is required for the Ph.D.

Claremont

The Claremont School of Theology offers a degree in Hebrew Bible.

Students in the Hebrew Bible track must pass research language exams in French and German as well as an examination in Biblical Hebrew and demonstrate competence in Aramaic. Students are also required to study at least one additional Semitic language. Normally, the additional language will be Akkadian, although Ugaritic, Syriac, Arabic, and other relevant languages may be substituted with the permission of the student’s program advisor.

 Students are specifically required to take courses in the following:

T HB4033: Aramaic 4 units
Minimum 16 credit hours in Hebrew Bible 16 units
Free Electives 8 units
Hebrew Bible Track Additional Requirements – 20 units
Additional Hebrew Bible Electives 16 units
One additional Semitic language, such as Akkadian, Ugaritic, Syriac, or Arabic 4 unit

But that is not all:

In addition, students may take up to two courses (8 credits) in religious traditions outside of Judaism.

So neither history or archaeology is required here either.

Illif School of Theology

The Iliff School of Theology is a Methodist university that offers doctorates in biblical studies. The course requirements are:

Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion
Lived Religion Colloquium
Conceptual Approaches to Religion Colloquium
Text, Image, and Artifact Colloquium
Pedagogy and the Teaching of Religion
Dissertation Proposal Seminar

Additionally students must pass an exam in a modern language (and modern language classes do not count toward graduation requirements):

Typically French, German, or Spanish, this language allows the student to read scholarship in the field of religious studies.

 And just in case you thought they forgot it:

Students focusing in biblical studies must acquire additional languages such as Hebrew, Greek, and/or Aramaic, as primary content in their field.

The artifact colloquium may or may not cover archaeology. History is not required and it looks as though only one ancient language is required and there is no indication how much.

Dallas Theological Seminary

The Dallas Theological Seminary is one of the top evangelical universities in the country. PhD students in Hebrew Bible are required to pass a proficiency exam in Hebrew grammar and then take the following two courses:

OT103	Introduction to Hebrew Exegesis	3 hours
OT104	Principles of Hebrew Exegesis	3 hours

 Then they are allowed to proceed to stage two of the process:

For Biblical Studies majors, 9 hours of course work are required in divisional courses. In addition to this core curriculum, each student must take 12 hours in a concentration, either Old Testament Studies, New Testament Studies, or Bible Exposition and complete a 3-hour dissertation in their major field. Each student also has 11 hours of electives.

This includes numerous courses including mainly exegesis but also could include things like Akkadian, Ugaritic, or Northwest Semitic Inscriptions. What is on the books may not be offered all the time but this semester they are offering Hebrew grammar classes, two different courses on exegesis and an introduction to Ugaritic.

And, by the way:

Doctoral students are required to demonstrate ability to read scholarly French and German.

So neither history nor archaeology is even offered and languages other than Hebrew, German and French are not required.





Fazit

As can be seen, a doctorate in Hebrew Bible from some programs does not necessarily mean that one will have much more than a rudimentary grasp of Hebrew. It is possible in some programs not to have studied any other Semitic language. Some programs require only one modern foreign language though most seem to require two. Some programs not only do not require history or archaeology, they do not even offer them. A doctoral degree in Hebrew Bible may be very rigorous or extremely lax. You never know when you encounter someone with a doctorate in Hebrew Bible how much they might actually know or not know. At the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) meetings I have seriously met professors of Hebrew Bible who teach Hebrew at universities but who had never read more than a dozen chapters of the Bible in Hebrew. At SBL meetings one meets individuals who run the entire gamut from the prodigiously learned and frightfully competent to the abysmally ignorant and dreadfully incompetent and everything in between. I have avoided pointing fingers at any specific individual even though I have used specific examples of real programs. One cannot assume much of someone who has a doctoral degree in biblical studies. That may not be how it should be, but that is how it actually is.

Notes on Modern Scribal Training

In consequence of something I mentioned earlier (here), A friend of mine (who is a physician) asked if it is true that one can become a biblical scholar without taking any archaeology or history classes.

Here are only the coursework requirements (not teaching, writing, or dissertation requirements) from a number of Ph.D. programs in biblical studies. All of these programs have good reputations:

Brandeis:

A certain amount of coursework is required:

Three years of full-time residence are required at the normal rate of at least seven term courses each academic year.

These courses could cover many subjects but the following are required:

Students in the Bible and Ancient Near East concentration (BANE) must establish competence in biblical Hebrew, Akkadian, Northwest Semitic Languages, and two secondary research languages (normally German and French); in addition, students focusing on Bible must establish competence in modern Hebrew as a research language. 

Aside from demonstrating competence in five different languages, no other courses or subjects are listed as required.

This is supported by this paragraph:

Students in the BANE doctoral program take courses for the first three years. Typically a student will take four courses each semester (the minimum full time load is seven courses per year). In a typical semester, a student will take a course in Hebrew Bible, Akkadian and Northwest Semitics, with a fourth text or content course. (The latter includes courses such as Ancient Near Eastern Religion and Mythology, Women in the Bible, Near Eastern Law, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.) The fourth course may be chosen in accordance with a student's ultimate specialty. Students interested in grammar or semitics are encouraged to study Arabic; those who want to do textual criticism should study Greek. Each student is to consult with all BANE faculty members about course selection at the beginning of each semester.

So Brandeis does not require courses in archaeology or history.

Harvard:

This is complicated because there are a number of different degrees. If one wants to get a degree in Religion with an emphasis in Hebrew Bible, then the following is required:

A high standard of reading proficiency in two modern languages of secondary scholarship relevant to a student's course of study (in addition to English) is required. This proficiency is to be demonstrated through coursework or by exam after enrollment in the program. A student and his or her adviser will determine the choice of the two modern languages, which should not be confused with primary source languages necessary for the specialization. Typically French and German are selected as modern languages of secondary scholarship, however in certain fields other modern languages are more relevant.

In addition:

The committee requires of each student satisfactory completion of two common seminars in the first two years (normally in the first and fourth term of study), and in addition two courses outside the specialty, focusing on a religious tradition, a geographical-historical complex or a methodological approach other than the one a student elects as the context of study.

 For Hebrew Bible specifically, the requirements are:

The field of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament requires students to pursue a number of languages to attain the requisite proficiency of a scholar in the field. These include biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and German. Students often study others, such as Akkadian, Ugaritic, Egyptian, Modern Hebrew, and French, as well.

No other specific courses are required. The student will face the following four examinations:

1. The language and textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
2. Issue in Biblical Scholarship, which concentrates on literary, historical, theological, and hermeneutical issues.
3. An area of concentration, of which the most common are (a) the religion of ancient Israel and the comparative study of religion, (b) pre-exilic history, (c) post-exilic Second Temple history, (d) late Second Temple, early rabbinic, and early Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, and (d) theology of the Hebrew Bible. Students work out their area of concentration with the faculty.
4. A special topic, to be worked out in consultation with the relevant faculty.

Through the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, two different Ph.D. programs are offered: Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and the Hebrew Bible in its Jewish Interpretive Context. Both have the following course requirements:

PhD candidates are required to complete a minimum of sixteen half-courses or the equivalent. Particular requirements of certain fields of study may require additional coursework.

The primary language requirements are:

The major language of the student’s field of research is normally one of the fields of the general examinations.
In addition, all students are expected to have or acquire knowledge of a second departmental language. The minimum level of competence expected in this requirement is a grade of B in the final examination of a second-year course in the language.
Instead of such language coursework, a student may demonstrate the equivalent level of competence in a required language by taking a special examination administered by a member of the faculty.
If a second departmental language is included in the general examinations, the level of competence will be significantly greater than that ­required in a second-year language course examination.

The modern language requirements are as follows:

Each student must demonstrate reading proficiency in two modern languages of secondary scholarship (other than English) of direct relevance to their proposed subject of study. One of these languages must be either French or German.

But one should note the following:

Courses in the languages of modern scholarship do not count toward the required sixteen half-courses or the equivalent (see above).

Though courses are offered in biblical archaeology, it does not appear that anyone is required to take them. Courses in history seem to be encouraged but not required.

Johns Hopkins:

This is the university where Albight taught. A number of languages are required:

The study of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible forms the core of the program.  Students read a wide variety of texts in Hebrew each semester.   The three-year cycle of courses currently includes Archaic Biblical Poetry, Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomistic History (Book of Kings), Prophetic Literature (The Book of Ezekiel), Wisdom Literature (The Book of Job, Qohelet [=Ecclesiastes]) and Persian Period Texts. The approach of each course varies yet common methodologies include textual criticism, historical linguistics, literary criticism, and the application of socio-scientific methods.

Other ancient languages are also required:

 The academic study of the Hebrew Bible as an ancient Near Eastern text requires additional training in cognate languages.  In addition to a student’s minor language (two-three years of Akkadian and/or Egyptian, on which see below), students must also master other languages in the Northwest Semitic language family especially Aramaic and Ugaritic.

Johns Hopkins is one of the rare programs in biblical studies to emphasize epigraphy:

Students are trained in epigraphic methods (both conventional and digital) through dedicated courses covering epigraphic Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician and Moabite as well as texts that resist easy classification such as the TransJordanian Deir Alla texts.  In addition, the advanced course in Aramaic deals almost exclusively with epigraphic Aramaic (especially concentrating on Old Aramaic inscriptions).  All Ugaritic texts are read from the original alphabetic cuneiform inscriptions.

They also emphasize placing the Bible in its ancient Near Eastern milieu which means studying history:

Most noticeable is our requirement that all students complete a three-year Near Eastern history cycle--a year each of Egyptian history, Mesopotamian history, and Syro-Palestinian history.  Seminars (e.g. The Seminar in Israelite Religion) regularly situate topics under discussion (e.g. Divinity, Royal Cult, Domestic Religion, Sacred Space, Blood Rituals, Divination) in their broader ancient Near Eastern cultural context.

Johns Hopkins is exceptional in emphasizing material culture:

All students in Hebrew Bible/Northwest Semitics are strongly encouraged to study material culture.  Through the efforts of William Foxwell Albright, Johns Hopkins was the institution that gave birth to the discipline of  Syro-Palestinian Archaeology (formerly termed “Biblical Archaeology”). We have a very strong graduate program in Near Eastern Archaeology, one of our four areas of concentration. 

The strong encouragement is good, but there seems to be no archaeology requirement but history is required.

Yale:

There are three different ways to study the Hebrew Bible at Yale: One is through the Department of Religious Studies, one is through the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

In Religious Studies, one must take the following languages:

Language prerequisites for admission to graduate study in the field are as follows: two or more years of Biblical Hebrew (most applicants have more than two years); some Greek; and a reading knowledge of German and French. Proficiency in German must be demonstrated on entrance and proficiency in French must be demonstrated before the beginning of the third year. Proficiency in German and French is demonstrated by (1) passing an examination administered by the department; (2) by accreditation from a Yale Summer School course designed for this purpose; or (3) by achieving a grade of A or B in one of Yale’s intermediate language courses. During the first two years of course work, students must take at least one semester of Biblical Aramaic, if they have not already studied that language, and they must take a full year of Ugaritic. Students normally take at least a year of another ancient language, usually Akkadian, although in some cases Arabic, Greek, Egyptian, or further work in Aramaic may be appropriate.

Additionally, they must take other courses:

Each student must take at least one graduate seminar in OT/HB and at least one of the following advanced Hebrew courses each semester: Rapid Reading and the Syntax of Hebrew Prose, Problems in Biblical Hebrew Poetry, Problems in the History of the Hebrew Language, Text Criticism. Students normally fill in the remainder of their course schedules with aditional language work, biblical seminars, or courses in related fields, such as New Testament, Judaic Studies, Classics, Anthropology, or Literary Criticism.

There is no archaeology requirement and no history requirement and no courses are listed.

Through Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, things have changed:

 The Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations no longer maintains an active independent doctoral program in Northwest Semitic languages, Bible, or Comparative Semitics, although courses in Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and cognate languages are regularly available in the Department. Students interested in doctoral study in Bible and Northwest Semitic languages or in the history, culture, and religion of Israel are advised to consult the Department of Religious Studies.

 So neither archaeology nor history is required.

Fazit

So the short answer to the question is that one can get a good Ph.D. in biblical studies from a very reputable university without any exposure to archaeology. This does not, of course, mean that all those with doctoral degrees from these institutions have necessarily gotten their degrees without exposure to archaeology or history, just that such courses of study have not been required. That top programs in biblical studies do not require either history or archaeology says something about how biblical studies in conceived by its practitioners.

An Exception to the Rule

In most cases the comments sections on the internet are not worth reading. They are typically full of bile. In this case, at least when I looked at it, the comments were better than the article:

http://www.dailycal.org/2015/01/20/occupy-syllabus/

As one of the commentators said, it almost looks like an article from the Onion.