Richard H Armstrong

Today marks the 210th anniversary of my family’s departure from Ireland for America—initially for Pennsylvania, then the Ohio frontier.  I didn’t know this so exactly until this summer, when I chanced upon the original manifest listing 11 Armstrongs aboard the Brig Louisa, which left Londonderry August 27, 1808 for Philadelphia, at that time the Ellis Island of the Germans and Scots-Irish.  We always knew something of the date and even something of the family that came over, but to see their names huddled together in a manifest as passengers in steerage was a moving discovery. 

I confess slightly before I found this document, I had already been infected by the peculiar fever of family history.  A proximal cause was really my wife’s interest in her own Texas family, which brought me to the Clayton Library for Genealogical Research in Houston. Before I entered, I hadn’t realized it has a wealth of material for the whole United States, and as I walked over to the Ohio section, my eyes immediately landed on volumes for Muskingum County. My ancestors were original settlers in two townships of that county, and there they were in a variety of local records—their lands, their marriages, their graves.  That was the edge of the rabbit hole, I’m afraid, and I fell down it completely over the next few months.

There comes a point, I think, where anyone who becomes obsessed with family history and genealogy must wonder why this is happening.  It’s not that I wasn’t interested before; I think I was just taking a lot of it for granted, because there were others to do the heavy lifting. My Uncle Don was famously the family genealogist, and we relied on him to get the story straight for many years. And I doubt it’s a coincidence that his passing earlier this year pushed me into feeling greater responsibility for keeping this history alive.

Upon further reflection, I came to realize this obsession was actually a fairly healthy way to process a considerable amount of loss that has occurred over the past five years. In that time, I have lost both parents, two uncles, two cousins and nearly lost a son. So a feeling of responsibility for the family history isn’t just a matter of realizing we are the oldest generation now that our parents are gone; it’s also a matter of clinging to the wider sense of it all.  There is a strange if melancholic beauty to reading the wider web of a family’s experience, particularly if it spans so many generations.

What I least expected, however, was to find a role model. My great great great great grandfather Alexander Armstrong came over from Ireland with his brother James and their families, and managed by the end of his life to settle every one of his five children plus his nephew on a farm of their own, with more acreage than they could ever have dreamed of as poor tenant farmers back in northern Ireland.  I was inspired by the details I discovered to begin to write up a narrative of their crossing, land purchases, and life on the frontier, which I have titled The Armstrong Chronicles. This will be useful, I hope, for the family; at least I hope it will be mildly indulged. So far I have published Part I and Part II on this site, and will continue the narrative of settlement as time allows in subsequent installments. Part II will at least serve as a guide to anyone interested in seeing the places our ancestors cleared for settlement.

It certainly has been the most constructive way I could find to process the personal losses of the past five years.  We live so embedded in our own lives, it is difficult to imagine we are part of a larger story.  I now know I can at least draw strength and comfort from that larger narrative web, and I hope others will find so too.

It’s that time of year when Human Situation students are getting ready for the final oral examination.  Since oral exams are rare and the students are largely freshmen, it’s understandable that they don’t quite know what to expect.  I have posted something over the last few years that turns out to be very helpful, so I’m reposting it now with a little freshening up.

First of all, if you’ve seen the rubric, you can tell that we are looking at the full range of texts in the semester.  At a minimum, you should have something to say about every text we read. We don’t expect total recall of the whole text of say, the Odyssey; but it is not unreasonable for us to expect you to remember the names of major characters, the general incidents and outline of the work as well as some details that were personally significant to you. We dwell on particular scenes in discussion and lecture, and we’d expect those discussions to stick in your memory. And you’ve heard arguments that trace the broader arc of plot and character throughout the work. If you sound as though all you know could have been taken from Spark Notes, then we’re not that impressed.  We’d like you to show some fluency in the world of the Odyssey—including the overlap between it and the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. 

We also expect you to retain key elements of the arguments in a Platonic dialogue, so review the Phaedo and understand the premises, the theories of the soul, the role of the Forms in Socrates’ argument. It won’t work to just say, “Well, I read the Phaedo and I just don’t buy it.” While it’s fine to push back against arguments in such texts, you have do so with some detail. You don’t get points for gut reactions. Here the hard work you’ve done in your papers can really pay off.

Admittedly a more diffuse narrative text like Ezra-Nehemiah or Livy’s History of Rome can be a challenge to keep in your head. But you can develop strategies to remember the episodes by thinking of their position within larger framing narratives, or by linking them thematically as you study. As always, committing to some level of detail on a part can be as important as getting a sense for the whole. Think which parts of the work connect most relevantly to your brief—that’s one way to prepare for the exam efficiently.

Another thing to keep in mind is the specific text types and genres we have covered, and how they should be read differently. You have read some Egyptian poetry, a long Greek epic poem, a Greek tragedy, some narrative texts from the Hebrew Bible, a philosophical dialogue, part of a very long history of Rome, and a work called Confessions that at times reads like an autobiography, but at other times seems more a work of philosophy or theology. Try not to lump them all together (DO NOT CALL THE ODYSSEY A NOVEL), but have some sense and respect for their generic differences.

Ultimately, the exam shouldn’t really be all that much about your memory of texts and arguments—it’s not a trivia contest. It’s a lot more about your engagement with the reading. So what’s the difference between a B- and a solid A exam?  Here are some observations.

1. An A exam feels like the examinee has conviction based upon a thoroughly digested reading of the texts.  This means thinking through the arguments, pulling them apart, comparing them, and coming up with new ideas. Hopefully you have done this in your discussion sections and your papers.  All that previous work is fair to use for the oral final; use it, but build on it. Repetition doesn’t get you much.
2. In an A exam, there is solid textual detail that naturally comes forward.  While we don’t expect you to remember everything we might mention, we do expect some decent kind of recall.  However, when you offer of your own accord some detailed textual analysis, we can’t help but be impressed. That’s why memorizing some parts of texts is always a great fallback, particularly when they are central to your understanding of the text.
3. An A exam is not one where we have to walk you through the connections.  Sometimes the examiner poses a question that immediately draws two texts into play.  Once you see the connection, a lot of things should fall into place. But if the examiner has to map them out for you, then you get a lot less credit for the discussion.
4. In an A exam, the examinee is often as ready to teach as to learn. While we don’t expect it to happen in every exam, the fun thing for us is that we sometimes learn to see things differently based on what students say in the oral final. This again reflects not just assimilation of information, but a new synthesis and digestion of all this from your perspective.
5. In an A exam, the examinee holds her own without bluster.  This means that in the give and take of questioning, she keeps her poise but also allows herself to think, in order to add judicious insight and nuance to her answers.  One common mistake is to think we’ll read bluster and obstinance as conviction and certainty.  You can get marked down for simply riding one hobby horse through all the texts, so remember that this is a conversation, not a debate tournament.  Learning to concede points, to qualify claims, or to reflect on the implications of a line of reasoning are all part of critical thinking. There is more to critical discourse than talking fast. Sometimes taking a moment to ponder and formulate an answer to a good question looks quite respectable.
6. In terms of the show Chopped: You need to use all of the ingredients from the basket, but it’s not enough just to toss them on the plate. You need to transform the ingredients and give us a real sense of your cooking skills.

Lastly, these observations are not made as some kind of ideal of what an A exam should be.  These are actual descriptions of what A exams are like, from the point of view of the examiner. There really are people out there who will get an A.  It’s not easy to do, but people do succeed at this all the time. And we are always very proud of them.  Good luck!

Happily, in an Honors College plagiarism isn’t a rampant problem, so my work in policing students is fairly light duty. But something I tend to use as a talking point when I’ve called in someone for “processing” in an academic honesty case is this: plagiarism corrupts the whole of the academic enterprise of free thought. That sounds like moral grandstanding, but for anyone who makes a living trading ideas with colleagues, it’s quite simply the truth.

Plagiarism is often seen as a victimless crime by freshmen, most of whom commit such deeds merely out of desperation. This is why it’s essential for every college and university to have a rigorous process to teach incoming students about the boundaries of intellectual discourse. The truth is, however, it’s not really a conceptual problem relating to intellectual property. Virtually all students I have dealt with in this context are indeed aware of what they are doing—taking someone else’s ideas as passing them off as their own. Their excuses tend to reveal something else: problems with time management, insufficient preparation for college-level writing, fear of failure that unfortunately leads to a worse kind of failure in the end. This is really just the background noise, as far as I’m concerned, and not the heart of the problem. Most freshmen once caught, penalized, and instructed move on all the wiser and commit no further infractions.

The dangerous element in plagiarism is what happens at the level of a senior thesis or a graduate degree, when we’re dealing with an attempt at original research supervised by an institution of higher learning. This has really come home to me in the case of Monica Crowley, President-Elect Trump’s choice for a high-level National Security position in his cabinet. As Politico’s Alex Caton and Grace Watkins report (Jan. 9, 2017), Crowley apparently plagiarized several sources in her Ph. D. dissertation for Columbia University. This simply astounds me. Part of the dissertation game is to show just how citation-studded a work the budding scholar can produce, and yet it seems Crowley repeatedly violated Columbia’s own rules concerning both intentional and unintentional plagiarism by failing to cite sources and by using barely altered text in her thesis.  This was in the year 2000, i.e., well within the period when all such theses are searchable texts. Why take such risks? Caton and Wakins do a good job of what we plagiarism czars do in such cases: they lay out side by side comparisons for the readers to judge what is going on. And it’s very clear: theft.

This revelation comes after a CNN report that Crowley did exactly the same kind of thing in her 2012 book, What the (Bleep) Just Happened, where once again the theft did not consist in a few minor undocumented liftings, but a hefty pillaging of over 50 sources, including that freshman favorite, Wikipedia. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski again lays out parallel passages for those capable of evidence-based thinking and not content with mere accusations. There is a lot of evidence; and it doesn’t look good.

This goes to show that someone who gets away with plagiarism will not just be tempted to cut corners again, but may decide this is the smart way to go. Both Columbia University and Harper Collins (whose imprint Broadside Books published Crowley’s book) now have a serious problem on their hands. Crowley is clearly shameless enough to bluster through this, but the institutions have something truly at stake here—the credibility of their brand.

The irony is that when a Trump Administration spokesperson lauds Crowley’s “exceptional insight and thoughtful work” and discredits any criticism as “a politically motivated attack,” it’s all too plain to see who the political hacks are. For any academic, Crowley has been outed as a crook, plain and simple. And now we have a shining worst-case scenario for all our college students to ponder: see what happens when you lose your moral bearings in a scholarly context.

A case like this shows us what can happen when someone has more ambition than intelligence: it is very easy to get caught, and very hard to deny instances of theft so readily apparent. How is someone caught engaging in such deception supposed to have a role in National Security communications? One shudders to think what starting from so cynical a position will mean for the next four years.

It’s that time of year when Human Situation students are getting ready for the final oral examination.  Since oral exams are rare and the students are largely freshmen, it’s understandable that they don’t quite know what to expect.  I have posted something over the last few years that turns out to be very helpful, so I’m reposting it now with a little freshening up.

First of all, if you’ve seen the rubric, you can tell that we are looking at the full range of texts in the semester.  At a minimum, you should have something to say about every text we read. We don’t expect total recall of the whole text of say, the Iliad; but it is not unreasonable for us to expect you to remember the names of major characters, the general incidents and outline of the work as well as some details that were personally significant to you. We dwell on particular scenes in discussion and lecture, and we’d expect those discussions to stick in your memory. And you’ve heard arguments that trace the broader arc of plot and character throughout the work. If you sound as though all you know could have been taken from Spark Notes, then we’re not that impressed.  We’d like you to show some fluency in the world of the Iliad. 

We also expect you to retain key elements of the arguments in a Platonic dialogue, or in philosophical essays like Seneca’s On Anger. It won’t work to just say, “Well, I read the Republic and I just don’t buy it.” While it’s fine to push back against arguments in such texts, you have do so with some detail. You don’t get points for gut reactions. Here the hard work you’ve done in your papers can really pay off.

Admittedly a more diffuse narrative text like Ovid’s Metamorphoses can be a challenge to keep in your head. But you can develop strategies to remember the episodes by thinking of their position within larger framing narratives, or by linking them thematically as you study. As always, committing to some level of detail on a part can be as important as getting a sense for the whole. Think which parts of the work connect most relevantly to your brief—that’s one way to prepare for the exam efficiently.

Ultimately, the exam shouldn’t really be all that much about your memory of texts and arguments—it’s not a trivia contest. It’s a lot more about your engagement with the reading. So what’s the difference between a B- and a solid A exam?  Here are some observations.

1. An A exam feels like the examinee has conviction based upon a thoroughly digested reading of the texts.  This means thinking through the arguments, pulling them apart, comparing them, and coming up with new ideas. Hopefully you have done this in your discussion sections and your papers.  All that previous work is fair to use for the oral final; use it, but build on it. Repetition doesn’t get you much.
2. An A exam is not one where we have to walk you through the connections.  Sometimes the examiner poses a question that immediately draws two texts into play.  Once you see the connection, a lot of things should fall into place. But if the examiner has to map them out for you, then you get a lot less credit for the discussion.
3. In an A exam, the examinee is often as ready to teach as to learn. While we don’t expect it to happen in every exam, the fun thing for us is that we sometimes learn to see things differently based on what students say in the oral final. This again reflects not just assimilation of information, but a new synthesis and digestion of all this from your perspective.
4. In an A exam, there is solid textual detail that naturally comes forward.  While we don’t expect you to remember everything we might mention, we do expect some decent kind of recall.  However, when you offer of your own accord some detailed textual analysis, we can’t help but be impressed. That’s why memorizing some parts of texts is always a great fallback, particularly when they are central to your understanding of the text.
5. In an A exam, the examinee holds her own without bluster.  This means that in the give and take of questioning, she keeps her poise but also allows herself to think, in order to add judicious insight and nuance to her answers.  One common mistake is to think we’ll read bluster and obstinance as conviction and certainty.  You can get marked down for simply riding one hobby horse through all the texts, so remember that this is a conversation, not a debate tournament.  Learning to concede points, to qualify claims, or to reflect on the implications of a line of reasoning are all part of critical thinking. There is more to critical discourse than talking fast. Sometimes taking a moment to ponder and formulate an answer to a good question looks quite respectable.
6. In terms of the show Chopped: You need to use all of the ingredients from the basket, but it’s not enough just to toss them on the plate. You need to transform the ingredients and give us a real sense of your cooking skills.

Lastly, these observations are not made as some kind of ideal of what an A exam should be.  These are actual descriptions of what A exams are like, from the point of view of the examiner. There really are people out there who will get an A.  It’s not easy to do, but people do succeed at this all the time. And we are always very proud of them.  Good luck!

It’s that time of year when Human Situation students are getting ready for the final oral examination.  Since oral exams are rare and the students are largely freshmen, it’s understandable that they don’t quite know what to expect.  I posted something last year that turned out to be very helpful, so I’m reposting it now with a little freshening up.

First of all, if you’ve seen the rubric, you can tell that we are looking at the full range of texts in the semester.  At a minimum, you should have something to say about every text we read. We don’t expect total recall of the whole text of say, the Odyssey; but it is not unreasonable for us to expect you to remember the names of major characters, the general incidents and outline of the work as well as some details that were personally significant to you. We dwell on particular scenes in discussion and lecture, and we’d expect those discussions to stick in your memory. If you sound as though all you know could have been taken from Spark Notes, then we’re not that impressed.  You should really know who Polyphemus is, what the bow contest was, what’s so special about Odysseus’ bed or his scar, and whom Telemachus visits.

In a text like Plato’s Symposium, we expect you to retain the general nature of the speeches (yes, all of them) and how they relate to each other. We might throw a question at you like: why doesn’t the Symposium just end with the speech of Diotima?  It might be understandable that you’d forget the name Pausanias, but you should definitely remember the name Alcibiades and why his intrusion seems important. (And thanks to that last sentence, you will NOT forget the name Pausanias.)

Some of us are quite open to your challenging philosophical positions in the exam. For example, you might declare you find Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations to be seemingly inconsistent; however, expect immediately to be asked to explain the inconsistencies in detail.  It’s not enough to say, “I just don’t buy the argument.”  You should also be careful to review the meanings of words as defined in the context of the course. We might ask you, “What is yoga in the context of the Bhagavad Gita?” or “What would Marcus Aurelius think of kleos as a goal for virtuous action?”

If we are discussing the Hebrew Bible or a Christian work like Augustine’s Confessions, know that we expect you to engage them as texts. We are neither trying to convert you nor subvert your faith; but we are expecting you to enter into the terms and details of those books as texts. You don’t have to be a Christian or a Hindu to address a comparative question like, “How do Plato and Augustine see the nature of the soul’s desire as opposed to the Bhagavad Gita?”

Ultimately, the exam shouldn’t really be all that much about your memory of texts and arguments—it’s not a trivia contest. It’s a lot more about your engagement with the reading. So what’s the difference between a B- and a solid A exam?  Here are some observations.

1. An A exam feels like the examinee has conviction based upon a thoroughly digested reading of the texts.  This means thinking through the arguments, pulling them apart, comparing them, and coming up with new ideas. Hopefully you have done this in your discussion sections and your papers.  All that previous work is fair to use for the oral final; use it, but build on it. Repetition doesn’t get you much.
2. An A exam is not one where we have to walk you through the connections.  Sometimes the examiner poses a question that immediately draws two texts into play.  Once you see the connection, a lot of things should fall into place. But if the examiner has to map them out for you, then you get a lot less credit for the discussion.
3. In an A exam, the examinee is often as ready to teach as to learn. While we don’t expect it to happen in every exam, the fun thing for us is that we sometimes learn to see things differently based on what students say in the oral final. This again reflects not just assimilation of information, but a new synthesis and digestion of all this from your perspective.
4. In an A exam, there is solid textual detail that naturally comes forward.  While we don’t expect you to remember everything we might mention, we do expect some decent kind of recall.  However, when you offer of your own accord some detailed textual analysis, we can’t help but be impressed. That’s why memorizing some parts of texts is always a great fallback, particularly when they are central to your understanding of the text.
5. In an A exam, the examinee holds her own without bluster.  This means that in the give and take of questioning, she keeps her poise but also allows herself to think, in order to add judicious insight and nuance to her answers.  One common mistake is to think we’ll read bluster and obstinance as conviction and certainty.  You can get marked down for simply riding one hobby horse through all the texts, so remember that this is a conversation, not a debate tournament.  Learning to concede points, to qualify claims, or to reflect on the implications of a line of reasoning are all part of critical thinking. There is more to critical discourse than talking fast. Sometimes taking a moment to ponder and formulate an answer to a good question looks quite respectable.
6. In terms of the show Chopped: You need to use all of the ingredients from the basket, but it’s not enough just to toss them on the plate. You need to transform the ingredients and give us a real sense of your cooking skills.

Lastly, these observations are not made as some kind of ideal of what an A exam should be.  These are actual descriptions of what A exams are like, from the point of view of the examiner. There really are people out there who will get an A.  It’s not easy to do, but people do succeed at this all the time. And we are always very proud of them.  Good luck!

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of working on a cd with John Lienhard that served as one of the premiums for the KUHF pledge drive that year. It was all centered on theater, and featured our Engines of Our Ingenuity colleagues Andy Boyd and Roger Kaza in addition to ourselves.

In case you missed it, the content is available online now here.

One of those many great things that comes from being a part of the Engines team!

So here’s why I love my job. An awesome colleague, Ricardo Nuila, MD, came to us with a project: mounting a service learning trip to a clinic in Santa Ana Honduras run by an NGO, Shoulder to Shoulder. With the help of student assistants from the Bonner Leaders program, we were able to make this happen and selected 17 amazing students from the Honors College at UH—including Jonathan Adams, a Classical Studies minor and Biochem major (renaissance man!). We added to this crew a talented  young videographer, Abigail Hagan, who had gone with the Honors College before on a mission to Haiti, organized by my colleague Shasta Jones. In the end, Ms. Hagan produced this amazing video that reveals all that is so important about this endeavor:

Honors Service Abroad to Honduras, 2015 from Abigail Hagan on Vimeo.

We have just received another batch of applications from students eager to participate in this clinical project, and we see another crop of committed and talented young people ready to go, thanks in part to this video. When I see things like this happen, I think I have the best job in the world!