doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Do you really want to know?

Brent,

I'm speaking from some experience. I am an adjunct Asst. Prof of Biology at the local university. In one instance I provided most of the tools and facilities for a research project on Hansen's disease in Armadillos. Both graduate students earned Masters degrees and since have earned their doctorates. One is now an assistant dean at her school. I have also seen what budget cuts do to collections as well as the corrosive effects of campus political correctness (mostly at other schools, we're kinda redneck here). It has taken a lot of involvement by former students to maintain Dr Thomas' wonderful herbarium and Dr Douglas' fish and herp collection against lack of funds and criticism from other faculty about their "relevance". There are plenty of professors perfectly willing to jettison another man's life's work just because it doesn't meet their approval. Get a couple of them on the wrong committees and they can do a lot of damage. So it comes down to I love my old school and I am involved but I have little faith in the motives of much of the faculty (especially from the humanities). I just have to be worried about the reception such a collection as Petrov's would get at a lot of schools. However I suspect, as suggested, any Alaskan college or university would be pleased to get the collection.

Jerry Liles

Brent, ol' buddy ol' pal, methinks you got it exactly backwards, it's the ivory tower THEM that have rejected the non-PC US!

I fully agree with everything that Michael and Brent have said about the ASSRA as an organization, and also the fact that most of its members are actually fine folks.

And the real shame of it all is that an organization like the ASSRA would and should be perfect IMO for such a curatorial responsilbility!

Except for the politics and vested interests, that is.

My 'vote'(G) reluctantly goes to either the Cody museum or a serious, reputable university (not a college) with a national firearms reputation. I stipulate a university because of the very welcome possibility that graduate students will find the info useful in pursuit of their advanced degrees, and that the resulting exposure of firearms knowledge will benefit our sport among the academics. Just a thought.
Regards, Joe

Jerry, I speak from more experience. I'm a full professor at a fairly large R1 university. I've been employed by 5 different R1 universities around the country and one overseas. You have no clue what you are talking about.

Sadly, your attitude does more to create a self-fulling professy than it does to identify, much less remedy, the problem.

Go to a gun range or a gun show in any college town and chances are you can damn near hold a faculty meeting there. But don't expect anyone to raise their hand and identify themselves as an academic. The political correctness of your preceived enemies is far outmatched by the political correctness of the gun crowd. Any academic is likely to be harassed on sight.

Joe, you are pretty PC, though not quite as much as the norm in the gun world, and no, "they" have not rejected you or me or anyone. Universities are bigger places than that.

Again, start with UAF. They have a museum with a wonderful reputation for natural history of AK and probably it's modern history as well. You might be welcomed. Never know 'til ya ask.

Brent

From what I know of the academic world, the few supporters that may embrace such a project will not identify themselves at 'work' either. Hat's off though to tolerant institutions that also have protections in place against future priority shifts.

Brent, we've disagreed before and we surely disagree now. I'm reasonably well-educated, well-read and well-informed, and I most emphatically disagree with your opinion on this subject. I know many 'educators' and other academics, in fact I trained for the teaching profession for many years and spent a fair amount of my professional life as an instructor (NOT a teacher, an instructor) of technical & math studies at the nuke plant. When you meet the academics who frequent the rifle range or gun show, at least around here, you're meeting the folks who are generally the bottom knots on the academic committee yoyo string. I know and shoot with quite a few college professors and each of them is a fine fellow himself, but each will be quick to tell you of the vicious infighting over budgets and political correctness and 'relevance' and 'image' and other trivia that goes on in the more rarified academic atmospheres. Most of my friends choose to keep away from such infighting and so the committees are largely left to the more-PC types.

I used to belong to the local sports car club, an organization thoroughly infested with college professors and other politically-correct academic types. Most of the males and many of the females appeared to be repelled by my gunsmithing hobby, and many even tried to involve me in defending the shooting sports against their innuendos and outright attacks.(!)

Brent, you are fortunate to have been spared this unpleasantness but please don't think for a minute that your experience is typical.
Regards, Joe

Ponder this Joe
The Executive VP for Research and Provost of this Univeristy is a major gunner, pehasant killer and owner of high quality gun dogs. The Chair of Socialogy and Anthropology I go to gun shows with. Three full profs in my department are serious hunters and those are just the full profs. I know the upper echolons of several other departments from meetings at the range or at shows. Joe, you just plain wrong.

You're feelings of repulsion are probably imagined, or maybe you need a shower?? :):)

Yup, we disagree and I know a lot more about this business than you. I'm also damn sick and tired of being tarred and feathered. Enough so to consider quitting this game. IT GETS DAMN TIRESOME!!!!

Brent

I think the truth is there is no "one truth" about the political leanings of any one institution of higher learning. When I was a kid my dad would have the industrial arts faculty of the local university out for pheasant hunting several times during the season.I know several of the faculty at the same university(University of Northern Iowa) and they are all fixtures at the better gun shows and hunt too.That being said several of the faculty at the same university are very outspoken in their dislike for firearms.

Brent, you can claim more experience all you want but I still rely upon my own life experiences. I don't feel any repulsion at all for the academic life, not at all, but apparently some of the academics feel some sort of repulsion for many of the rest of us and our more-blue-collar lives.

Ponder this: 100 years ago even the average high school graduate had at least a nodding acquaintance with Latin, Greek and the classics, and teachers were almost always respected as pillars of the community. Today our colleges(!?) teach remedial English & remedial math as SOP, and many teachers seem to be either degenerates or extreme liberals who dislike guns and embrace censorship of reading material. Frequent mentions of these aberrant behaviors are all over the national news media, all the time, so it seems to me that many in the academic world have kinda rejected the rest of us by moving even further away from the mainstream. Whatever, JMOFWIW, but I'll bet that your opinion is a minority even among college professors. The most 'prestigious' universities in the US are located in CA and MA, how many shooting sportsmen do you think teach at Berkley and MIT? I won't even mention Pepperdine or Harvard! Even Emory down in GA has more than its share of ultra-PCs, my brother is a graduate of the Emory Law School & you should hear some of HIS stories!
Regards, Joe

Joe, what amount of data would it take to change your opinion? At what point does fact overcome opinion? Your repulsion is pretty obvious to me in your commentary and pretty typical of gun folk in general. I suspect your car club acquaintences sensed your feelings about them long before you brought up you gun interests. It comes through loud and clear.

You assesment of modern academics is, again, wrong. But I am giving up on you listening. A sure sign of a PC person is one that is unable to face facts that stand contrary to his perceptions. You are being foolish - to put it politely. And you are doing a damn good job of alienating yet one more academic. Congratulations!

Now, I'm off to a meeting run by the Second in Command of this place - and she just happens to be that rabid pheasant hunter. I'm sure she and I will have more interesting discussion than you and me.

Brent

Probably about the same amount that it would take to convince me that the Obamanation is A Good Thing.

You yourself have admitted that many average folks consider academics to be their adversaries when it comes to shooting, so where exactly do you think they've gotten that impression? Had to come from SOMEWHERE! I posit that many academics themselves have caused that opinion to form and to flourish, because of their sometimes outspoken advocacy of the tree-huggers.

And I suspect that some if not most of the Sports Car Club animosity stemmed from the fact that my blue-collar Trans Am and Austin-Healey w/Ford 302 V8 (How BRUTISH! What SACRILEGE!) waxed their collective 6-cyl asses at every single autocross. Plus, at that time I was single, tall, not too ugly yet and VERY interested in their females....'nuff said.
Hope you have a good hunt, regards, Joe