Talk:David Graeber

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Additional information: This article has been selected for use on the Anarchism Portal. Related task forces (major traditions): Anarchism

David Graeber was featured as the Anarchism portal selected article for November 2007.

Yale maintains a private online database of course evaluations made available to students at the beginning of each semester. There are, in fact, numerous student reviews of some of Graeber's larger lecture courses on this database. I would suggest finding a Yale student willing to divulge the contents of that database if you want to get to the bottom of the "student reviews..." claim.

[edit] Speculation on why Graeber's contract wasn't renewed

It seems to me that the latter third of this sentence in the article, and possibly the whole sentence, is too speculative to belong in an encyclopedia entry: Some Yale authorities may have been uneasy about Graeber's activism, including his role in protests against the World Economic Forum in 2002 and membership in the radical labor union Industrial Workers of the World; recent controversy over radical professors like Ward Churchill may have increased this anxiety. (my emphasis added) My preference is to delete the clause beginning with "recent controversy". Thoughts? - Walkiped 03:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I would call it as it is, and point out thatthe original entry was clearly not written from a neutral or objective point of view, is clearly an advocacy piece, and should be flagged accordingly.

All one has to do is add, "his supporters claim" at the beginning, with some mention of who these people were. This would be better than just flagging the neutrality of the piece, since in fact it is a significant aspect of this anthropologists' career that he had a large number of supporters who viewed the dismissal as politically motivated. To mention this reality is not to create an advocacy piece. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Right honorable dr. zombie (talk • contribs) 17:20, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Student Evaluation Claim

An anonymous user has added this sentence:

While opinion writers for the Yale Daily News, among others, have protested and created controversy over the issue, students review Graeber's classes as poorly focused and opinionated, albeit easy, as statistical evidence compiled from student evaluations shows.

This needs to be sourced b/c I have not been able to find anything to support the claim. Google finds nothing relevant when searching for the phrases "poorly focused" [1], "opinionated" [2] or "student evaluation" [3]. Can someone find a source? If not, the statement should probably be removed. - Nihila 15:13, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality banner removal

Is there any reason to keep the neutrality banner on this page? I don't see any conversation related to it on the talk page. If there is an outstanding POV issue, lets correct it - otherwise, lets remove the banner. - N1h1l 16:21, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and just to be careful I have gone over the article, removed material that was clearly partial to Graeber, and given voice to the opposition view. I have removed the NPOV tag. Waltersobchak 23:16, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Good work. - N1h1l 21:59, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem with this is that in a knee-jerk desire to achieve "balance" the text has been wildly slanted in favor of "detractors". First of all, Yale gave no official reason whatever for my dismissal. So any claims by "detractors" - who are, significantly, all anonymous, while my defenders are willing to produce names and evidence - are utterly speculative. The claim that I appeared unprepared in class is outrageous and perhaps even actionable if I were a legalistic minded person. At no point did anyone accuse me of being unprepared in class. Certainly no one in the Yale administration made any such claim. I am in fact scrupulously well-prepared, never come to class without detailed lecture notes (that in grad seminars I often make available to students) and some of my theory courses are known as far away as India and Taiwan for being well-organized and comprehensive. The statement I appeared unprepared appears to be simply one individual's slur - apparently, the same individual who earlier tried to insert obviously false information, such as that "statistics" showed that in my classes I was "opinionated" (etc) - despite the fact that the statistics Yale does keep do not measure anything of the sort. The fact that this claim appears on this web page because some malicious individual posted something anonymously and then editors felt it was required for "balance" is an embarrassment to the entire wikipedia project. It has also been extremely damaging - since at least one published source has now cited my purported "unpreparedness" as the reason Yale is supposed to have fired me, despite the fact that Yale never accused me of anything of the sort. They could have only got this from the anonymous smear-artist on wikipedia, since no one else has ever reproduced such a claim.

Meanwhile, crucial and verifiable information: for instance, that I was one of the two most popular professors in the sociocultural department in terms of enrollment, that it was the students who initiated the protests, not me, or even that the main reason suggested by those students for my dismissal was my defense of a graduate student involved in organizing for GESO who the senior faculty attempted to expel from the program, simply do not appear.

I do not feel it would really be appropriate for me to edit my own entry but if someone doesn't intervene to remove this false and actually potentially libelous statement, I'm going to have to do it myself. If you really can't handle controversy, why not just say I was dismissed for reasons that Yale refused to specify and leave it at that? David Graeber

I agree with David's assessment. A Google search fails to return any reliable source for the "late and unprepared" statement. Unless this claim can be cited, It should be removed. - N1h1l 19:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. This is precisely the reason that uncited information must be removed immediately before it can cause further damage. I don't care if it's an article about a person or about a Pokemon. --Liface 03:58, 20 September 2006 (UTC)