BY THE WATCHMAN
While going through our various news feeds this week we came across one that struck us as being a little biased and uncommon for the source. We had to ask ourselves why they would use this source as an expert on Oklahoma Politics. The only answer we could find was due to his association with a major university in the state and his willingness to do the interview.
Just so everyone would know, we went to Wikipedia to get a definition of Political Science for you. Here is what we found Political science is a social science discipline that deals with systems of government, and the analysis of political activities, political thoughts and political behavior.[1] It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics which is commonly thought of as determining of the distribution of power and resources. Political scientists "see themselves engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions, and from these revelations they attempt to construct general principles about the way the world of politics works."[2] Political science is related to and draws upon the fields of economics, law, sociology, history, philosophy,geography, psychology, and anthropology. In short these are the long term political operatives and career bureaucrats that are writing the actual regulations that complicate our lives on a daily bases. We have enough of them already. We don't need to teach these people how to be crooks.
The article that brought this to our attention was this Keith Gaddie: Dissecting Oklahoma Politics | Oklahoma Watch. At first this made a lot of sense, but then we looked into the background of Dr. Gaddie and it took the luster from his career. We found a lot of education and we know he's an intelligent individual. We recognize him as an author, co-author and proof reader on 20 different books. We will take him at his word on that. What we don't see is expertise outside of academia.
The next article of interest we found was this Ronald Keith Gaddie-Biographical Profile. We would urge you to open this link and read the article for yourself. There is a lot of professional information on his page, but very little to no personal information. We can understand ones right to privacy particularly in this day and age. It does list some of the books he's worked on. Admittedly he has written on Oklahoma Politics, but we've not been able to find anything on Oklahoma Politics since 2002. What we don't find is any mention of any field work or research to verify his findings. Additionally we can find nothing where he has made himself aware of the current political climate in the nation today.
This article goes on to indicate that he has worked as a "litigation consultant" in voting rights and redistricting cases, for both major parties and for both plaintiffs and respondents. This would include cases in Florida, Illinois, New York, Virginia, Georgia, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico and Texas. We don't envy him the Texas case. We wonder if he was an employee of the University of Oklahoma at the time he worked on the Oklahoma case. If so, then that would represent a conflict of interest and if he accepted a fee for his work, than those funds should be repaid to the state entity that hired him. His testimony should also be considered void and the case reopened.
The next article of interest we found was this Ronald Keith Gaddie | Department of Political Science | The University of Oklahoma. We actually found more information here than on his biography page. He is the Chair of the Department of Political Science. We also found that he is a Senior Fellow of Headington College; Associate Director of the Center for Intelligence and National Security. They say they are an Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence. He's a General Editor of Social Science Quarterly and on faculty of the National Institute for Risk and Resilience at the University of Oklahoma.
We could go on, but it just gets repetitive. Through all of his accolades, which are well deserved, there seems to be one thing missing. Field work. Without the fieldwork to support what he is teaching his students, then what he is teaching is pure theory and innuendo. Why would anyone want to spend their money on a class that has nothing to support what they are being taught?
We would recommend that the Professor start doing some field work and publishing it for all to see. Maybe then we can move his teachings from the realm of theory to the form of reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment