ARE YOU SUFFICIENTLY SENSITIVE TO ADMINISTRATIVE INTENT?

I was an assistant professor aspiring to become associate; and had to prove my teaching, publications and service met the mark. My "course evaluations" were quite good. (Actually they were my customer satisfaction ratings — but it is unwise to call them that.) My publications also met muster. The problem was my "service."

 

In this institution, "service" was defined by service on college committees. Here I was drawing a blank. Despite regularly volunteering, in writing, mind you, for whatever committee slots were available, I received no assignments. 

Favored faculty, who often had been educated by the religious order running the school, got the great majority of the key committee assignments. They even garnered these coveted assignments when they hadn't filled out the requisite areas of interest form. In contrast, I filled mine out regularly. I indicated preferences, but even expressed willingness to serve on any committee, Nevertheless, I got zero assignments.

An absence of committee work would doubtless sink my prospects for promotion. So I decided to inquire into this situation. Assignments were made by our faculty senate's "Committee on Committees. It largely consisted of old boy faculty who were alums of the formerly all male school. Oddly, though, this committee was chaired by a woman. What distinctive qualities won her this position? It seemed to me there were two. First, she was a co-religionist. That seemed to be an unwritten qualification. Second, and of far greater importance, she demonstrated slavish servility to every administrative power holder. 

I requested an appointment with this woman, and was in no mood to genuflect. So I opened the meeting abruptly by boldly declaring that I had repeatedly volunteered for any committee assignment, but got nowhere. I noted other faculty had received one assignment after another. What, I asked, was going on? Her reply? It had somehow been determined that I was "insufficiently sensitive to administrative intent." 

Perturbed, I reminded this academic weather vain that my promotion was at stake. I told her that I had kept a careful record of all my futile efforts to volunteer and, as well, those who had received them instead. Then I suggested that if I failed to get promoted because of any alleged "lack of service," she and the other committee members might find themselves legally liable.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I never again had any trouble getting committee assignments. And my promotion followed in due course.

Care to guess what subsequently became of this weather vane chair of the Committee on Committees? It wasn't long before she was appointed, perhaps "anointed" is a better word, Dean of Arts and Sciences. And once in this exalted office, she continued to manifest her finely-tuned sensitivity to administrative intent. Of course, the consequences of her newly-acquired influence frequently disadvantaged the very faculty whose interests she supposedly represented. Before she rise to power this gal was a professor of English, not meteorology. Nevertheless, she always knew which way the wind blew.

What can be learned from this story? 

1. That course evaluations actually measure customer satisfaction. 
2. That there are irreconcilable, though unmentionable, tensions between the interests of the administration and those of the faculty. 
3. That a surprising number of faculty are craven lick-spittles. 
4. That brown-nosing pays — at least in terms of promotion.
5. That one's alleged colleagues might not be collegial. 

What else, more generally, can be learned from this? That there are covert academic realities reminiscent of the often missing genitalia on human anatomical illustrations. Genitalia are obviously critical components of human anatomy. Nevertheless they frequently get “disappeared” on such illustrations. But mentioning their absence is risky.

Are there times to confront the academic equivalent of those anatomical illustrations, point to the blank crotch area and ask, “What the hell happened here?" Apparently there are. But when should one do that? Only when you have more to lose if you keep pretending you don't notice the absence. 

Pulling the sheet off these covert realities can produce a sobering effect on academic power holders when all else fails. It can cause them to stop and weigh potential costs and benefits before messing with you further. But remember, breaking the silence will forever change your status both with the power holders and your colleagues. For good or ill, neither will ever view you, or treat you, in the same way again. 

THE END OF IGNORANCE? sure, if you're politically correct

 "In the age of information, ignorance is a choice." Donald Miller

No one is ignorant, even flat wrong, in the world of the politically correct. They're just "differently informed." Folks who voted for Donald Trump because Barrack Obama is an African-born Muslim, for example, weren't block-heads, just "differently informed" by "alternative facts." When Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested a Rothschild-financed Jewish space laser might well be igniting those devastating wildfires in California, she too wasn't neither stunningly ignorant nor engaged in hate-mongering demagoguery. She too was merely "differently informed," by "alternative facts."

How deliciously nonjudgmental this is. No assertion is too ridiculous, too obviously laughable, to be rejected. It's just "differently informed." Informed by what? "By whatever authority some nincompoop happen to subscribe to. It's like being left instead of right handed. There's no fault involved, no personal responsibility, no right nor wrong. Just different, equally valid, conceptions of reality. 

The truly "woke" refuse to acknowledge that some sources of authority are far more reliable than others. They also deny that ignorance is often an achieved trait. Yes, of course, ignorance is acquired if you are mentally retarded. But not if you are a person of normal intelligence. For instance, someone of normal intelligence adamantly insists on the patently ridiculous idea that the condensation trails of planes flying at high altitude are actually "chemtrails" containing harmful substances being released by one or another villain for sinister purposes. This abysmal ignorance is achieved; and ultimately is the believer's responsibility.  

Normal individuals are wholly accountable for eagerly embracing puerile buncombe. But not from the politically correct point of view. Is this world there are no ignoramuses, no blockheads, no dimwits, no willful cretins. Not a one! In this fault free world if you insist the earth is a mere 6,000 years old, not the scientifically affirmed 4.6 billion, for example, you're not way, way, way off. You're not utterly wrong. You're just "differently informed." 

In this Alice in Wonderland world any and all sources are authoritative if you think them to be so. When born-again true believers adamantly insist that the earth is 6,000 years old, for instance, they are likely unknowingly relying on the cranky calculations of the late Bishop Ussher, a 17th Century Church of Ireland prelate. He was the fellow who famously added up all the generations of the Bible, cranked in every post-Biblical generation he could identify, and gravely concluded that creation took place at 6 pm, 23 October, 4004 BC. (He admitted a bit of uncertainty about the exact time of day.) Was he correct? No, he was as full of crap as a Christmas turkey. But not for those "differently informed."

Is the late Bishop's reckoning actually just as good, perhaps better, than several centuries of scientific investigation? Only if you maintain that several centuries of rigorous scientific investigation are inerior to the computations of a scientifically illiterate, faith-blinded, 17th century dogmatist. Yet in the wacky view of the most politically correct, any version of reality, however hare-brained, is just as good as any other. 

How far does this alternative reality take them? The most zealous end up in a world where truth and fact are totally inoperative. Where the scientific method is coequal with the crystal ball readings of store-front gypsies and the  self-enriching ramblings of flimflamming televangelists. Yet, In the world of the most politically correct, the earth is flat if you believe it to be so. 

What are the implications of this toxic "tolerance" for the processes and purposes of schooling? It is that their unhinged tolerance lays waste to both. With the search for truth abandoned, with knowledge a mere matter of opinion, with every viewpoint as good as every other, true education evaporates and a wishy washy indulgence takes over. This results in something like this: "Schoolin? Nobody needs no stinkin schoolin!"