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? yes, if you're politically "correct"

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

In the world of the most politically correct, no one is ignorant — even flat wrong, They're just "differently informed." Folks who believed that Barrack Obama was an African-born Muslim, for example, weren't gullible knuckle-heads. They were, at least according to these relativists, "differently informed," 

When Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested a Rothschild-financed Jewish space laser might be igniting those devastating wildfires in California, she was not revealing stunning stupidity, nor cunningly engaged in hate-mongering demagoguery. She was merely "differently informed." In this case she was aided by "alternative facts." 

How deliciously nonjudgmental. No assertion is too ridiculous nor obviously laughable to be dismissed. Preposterous assertions are merely "differently informed." Informed "by what?" By whatever half-baked nonsense nincompoops happen to subscribe to. In this fun house, no one is simply wrong. No, no, instead it's like being left instead of right handed. There's no right or wrong, no fault involved, no personal responsibility. Just different, equally acceptable, conceptions of reality. 

Really "woke" folks actually reject the possibility that some sources of authority are more accurate than others. That is too judgmental. They even implicitly deny that ignorance exists. Take, for example, those folks who adamantly insist that the condensation trails left by planes flying at high altitude are actually "chemtrails" laced with harmful substances, released for one or another sinister purpose by the villain of their choice. 

In a normal world this abysmally ignorant claim would simply discredit the believer. But not in the woke world. Here, any and all conceptions, even those in clear violation of a known natural causes, are plausible. Why? Because factual claims no longer require adequate supporting evidence. Should some dimwit believe it, that's good enough.

In the real world individuals embracing puerile buncombe are dismissed out of hand. Not in this world. In this fact-free zone there are no ignoramuses, no blockheads, no dimwits, no cretins. Not even a single shit head! For instance, if someone insists the earth is a mere 6,000 years old, not the scientifically affirmed 4.5 billion, they're not way, way off. The're not utterly wrong. They're just "differently informed." 

In this Alice in Wonderland world any sources become authoritative should someone subscribe to them. When born-again believers embrace the preposterous notion that our earth is 6,000 years old, as mentioned above, they likely are relying on the calculations of Bishop Ussher — a 17th Century Church of Ireland prelate — who painstakingly added up all the generations of the Bible, cranked in every post-Biblical generation he could find, and gravely concluded that creation took place on 23 October, 4004 BC at 6 P.M. (He was a bit uncertain about the exact time of day.) 

Was Usher correct? Of course not. He was as full of crap as a Christmas turkey. But for the fully "woke," the late Bishop's reckoning is at least as good as centuries of painstaking scientific investigation and vast amounts of contrary physical evidence.

But in the wacky world of the really politically correct, any fact claim, however hare-brained, is just as good as any other. And the enormous amount of factual drivel available on social media reinforces this idiocy many times over. Search the internet and you will come up with an enormous amounts of puerile none-sense that, nevertheless, has an abundance of supporters.

How far does their factual relativism take these true believers? The most zealous end up in a world where truth and fact are both inoperative. The scientific method is coequal with the crystal ball readings of store-front gypsies, or the self-enriching preachments of flimflamming televangelists. In this world, the earth really is flat if you believe it is. 

How, in the name of reason, did these zealots end up there? Well, there is a long-standing debate about whether knowledge is structured by a unique relationship to "reality," or is "socially constructed." In other words can there be an "objective" organization of facts about the world, or does that organization totally depend upon the interests of the organizers?

The value of this socially constructed point of view is that it helps identify potential stakeholders. In other words, it suggests whose interests are being served. However, it nullifies the power of a truly revolutionary method for factual discovery. Namely, the scientific method. Designed to be independent of special interests, this methodology continuously produces astonishingly powerful results. 

Unfortunately, the most "woke" accept the socially constructed view so enthusiastically that they end up thinking that all knowledge — except their own, of course — is entirely relative. And they therefore think it follows that all knowledge claims must be given equal weight.  

What are the implications of this toxic "tolerance" for schooling? It lays waste every form of education based on the scientific method. With the search for truth abandoned, with knowledge a matter of opinion, with any viewpoint as good as any other, scholarship is vaporized and insipid, muddle-headed "tolerance" takes over. 

Worse, schooling's sorting function, in which relative merit is measured, becomes completely inoperative. No more graduating with honors. No more failures either. Everybody in this world get's an "A." Just don't count on expertise in any area of your life. Need cardiac surgery? Good luck with that. Live in a high-rise? Make sure your life insurance is paid up.