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 are customer satisfaction ratings — but it is unwise to call them that.) My publications also met muster. The problem was my "service."

 

And in this institution, "service" was defined by service on college committees. Here I was drawing a blank. Despite my regularly volunteering, in writing, mind you, for whatever committee slots were available, I had received not a one. 

Favored veteran 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 carefully. And although I indicated preferences, I also expressed willingness to serve on any committee. Still, this resulted in zero assignments.

Zero committee work would doubtless sink my prospects for promotion. So I decided to challenge this situation. Assignments were made by our faculty senate's "Committee on Committees. It chiefly consisted of old boy faculty who were alums of the school. Oddly, though,, the 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 was an unwritten prerequisite. Second, and of great importance, she demonstrated slavish servility to all administrative power holders. 

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

How to respond to that? I'm not recommending it, but here's what I did. 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 as well as who had received them. Then I suggested that if I failed to get promoted because of any alleged "lack of service," she and the other committee members might discover that this was grounds for legal action.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

The meeting ended inconclusively. But I never again had any trouble getting committee assignments. And I continued to do my best to remain appropriately insensitive to administrative intent.  Promotion followed in due course.

Care to guess what subsequently became of the weather vane chair of the Committee on Committees? Want to wager on the brightness of her academic future? Well it wasn't long before she was appointed, perhaps "anointed" is a better word, Dean of Arts and Sciences. 

Once in this exalted administrative office, she continued to utilize her finely-tuned sensitivity to administrative intent. Unsurprisingly, the consequences of her newly-acquired influence often disadvantaged the very faculty whose interests she supposedly represented. Before her 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 missing genitalia on censored human anatomical illustrations. Genitalia are obviously critical components of human anatomy. Yet they frequently get “disappeared” on such illustrations. Worse, mentioning their absence is risky. Similarly, the discerning know that academia is not what it claims to be. However, joining in the pretense that it is pays off. ” 

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

This is a professionally dangerous maneuver. But pulling the sheet off these covert realities can produce a sobering effect on academic power holders when all else fails. At the very least, it causes 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. 

IS THIS THE END OF IGNORANCE?

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

Have you noticed that no one is ignorant anymore? Not in the view of the politically correct. What are they then? Just "low on information." Folks who didn't vote for Barrack Obama because he is a Muslim and born in Africa, for example, aren't ignorant cretins. They were just low on information. When Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that a Rothschild-financed Jewish space laser deliberately ignited those devastating fires in California, she wasn't being a bigoted ignoramus. Nor was she feeding vote-garnering bullshit to the clueless. Her information was simply deficient. 

How deliciously nonjudgmental this is. No one is too stupid, lazy, dogmatic, dishonest or emotionally needy to discover actual facts. They are simply "less informed." It's like being left handed as opposed to right handed! There's no fault involved, no personal responsibility. They're just — that way. 

The politically correct refuse to accept the fact that ignorance is often an achieved trait. Yes, for the mentally deficient, ignorance is acquired. But what about the person of normal capacity who still adamantly insists on the patently ridiculous? For instance, that the condensation trails of planes flying at high altitude are actually "chemtrails" containing harmful substances released for sinister purposes. That sort of ignorance must surely be achieved.

Given a mountain of unambiguous evidence to the contrary, isn't such ignorance the believer's responsibility?  Isn't he or she accountable for embracing such obvious bullshit? No. not from this politically correct point of view. For these extremely enlightened folk, there are no willful ignoramuses, no dogmatic true believers, no mental sloths. There is just then"information deficient." 

Worse still, the most politically correct have constructed an even less judgmental view. As described above, there are no ignoramuses, no blockheads, no dogmatists. Not a one! But in this even more enlightened view, there are just people who are "differently informed." If they insist the earth is a mere 6,000 years old? That's fine!  A 6,000 year old earth is just as good as science's 4.6 billion when you're "differently informed." 

Yes, in this Alice in Wonderland world, no authority is superior. When born-again true believers adamantly insist that the earth is 6,000 years old, for example, they're probably unknowingly relying on the authority of the late Bishop Ussher. He's the 17th Century Church of Ireland prelate who meticulously added all the generations of the Bible, cranked in all post-Biblical generations, and calculated that creation took place at 6 pm, 23 October, 4004 BC. (He was a bit uncertain about the exact time of day.) Is the Bishop's reckoning just as good as centuries of painstaking scientific investigation? Sure, if you hold that the findings of science are co-equal to counting the generations of the Bible. In the painfully non-judgmental view of the very politically correct, every reality is just "differently informed. How come?" Because no authority is better, no information more valid, than any other.

 
How far does this feverishly nonjudgmental crap take them? They end up in a world where truth and fact are inoperative. Where the scientific method is passé. Where the earth is actually flat if you think it is. But should they, discover they have a potentially fatal disease, it's my bet that the vast majority of these super tolerant individuals will still seek refuge in the authoritative knowledge of medical science. 

So what are the implications of this metastasizing super "tolerance" for the processes and purposes of schooling? Here's what it adds up to. Such uncontrolled tolerance will lay waste to both schooling's processes and purposes. No knowledge will be left. Everything will be a mere matter of opinion. And with every opinion being just as good as any other, truth and objective reality have utterly disappeared. And at that point it comes down to this: "Schooling? We don't need no stinkin schooling!"