Another phrase that needs to be abandoned for at least a decade is “a threat to democracy.” It’s been so overused that anybody who still pronounces it seriously comes off like an intellectual lightweight.
Price of Fame
I was about to go into the classroom on Wednesday, when I got a call from the hospital.
“Hi, I’m with your mother, and I want to give you an update. The doctor says her cancer is back but they don’t know if it metastasized, and you know, I really like your show, I watch every week. The last week’s episode was really funny!”
Strange Pronunciation
I really want to listen to the Rufo-Lomez podcast, but their intonations are driving me up a wall. Can anybody do me a favor, listen to them for a bit and tell me where this pronunciation is from? In Rufo it’s particularly noticeable. Is it regional? Class-based? Or what?
The Global Favela Loves
An anti-racist colleague said, “Look, I understand completely why you support Ukraine but have you noticed that only majority white countries are pro-Ukraine? People of color here and globally aren’t.”
To the very white anti-racist colleague, “people of color are against” means everybody should be against, too. Because “people of color” are an idol that must be worshipped. But he’s right in that the global favela is unanimously happy about the war in Europe. And unanimously supportive of the initiators of the war. It’s not mysterious why that is.
The reason isn’t that Russia gives them money. The US gave much more money over the years, and the global favela detests the US. They’ll take the money but would withhold the love. This is the issue of civilizational competition. Isn’t it enjoyable to see your competitor suffer? That’s what this is about.
Since we are on it, I strongly suggest we substitute the expression “the Global South” which is ridiculous because much of it is in the North with “global favela.” It’s a lot more descriptive and precise c
Free Money
I highly recommend this short clip about the US Treasury sending out untraceable blank checks to the tune of billions:
I work for a state-funded organization, and there’s no opportunity for me to spend even $5 without three levels of review. The money is controlled with ruthless efficiency.
That the federal government couldn’t figure out how to avoid the egregious abuses described in the video is impossible to believe.
What Do We Gain?
Another tenured professor is being fired for pro-Palestinian protests. This is the first public university professor fired under this pretext but previously two private college professors were fired, as well.
What people don’t seem to understand is that if you destroy the concept of tenure over this, you will have destroyed it over everything else. Read my posts from yesterday and earlier today. The only reason why professors can oppose administration’s plans is because we have tenure, academic freedom, and academic self-governance. Does anybody think it’s a good idea to leave higher education entirely in the hands of small cohorts of bureaucrats?
Yes, many professors have dumb ideas. But nobody will touch those professors. It’s the original thinkers, the ones who stand out, the ones who go against the current who will be thrown out. Is that what we want? Do we want people like me to not be in academia? Is that going to be a gain for us as a society?
For what important gain are we undertaking such a massive change?
No Scale
So does real teaching. You need real people entering into real relationships and developing those relationships across time. It can’t be automated, outsourced or scaled.
Petard, Meet Hoist
One particularly enjoyable exchange at the meeting yesterday was this.
Me: Your proposal is based on the idea that change is always good and that our goal should be to pursue change, any change, at any cost, all of the time. That is not true, however.
Administrator: It is! Change is good. It’s great, in fact.
Me: Any change is good?
Administrator: Of course!
Me: Including climate change?
Administrator: Oh.
Infantile Elites
The only argument that the administration was able to advance in support of its proposed measure yesterday was an appeal to emotion. We were asked to vote yes on the measure because several people had worked hard to prepare the text of the proposal. No other argument was advanced. Nobody even tried to claim that the measure was good for students or the university.
It is a strange argument because adult people should have emotional distance from the products of their labor. They should have an even larger distance from the others’ response to the products of their labor. It’s cruel to tell a 5-year-old that you don’t like her drawing of a Christmas tree. She is not at the stage of her development where she has a strong sense of self and can separate herself from something she created. She’ll think you are rejecting her if you reject her work.
An adult self, however, exists separately from its products. If your husband says, “honey, I don’t like this soup, is there anything else to eat?”, the child says, “mommy, I don’t want to talk right now, I prefer to listen to music,” and the publisher says, “unfortunately, we will not be accepting your book Neoliberal Love for publication,” it’s mildly disappointing but not crushing or deeply painful.
The administration wasn’t infantilising us with its appeal to “but we worked so hard, and you are hurting our feelings.” Children are immune to arguments based on this form of empathy. The administration was infantilising itself. It was asking us to take on an enormous amount of extra bureaucratic work out of… compassion for the administration.
We are seeing this in everything, including politics. It’s fashionable to say “vote for me because I have this identity that has suffered historic indignities.” We often respond by getting into an argument over whether the suffering the candidate claims is real. But that shouldn’t even be part of the discussion. Let’s say it’s real. So what? We are not your mommy.
It’s often said that people in power talk to us like we are kindergartners. I’m not seeing that, however. To the contrary, they are talking to us like they are kindergartners. We are supposed to be compassionate and kind to their poor results because we are supposed to see them as small and helpless. At a time when systems of power in politics, academia and everywhere else are consolidating to crush any form of dissent, the very people to whom increasingly more power accrues every day put on an act of being small, defenseless children.
This is how you know who has power these days. It is whoever can afford to take on this childish, highly emotional persona.
My True Calling
Friends! Citizens! Today I have found my true calling. It’s a bit late to change professions but I experienced democratic politics, and I’m in love.
It’s funny that I started the day debating democracy on the blog, and then immediately life tested my declared love for democracy.
What happened is that I was elected to the Faculty Senate. I was very reluctant because I’m busy and had no interest in academic politiquing.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
Being a senator is the bomb. Today we had a very long session of the Senate. The administration is trying to bring forth a very neoliberal measure. Enough of the faculty members are able to see through it, so there was a huge battle in the Senate. I was leading the charge, making enormous efforts to avoid saying the word neoliberalism because I noticed that people don’t like it to be named.
The other day my mother called me a conflict-avoidant, appeasing Jew. I would love it if members of our administration could hear this characterization of me because they’d have fits of hysteria.
So we are arguing, people are running out in tears, insulting each other, impugning each other’s motives and vilifying each other’s characters.
One faculty member tells everybody that he damns us all to hell.
The administration tries to guilt-trip us into approving the measure, saying things like, “we’ve put a lot of work into it, and you don’t seem to appreciate everything we’ve done. How do you think it makes us feel?” Which is exactly what my mother said after calling me a conflict-avoidant, appeasing Jew, so that didn’t have much effect.
Finally, we vote. Yelling increases.
Then, a melancholic professor gets up and says, in a beautiful Louisiana drawl, “Folks, I counted several times, and we don’t have a quorum. We can’t vote.”
Two and a half hours of this, and in the end we couldn’t vote. The administration will be livid.
I love democracy. At this rate, this horrible measure will never pass.
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