By Professor
Doom
I feel a little bad writing under a
pseudonym. Yes, I realize it’s a level of cowardice on my part, but having seen
so many of my colleague’s lives and careers destroyed for openly trying to stop
what’s going on in higher education, I just didn’t have the courage. Besides,
my name is irrelevant, and even if the gentle reader discounts any research on
my part because of the pseudonym, I’ve presented study after study, example
after example, revealing the disaster that is higher education, that even if I
were merely an anonymous pointer, the things I’ve pointed at are what really
need to be seen.
A recent article on LewRockwell.com
reveals just how fragile, how cowed, faculty are in higher education. We know
that if we offend administration, smackdown will be brutal and unending. We
know that even if we’re at one school and criticizing another, administrators
will just make a phone call and end our career…and we won’t be hired anywhere
else.
Now, LewRockwell.com is a major site, in
the top 20 of political sites, and features articles by establishment (or
former establishment) luminaries like Patrick Buchanan, Andrew Napolitano and
former treasury secretary Paul Craig Roberts. It never preaches violence or
racism, and has even posted articles by Poo Bahs in
higher education.
Now, Poo Bahs aren’t afraid to give their real name when it comes to talking
about higher education, but faculty are, and it’s not just me.
A colleague recently was fortunate
enough to have his work published on this top site. Now, getting published is
supposedly a good thing for a professor, it’s what we need to do to (allegedly)
get tenure, so this is the sort of thing a professor should be proud of.
Instead, my colleague writes under a
pseudonym, “Professor X.” Gosh, he’s afraid of retaliation for what he might
say. Let’s see what horrible, horrible, things he says, which are so bad that
he’s justifiably afraid of retaliation from administration in higher education.
First, the title:
No kidding? Gee whiz, Howard Cosell pointed this out
decades ago, and
college sportsball scandals are so common today that it’s hard to believe anyone
thinks there’s any legitimacy in it.
How do you know when freedom of speech is
gone? When people are afraid to speak even an obvious truth. Gentle reader,
please don’t believe there’s “academic freedom” on campus. When a professor is
terrified of the repercussions of speaking a truth everyone knows, we have to
concede academic freedom has dropped out.
But maybe it’s not the title that the
professor thinks might cause problems. Let’s see if I can find something else
inflammatory here:
“…large number of students, mostly
football and basketball players, were given course credit for
phony “paper” courses that had no instructor, never met, and had no
requirements other than a written paper, many of which were themselves phony.
According to various investigations and reports, these phony courses were
offered for almost 20 years, their existence was well known..”
The UNC
scandal is well known, and I’ve covered it many times in my blog as well. Is
simply repeating old news cause for fear of punishment? Yikes. The key thing to
know about the UNC academic fraud, incidentally, is there will be no academic
punishment…crimes
aren’t punished, but faculty that talk about crimes are justified in fearing
punishment.
Perhaps something in the below is
inflammatory?
“…the athletics programs at Division
I schools should be spun off into independent, nonprofit (or for-profit)
entities that, if they desire, license the brand…Some of these
college-affiliated teams could be minor-league outlets for a local
professional team…we should give up the pretense, known to all…that the typical…player
is a regular college student, there to get an education…”
So here Professor X is offering a
suggestion on how to fix the corruption of college sportsball: sell off the
teams, and stop making higher education responsible for protecting pedophiles,
rapists, and all-around thugs. Again, I accept that the professor is terrified
of the repercussions for simply trying to help.
A college I used to be at was loaded with
administrators (or people serving in administrative capacity), that were simply
in way over their heads. When I tried to help by making corrections to even simple
arithmetic errors, like 12/5 = 2.4 (and not 2.35 as administration insisted,
and probably still insists to this day), I only enraged administration, and was
punished…and they doubled down on their arithmetic.
There’s a claim of “shared governance” in
higher education, governance shared between faculty and administration. This
claim is a lie; we really are at the point where all faculty can do to “share”
is to meekly make basic suggestions and cower. And even then, admin is free
both to ignore such suggestions, and to
punish faculty for daring to try to help.
Thus, Professor X is quite justified for
being afraid to point out a possible solution to the endless scandals of
college sportsball.
Another truth is perhaps the most
inflammatory statement in the whole piece:
“…nontraditional, less-demanding
majors like Afro-American Studies, Education, Communications, and the like. Is
it any coincidence that the UNC scandal didn’t involve professors and phony
courses in physics, art history, or economics?...”
Wow, daring to point out something screwy
is going on in Afro-American studies? That’s a mistake, because it’s not
politically correct. Daring to point out something screwy is going on in
Education? That’s a terrible mistake, too: even though we all know Education is a bogus
degree program at
most schools, administrators get their bogus administration graduate degrees through Education departments, they
do not want scrutiny there. Communications? I’ve never looked closely at what
goes on there, although I certainly knew it wasn’t very rigorous (I do know
Speech courses are pretty fake, however)…I thought it was just a jobs training
degree or something.
Who would be willing to challenge the African-American head of the
Afro-American studies department over its lax standards for primarily African-American
students? This would be a near-suicidal move for most faculty members.
Professor X certainly also knows it
would be suicidal to point out the bigoted treatment these departments receive,
that’s why he’s using a pseudonym, after all.
And now we come to the last possible
thing that might incite retaliation:
These are difficult questions, ones that do not get asked enough…”
So, the good Professor X finishes with
questions for consideration. The fascinating thing here isn’t the fraud of
college sportsball, it’s this wonderful demonstration of the culture of terror
in higher education.
It doesn’t matter if you have a high
falutin’ degree, or have tenure, or are at a major university. If you intend
to:
1) Speak an obvious, well known truth,
or
2) Offer suggestions to help, or
3) Try to increase academic standards,
or
4) Ask questions about what’s going on,
then you need to do so under a pseudonym,
because administrative pettiness and retaliation is so pervasive, so vicious,
that doing things that any decent, thoughtful, human being would do is risking
a severe backlash.
The only academic freedom, or freedom of
speech, on campus today for faculty is the freedom to do whatever
administration wants. Is this yet not another sign of the collapse of higher
education?
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