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What a post! The world owes Cyrus R. K. Patell a huge
debt for providing his readers such insight into the administrative mind in
“Who’s Confused?” Everyone concerned
with higher education ought to read it and post it as widely as possible. I have linked it here: http://patell.org/2013/03/whos-confused/ And I have reactivated my Facebook account
just to post a link to it as well.
Patell’sblog post is a great follow up to the confusing NY Times article
on NYU at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/nyregion/nyu-gives-lavish-parting-gifts-to-some-star-officials.html
You might think that the role of the university is to
produce informed citizens who will participate in our liberal democracy. You might think that faculty, the people who
do research and actually teach students the intellectual and technical latest
developments in their chosen majors, would be at the center of the
university. You might think that the
role of university administrators would be to support faculty. Think again!
An administrator himself, Associate Dean Cyrus R. K. Patell has
certainly disabused us of any such naïve notions in his column. Patell is not at all confusing. Faculty, he says, are not citizens in a
university. Why? Because the university is not a
democracy. But not to worry! For democracy isn’t a good thing either,
according to Patell. Why can’t Obama
just dictate? Forget about that circuit court
decision ruling that Obamas recess appointments were unconstitutional. Forget
about the Republicans in the 111th and 112th U.S Congress
being the most obstructionist in the history of the United States. No, “debate” in Congress is just a waste of time. Too bad we aren't living in Abu dabi, I guess. Well, at least we can take solace in the fact
that the university is an authoritarian,
top down structure. And academic
freedom? How dumb to think faculty
should have it! Cyrus Patell knows it so
stupid that it isn’t even worth mentioning.
Why would any administrator write such a candid and revealing a blog post like
Patell’s? Apparently, he just can’t stop
himself. Citing with great approval a
passage written by Stanley Fish, reveals with almost blinding clarity the
absolute contempt in which university administrators hold faculty. Here it is:
At
the end of my tenure as dean, I spoke to some administrators who had been on
the job for a short enough time to be able to still remember what it was like
to be a faculty member and what thoughts they had then about the work they did
now. One said that she had come to realize how narcissistic academics are: an
academic, she mused, is focused entirely on the intellectual stock market and
watches its rises and falls with an anxious and self-regarding eye. As an academic, you’re trying to get ahead; as
an administrator, you’re trying “to make things happen for other people”;
you’re “not advancing your own profile but advancing the institution, and
you’re more service oriented.”
Ah, yes, the days when I was just another narcissistic
faculty member, the days before I became an Associate Dean and could “make things happen for other people,” those “other people” who in the administrative mind obviously do not include faculty who work in a system which evaluates them as individual persons, not as members of a collective. No, “advancing
the institution,” means working to help administrators, or in the case of NYU, helping them leave NYU with huge
retirement packages, packages so huge that the NY Times even ran a story about it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/nyregion/nyu-gives-lavish-parting-gifts-to-some-star-officials.html
The NY Times interview Patell spends his blog attacking is a follow up. You might very well
think that Patell is a time-server, a lackey, a sycophant, a failed academic
who didn’t publish enough to be promoted to full professor, a courtier who,
like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, makes love to his employment. You might very well think that. Patell
should be congratulated for showing us the contempt in which
self-servicing university administrators so richly deserve to be held.
By the way, my grandfather went to Harvard, like Patell. Some years ago, I scanned and posted on FB the letter admitting him
and his twin brother that the then Dean of Harvard, no doubt “revered,” wrote to my
great-grandmother. Also, regarding the Puritans
Patell mentions: My mother is a direct descendant of Governor Winslow.
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