Haltom's Eleventh Law: Seeming beats being

Imagery and dramaturgy tend to displace veracity and verity.


Haltom's 11th salutes seeming, which usually outperforms being.

Haltom's 11th should not be interpreted to do more than state a routine inequality: appearances will avail most people most of the time far more than actualities will. The apparent need not displace the actual because appearances work best when they accommodate or accentuate actualities. Indeed, appearances often complete actualities on first dates or in weddings. The competent observer pays attention both to actualities and to appearances, both to what what is going on and to what is being said, sung, shot, or otherwise conveyed about what is going on.

The late David Mayhew stirred political science when he noted how seeming rounded out being in the U. S. Congress. Professor Mayhew did not argue that congresspeople were indifferent to vindication of principles, to improvements in policies, to acquisition of power, or to advancement of agendas personal, partisan, or pecuniary. However, he helped us to see that, to approach any goal or goals, the congressperson had to get herself or himself re-elected. This led lawmakers to seek publicity ["advertising"], to orate eloquently on problems and bills ["position-taking"], and to bribe their constituents with benefits ["credit-claiming"]. Of course, cynics -- my volk! -- tlansrated [sic] advertising as public-relations blather, position-taking as empty posturing, and credit-claiming as pork-barrel politicking. Either way, congresspeople performed well and secured re-election through dramaturgy. Because their survival as members of Congress demanded fraud, frauds they delivered. Congressional con artists made certain that their appearances accommodated and augmented actualities.

Appearances accommodate and complement actualities in other institutions as well. Academic institutions abound in advertising, position-taking, and credit-claiming because they abound in con artists. Institutional and individual web-pages advertise virtues and accomplishments that are more about seeming than being. Schools and scholars alike take positions athwart ignorance and inveigh against evils of an age, evils from when most immediately shrink rather than back their shibboleths or slogans with any actions that might cost them anything. How quickly Dr. Alligator Mouth becomes Professor Ostrich Head! And, of course, this university and that professor claim credit for any good that might be associated with higher education and evade responsibility for any harms that might be attributed to them personally or institutionally. No professor is so complete and utter a fraud as when he or she sits through a celebration of her or his retirement without rebutting the recited litany of ways in which the retiring single-handedly extended the frontiers of knowledge. [Remember! The frontiers of knowledge may be extended by shrinking what is known.]

Haltom's Eleventh Law applies to academic institutions differentially. The more respected and respectable the institution, the more that seeming must be backed by being eventually. The less respectable an institution and the less respected its faculty, the more that seeming will substitute for being over a longer period.

Accordingly, at a respected institution, a manuscript must appear between covers and be issued by a respectable press to continue to be touted as a "book." Books, articles, and reviews each have looming expiration dates after which the author must forfeit repute for his or her fecundity. At even mediocre schools, someone at some time will contrast the record [being] with the reputation [seeming] eventually. If the seeming outpaces the being too much for too long, an evaluator will flirt with such f-words as "fraud" or "failure." At sub-par schools, by contrast, "the culture of evidence" is so occasional and so selective that the author of some of the best rotogravure inserts a tourist bureau could underwrite may parlay such "refereed publications" into tenure and promotion. Indeed, some schools are so desperate to simulate greatness that their faculty will salute fulsomely some colleague for producing a book that has never appeared even as a manuscript in a dozen years. At some point, those who have praised "the book" over the years do not want to acknowledge that they have been lauding an accomplishment more apparent than actual. Belonging to an academic cargo cult would embarrass the laudatory. Better to praise a colleague's invisible manuscript and the latent glory with which it showers the institution and the institutionalized.

Whatever the level of academic institutions, those who cannot be must seem if they are to preserve their sinecures, secure prizes, and maintain an aura of potential. Most of us can simulate much more than we can realize, so seeming beats being for almost all of us almost all of the time, even at the better institutions. The worse the setting and the less accomplished the peers, moreover, the more that seeming may supplant being. Indeed, at truly weak venues, faculty are so busy covering up their lack of productivity that they have too little time in which to be productive. Seeming takes up all their time.

Haltom's Eleventh hints at high art when candidates for tenure must seem excellent without being even competent. As I have noted in previous blogs, at the University of Puget Clowns the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] will certify perhaps 85% of candidates for tenure as excellent teachers and excellent scholars. Some will not just seem but be excellent teachers. Some will be truly excellent scholars rather than performatively and ritually excellent scholars. Almost no one will excel at both teaching and scholarship unless the FAC and co-conspirators manipulate appearances to mask realities. If a candidate for tenure is beloved by her or his department, the department will furnish intra-disciplinary perspectives from which flawed or non-existent accomplishments are "actually" evidence of excellences. Of course, if a department or an FAC or an administrator wants rid of someone, evaluators will pronounce themselves disconsolate that she or he has failed of some standard of which everyone else in his or her tenure-class also failed.

Seeming is more than enough for those whom Puget Clowns wants to keep. Being is not enough for those whom Puget Clowns wants to go. Thus does seeming profit one more than being at the University of Puget Clowns.

After tenure, such seeming must be taken for being. This explains why so many colleagues will shake their heads at junior faculty who worry about verisimilitude. Colleagues addicted to discovering and communicating truth might expose this renowned intellectual as a mirage or that legendary teacher as an urban legend. Naïve faculty who say that "the book" is not invisible but non-existent imperil not only the author of the manuscript that never appears but also the system of evaluation and the institutional publicity that apotheozies him or her. The stubborn realist who opines that a renowned campus intellectual "... knows the first three sentences of every book ever written and nothing else" must be driven from our midst. Exile is too good for anyone who says that evaluation processes that promote fictions and folderol are corrupt; such a knave must be subjected to one or more degradation rituals, then exiled.

If seeming is to continue to outpace being, in sum, those who seemed excellent must be vigilant against demystifiers. Otherwise, a converse of the differential stated above becomes too obvious. Above I wrote, "The more respected and respectable the institution, the more that seeming must be backed by being eventually. The less respectable an institution and the less respected its faculty, the more that seeming will substitute for being over a longer period." One does not want to reverse that premise: "The longer and more that seeming substitutes for being, the less respectable the institution and the less respected its faculty."


Coming Soon -- Haltom's Twelfth Law: No matter how well you teach a class-session, the students would have preferred you to cancel.