Here's a tip for all you honkies:
Fa La La La La La La La La
It's the time we pay off donkeys!
Fa La La La La La La La La
Colleagues who are barely sentient
Fa La La La La La La La La
Profit from their supine penchant.
Fa La La La La La La La La
Freeze your expression like the icy tundra of Lambeau Field. Decisions about tenure, promotions, and awards have been made and soon will be known. Veterans know how it works: try to remain calm and profess to see logic in even the most preposterous pronouncement(s).
Commit no candor!
Please recall from previous blogs that at least one such decision per year reinforces the perception that merit is not the only criterion for this award or that honor. Our merciful systems allow those spurned to espy at least one unworthy colleague who got what the spurned did not. Since this or that result cannot be explained by established rules and standards, those who were spurned were not necessarily unworthy. Perhaps they lacked allies or advocates in strategic places. Maybe a disgruntled chair or disgraced opponent figured in the decision. No need to take rejection as an affront. No need to be taken aback.
Keep your reserve.
The harder task is to remember, when one receives some honor, how empty the accolade may be. If one served on a power committee or otherwise assisted some decision-maker, one may have received the honor as much for conformity and credulity as for one's other qualities.
At the University of Puget Clowns, that one doubtless earned an honor may have little to do with why one got the honor.
Next: Explaining the Ways of UPS
2 comments:
Isn't Haltom's 25th Law lurking in your conclusion?
"At the University of Puget Clowns, that one doubtless earned an honor may have little to do with why one got the honor."
Can this be generalized to other small schools or large universities?
The sentence you quoted might stand as a generalization inside and outside academia.
Too often too many humans are much more skeptical of honors accorded others than they are of honors they receive.
I have no idea whether practices in real academia match those in meatball academia. I imagine that intra-campus support for research differs at an R1 from practices at Puget Clowns. At an R1, for example, those who dispense fellowships would probably welcome CVs or other evidence of productivity. That has often NOT been true at UPS.
At many institutions, one would never apply for research support with a promise to learn more about one's teaching areas. Indeed, at the finer institutions, one might not recover from an admission that one was falling behind in one's areas of expertise.
I cannot imagine how many colleagues at how many places would treat leaves as affirmative action for unproductive faculty, as at least one UPS veteran admitted doing in 1990. Maybe they do so at other small campuses but without admitting it.
As for tenuring the unpublished or the barely published, many minor institutions doubtless make career commitments to faculty who have no advanced degrees. I do not doubt that some of these small-fry schools promote the unaccomplished or barely accomplished as well. Too many of our colleagues, however, presume that this is no longer done at UPS. It is no longer admitted at UPS. It is still done at UPS.
I suppose that at UPS obviously deficient colleagues are more likely to be found on the promotion and tenure committee than would be the case at an institution that sincerely valued and promoted excellence.
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