How redolent the phrase; how repulsive the image!
Long ago on a campus far away from Tackytown, a few academics came to characterize faculty meetings as a "confederacy of naked emperors."
"Naked emperors," of course, recalls "The Emperor's New Clothes" [see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes]. Hans Christian Andersen told a variant on the tale of tricking a none-too-bright monarch into acting as if non-existent raiment were resplendent. Told that the sartorial splendor will be obvious to the competent and the innocent, the emperor must first act as if his new suit does not leave him naked lest the trickster tailors "discover" the emperor to be incompetent and corrupted. Then the emperor must delude himself of the magnificence of his new "threads" so that he can parade in the nude among his subjects. In some versions, the emperor even gets past the child so innocent that he can say, "Look! The emperor is naked." Now that is self-delusion. But do not overlook the subjects who professed to admire the new suit.
"Naked emperors" captures the vanity and pretentiousness of academics. Among academics as among others, wily operators can only con those who are not honest. Moreover, attend to the sequencing. Incompetent or corrupt academics encourage flatterers and clientele to lavish praise for virtues that the praised do not possess but ought to. Fulsome flattery or flatulence then turns the head of the academic [and the stomach of anyone with common sense and powers of perception at least equal to their powers of suspending disbelief]. Convinced that their colleagues manifest incompetence or malice if they do not join the praises for those not praiseworthy, the flattered cleaves to confederates who get, prolong, and further the delusions. Taken in by their own blather, these nudists glory in their greatness. They fool themselves about fooling others. They find other naked emperors, who must maintain the pretense, and the emperors confederate to delude one another as they delude themselves.
Usually, one does not want an academic to be unclothed in the presence of sentient beings, but "naked" conveys the more pleasing image of pretentious fops who fool themselves while attempting to fool others. The nudity conveys the peril: woe unto all colleagues who see through the pretense and behold the nakedness. Holy Medusa! Wholly Medusa?
In addition, I think that the term "confederacy" works as no synonym quite would. "Conspiracy" or "cabal" might connote practicality or planning, both unlikely among academics. "Confederacy" suggests, by contrast, an aloof alliance preserved by exchanges of favors. The exchanges need not be planned. Fidelity need not last into the next exchange. Opportunism reigns among all who must hide from themselves and from others their inadequacies.
Most "coalitions" involve candid acknowledgment of opportunism and interest, so "coalitions" might not capture the mutual interdependence of pretenders and those who pretend along with the pretenders.
"Congress" has more talented dissemblers, so "confederacy" works better than "congress."
"Collusion" might understate the sheer necessity behind confederation. Collusion may be ephemeral. Those who collude this year may be subjected to collusion that excludes themselves next year. "Confederacy" builds on the Latin for a treaty or compact. This imparts an ongoing character to pretenders and pretending-alongside, to an ongoing "contract of depravity" between/among flattered and flatterers.
So it's gotta be "confederacy."
At the next faculty meeting, watch as lunatics swap stories, favors, and spit. Colleagues by turns preen and posture before admiring confederates, then join the audience to swoon at the blather of others.
After a short lecture, a colleague rises to praise the lecturer and poses a question that the lecturer answered in the opening three minutes of the lecture. ADHD [Attention Deficit Hypocritical Disorder] is common among naked emperors.
A naked emperor regales the assembled with an impassioned speech utterly unrelated to any business in a meeting and utterly unburdened with facts. The other naked emperors join the formation renowned as "The Loon Coalition" to reiterate the necessity of the first emperor's eloquence and erudition.
A narcissistic blatherskite intones a blatantly obvious point then luxuriates as other naked emperors argue about whether the blatherskite has displayed more perspicuity or perspicacity.
When you see episodes such as the above, it is important to translate. "Professor Dithers makes a fascinating observation that we all are liable to overlook," for example, is the emperor's code for "My, Professor Dithers, but you are looking very fashionable today. Are those trousers new? They nicely display your manly bulges."
For a second example, "I want to thank Professor Dodders for all of the hard work that obviously went into her utterly unrehearsed remarks" is emperor's code for "Professor Dodders, you are as much a fashion plate as you are a scholar."
In classrooms and other venues in which the credulous and the cowed congregate, nudists glory in inadequacies displayed but never pronounced.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Recalling My Letter
Waiting out a colleague's fate, I remember my own tenure-decision.
As I await for a colleague "the lame feet of salvation" (Robinson Jeffers, "Hurt Hawks") from a committee that too often plays "death the redeemer" (Ibid.), I recall waiting for word from the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] when I was considered for tenure.
I had a unanimous endorsement from my department and letters from colleagues at Harvard and other creditable institutions. Still, I had not kept my mouth shut and "the asshole clause" -- possession of appropriate personal and professional characteristics -- had yet to be excised from the Faculty Code. In the semester I stood/stooped for tenure, I had noted in the Faculty Senate that the general education core had yet to pass according to rules that the faculty had agreed to. Throughout the renegotiation of general education in 1990-1991, I had questioned such prescriptions as "Science in Context," calling them pork-barrel projects and an "International POlitical Economy" syllabus that was risible. Before that, I had questioned the delay of fraternity and sorority rush on the ground that the faculty had no business saying when clubs could recruit.
Moreover, a member of the FAC had warned me not to disagree with the dean again after a dean so calm that he was nearly comatose had struck me over a governance dispute. At first I thought the member of the FAC was joking, but he made it clear he was serious. "You're saying that this university is so chickenshit that my disagreeing with the dean and my getting struck by the dean might doom me?" I asked rhetorically. One sixth of the FAC there and then assured me that this university did not need troublemakers. [This was before I learned to say, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." Please see the entry in this blog for 14 January 2010.]
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had at least two advantages. First, I was a male. It would be some years before I learned just how advantageous that Y-chromosome was. Second, a contemporary bereft of a Y-chromosome was given to obeying federal law on sexual harassment despite sentiments in her department such as the immortal, "If she followed the law, then that law is wrong!" The FAC lavished ammunition on the whistleblower. Maybe they ran out of ammunition (Admiral Stockdale, 1992) before me. [The university ran out of ammunition when she sued and got a huge settlement. She threw a great party, but I still miss her.]
By the time the FAC sent me its letter, I was in Vermont. I opened the letter and smiled that the FAC had recommended me for tenure. Then I read the letter aloud to my friend. She was a voracious reader and learned, so she gasped along with me as solecisms and errors in the letter accumulated. I do not think that she was much impressed with the institution at which I had just received tenure. "This letter was written by a professor?" she asked. "Nope," I answered. "It was written by six professors."
In the final paragraph of the letter, the FAC explicitly hoped that I would conform more and squawk less than I had in my probationary period. I found the FAC's presumption droll. [Think Victor Laszlo in "Casablanca:" "If I didn't give {names of the underground leaders} to you in a concentration camp where you had more persuasive methods at your disposal, I certainly won't give them to you now."]
When I returned to Tacoma, the main author of that letter took me to dinner to explain away its final paragraph. He apparently did not want me to think that the letter, especially in that final paragraph, meant what it said. I cut him off. "My letter will always say what the words literally meant. Anything you say now is gloss beside the point." My interlocutor seemed flummoxed and frustrated by my unwillingness to go along with his re-mystifying. How lacking in civility of me after all he had done for me!
Thus did I come to understand why my pre-tenure period was called probationary. When I completed my probation, I received a lifetime sentence.
As I await for a colleague "the lame feet of salvation" (Robinson Jeffers, "Hurt Hawks") from a committee that too often plays "death the redeemer" (Ibid.), I recall waiting for word from the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] when I was considered for tenure.
I had a unanimous endorsement from my department and letters from colleagues at Harvard and other creditable institutions. Still, I had not kept my mouth shut and "the asshole clause" -- possession of appropriate personal and professional characteristics -- had yet to be excised from the Faculty Code. In the semester I stood/stooped for tenure, I had noted in the Faculty Senate that the general education core had yet to pass according to rules that the faculty had agreed to. Throughout the renegotiation of general education in 1990-1991, I had questioned such prescriptions as "Science in Context," calling them pork-barrel projects and an "International POlitical Economy" syllabus that was risible. Before that, I had questioned the delay of fraternity and sorority rush on the ground that the faculty had no business saying when clubs could recruit.
Moreover, a member of the FAC had warned me not to disagree with the dean again after a dean so calm that he was nearly comatose had struck me over a governance dispute. At first I thought the member of the FAC was joking, but he made it clear he was serious. "You're saying that this university is so chickenshit that my disagreeing with the dean and my getting struck by the dean might doom me?" I asked rhetorically. One sixth of the FAC there and then assured me that this university did not need troublemakers. [This was before I learned to say, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." Please see the entry in this blog for 14 January 2010.]
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had at least two advantages. First, I was a male. It would be some years before I learned just how advantageous that Y-chromosome was. Second, a contemporary bereft of a Y-chromosome was given to obeying federal law on sexual harassment despite sentiments in her department such as the immortal, "If she followed the law, then that law is wrong!" The FAC lavished ammunition on the whistleblower. Maybe they ran out of ammunition (Admiral Stockdale, 1992) before me. [The university ran out of ammunition when she sued and got a huge settlement. She threw a great party, but I still miss her.]
By the time the FAC sent me its letter, I was in Vermont. I opened the letter and smiled that the FAC had recommended me for tenure. Then I read the letter aloud to my friend. She was a voracious reader and learned, so she gasped along with me as solecisms and errors in the letter accumulated. I do not think that she was much impressed with the institution at which I had just received tenure. "This letter was written by a professor?" she asked. "Nope," I answered. "It was written by six professors."
In the final paragraph of the letter, the FAC explicitly hoped that I would conform more and squawk less than I had in my probationary period. I found the FAC's presumption droll. [Think Victor Laszlo in "Casablanca:" "If I didn't give {names of the underground leaders} to you in a concentration camp where you had more persuasive methods at your disposal, I certainly won't give them to you now."]
When I returned to Tacoma, the main author of that letter took me to dinner to explain away its final paragraph. He apparently did not want me to think that the letter, especially in that final paragraph, meant what it said. I cut him off. "My letter will always say what the words literally meant. Anything you say now is gloss beside the point." My interlocutor seemed flummoxed and frustrated by my unwillingness to go along with his re-mystifying. How lacking in civility of me after all he had done for me!
Thus did I come to understand why my pre-tenure period was called probationary. When I completed my probation, I received a lifetime sentence.
Sunshine Thugs
Are you a Sunshine Thug?
Our colleague is a Sunshine Thug. He may even be The Sunshine Thug.
The Sunshine Thug beams to see me as he asks me how my life is going. The Sunshine Thug's face shines on everyone most of the time. The Sunshine Thug radiates diffidence about his own competence as a means of suggesting that whomever he speaks with is a far better member of the faculty than he.
Do not be taken in! The pleasantries are mannered rather than truly civil or cordial. His sunshine is shtick.
If his betters close a door and grant Dr. Sunshine confidentiality, his dark side will come out. If it nets him a course release, he'll support a decision to push you down a well. Give him a title, no matter how trivial, then watch him dispatch his good friends, his cherished colleagues, his longtime department, or anyone else if it might please those who can grant him favors or save him bother. Smiling all the while and professing to be uncertain what has happened or why, this Mack the Knife flashes his shark teeth as he fingers the blade out of sight.
Having alluded to Bertolt Brecht, I am uncertain whether I now should steal from Edmond Rostand. Rostand has his hero Cyrano denounce some Sunshine Thugs. These folks "seek for the patronage of some great man, and like a creeping vine on a tall tree, crawl upward, where [they] cannot stand alone ..." Clinging to the lofty, Sunshine Thugs "... play the buffoon in the vile hope of teasing out a smile on some cold face ..." and make their "knees callous, and cultivate a supple spine ... ." Shaded by their patrons and protectors, the Sunshine Thugs "[t]ickle the horns of Mammon with [their] left hand, while their right, too proud to know his partner's business, takes in the fee ..." Betraying whatever smidgeon of talent they may have and usually do not need, Sunshine Thugs "[u]se the fire God gave [them] to burn incense all day long under the nose of wood and stone ..." even as they burn vulnerable colleagues out of the sight of most colleagues. In sum, Rostand/de Bergerac might say that Sunshine Thugs "[c]alculate, scheme, [live in fear], love more to make a visit than a poem, seek introductions, favors, influences..." all while acting the part of the affable, slightly daffy academic too distracted to have any part in dastardly deeds in which they play a prominent but latent part.
Our colleague is a Sunshine Thug. He may even be The Sunshine Thug.
The Sunshine Thug beams to see me as he asks me how my life is going. The Sunshine Thug's face shines on everyone most of the time. The Sunshine Thug radiates diffidence about his own competence as a means of suggesting that whomever he speaks with is a far better member of the faculty than he.
Do not be taken in! The pleasantries are mannered rather than truly civil or cordial. His sunshine is shtick.
If his betters close a door and grant Dr. Sunshine confidentiality, his dark side will come out. If it nets him a course release, he'll support a decision to push you down a well. Give him a title, no matter how trivial, then watch him dispatch his good friends, his cherished colleagues, his longtime department, or anyone else if it might please those who can grant him favors or save him bother. Smiling all the while and professing to be uncertain what has happened or why, this Mack the Knife flashes his shark teeth as he fingers the blade out of sight.
Having alluded to Bertolt Brecht, I am uncertain whether I now should steal from Edmond Rostand. Rostand has his hero Cyrano denounce some Sunshine Thugs. These folks "seek for the patronage of some great man, and like a creeping vine on a tall tree, crawl upward, where [they] cannot stand alone ..." Clinging to the lofty, Sunshine Thugs "... play the buffoon in the vile hope of teasing out a smile on some cold face ..." and make their "knees callous, and cultivate a supple spine ... ." Shaded by their patrons and protectors, the Sunshine Thugs "[t]ickle the horns of Mammon with [their] left hand, while their right, too proud to know his partner's business, takes in the fee ..." Betraying whatever smidgeon of talent they may have and usually do not need, Sunshine Thugs "[u]se the fire God gave [them] to burn incense all day long under the nose of wood and stone ..." even as they burn vulnerable colleagues out of the sight of most colleagues. In sum, Rostand/de Bergerac might say that Sunshine Thugs "[c]alculate, scheme, [live in fear], love more to make a visit than a poem, seek introductions, favors, influences..." all while acting the part of the affable, slightly daffy academic too distracted to have any part in dastardly deeds in which they play a prominent but latent part.
Shall I invoke Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, MN, instead?
You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning
You got a lotta nerve
To say you gota helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that's winning
...
You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, "How are you?" "Good luck"
But you don't mean it
When you know as well as me
You'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once
And scream it
...
If in public you praise excrement as excellence while in private you serve anyone who can do you any good or any harm, you may be a Sunshine Thug. If you loudly, proudly endorse independence even as you punish independents in any circumstance that hides your other face, you may be a Sunshine Thug. If you are craven in the shadows but gay in the daylight, you may be a Sunshine Thug.
Please do not be a Sunshine Thug.
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