The Dark Side

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Each member of the faculty is in some measure a perpetrator, a bystander, and a victim. However, when faculty become dean-like, perpetration increases, bystanding becomes more active, and victimization decreases.
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In Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, Professor Raul Hilberg differentiated those who created or expedited the Holocaust [perpetrators] from those who did little to stop the Holocaust [bystanders] and from those who died in or suffered through the Holocaust [victims]. Academic politics and government, to be sure, are far less important and far less murderous than the Holocaust was, so I intend no comparison between the misdeeds I cover below and the crimes and outrages of the Nazis and others. Rather I aim to use the concepts "perpetrator," "bystander," and "victim" to explain how administrators go over to the dark side.

In this entry I shall not differentiate the doers, the done-to, and the done-too-little for the University of Puget Clowns [® Susan Resneck PieRce]. Rather, I aggregate those roles or descriptors. Every academic, I presume, is to some extent a perpetrator of and a victim of and a bystander amid the lesser outrages and delicts of academe. I further presume that the modal academic is mostly a bystander, occasionally a victim, and only rarely a perpetrator. Hence, the mix of roles or dispositions interests me in this post.

I expect that any increase in administrative responsibilities or expectations will increase perpetration even if it does not reduce victimization. What may be less obvious is that the more administrative one's duties, the more that one is expected to be a bystander. Although administrators may often be bystanders, administrative roles require less passive and more active standing by than professorial roles require.

Recall from my entry "Standing By" for 26 June 2010 in "Rump Parliament" that passive bystanders stand by apparently idly and inertly. Passive bystanders know little and want to know less unless a matter or issue lines their pockets or threatens their positions or interests. Compelled or induced into some academic fray, passive bystanders avoid controversy, agree with and reaffirm the basic goodness of as many colleagues as possible, decide nothing, and establish no truths or facts. Passive bystanders want all of us to get along. Indeed, the passive are so averse to conflict that they avert their eyes and close their minds to injustices and improprieties. Even if passive bystanders do not become apologists, they strive not to know, try not to hear, euphemize in every way, and thereby resist being drawn into frays or phrase.

Faculty have far more opportunities for passivity and apathy than dean-like or dean-light figures do. Untenured faculty had better be active apologists, accomplices, or enablers at least some of the time lest they run into "Double Secret Personal and Professional Characteristics," but professing to know almost nothing and to be unconcerned about whatever senior faculty tell junior faculty to be unconcerned about secures tenure and promotuion most of the time. Unternured and tenured alike will usually strive to be credulous and conforming. Knowing and caring get in the way of conformity and credulity. To be sure, passive bystanders must declare their basic decency: "Oh, our colleague got shafted? I had not heard that. How dreadful for her! I am so saddened by this news -- which I had not heard anything about -- that I am not certain I shall recover by my nap."

By contrast, dean-like or dean-light colleagues must be more active and less passive than even sinecures. Associate deans, assistant deans, or petty decanal figures [e.g., chairs or directors or members of Power Committees] may be expected to be cover up administrative decisions or non-decisions rather than to ignore them, to rationalize or apologize for policies or ukases rather than to describe them and conform to them, or actively to support or to cheer on actions or inactions, especially when actions or inactions are indefensible. Hence, a shift to an administrative role may not change the degree to which one is a bystander but will change bystanding from more passive to more active standing by. Administrators are expected to stand by what their superiors have dictated.

Members of Power Committees tend to stand by administrators and other superiors, so their bystanding will be more active while they occupy committees and more passive when they do not so serve. After service on a Power Committee, faculty may revert to passive bystanding, but they may be more active bystanders if the acts they perpetrated on the Power Committee especially rankled departments, programs, or a few conscious colleagues. On rare occasions when Power Committees or the Confidentiality Con is challenged, veterans of Power Committees will stand by the actions of "their" committees with aggressive and defensive rhetoric and, of course, the usual stonewalling.

Some chairs of programs, schools, or departments quite predictably become aggressive bystanders when they are not flat-out perpetrators. Indeed, some departmental chairs were so obviously perpetrators-in-waiting that I am reluctant to pronounce them bystanders at all, except in the sense that a Rottweiler on a short chain is "standing by." A colleague salivating at the thought of having her or his way with a school or program may actively stand by her or his administrative betters to get into positions from which to tyrannize. Such colleagues range between bystanding and perpetrating.

When we reassure ourselves and others that a professor will not be changed by becoming decanal, we probably have in mind that the professor is no perpetrator. But we are not thinking matters through. Even if a decanal figure evades stark perpetration for some months or years, administrative office will move him or her toward more active bystanding. [It should go without my adding that members of Power Committees, chairs, directors, and deans sooner or later become perpetrators. It comes with each job, even if one is temporarily chairing the smallest program. Indeed, for some chairs, perpetrating tyrannies is their reason for accepting responsibilities.]

Multiple members of the faculty have not merely claimed that becoming an assistant dean or associate dean or a chair would not change them but boldly proclaimed such immunity. Understanding more active bystanding explains why such predictions have proved misleading.

Many of the predictions, of course, were designed to mislead. After one professor served in a decanal position, any colleague with three digits of IQ knew what a tyrant he would be if he ever became an assistant dean or an associate dean or, God help us, a "full" dean. To my knowledge, he was tyrannical only in two dean-like or dean-light capacities. So when he explicitly reassured long-serving colleagues that he did not want his "accession" to change relations with colleagues, he was at best being clever. In theory he did not want relations to change; in practice they would. They must.

More than one member of the faculty has counseled a colleague to get out of a position that requires deception or distortions. More than one member of the faculty has asked what happened to a colleague who became more administrative and began to parrot nonsense or support malfeasance. At such times, faculty exclaim, "He's gone native!" or "She's gone over to the dark side." I have shown above why that should be expected.

So when a veteran warns that someone has "gone over to the dark side," the veteran is not necessarily committing to the prediction that decanal darkness will involve flat-out misconduct or corruption. Some combination of dishonesty, misprision, malfeasance, and nonfeasance is highly probable but not inevitable.

On the other hand, the probability that a decanal figure will be victimized is far less than the likelihood that she or he will victimize. Thus, I define "going over to the dark side" as increasing one's propensity to victimize, decreasing one's propensity to be victimized, and increasing one's active bystanding. Those trends are inevitable. That is "going over to the dark side." That is why colleagues caution against taking decanal positions.

If you would be a chair, a director, an assistant dean, an associate dean, or worse, remember your Dante: Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'entrate. Abandon hope for your own soul. Abandon hope for your colleague's soul. Those who enter Jones Hall or chair a department or serve on a Power Committee plummet into active or aggressive standing by, into covert or overt sins of commission or omission, and into a spiral of rationalizing and covering up.

Yes, I am serving my third year on the Professional Standards Committee after two stints on the Faculty Advancement Committee. Why do you ask?
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Letting Meanings Choose Words -- Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!

Eric Arthur Blair's palliative measure that masks symptoms but does not actually cure underlying conditions does not suit The University of Puget Clowns [ ® Susan Resneck PieRce]

In his classic essay "Politics and the English Language," Eric Arthur Blair informed me that

######What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word,
######and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can

######do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a
######concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want
######to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably
######hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it.
######When you think of something abstract you are more
######inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a
######conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect
######will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense
######of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably
######it is better to put off using words as long as possible
######and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and
######sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the
######phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round
######and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make
######on another person.
##########
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Kindly overlook the many aspects of that passage that are patent blather and focus please on the blather that may be latent:

If you let your meaning choose your words and if your meaning is at all nuanced or complicated, almost no reader will be able to understand you amid post-literacy, and you will run afoul of Mr. Blair’s own rules.

That is my contention and my meaning in this entry. Let me now choose my words.

I know not when literacy gave way to post-literacy. The first person whom I heard call ours the Post-Literate Era was Jerry Collins. I'll have to ask him to fix a threshold or period.

I know that academics live unabashedly in post-literacy because colleagues have taught me as much over the years. I have often relied on a colleague to proofread my drafts intended for academic audiences. My Proofreader has counseled me to keep things simple even at severe costs in oversimplification. In other words, let simplicity and facility of wording and phrasing shape or bound my meaning. When I have protested that I have chosen exactly the words that should convey my meaning and my case, My Proofreader has patronized me and my audience by the reminder that I must dumb down even prose intended for faculty.

Mr. Proofreader must regard his colleagues as clowns!

In this counsel My Proofreader has often reiterated the tactical advice of another Puget Clown, who claims that one always prevails in campus forensics if one says something like: "I am clear; my opponents are confused." If one's opponents are confusing a meeting of faculty by admitting realities or sorting through tradeoffs or thinking carefully, precisely, and honestly aloud, the opponents have delivered themselves into the clutches of a gibe. What the faculty cannot understand they will not vote for, so assure colleagues that they do not understand the novel, the logical, or the seldom uttered because the originator of an argument is himself or herself confused. In effect, The Tactician advises that one deploy this "syllogism:"

##########
##########The speaker has said something unexpected.

##########The unexpected is harder to understand than the predictable.

##########The difficulty of understanding lies either with the speaker
####################or the audience.

##########The lack of understanding cannot be yours.

##########Thus, whenever you are not speaking, the absence of
####################understanding is due to shortcomings
####################of the speaker, not of you.

##########Hence, what confuses you is not your fault but the speaker's.

##########Hence, you should adhere to the familiar, the clichéd,
####################and the reassuring and reject the
####################speaker's confusion.
##########
##########

The Tactician revels in his own superiority to stooges who, like recently unthawed cave people or a recently assembled monster, fear what they have never heard and do not want to trouble themselves to think about, let alone to understand. My Proofreader at least has the grace to lament post-literacy, but The Tactician spies an opportunity to get his way and to have his way with colleagues.

The Tactician assuredly regards faculty as jokers ... at best.

The Tactician and My Proofreader have taught me that the sort of writing that Mr. Blair was on about is overly optimistic for governance of and politicking at Puget Clowns. If, following Mr. Blair, I determine my meaning precisely and select just the right words or phrases to convey that meaning, I will make myself obscure to colleagues.

Clowns to the left of me / Jokers to the right / Here I am

Perhaps worse, I have been advised by colleagues who do not acknowledge an implication that My Proofreader and The Tactician accept:

We are so deeply into Post-Literacy that an academic who uses vocabulary beyond common usage or the SAT [whichever bound comes first] insults his or her colleagues.

More than once a sensitive fussbudget has warned me not to phrase matters as I have lest most colleagues be unfamiliar with a key term. When I have found ways to elaborate, in notes or in the main text, precisely why the unfamiliar word or phrase or concept conveys my meaning, Dr. Fussy Wuzzy has protested explicitly that colleagues would be put off and put out that I should teach faculty arcane vocabulary – say, words once found on the GRE.

How presumptuous! How insulting! How didactic! What kind of fool am I? What must Dr. Wuzzy think of the Puget Clowns?

Please do not misunderstand me. I accept the notion that one parades learning or teaches readers at great peril to readers’ understanding or patience. I do not accept, however, the contention that a self-proclaimed "community of lifelong learners" get(s) to protest that thinking in novel terms or viewing matters from a different perspective or altering one's language to get matters exactly right is so challenging that the writer may fairly be said to insult readers who have PhDs but too little facility with what was, until recently, academic or intellectual English. I am not defending argot, jargon, or jactitation for the sake of showing off.

I know what you're thinking! "Jactitation?" I learned the word in the fifth grade from Stanley Kramer's movie of "Inherit the Wind" (1960). Doctor, do you know less than a fifth grader? ... a fifth grader watching a movie in Ballard? Sheeesh!

I am saying that stating matters as clearly as one can and informing hearers or readers why one has used a complicated concept or a rare word once was a norm for intellectual discourse.

Indeed, need I note that My Proofreader, The Tactician, and Fussy Wuzzy have each and all lamented the laziness of students who will not learn vocabulary and concepts and ideas?

I should be so fortunate that I might write what I mean and let my meanings choose my words, Mr. Blair [writing as "George Orwell," a name that there is no reason for me to suppose is familiar to a PhD on the roster of Puget Clowns]. After I figure out what I think and should like to convey, I then must settle for 11th-grade words and phrases [My Proofreader] that do not in any way challenge or inform or awaken or alarm fellow faculty [The Tactician] lest sensitive faculty feel hurt that I should use English in way that demands close reading, an active mind, and a willingness to learn [Fussy Wuzzy].

Do I insult post-literate readers if I alert them to a transition ["segue" is shorter, no?] in my entry as I move from letting the meaning select the words to the inconsistencies between letting the meanings select the words and Mr. Orwell's rules? How about if I call him "Orwell" below for contrast with "Blair" above?

What's more, Mr. Orwell in the very same essay enumerated rules that contradict his advice to let my meanings select my words:

##########(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. So I let meanings choose my words, then eliminate familiar idioms and tropes even if those tropes and idioms articulate exactly what I meant?

##########(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. So I let my meanings choose my words, then let the inability of my audience to handle longer words -- more syllables? more letters? -- drive out the longer even if it is clearer and more familiar than the shorter word? If I mean "understand" or "perceive," I use "ken?"

##########(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. [I'll try not to take your order literally, Mr. Orwell, since word-processors make cutting words out always possible.] So I select the words that most perfectly convey my meaning, then I see how many of them I can eliminate? After I exclude some words because I may/can, do I re-evaluate their ability to convey my meaning exactly and clearly?

##########(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. [Again, the literal reader concludes that one always should use the active voice.] So I should eliminate any meanings that might select for passive constructions? So words should not select my meanings but grammatical voice should?

##########(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. How will I know if the everyday English equivalent will convey the meaning by which I selected the foreign word -- schadenfreude -- before I applied your fifth rule?

##########(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. So I should avoid thinking or averring meanings, visualizations, or ideas that might lead to expressions that could be seen as alien, different, or issuing from some linguistic or cultural others?

I sum up Orwell's advice: Avoid communication with humans. If you must communicate with humans, do not use "palliative." Instead, say "measure that masks symptoms but does not actually cure underlying conditions." Always use "assay" rather than "assess" or "evaluate" because "assay" is shorter. Never use "professoriate" or "professoriat" but know that either spelling is accepted and that you might save an "e" by going with "professoriat" when writing in your diary.

Sordid by Faith

Have faculty and students at this university been "sorted by fate" to enjoy classics?

Ten to twelve years ago a now-retired colleague shared with me that he addressed students on the first day of class with the sentiment that they were all fortunate to have been "sorted by fate" to be in that class and that classroom to contemplate some classic texts.

Someone is rather full of himself, what? Fate must be omnicompetent to bother with a dozen or two humans in Tacoma, Washington.

How do I ridicule my erstwhile colleague's sentiment? Let me count the ways.

Unlike Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I actually count the ways below. She said she would count the ways, then she did not count.

On the other hand, in every other respect, Elizabeth Barrett Browning counts far more than I.

First, "fate" usually holds a place for and thus supplants understanding. Fate makes thinking and understanding less likely. We invoke destiny when we have no better explanation or when we do not want to formulate a more concrete, more accurate explanation. Who invokes fate relies on, if not revels in, ignorance.

"Ignorance is strength!" said some author in some classic that I was sorted by fate and assigned by a summer reading list to read.

Second, the perfect, passive participle "sorted" saves us the trouble of identifying agency beyond "fate." This usage is very close to the British "sort out," which [when transitive] means that someone arrays something by class or type, but [when intransitive] is used utterly impersonally to indicate unexplored evolution, unexplained developments, or blind contingencies without little human design. "Let's wait and see how things sort out" invites listeners to be patient while some unspecified force(s) determine advantages and disadvantages.

I suffered some Catholic guilt until I realized that heretics and the faithful had been sorted by divine will. His will be done!

Third, taken together the words "fate" and "sorted" attribute a situation to an abstract, ineffable and impersonal entity that separated us fortunates from those less fortunate, that ordered the universe to bring us into the presence of greats and greatness, and that therefore must like us -- must really, really like us.

Hard not to be happy with ourselves, the class and our class, our status, our situation, our breeding, our genetics, our . . . after that introduction to what is, after all, a college course.

Fourth, "sorted by fate" euphemizes past factors so chronic, common, and substantial that disciplines define themselves thereby. Whatever sorting fate did was ably assisted by stratification, kinship, subculture, class, status, party, conformity, courtesy, credulity, and other factors or forces about which social sciences have nattered from time to time.

You may have already won big prizes!

Fifth, the inevitability of fate excuses us from any trace of guilt or shame that our advancement comes at the expense of many others who cannot afford to attend the University of Puget Clowns or who suffer from some disadvantage(s) related to anthropology, sociology, or other subjects that might complicate moral or personal responsibility. This is especially important for self-esteem on Graduation Day: We stand at commencement like self-made men and women in part because kindly professors conditioned us to believe that fate got us into the classroom and we [great author, great expositor of author, and about 15 receptive admirers of author and expositor] did the rest.

"Sorted by fate" my ass! No wonder Plato opted to rid his ideal state of poets!

Shall we demystify just a little? Maybe a little less ignorance will make for a little more strength, Big Brother to the contrary notwithsianding?

Students who think themselves in the presence of Plato do not comprehend that multiply translated words do not make the man or the thinker. At most students circle an honored text while a teacher circuits his or her notes. Hey, kiddies. It's called a "course"* for a reason. Or as Dr. Joni Mitchell phrased the refrain:

And the seasons they go round and round,
And the painted ponies go up and down.
We're captive on the carousel of time.
We can't return; we can only look
Behind from where we came,
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

* Sorted by Sister David into Seattle Preparatory School, I learned that "course" evolved from "cursus," the Latin for track or a road or circuit to run.