With Apologies to Johnny Mandel

To the tune of Johnny Mandel's "Suicide Is Painless," the theme to M*A*S*H


Through academic fog I see
What this place has done to me.
The frauds and fakes I cannot flee
I realize; how can it be

That menticide is painless
And nothing ever changes
Yet I can take or leave it if I please?

I tried to find a way to make
Our governance a bit less fake,
But now I know I'll never slake
The thirst of poseurs on the make.

But menticide is painless,
And nothing ever changes,
So I can take or leave it as I please.

To tell the truth will never pay
Where liars tend to rule the fray.
So as I while away the day
This is what I try to say:

Hey! Menticide is painless,
And nothing ever changes,
And I can take or leave this if I please.

The only way to win is cheat
Or fabricate your every feat.
So let another have my seat.
I'll pound a very diff'rent beat.

Though menticide is painless,
It brings on many changes,
and I don't care to live amid the sleaze.

Able was I ere I saw
Each blemish and each morbid flaw,
And though it all sticks in my craw,
When things get heinous I guffaw

That menticide is painless;
It brings on many changes;
And I don't care to live amid the sleaze.

So if you come to question me
About some issue you think key,
I'll talk about my standard fee:
Rebuke for your naivete.

'Cause menticide is painless,
it brings on many changes ,
and I don't care to revel in the sleaze.
But you go on without me, if you please.

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

Two phrases from a classic film will ease your way around campus and throughout your career here.


The movie "Chinatown" ends with two lines as forlorn as Oscar-winning scriptwriter Robert Towne could make them. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), who has just witnessed a police killing in service of avarice and power, mutters, "as little as possible," the phrase that the L. A. prosecutor had used to tell Gittes what to do in Chinatown. Gittes' associate Walsh muscles Gittes away from the death scene with the memorable "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

I respectfully suggest that colleagues use the mantras "as little as possible" and "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." to address conditions they may never redress. The phrases may be defeatist, cynical, or fatalistic. However, these two mantras will get colleagues past irrational decision-making and crass favoritism and myriad other vices of academic life.

Take the young colleague who asked me, "Doesn't the university support scholarship and publication?" As little as possible.

The university luxuriates in mostly imagined glories from accomplishments of faculty but supports research and scholarship minimally. Bequests and donations keep support from being entirely rhetorical, but such support mostly falls on the university rather than wells up from within the university. Almost all support for scholarship is honorific. In multiple senses of the term, support for scholarship is cheap. You need support to execute researches that you were promised you could pursue? Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

Sound too cynical? Look at "The Open Line,"* the newsletter by which the university's PR flacks keep the community informed about the accomplishments of faculty and staff. Ignore the few entries that seem to be genuine accomplishments. [Many of them are only apparent accomplishments, but do not let that concern you.] Now assay the remaining majority of entries. Tenure-seeking self-promoters tout minuscule feats as attainments. Would-be experts report recent interviews by media whose provenance is unknown and whose prominence may be doubted. If faculty had less pathetic accomplishments to report, would the "Noteworthy" section be so unworthy? "The Open Line" imparts new meaning to the phrase "minimum publishable unit." What items are not reproduced in "The Open Line?" As little as possible.

Still unconvinced? Find a report of colleagues tenured, promoted, or reviewed in a given year. Now search the Internet to see what accomplishments those colleagues claim on their resumes. If the university sincerely values academic excellence, how did this person get tenure without a peer-reviewed publication? If the university earnestly demands academic accomplishments, how did that person become a "Distinguished Professor" with nary a substantial scholarly credential? To be sure, the university consistently embraces scholarly achievement, but the university also embraces an absence of scholarly achievement. As a result, many faculty publish as little as possible.

Maybe the curricula vitarum are selective and the most impressive scholarly achievements are not yet listed? And maybe it's Chinatown.

Given that Puget Sound supports scholarship as little as possible, a naif might expect support to be directed to the most productive scholars and worthiest projects. Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown. If track records mattered, those rationing support for research would demand a Curriculum Vitae with applications for support. At the University of Puget Clowns, we ask that applicants not provide a resume. Could the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] be clearer that it's Chinatown?

Multiple colleagues have held named chairs despite decades or careers largely bereft of publication. As little as possible indeed.

When a colleague is feted for a book about which he or she has been talking and getting rewarded for decades, don't ask why it took so long or other questions. Just mumble to yourself, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

When a colleague coming up for evaluation quickly publishes a book with a flimsy press, it is impolite to comment on the press or the absence of peer reviews before or after publication. The colleague is after all merely living the Puget Clowns motto: as little as possible.

Look up this blog's "Scoundrels and Frauds" from 18 May 2009. A member of the faculty said nearly despondently of graduation, "I am happy to attend for the kids but usually dislike the speeches. The speeches are high-minded. I get inspired then look around and see so many scoundrels and frauds sitting near me. I feel soiled, but say nothing. The hypocrisy bothers me." Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown!

So what to do? Teach your students, read and learn, and, if you're serious about research, look for another place at which to do it. But do not even think about service, accreditation, or faculty governance unless you can keep in mind as little as possible.

You expect administrators, colleagues, committees, schools, departments, or programs to approximate their ideals or to redeem their promises or to deliver what they talked about while recruiting you? Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

-----------------------

*In this blog, "The Open Line" is usually called "The Open Manhole," for it leads to sewage. See "Lifting the Manhole Cover," 14 March 2009 for my parody of "The Open Line."

Up Is Down

"You must modify Haltom's Third Law. You have posited that 'Those who profess ethics have none.' But you have noted as well that those who campaign for rigor often or usually have none. Why not combine the two adages?"

Beloved reader, I can go at least this far. Whenever anyone campaigns for more rigor in the classroom, check the teaching evaluations immediately to find what is wrong in the campaigner's classroom. Whenever a colleague demands changes in the forms with which students evaluate teachers, seek out the bad set of evaluations that is spurring the colleague. Whenever an alleged scholar campaigns for rigor in scholarship or for more professional growth, locate the scholar's CV and marvel at chutzpa.

Regular readers of this blog know that at the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] up is down. What my reader apparently does not appreciate is the artistry that the clowns bring to their affectations. Anyone who has professional growth may talk about professional growth; it takes a true bullshit artist to banter about professional growth amid a career-long slump. A colleague who could smear his arms and hands with tuna but still could not get a cat to sit up has some nerve talking about teaching, which makes his act all the more breath-taking. It is one thing to do a high-wire walk without a net, but without a high wire?

And what about the cunning by which the polymorphous incompetent induces colleagues to cover for her? She calls attention to her minuscule scholarship even as she begs someone to create a simple document for her. You think that is easy to pull off, dear reader? She faults another's teaching but is herself infamous for truncating classes for which she has barely prepared. That's genius!

Meanwhile, colleagues have to keep doing the jobs of and for the poseurs. Various frauds drag their feet regarding diversity, compelling more productive scholars and more accomplished teachers to struggle for diversity. Those committed to scholarship have to argue that committees handing out money for scholarship should ask for CVs before granting moneys and proof of accomplishment after the grant has run. Those who have served the university in multiple capacities for multiple decades must wrestle with slackers and slugabeds to induce committees and the Faculty Senate to follow by-laws. Men and women who are quite busy should not have to devote free time that they do not have to inducing women [and a few men] to stop bringing down or driving out women.

Still, I wonder that my reader can generate any juice over these matters. For as long as I have been here, the working faculty have done their own jobs and the jobs of blatherers and bullshitters for, more often than not, a sucker's payoff.

If Colleagues Read and Believed SI

The Captain of the Yankees covers a truth most people learn in junior high. What if colleagues knew this truth?

In the 7 December 2009 Sports Illustrated, Derek Jeter made an obvious point: "If you're accomplished, people will talk about it for you. You don't have to point it out."

Who did not learn this in junior high? If Stud Bucket were a ladies' man, would he have to tell us that he was? If Buffy Moolah came from so much money, wouldn't we discern that without much assistance from her?

So why does this colleague tell me about her breeding? Why does that colleague remind me that he is "a member of the club" in some discipline? She and he point out such "facts" because otherwise I would never guess them. They have to point such facts out because they are not accomplished.

At any university or college, expect the least accomplished colleagues to remind you of their accomplishments.

The Persistence of Blather

At the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] the half-life of blather is measured in years.

This week I beset a faculty senator at the Faculty Club. When I pointed out to her that the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] was once again flouting the Bylaws, which verbatim require all Faculty Senate committees to elect a single chair, she responded, "There are other committees with two chairs."

The last time I heard that talking point, it issued from the most flagrant blatherskite on the faculty, a member of the FAC. Sensing that I was dealing with a credulous naif repeating a shibboleth, I was gentle: "Yes, and other men had abused their wives before O. J. Simpson did."

Not that it will profit either the blatherskite or the naif, I now plod.

When — not if — the FAC violates the express language of the Bylaws, its claim that this or that committee violates the same language is no defense. If every committee festooned itself with six chairs [as the FAC has done to evade the rules], that would not change the Bylaws, which direct the election of a chair [please note the singular, which appears lost on members of the FAC] as the first task of each Faculty Senate committee. Any claim to the contrary by anyone competent to read the Bylaws is argument in bad faith. Argument in bad faith is no duty of the FAC, although it has long been a habit whenever rules or authority are inconvenient. Does that mean that arguments in bad faith are acceptable because they are an FAC or a UPS tradition?

That multiple committees violate the Bylaws should embarrass senators. Every time the Faculty Senate accepts a report from a committee that violates the Bylaws, the Senate condones or colludes in such violations. As the shibboleth conjured by the blatherskite and aped by the naif demonstrates, senators know that the FAC violates the Bylaws. But challenging the FAC is a bother and could imperil the naif's advancement.

As I have repeated in this blog from time to time, the FAC will not simply elect a chair. That chair could have no responsibilities beyond reporting to the Faculty Senate on the year's actions. The Bylaws require no specific performance beyond that. The election of a single member of the FAC to report to the Faculty Senate would take one to two minutes. Instead, the FAC dodges the Bylaws, the Chair of the Faculty Senate counsels them on how they may avoid authority, and senators lack the backbone or even the spittle to protest. Behold how blather persists!

I hope that the above has helped the senator-naif. I know that the blatherskite is beyond help. She knows that she is blathering. Blather is what she does best. It may be all that she does.

The Good Ol' Days

The University of Puget Sound in the early 1990s: The Myth of the Cave playing to rave reviews from prisoners inured to shackles.

A Puget Sound retiree reminded me today of this university in the early 1990s. I may have conveyed some of this narrative, but I want to contribute to the oral history of those times.

When the president of Puget Sound announced that he intended to retire in one year, administrators and one or more executives of the Faculty Senate conferred on the process for selection of the next CEO of UPS. In those days, Faculty Senate chairs tended to shill for the administrators to a far greater degree than in the later 1990s and early 21st century. The administrators and their apparatchiks announced, among other things, that faculty would select three faculty for the presidential selection committee via the process used for seating faculty on the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC]. That is, faculty would submit names and, pending approval of the trustees, the three named faculty would be on the committee.

No other faculty would know the names of candidates or interviewees. No one interviewing on or near campus would meet faculty. The Dean of the University, through the chair of the Faculty Senate, distributed photocopies of arguments for such secrecy. Indeed, the chair of the Faculty Senate reminded senators than PLU had recently been poised to hire a new president but had been prevented owing to an upsurge from faculty who disliked the choice. When an as-yet-untenured senator asked why it was better for faculty to suffer whomever the committee selected rather than to voice objections prospectively, I was rebuffed.

Then I asked why the indirect election was needful. The Dean intoned, as he sometimes did in defense of administrative brakes on direct election of members of the FAC, that otherwise the faculty might directly elect faculty from the same department or representative of some clique. This pretended solicitude for representation of the faculty made me wince, for even in my early years I had seen through the pretense.

I was somewhat surprised, nonetheless, when three faculty approved by the trustees [or administrators -- other than what administrators or their flunkies told trustees, trustees knew little about faculty then or later] included two faculty with PhDs in chemistry and not a single humanist. As a political scientist, I was not surprised that the selected faculty were more representative of administration dogma than of the teaching faculty. The Dean's concern for representation of the faculty failed elementary skepticism: "What would one expect an administrator to say?" That administrators and trustees were audacious enough to undermine their only announced rationale for indirect election surprised me. Usually deceptions are better protected from detection. [This eerily foreshadowed the presidency of the successful candidate: she probably fibbed about as often as her predecessor, but she did so in ways that made it unmistakeable to everyone except the most reputable and reliable faculty that she was fibbing; indeed, she seemed to me to revel in having power to mislead with impunity.]

When the Chair of the Board of Trustees later spoke to a faculty meeting, I asked him why the trustees were keeping faculty away from would-be presidents. His face reddened. He sputtered that he knew nothing about that and that trustees did not care who represented the faculty or how many faculty met with candidates. The chair of the board thus exposed as deceitful those who had claimed that the trustees wanted the process to proceed in the way it did.

Once the deceit of the Chair of the Faculty Senate and the Dean of the University had been exposed, the process went forward. I could not find a dozen faculty who knew and cared that all but three of the faculty had been closeted lest candidates or trustees meet the zany loons who do the teaching. When I raised the matter with a 15-year veteran, he croaked, "You'd argue with dean if he said it was raining." I must concede his point. If the dean complained about the rain on a dry day, I should argue. I thought the more pertinent hypothetical was that if that if the dean told that veteran that black was white, that veteran would act as if he believed the dean if rewards sufficed.

The rewards must have flowed because, to my knowledge, that 15-year veteran confronted mendacious, manipulative administrators exactly twice before he retired. Mostly, he mumbled protests and deconstructed absurdities that issued from Jones Hall. Still, that put him far ahead of most of the faculty who had been hired in the 1970s and had prospered in the 1980s. Those faculty not only held their peace but also reveled in their obsequiousness. Veterans traduced newbies who doubted the dubious or observed the obvious. Every day in every way, the university was improving. Pavlovian faculty "freely" associated improvements with going along with each administrative gag. Those who gagged at administrative euphemisms or misdirection lacked the appropriate "personal and professional characteristics" for Puget Sound. Faculty evaluation procedures and other discipline would deal with thralls less than grateful for their subjection.

And why shouldn't the uninquisitive and the credulous rejoice in their shackles? Cheerful credulity and instrumental ignorance profit the shackled in honors, programs, and a reputation for being respectable and responsible. In addition, docile and reticent apologists and apparatchiks have more time for pursuits they value, like pretending to do research.

Why Did I Believe that Paul Simon Could Write?

Standing in line at Starbuck's three days ago, I heard the familiar strains of "The Sound of Silence" for the first time in a while.

The following line struck me as it never had before:

But my words, like silent raindrops fell /

And echoed in the wells of silence. /



What?

Silent raindrops -- as opposed to noisy raindrops?

If they were silent, how could the raindrops echo?

"Songfacts" http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=796 claims that Paul Simon took six months to write the lyrics, averaging a line per day. [Lots of rewrites? The song is but 34 lines long.]

Simon should have sent it to me. Even though I was only twelve, I could have helped.

I liked the song when I was in grade school.

What was I thinking?

What was Simon thinking?

The answers are blowing in the wind.