Confederacy of Naked Emperors

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.

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.

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.

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.

What's Wrong with Collusion?

Do veterans of the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] hear what they have become when they quibble over corruptions of peer evaluation?

Upon hearing scuttlebutt about collusion in a tenure evaluation, colleagues with 50 years of service at our fine university independently inquired, "What's wrong with collusion?"

Such a question asked without irony limns a depravity* of faculty evaluation here. I have quoted from "The Hustler" more than once the jarring characterization of Sarah Packer [Piper Laurie]: "We have a contract of depravity. All we have to do is pull the blinds down."

Some Puget clowns no longer pull the blinds down.





* To go all etymological on your butt, to deprave is to descend ["de-"] into crookedness ["pravus"]. Perhaps our colleagues were straight and whole when they arrived so long ago. Their speech illuminates what has become of them.

Malfeasant or Nonfeasant?

On 14 February 2007, a bygone Professional Standards Committee soiled itself over the slightest supervision by the Faculty Senate.



Lest we forget, three years ago the Professional Standards Committee from academic year 2003-2004 [hereinafter, the Professional Standards Committee will be abbreviated "PSC" and the PSC for the year 2003-2004 designated "the Starr Chamber" to commemorate the secrecy of their proceedings and decision-making and the inequity of their methods and reasoning] sent the Faculty Senate a mewling memorandum.

The Faculty Senate, by the barest of margins, had passed a resolution in which the Senate took responsibility for mistakes made by the Starr Chamber in its annus horribilis 2003-2004. The Senate, deciding to exercise oversight just to see what it might be like, had appointed an ad hoc committee to investigate recent PSC misbehavior and to make recommendations to prevent violations of the Faculty Code and due process in the future. That ad hoc committee produced no findings, instead insulating the 2003-2004 PSC and insulting the Faculty Senate and faculty. When seven senators responded to the absence of findings by acknowledging the errors and misjudgments of the Starr Chamber, that was entirely too much for the Starr Chamber and for its chronic, conniving apologists on the Faculty Senate.

This 2006 report was one of the most cunning or cowardly or contemptible or clumsy or clownish actions by a committee or subcommittee ever. Was that ad hoc committee truly malfeasant or merely nonfeasant? You make the call!

The resulting communiqué from the Starr Chamber was a marvel of haughtiness and misdirection. Having committed undeniable errors, the Starr Chamber claimed that the Senate had not proved the errors. Even that subterfuge was not quite true. For one thing, senators had noted that the Starr Chamber had proceeded in very different ways to deal with two grievances, one in Fall 2003 and one in Spring 2004. When the then Academic Dean, himself a member of the Starr Chamber, was the respondent regarding a grievance, he and the grievant received the report of the Starr Chamber at about the same time that the President received it. The Starr Chamber after the next grievance hearing sent its report to the President but denied the report to the second grievant and to the second respondent. Logic dictated that at least one release had to be contrary to the Faculty Code, which had not changed in the interim. Senators therefore concluded that the Starr Chamber had committed at least one mistake.

Yes! By their own admission, the Starr Chamber erred once or twice in 2003-2004. Even the senators desperate to fend off any accountability had to admit this fact. Thus, the flimsy acknowledgment of the Faculty Senate merely stated a fact. Was the Starr Chamber in its disparaging the Faculty Senate flat-out malfeasant or merely nonfeasant? You make the call! Maybe you do not mind deceptions from the Starr Chamber. Maybe you expect no better.

The Senate had noted other errors or irregularities that the Starr Chamber could not have denied if the members of the Starr Chamber had spoken to senators or cooperated in any way. No one can dispute that the Starr Chamber conducted a grievance hearing more than fifteen days after it received the grievance from the Dean of the University. It is beyond dispute, therefore, that the Starr Chamber failed of the Faculty Code's explicit deadline.

That was a violation of the Faculty Code, a violation that one hopes was mistaken but may have been deliberate. No one may dispute that violation and argue in good faith. Was the Starr Chamber arguing in bad faith or was it that incompetent? You make the call!

To cover its misstep or mission, the Starr Chamber "interpreted" the Faculty Code to set the deadline at fifteen working days, an interpretation by which the Starr Chamber hoped to negate the mandate in the Faculty Code.

That was another violation of the Faculty Code. If the Starr Chamber believed they could substitute their own deadline for the code's deadline, they compounded their errors. If they knew that they had no authority to overrule the Faculty Code, they deliberately violated the code. Was the Starr Chamber mistaken or misbehaving? You make the call!

It is not only beyond dispute but beyond belief that the Starr Chamber then blew by the "reinterpreted" fifteen working days -- another incontestable violation of its duty. You read that last sentence right: the Starr Chamber disobeyed the explicit mandate of the code [15 days], "interpreted" that explicit mandate to excuse their disobedience [that is, they went to 15 "working" days as the new limit], than failed to hold the hearing within 15 working days.

Was this trifecta of violation merely three mistakes, as the Faculty Senate charitably proclaimed, or was it deliberate arrogation? The Starr Chamber should have thanked the Faculty Senate for calling flouting of authority error.

When the second grievance was eventually heard more than two months after it reached the Starr Chamber, one of the two claims advanced by the grievant turned out to have occurred more than 30 working days in the past according to the grievant's own complaint. That is correct! The Starr Chamber had delayed and delayed hearing a grievance that it could, if even one member of the Starr Chamber could or would have counted to 30, have dismissed in a timely manner. The Faculty Code limits grievances to 30 working days. Despite the code's "statute of limitations," the Starr Chamber at long last entertained that grievance.

Behold yet another violation that senators did not have to investigate or to prove; the grievant's complaint and a calendar proved the nonfeasance or malfeasance of the Starr Chamber.

The Valentine's Day greeting from the Starr Chamber to the Senate in 2007 teemed with still more deceptions. The most inept and/or feckless PSC in recent memory objected that the Senate had not carefully investigated mistakes. As noted above, the Senate's ad hoc committee had investigated mistakes and malfeasance, so the mistakes of the Starr Chamber were carefully investigated. Because that ad hoc committee issued no findings, neither senators nor members of the Starr Chamber could know what the ad hoc committee might have found. Senators knew that each member of the ad hoc committee admitted before the senators that he or she had discovered mistakes. The Starr Chamber phrasing was thus cunning and misleading in the extreme. The Senate as a whole had not investigated, but the Senate's ad hoc committee had discovered that "mistakes were made."

Was the Starr Chamber's clever phrasing malfeasant or nonfeasant? You make the call!

The recklessness of the Starr Chamber in conducting its proceedings in 2003-2004 made the Starr Chamber's call for careful work as amusing as it was hypocritical. The Starr Chamber then augmented its hypocrisy: "In our opinion, the Senate passed its motion without exercising due process, without gathering evidence from all parties involved, and without assuring itself that it had received an impartial and complete account of events." Shall we peel this onion and weep at the multiple standards deployed by the Starr Chamber and its apologists?

The Starr Chamber violated due process repeatedly in 2003-2004 beyond what I have listed above. For one thing, the Starr Chamber so constructed a list of charges that an accused colleague had to prove her innocence rather than the accusers having to prove her guilt. The Starr Chamber's product passes for due process but the Senate's motion does not? The Starr Chamber dared to write "due process" without fear that members' tongues would burst into flames?

Was the Starr Chamber's reference to "due process" malfeasant or nonfeasant? You make the call!

The Starr Chamber repeatedly insisted that a confidentiality found neither in the Faculty Code nor in the bylaws prevented them from speaking with the Senate about their activities despite the Senate's oversight capacity and duty. Hence, those who protested that evidence had not been gathered had refused to provide the evidence that they then said had not been accumulated. [Please consult the very first posting in "Rump Parliament" to see that two members of the Starr Chamber had explicitly informed the Faculty Senate that no member of the Starr Chamber would break confidentiality to speak to the senate or to its ad hoc committee.] Having obstructed the investigation, the Starr Chamber then protested that the investigation was incomplete. This effrontery of the Starr Chamber recalls the classic definition of chutzpah: A son kills his parents then demands mercy because he is an orphan.

Was the Starr Chamber more malfeasant than nonfeasant in claiming that the Faculty Senate did not consult all parties when the Starr Chamber itself refused to be consulted based on a fictitious confidentiality? You make the call!

A final hypocrisy: the little information the Starr Chamber had released was partial and incomplete, not to mention every bit as misleading as the Starr Chamber's Valentine's Day memorandum.

More malfeasant? More nonfeasant? You make the call!

Had anyone with even the slightest common sense counseled veterans of the Starr Chamber, he or she would have noted that defensive over-reaction to the merest hint of oversight and accountability did not become the Starr Chamber. It did, however, show what the Starr Chamber had become.

Malfeasant? Nonfeasant? Pathetic? Embarrassing? You make the call!

Still, the 2006-2007 Senate weathered the whining duplicity and abject hypocrisy of the Starr Chamber. Thus, the Senate was steeled when the 2006-2007 PSC was found to have issued a major interpretation that it had sent forward neither to the Senate nor to the trustees. The Faculty Code requires the assent of the trustees to a major interpretation. It also requires that the Faculty Senate be notified of the interpretation. The PSC once again had ignored or forgotten elementary demands of the Faculty Code, just like the Starr Chamber.

So little genuine supervision or accountability so aggravated the Starr Chamber that I wonder what genuine, routine Senate supervision would do to such popinjays.

Legends of Political Correctness

A member of the small, demented following of "Rump Parliament" wrote:

##########I hear so much about "political correctness"
##########on campus, yet I can't think of a single
##########right-of-center person who's been fired.
##########Meanwhile women ever-so-slightly
##########left-of-center and persons of color keep
##########leaving the university voluntarily or
##########involuntarily. I can name at least ten
##########conservatives who claim that some
##########forces on campus are after them,
##########but none of them is denied promotion or tenure.

I resist my glib reply: Has anyone of any credibility raised "political correctness" issues on this campus? I believe that that question answers itself.

Has anyone to the right of political center been denied tenure or sacked? Not to my knowledge, but I do not purport to know the ideological or partisan bent of most colleagues. Most faculty at Puget Clowns do not know much about most of the beliefs of most colleagues, which may itself suggest that "political correctness" is almost always blather.

What do I know about driving those to the right off campus? When women were abandoning this university in the late 1990s, a dean noted that no faculty publicly protested the departures of certain right-of-center women the way that faculty lamented the departures of some left-of-center women. However, I know of only one colleague who was foolish enough even to repeat that classic example of misdirection. [I shall divulge the identity of that colleague only after two Bombay Blue Sapphire martinis.] The names that the dean bandied included those of a libertarian and a religiously devout colleague. To the best of my information, neither woman was pushed away owing to her beliefs.

If right-of-center colleagues were driven away, we should all have heard one or more cover stories. As has been the case when women and minorities have escaped or been booted, a colleague should have whispered this excuse and another shoould have advanced that justification. When left-wing women have been induced or forced to leave, it has never been about gender to hear the apologists tell the tale. It has never been about race either, of course. It could not have been about ethnicity or religion. Certainly a firing could not owe to an evaluee's being avant garde or frightening. Women who intimidate or antagonize men have always been welcomed wholeheartedly. Minorities who expose the privileges that the majority enjoy have always been invited to enlighten the comfortable and conventional faculty still further.

I have never heard the cover story that would "prove" that political correctness was not involved. Hence, I assume that neither political correctness nor any other misconduct has driven any conservative faculty from campus.

You might exclaim that there are so few conservatives on campus that the odds that one of them would be hounded off campus are remote. That proves a little too much doesn't it?

Any veteran can name progressive or liberal or maybe even radical women or men who have been sent packing. I doubt that any veteran can identify a traditionalist or a conservative or a reactionary pushed out since 1992. If someone wants to bring up the fellow in 1992, I shall be more than happy to review actions and events that led him to resign. Whatever the outcome of that review, I am confident that more lefties who were also minorities have left our happy family than righties. I do admit that the lefties only outnumber the righties by an order of magnitude.

So, if you hear that a colleague is being punished for being too conservative, admit that such is not impossible but is improbable. It is far more probable that someone is exaggerating or even imagining the conservatism of an erstwhile colleague to manufacture a "crusade against nonconformists." It is easier to conjure that narrative than to analyze instances.

Do Mediocrities Tend to be Mean? Why?

Are many colleagues both mean-spirited and mediocre? Why?

A colleague recently opined, "She's mediocre, so she has to be mean."

"Read" as tautology, I guess that sentiment works. The mean is one definition of mediocrity.

"Read" as a syllogism, the sentence is a non sequitur. Plenty of professors are mean-spirited but not mediocre. Plenty of campus mediocrities are not mean-spirited. So the most one should posit is a mild positive correlation between excellence(s) and equanimity.

Besides, many mediocrities do not have to be mean; viciousness is just an extra.

As a mild positive correlation, the meanness of the mediocre corresponds to experience. In junior high school, the fellow barely tolerated by the cool clique was usually the fellow most intolerant of those not admitted to the clique. We did not wonder that the last fellow on the social yacht repelled boarders. We expected it and were surprised when a social deckhand was civil.

How often on how many campuses have not particularly talented graduates of modestly prestigious universities derided lesser institutions as if the greatest graduate of a more mediocre institution could never measure up to the worst survivor of some less mediocre institution?

One whose teaching is truly excellent will usually be disinclined to disparage the teaching of another, while many an ordinary teacher must tell you why he or she is at least better than this or that colleague because how else would you know? [See "If Colleagues Read and Believed SI," the entry in this blog for 16 December 2009.]

However, I suspect that the meanness of the mediocre should most pertain to professional growth. Many who prate about the professional growth of others often have undistinguished professional growth when they have any verifiable professional growth at all. This form of hypocrisy seems quite common in academia.

How about anecdotes that members of the Faculty Advancement Committee would treat as data if it suited them?

1. A senior member of the faculty at the a "Public Ivy" made bold to tell a candidate for tenure that he had voted against that candidate. [Openness and honesty were uncommon at that school, too!] When the evaluator mentioned how little he thought of a book that the evaluee had presented as professional growth, the evaluee snapped back, "What would you say was your best book to date?" The senior detractor had produced no book in his first 14 years at the institution. The tenured evaluator huffed and puffed down the hall, angered that the untenured dared to note his hypocrisy. That mediocrity was the meanest sphincter I have met in academe.

2. An ideologue renowned for the emptiness of his or her classes and the nullity of his or her professional growth -- at the University of Puget Clowns [TM Susan Resneck Pierce] that hardly distinguishes this colleague -- browbeat students for years and disparaged colleagues who had accomplished more, which provided many targets. As lousy a chair as he or she was a scholar or instructor, this full professor was renowned for mistreating staff as well. [That, by the way, is one way in which mediocrities excel: meanness to staff. Every or almost every mediocrity will lord her or his status and renown over "at will" employees.] As vicious and unaccomplished as they come, this colleague guaranteed the meanness and mediocrity of a department.

3. My favorite recollection of another mean mediocrity is his or her being chased down a corridor by another professor. The pursuer was screaming, "I am sick of having to humor a psychopath." Pursued and pursuer alike had seemed to me unbalanced for as long as I had known either, but the professor being chased wasted more of his or her colleagues' time than any five other professors combined. His or her professional accomplishments were as legendary as the Loch Ness Monster, albeit with less documentation. He or she could always be counted on for scathing appraisals of colleagues who saw through his or her preening and posturing. Not quite as vicious and unaccomplished as the subject of anecdote 2 supra, this colleague merely guaranteed the meanness and mediocrity of a program.

Despite the anecdotes above and other war stories that would correspond to the claim that professional mediocrity and meanness tend to go with one another, I am not certain that the mediocre have to be mean any more than do the inept or the excellent.*

Still, I am disposed to wonder why colleagues with modest professional growth might have a propensity for meanness.

Are they mean to drop their betters beneath themselves so that they might be mediocre? Many of the mediocre imagined themselves too good for Puget Clowns but discovered themselves barely up to the job. They settled then sank as a temporary billet became a permanent prison. The mediocrities therefore clawed at others to reduce their betters to an underclass lest the mediocrities themselves fail of adequacy.

Are they mean because they despair of accomplishments other than fierce arrogation? I have written that for many colleagues "able was I ere I saw Elba" summarizes their careers to date. Despite the University of Puget Clowns, they are able to be ornery and unfair. Due to the University of Puget Clowns, they cannot accomplish much else.

Are the mediocre mean out of ambition? As I blogged on 24 May 2008, the greater your ambition to lead, the less fit for leadership you are [Haltom's 19th Law]. Pursuing meager honors and minor authority with modest abilities, the ambitious brandish standards that they have never met. Professional growth is easier to fake than good teaching evaluations, so the ambitious pretend to be serious scholars. These ersatz leaders understand themselves enough to apply standards to vulnerable others, especilly those who are not allies or admirers. Anyone who sees through the ambitions to the inadequacies must be destroyed.

Are at least a few colleagues mediocre and mean owing to the same lack of mental prowess? Some colleagues cannot achieve because they cannot think beyond animal cunning. Some colleagues are vicious because they cannot summon less vicious means by which to strike back at their many betters. When the Venn sets "Those who cannot achieve much" and "Those who are vicious" overlap, is the intersection large or is the intersection merely glaring?

Do mean mediocrities drive out their betters, some of whom might have been or become mean non-mediocrities? If meanness and mediocrity each peak around the median of a normal distribution, maybe mediocrities assault those too obviously better or worse at professional growth than the mediocrities. Those who are sub-mediocre at professional growth often get tenured nonetheless, so mediocrities have plenty of targets. If not rooted out before tenure, however, sub-mediocre targets cannot escape to another campus. Mean mediocrities cannot drive the sub-mediocrities out if the latter have nowhere to go. Supra-mediocre colleagues, by contrast, may be able to go elsewhere. If supra-mediocrities who might also have been mean often escape abuse, that might explain why mediocrities are more often mean than supra-mediocrities.

##########

Still, I do not quite know what to conclude. Do the mediocre tend to be mean? If so, why?



*I here use "excellent" in its dictionary meaning -- "possessing outstanding quality or superior merit; remarkably good" Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary on CD -- rather than its operational meaning at the University of Puget Clowns: "possessing arguable quality or putative merit; no worse than some others whom we do not like as much."

############