Avoiding “university politics”
is under normal circumstances a wise move by non-tenured professors because of
how vicious such politics can be. Perhaps if more scholars who take on
administrative positions with considerable power were more passionate
about learning more in their respective fields of knowledge, the power itself would
not be used so much to settle scores (i.e., retaliate). As Jesus says in the
Gospels concerning God and money, a person cannot serve two masters. When the
president of a university system is a lawyer rather than a scholar holding a
doctorate, a passion for acquiring academic knowledge cannot be relied upon to
keep the occupant of the high office focused on the essentials rather than on “extracurricular
activities.” When the Board of Regents fired Jay Rothman, a lawyer who had been
the presiding officer of the University of Wisconsin system (i.e., the main and
branch campuses) on March 7, 2026, the fact that he was not oriented as a
scholar—he had earned two undergraduate degrees—was arguably part of the reason
for the firing, given the salience of politics both in his conduct while in
office and his firing.
The full essay is at "On the Politics of Non-Politics at the University of Wisconsin."