Yale Vipers

Even though it is sometimes difficult to "read between the lines" to assess whether or not people in an organization are welcoming or tacitly "showing you the door," the message is undoubtable and even palpable when "all the arrows are pointing in the same direction." In the case of Yale, where I have been an alumni scholar temporarily in residence during the 2023-2024 year, the university's administration could do its alumni a big favor by explicitly saying that we are not welcome back on campus, except to visit and of course donate money. Instead, passive aggression, unaccountability, and even unwarranted retaliation rule the roust there, in what is a toxic organizational culture. 

The full essay is at "Yale Vipers."

American Federalism Eclipsed by an Ideal of Democracy: Education Over Immigration as a Constitutional Problem

The U.S. Constitution includes immigration as one of the listed (i.e., enumerated) powers of the federal government. Education is not such a power; hence it resides with the States. Historically, the accumulation of power by the federal government has involved taking areas from the States even though those areas are not listed as federal powers. As a result, American federalism has shifted increasingly toward a consolidation of power at the federal level. Among other means, Congresses and U.S. presidents have used the power of the purse to gain control from the States. Education is a case in point, whether elementary, secondary, or higher education. That the U.S. Government has had trouble controlling the country's southern border with Mexico suggests that maybe adding education has come at the expense of the added attention and effort that could have been put on immigration. In business terms, an opportunity cost (i.e., the cost of foregone benefits) comes with each additional federalized area. U.S. President Obama on education presents us with a case in point. 

The full essay is at "Federalism Eclipsed by Consolidation."

An Aggressive Culture Applied to a Pandemic

If a local culture does not value education, such that the public education system is weak, and furthermore engages in and enables aggressive behavior, even self-protective statements and efforts can provoke aggressive responses based on ignorance. In such a culture, authorities may be particularly unlikely to stem such aggression, and they may even be inclined to engage in active or passive aggression against victims rather than enforce laws and rules. For existence, police called on a noise complaint at an apartment complex may willfully or unwittingly turn on the complainer not due to lack of noise, but, rather, out of ignorance as to what constitutes a residential disturbance, fear of confronting people who are disturbing others, a desire to inhibit future calls or simply due the aggressor’s bidding by blaming the victim for complaining. Besides indicating a corrupt, sordid police culture, that of the locality itself would likely be compromised. During a pandemic, such pathology might be especially transparent because it is clear when people and authorities are not only not enforcing laws and organizational policies geared to protecting both employees and customers, but also acting against public health by turning on the victims. The case of Arizona and, more particularly, the Phoenix police department, is particularly revealing.

The full essay is at "Dysfunctional Culture During a Pandemic."

Frank Lloyd Wright: A Modern Renaissance Man

Perhaps no greater Renaissance man has been cited in American history than Thomas Jefferson. He wrote on the native plants of his country, Virginia, ran a plantation, designed buildings, founded a university, surveyed land,  was the head of state in Virginia, wrote a declaration of independence, and was the third president of the new American Union. More than two centuries after Mr. Jefferson, however, a cleft had become well-ensconced in American society between being an intellectual and a practitioner. The typical lawyer or physician, who holds two undergraduate degrees due in part to the political sense that a well-rounded citizenry makes a good electorate, has scant interest in intellectual endeavor. Indeed, one might even say that the “professions” place scant value on such activity; it is not “real work” or of the “real world.” The disdain is palpable, particularly in among the self-righteous in America. Yet Mr. Jefferson was able to bridge this gulf; so too can we. More contemporary examples can be cited to illustrate the mere possibility. The requisite delimiting "pruning" self-discipline might come as a surprise to people who presume that Renaissance breadth is borne of a wayward inability to "stay put."

The full essay is at "Frank Lloyd Wright.

Physicians and Lawyers: On the Presumption of Ignorance

It would surprise virtually every American (but only a few Europeans) to know that neither the JD nor the MD degree is a doctorate.   Each one is the first degree in its school, or discipline.  Yet we presume them to evince advanced knowledge, even allowing people with two undergraduate degrees to be "professors" (really instructors) in American law and medical schools. In the school of law, the sequence of degrees is: JD (same as the LLB), LLM (hint: M...Masters), and JSD (Doctorate in Juridical Science). The JSD degree includes advance study, a comprensive exam (an academic exam graded by faculty--not a industry-qualifying exam like the bar), and a defended dissertation. A doctoral degree must be the terminal degree of a field, contain a comprehensive exam, and include significant original research in a defended dissertation. The JD misses on all three points. The title of the first degree in law, the LLB (bachalors in letters of law) was replaced with "JD" largely for marketing purposes in 1901 in the founding of the U of Chicago law school (by three Harvard professors) because prospective students were complaining about having two "B" degrees after seven years of school.  People don't like to think they have gone to school for seven or eight years for two undergraduate degrees, but this is precisely what they have done. Nevertheless, the new law school in need of students complied with the "customer" complaint with a feat of mirrored marketing that was perhaps intentionally ambiguous.  To eviscerate the ambiguity in  Juris Doctor and a doctorate, one must look beyond the mere words.

The full essay is at "Professionals Over the Top." 

A U.S. Visa Fast-Track For Rich Investors

The New York Times reported in December 2011 that affluent foreigners had been rushing to take advantage of a U.S. immigration program. The foreign applicants must invest at least $500,000 in construction projects within the United States. The number of applicants had nearly doubled since the end of 2008 to more than 3,800 in the 2011 fiscal year. The intent of the program is to spur economic development at a time of high unemployment. Yet the program has also been characterized as a cash-for-visas scheme. Besides the question of whether the program’s rules have been stretched in New York City to qualify projects in prosperous areas for special concessions, an ethical question can be raised concerning who should get a visa.

The full essay is at "Visa Fast-Track for the Rich."

Leadership Consulting: Stances on Scholarship

As the field of leadership consulting continues to proliferate, fringe-elements have developed that risk taking down the credibility of the field itself as well as its more solid practitioners. In this essay, my objective is to make those practitioners aware of the damage to their field (and indirectly to their own practices) that is being committed on the periphery. Relatedly, my task extends to making scholars of leadership aware of how leadership itself is being undermined as a concept used (and abused) in the business world. I contend that maintaining the distinction between consulting (including writing on it) and scholarship is in everyone’s interest, even if some “coaches” believe they have a momentary interest in blurring the lines for personal gain.

The full essay is at "Leadership Consulting."

See related essay: “Toward a Definition for Ethical Leadership: Disabusing the Pessimists”

Analysis of Inferences and Assumptions: A Homework Assignment for “We the People”

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both strongly believed that the continued viability of a republic depends on an educated and virtuous citizenry. Public education and even the practice of some of the professional schools (e.g., medicine and law) since at least the early twentieth century to require a degree in another school (e.g. Liberal Arts and Sciences) before being admitted to the undergraduate program (i.e., the M.D. and J.D. or LLB, respectively). This lateral move is unique to the U.S.; entering medical and law students in the E.U. need not already have a college degree. I submit that the Founding Fathers’ firm political belief in the importance of an educated electorate concerns the value of not only having a broad array of knowledge, but also reason being able to assess its own inferences, or assumptions; for inferences, or leaps of reason, go into political judgments. Ultimately, voters make judgements, whether concerning the worthiness of candidates on a ballot, their policies, or proposals on a referendum. To the extent that subjecting assumptions to the “stress test” of reasoning is not a salient part of secondary education, an electorate is likely to make sub-optimal judgements, resulting in suboptimal elected officials, public policies, and laws.

The full essay is at “A Homework Assignment for ‘We the People’.” 

Gandhi's Philosophy of Nonviolent Defiance: A Way to Freedom

Film is indeed an art form, but the medium can also function as a teacher in how it conveys values and wisdom. Both of these features of film are salient in Gandhi (1982), whose director, Richard Attenborough, says in his audio commentary that the film has done much keep Gandhi’s philosophy alive in the world. In using the film’s star protagonist to explain what is behind his approach, viewers become, in effect, students. The strength of film here lies in its use of both audio and visual means to engrave the lessons in memories. In Gandhi, the main concept to be explained and illustrated is nonviolent active non-cooperation or defiance of unjust laws or regimes.

The full essay is at “Gandhi”

Can Ethical Leadership Be Taught?

In the typical business school, this question would be interpreted, or “refurbished.” Can students be trained to become ethical leaders? While often conflated contemporaneously, these two questions are indeed distinct. Instructors, professors and school administrators should first decide which question is more relevant to their purposes. The question chosen should fit with the education, pedagogical method, and philosophy of education of not only the instructor or professor, but also the school itself. In this essay, I distinguish the two questions in order to unpack them with their full significance.

The entire essay is at “Can Ethical Leadership Be Taught?

Ebola in Liberia: The Government’s Fault?

With the Ebola virus “spreading like wildfire” in Liberia, “devouring everything in its path,” Brownie Samukai, the state’s defense minister, went on to tell the U.N. Security Council on September 9, 2014 that “Liberia is facing a serious threat to its national existence.”[1] With more than half of the epidemic’s deaths in that state—1,224 out of at least 2,2296 in West Africa as of September 6, 2014—and new cases “increasing exponentially,” the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that “the demands of the Ebola outbreak have completely outstripped the government’s and partners’ capacity  to respond.”[2] Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that the illness had severely handicapped the mining, agriculture, and service sectors of the state’s economy.[3] Quite understandably, pleas for the government to do more peeled like frightened bells across the state. “The patients are hungry, they are starving. No food, no water,” a terrified woman told journalists. “The government needs to do more. Let Ellen Johnson Sirleaf do more!”[4] Even if valid, such blame is hypocritical to the extent that the people themselves had been refusing to do what is necessary to stop such a virus from spreading.

The entire essay is at “Ebola in Liberia”

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1. Abby Ohlheiser, “Ebola Is ‘Devouring Everything in Its Path.’ Could It Lead to Liberia’s Collapse?” The Washington Post, September 11, 2014.

2. WTO, “Ebola Situation in Liberia: Non-Conventional Interventions Needed,” September 8, 2014; Elahe Izadi, “Ebola Death Toll Rises to 2,296 as Liberia Struggles to Keep Up,” The Washington Post, September 9, 2014.

3. Anna Yukhananov, “IMF Says Ebola Hits Economic Growth in West Africa,” Reuters, September 11, 2014.

4. Abby Ohlheiser, “Ebola.”

Meteorology vs. Astronomy: Is It Spring Yet?

Advancing clocks an hour ahead to Daylight Savings Time conveniently announces itself as the easy-to-remember Spring Forward. Advancing democracy in the Middle East in the early years of the 2010s proclaimed to the world the Arab Spring. Advancing global warming foretells earlier springs encroaching on softened winters. Even as spring blooms in the sights of the popular press, the media quite stunningly often stumbles over when the season begins. The groundhog is no help, differing from year to year on whether spring begins four or six weeks from February 2nd. Astonishingly—and in no small measure my impetus in writing here out of no less than dumbfounded curiosity—even television meteorologists play to the popular ignorance, willingly succumbing to the common practice of taking astronomical “spring” as meteorological spring too. The “professionals’” declaratory tone alone reveals just how certain human beings can be even of presumed knowledge lacking any real foundation.  Sadly, this mentality of assertion, having become so widespread, or ubiquitous, in modern society, is virtually invisible to us; and yet, the shrill of the epistemological missionary zeal reverberates from no less than modernity’s default: faith in one’s own use of reason. In this essay, I present the first day of spring as a case in point rather than make the entire argument.

Sometime during the first week of March 2014, as yet another front of frigid Arctic air charged southward through North America, various weather personalities on television newscasts relished in the apparently startling fact that spring was just two weeks away. Viewers looking out at snow-covered landskips as far south as Kansas City could marvel at the return of nature’s colors and smells so soon. Most years, the grass is green there by the Ives of March.

Even as the popularly broadcast juxtaposition made for good copy, meteorological spring in the Northern Hemisphere had already come—that is to say, with regard to weather and climate. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “(m)eteorologists and climatologists break the seasons down into groupings of three months based on the annual temperature cycle as well as our calendar. . . . Meteorological spring includes March, April, and May; meteorological summer includes June, July, and August; meteorological fall includes September, October, and November; and meteorological winter includes December, January and February.”[1] Therefore, by the first week of March 2014, spring had already arrived as far as the weather is concerned even as television meteorologists were publicly pointing to March 20^th as the first day. 

Even calling so much attention to the first day, as if suddenly the northern climes of the contiguous United States would suddenly return their fauna and flora to their other half-lives on that day, is horribly misleading. Assuming that the meteorologists were well aware that spring weather data begins on March 1^st of each year in the U.S., the next-most plausible explanation may be found in the lazy assumption that it is easier to go with popular misconceptions than expend the effort to stare one in the face and overcome its stolid inertia head-on (the excuse being not wanting to cause confusion).

As a result, Americans are left with the incredibly incongruent “expert” assertion that summer begins not with Memorial Day, but just a couple of weeks before July 4^th on June 21^st of each year. Essentially, we are to believe that summer begins in the middle of summer! That such a logical and experiential absurdity can long endure in spite of evidence to the contrary is itself evidence of just how much cognitive dissidence human beings are willing to endure in the face of declarations from perceived expertise. In other words, an erroneous or outdated status-quo societal default has tremendous hold even in the age of (rationalist) Enlightenment (i.e., from the fifteenth-century Renaissance period).

Lest it be said that the enabled popular misconception came spontaneous out of nothing ex nihilo, the basis of the confusion lies in the rather stupid decision to apply the names of the meteorological seasons (i.e., fall, winter, spring, and summer) to the four quadrants of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. Whereas the meteorological seasons are based on the annual temperature cycle applied to the calendar, “astronomical seasons are based on the position of the Earth in relation to the sun.”[2] Due to the tilt of the planet, solar energy is maximized in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in different parts of the planet’s orbit. To label a certain interval of space as “spring” is not just highly misleading; the label is a category mistake, for the climatic seasons on Earth do not exist in the void of space.[3]

Astronomy is distinct from weather, even though the two are related (i.e., not disparate).

(Image source: NASA)

Put another way, astronomical “spring” in the Northern Hemisphere refers to the portion of the Earth’s orbit from the point at which the vertical rays from the Sun hit the Earth on its equator (on the “Spring” Equinox, usually on March 21^st) to point when the vertical rays are on the Tropic of Capricorn (the furthest north the vertical rays go, on the “Summer” Solstice, usually on June 21^st). In fact, Summer Solstice is better translated as the highpoint rather than beginning of summer. That is to say, the sun reaches its highest arc in the Northern sky on June 21^st, which is neither the pinnacle nor beginning of summer in terms of temperatures.[4]

 

In short, the piercing pronouncements on the public air-waves of the beginning of spring (and then three months later of summer) ring hollow. Nevertheless, the meteorologists who trumpet the good news do so year after year, as if deer caught in a car’s headlights (or speaking to such deer!). Perhaps the fix is as simple as changing the names of the Earth’s orbit’s four parts so they are not likened to climatic seasons. The puzzle would doubtless still present itself as to how it is that nonsensical claims can long endure as a societal (or even global) default, taken for granted in a way that strangely wards off reason’s piercing rays and those of our own experience. Something is oddly off in how human beings are hard-wired.

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[1] National Climatic Data Center, “Meteorological Versus Astronomical Summer—What’s the Difference?” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, June 21, 2013 (accessed March 9, 2014).

[2] Ibid., italics added.

[3] As another example of a mislabeling that should have been known to trigger much confusion and even false claims, the three law instructors from Harvard who founded the law school at the University of Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century should have known better than to replace the name of the bachelors in law, the L.L.B. (i.e., bachelors in the letters of law), with a name implying a doctorate (the J.D., or juris doctor). The actual (professional and academic) doctorate in Law is the J.S.D., the doctorate in juridical science, of which the LL.B., or J.D., along with the LL.M. (masters), is a prerequisite and thus not possibly a doctorate in itself. A doctoral degree must be the terminal degree in a school of knowledge, have comprehensive exams in a discipline of said knowledge (graded by professors rather than an industry regulatory body), and include a significant work of original research (i.e., a book-length study, except in a quantitative or scientific field) that the candidate defends before a committee of faculty. Yet how many Americans correct an American lawyer who declares himself to be a doctor?  The same goes for the M.D. as well (a program of survey-courses followed by a couple years of seminars—the typical substance of a bachelors program), and yet how many physicians and surgeons presume themselves entitled to use the doctoral title (Dr.) even as they dismiss the valid appellations that holders of the Ph.D., J.S.D., D.Sci.M. (Doctorate in the Science of Medicine), D.B.A. (business), D.D. (divinity/theology), and D. Ed. (education) use as per the rights and privileges of these doctoral degrees?  Meanwhile, the general public goes on grazing as if the snow were green grass.

[4] The word solstice in English comes from the Latin word, solstitium, which combines sol (sun) and stit (from sistere, to make stand).  In other words, the sun is made to stand (highest) in the Northern Hemisphere on June 21^st of each year. Nothing is thus implied about any beginning; rather, the implication is that of a pinnacle or high point. Yet even in this sense, meteorological summer is different, for its high point in terms of temperature comes in mid to late July. 

Target Intimidating Customers by Impersonating Police: Nietzsche on Weakness Seeking to Dominate

In the PBS series Downton Abbey, the Victorian countess, magnificently played by Maggie Smith, delivers a reverberating line as fit for my hometown in the second decade of the twenty-first century as for a village in Britain a century earlier. Referring to the local physician, who had just been raised to the position of military manager of convalescent centers during World War I, the countess remarks in frustration after a rejected request, “We give these little people power and it goes to their heads like strong drink.” This poignant quote fits like a glove in the case of the typical store manager and assistant managers, especially in my decaying hometown in the U.S. a century after World War I. In this essay, I apply Nietzsche's philosophy to a rather distinct pattern that I discovered there decades after I had left for college.

The full essay has been incorporated into (or swallowed up by) On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Business Culture Forming Higher Education

“Publish or perish” is the infamous mantra of those intrepid scholars who work at research universities and many prestigious Liberal Arts & Sciences colleges dotting the map of the world. The need to demonstrate regular output is perhaps nowhere more stressed (hence, stress) than in the United States. As if the declining number of tenure positions (amid increasing reliance on adjuncts, not coincidentally) at colleges and universities in the U.S. were not enough of a challenge for the newly-minted doctors aspiring to the intellectual freedom that goes with the protection of tenure, that the young scholars are increasingly being subjected to an "assembly-line" process wherein faculty administrators treat their junior colleagues' published journal articles like chocolates on a conveyer belt puts scholarship at odds with itself and thus is utterly self-defeating from the standpoint of society gaining new knowledge.

The full essay is at "Business Culture Forming Higher Education"

Teaching Ethical Leadership

Can ethical leadership be taught? In the typical business school, this question would be interpreted, or “refurbished.” Can students be trained to become ethical leaders? While often conflated contemporaneously, these two questions are indeed distinct. Instructors, professors and school administrators should first decide which question is more relevant to their purposes. The question chosen should fit with the education, pedagogical method, and philosophy of education of not only the instructor or professor, but also the school itself. In this essay, I distinguish the two questions in order to unpack them with their full significance.

The question, Can ethical leadership be taught, can be interpreted as being centered on knowledge of the concept and theories of ethical leadership. Can this particular knowledge be taught? That is to say, if a student were to ask, What is ethical leadership? could the instructor or professor answer with a definition? Have scholars even come up with an agreed-up definition? More broadly, how does ethical leadership as a concept differ from that of leadership more generally? Do theories of ethical leadership explain it rather than merely being oriented to how to? Furthermore, do any extant theories relate the concept to other, related concepts such as strategic leadership or even strategy? If so, can such theories be taught to the students at a particular level of education? Last but not least, would teaching the theories toward an understanding of what ethical leadership is be in line with the approach of the particular business school? Some schools are more commercially-oriented than others. I contend that two basic schools of thought can be identified and used as pedagogical approaches for teaching ethical leadership.

Corporate Hacks Dominate at Mr. Jefferson’s University

The University of Virginia was thrown into a bit of an uproar in June 2012 after the university's president, Teresa Sullivan, “a 62-year-old eminent scholar of labor-force demography whose appointment drew national attention in 2010, was forced out during a closed-door session of the Board of Visitors in which no official vote was taken. The June 10 announcement that she would resign blindsided Sullivan and ignited wide outrage and protests,” according to the Associated Press. This controversy showcases the contemporary “corporatizing” tendency that has been taking place in university governance more generally. For non-academics to trump scholars on matters touching on academic policy is at the very least counter-productive (if not illogical). In this essay, I discuss Sullivan’s ouster at Virginia in order to advance the proposition that faculty senates rather than boards of corporate managers should have the final say on policy at colleges and universities. At public universities, only a legislature or president should be able to over-rule a faculty (assuming there is a very significant proportion of public funding).

Regarding the controversy at the University of Virginia, the Associated Press reported that, “(f)or her part, Rector Helen Dragas publicly disclosed Thursday more detailed reasoning behind Sullivan’s ouster.” She “did acknowledge that the board mishandled Sullivan’s removal, and apologized. ‘In my view we did the right thing, the wrong way,’ Dragas said.” Her “six-page statement said Sullivan wasn’t acting quickly enough to address financial pressures facing higher education, the role of online learning, changes in the health care environment, the increased student-faculty ratio, fundraising, and other strategic challenges. The university lacks long-range plans on several of those fronts, it added. ‘No matter how you feel about our actions, these challenges represent some very high hurdles that stand in the way of our university’s path to continued success in the coming decade, and they are going to remain front and center for the next board and the next president over the coming years,’ the statement said.”

 For her part, Sullivan countered by saying, “Sweeping action may be gratifying and may create the aura of strong leadership, but its unintended consequences may lead to costs that are too high to bear.” Moreover, “Corporate-style, top-down leadership does not work in a great university,” she said. “Sustained change with buy-in does work.” The subtext here is that scholars don’t behave like corporate managers. Running a college is more like herding cats than managing by memo. Not being scholars themselves, the board and its chair at Virginia missed this vital distinction. According to the New York Times, “(m)any public university presidents, past and present, said that those on the boards of the leading universities — typically business executives without much experience in academia — do not always understand the complexities of leading a large research university, and the degree to which a president can succeed only by persuading. ‘Everybody thinks university presidents are hierarchical and top-down,” said Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami . . . ‘But we are not corporate chieftains, and we cannot rule from the sky. We are more like tugboat captains, trying to get our ships aligned and pulling them in the right direction.’ The great research universities, she said, have achieved their dominant position in the world through shared faculty governance, and leaving faculty both academic and research freedom.” Such freedom does not compute from a corporate mindset. Whereas military-style “orders” are commonplace in the business world, scholars bristle at the prospect of a colleague barking out commands. "In the end," according to the Times, "the fundamental disagreement at the University of Virginia concerned the approach to change that the president should take — either incremental, with buy-in from each of the constituencies, or more radical, imposed from the top." That is, the ways of academic clashed with an interlarded corporate approach.

Indeed, the board at Virginia came from a very different world than that of years in a doctoral program followed by still more years working toward tenure. "Political contributions to our governors have become more important factors in the selection of our board members," said John Casteen III, who served as President of UVA for the 20 years prior to Sullivan's appointment. According to the Huffington Post, The UVA Board of Visitors included “a real estate developer, a coal company magnate, a Wall Street professional, a top lawyer for General Electric, a nursing home executive, [and] a beer distribution entrepreneur.” Lest it be presumed that the lawyer (or a physician) could substitute for a scholar, neither the first degree in law nor the first degree in medicine constitutes a doctorate. 

Accordingly, the board's motivation may have been rather pedestrian, or corporate (think of Fuld at Lehman Bros or Coyne at Bear Stearns), without due respect for the academic values and traditions particularly dear to the scholars who teach at the university. The Huffington Post reports that emails between the Rector and Vice-Rector “indicate that much of their motivation to remove Sullivan stemmed from three media articles, rather than professional or academic literature. One, a New York Times column by David Brooks, lauded online courses, as did a Wall Street Journal editorial, and an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.” In one email, the Vice Rector even suggests that providing a “modicum of candor” might be prudent. I smell a rat. 

The secrecy of the board’s decision alone—without even a formal vote being taken (and given the failure of the Rector to adequately explain her “board’s” decision after the fact to the faculty senate meeting behind closed doors)—suggests that the real reason could have had more to do with personalities than policy. However, if “philosophical differences” were at issue as Sullivan suggests in her public statement after her firing, I submit that it is scholars rather than political donors from the business world and that of the professions who have the wherewithal to make judgments regarding academic matters, as in determining whether (and how much) to expand on-line courses. According to the New York Times, Dragas had been "especially concerned about pushing ahead in online learning." Sullivan warned that online education was no panacea — and indeed, was “surprisingly expensive, has limited revenue potential and unless carefully managed can undermine the quality of instruction.” Scholars such as Sullivan are in a much better position to judge the academic suitability of such courses than is a beer distributor, a business executive, or a physician.

Pedagogy as well as learning can take a real hit if technology is relied on too much, especially at the doctoral level where the in-person aspect of seminars has real academic value. To assess that value, one must have experienced it oneself, rather than merely read about it online. Regarding the for-profit colleges that offer “on-line doctorates,” I worry that the doctoral degree itself is being rarified rather than protected. I have met students in such programs who somehow claim to know all about the alternative that they are missing. Of course, they are perfectly able to dismiss its academic value without even a suspicion that they could be wrong about something they have never experienced. Such a mark of closed ignorance among “doctoral students” is itself a red flag concerning where “higher education” in America is headed. 

In the case of on-line courses, the application to freshman and sophomore lecture classes is one thing, whereas the application to doctoral seminars is quite another. My point is that scholars who have lectured in large lecture halls and taught small graduate seminars are in a unique position (i.e., superior to non-academics on a university's board) to discern this vital difference. That a beer distributor would sit in judgment over a professor's judgment on such a matter is a bit like wandering down the rabbit hole only to expect things to be the same. To a scholar, the presumptuous entitlement of such overarching ignorance can only be emetic, not to mention downright insulting.

Generally speaking with respect to the academic and corporate worlds, what is of value in academic terms does not necessarily translate into financial terms (or value). A visiting scholar at a university who does research, for example, is likely a “zero budget item” (i.e., not paid by the university), yet he or she is of high academic status by virtue of having earned a doctorate (and perhaps even published a book, by which I don't mean one filled with simplistic bullet-points and overly-complex organizational diagrams).

To a business practitioner or professional (i.e., a lawyer, CPA, or physician), such academic status sans salary does not translate, and thus is of no value. In fact, the value would be negative, given the presumed opportunity cost (i.e., the money that could otherwise be earned by being bored in a mindless corporate cubicle). Lets be clear: that something has no value in corporate or business terms does not mean that it has no value. Even if a society allows its business sector to set societal norms, the realm of knowledge (i.e., scientia) is not so pliable, at least in principle. Perhaps the same could be said of the religious realm. How much value in business terms can be attributed to the Kingdom of God, for instance?

Showing its true colors, the “corporate” board at the University of Virginia evinced an utter lack of respect for the university's scholars by refusing even to provide the faculty senate with an explanation with a “modicum of candor.” To reduce scholars to a modern employee-classification (which is a given at least at for-profit "universities") ignores the academic status of scholars in academia. That is, it ignores the qualitative differences that distinguish faculty, staff, and students at a college or university.

Some staff try to get around basic clusters (i.e., faculty, staff, and students) by referring to themselves as "academic staff." To be sure, librarians are not exactly kitchen help, but neither do librarians hold a doctoral degree (e.g., the DBA, Ph.D., D.Sci.M., J.S.D., or Ed.D.). Hence, even the very laudable (and valuable) librarians working in academic libraries cannot be counted as colleagues with the scholars.

At one large research university at least, a significant number of graduate students in doctoral programs in the liberal arts claim to be colleagues with their professors because those students teach too. They refer to the "undergrads" there as the students. "I'm not a student; I'm a graduate student" is the sort of illogical claim made as if with impunity by some of the more arrogant usurpers. Their teaching, by the way, is typically limited to discussion sections of their professors' lecture classes.

Lest there be any confusion, graduate students are not colleagues with their professors. That this rather basic academic point is denied or ignored when convenient is just another indication that modern academia is under threat even from within its ranks. The fact that university governance boards increasingly rely on people from outside academia suggests that academic mores and standards will not be protected even from the encroaching decadence within universities.

Referring to Sullivan's firing, a program officer at the American Association of University Professors laid out the basic flaw that has been allowed to fester in university governance. "More and more boards come from non-academic backgrounds, and one consequence of that is a lack of appreciation for and understanding of the academic enterprise,” said Robert Kreiser. He told the Huffington Post that "the UVA debacle is only the most extreme example of an ongoing phenomenon in which those ‘who don't appreciate what higher education is about and who are more concerned about corporate interests and corporate considerations’ come to govern academia.” Both the hegemony of corporate interests (and values) in corporate governance and the tacit lack of respect in the business sector (and American society more generally) for the vocation of the scholar should be (but sadly are not) recognized as red flags. At the very least, the priority belies any interest in the higher education of generations to come (i.e., your children).

Therefore, we should return to the classical notion that a faculty of scholars ought to have the final say in the running of a college or university. At the very least, a version of the business judgment rule in corporate governance (wherein managerial judgment on business matters trumps stockholder votes) should apply to a faculty's academic judgment trumping decisions of a non-academic board (and even a legislature or president in the case of a public university).

The university as an institution has been around, at least in the West, since the High Middle Age. Aquinas, for example, taught at the university in Paris. Applying a corporate mindset (or governance structure) on top of such a seasoned institution is bound to cause problems. I would not blame the professors at the University of Virginia were they more than just a bit annoyed at being relegated on their own turf, or campus (which literally means “field” in Latin), by people in the "real world." This expression itself is highly insulting, as it conveys a judgment of utter dismissiveness regarding the world of academia. The message is that the pursuit of knowledge is in itself inherently irrelevant (e.g., of "the Ivory Tower"). Let’s be clear: wanting to get something useful out of a university does not necessarily involve respect for its sui generis (i.e., unique) ways and values. Furthermore, to filter knowledge according to its contemporary usefulness and display the results as if a poll on power-point slides vastly misconstrues even what knowledge is. To presume to govern the enterprise from such an “understanding” is at the very least audacious, not to mention disrespectful and even reckless.

It is time, in other words, to return academia to the men and women who know and respect it on its own terms (i.e., rather than trying to turn it into a different beast). This is the real lesson coming out of the tussle at Mr. Jefferson’s university, where truth, at least in pinciple, is to be pursued no matter where it leads. Business managers and even the folks in the professional caste do not have this faith. They are thus utterly unsuited in their presumptive entitlement to govern academia as if business trumps knowledge. In other words, there should be some check within academia on the infiltration of the subverted societal values. What's good for GM is not necessarily good for the classroom. 

Fides de scientia: Lux et Veritas must be nurtured, pursued, and protected as ends in themselves, rather than squandered for sordid lucre or subjected to petty politics.

Sources:

Zach Carter and Jason Linkins, “Teresa Sullivan University of Virginia Ouster Led by Politcal DonorsLacking Academic Experience,” The Huffington Post, June 21, 2012.

Associated Press, “University of Virginia Board to Meet to Consider Reinstating President; RectorDefends Ouster,” The Washington Post, June 21, 2012. 

Tamar Lewin, "Public Universities See Familiar Fight at Virginia," The New York Times, June 25, 2012.

No State Left Behind: American Education Eclipsing Federalism

Facing a federal requirement that every student be proficient in math and English by 2014, the member-states in the U.S. rushed to apply for waivers in 2011 and 2012. In 2010, 38 percent of the schools had failed to meet their goals for annual progress toward the 2014 goal. The U.S. Secretary of Education thought that figure could soar to 80 percent. When a school fails to meet such goals, the No Child Left Behind law requires “a series of interventions by the district and the state that can culminate in a state takeover. With so many schools failing, “that threatened to create an impossible burden on states and districts,” according to Chester Finn, director of an institute that studies education.[1] The waivers did not come without strings, however. The Obama administration pushed the governments to measure teacher performance, and put increased emphasis on low-performing groups as well as on the lowest-performing schools.

The full essay is at "No State Left Behind."

1. Richard Perez-Pena, “Waivers for 8 More States from ‘No Child Left Behind,” The New York Times, May 30, 2012.

California Fiscal Policy: The Crowding-Out Effect

In the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, some delegates expressed the concern that giving the General (federal) Government the authority to tax income would eventually result in a “crowding out” of the ability of state governments to raise revenue. Over two hundred years later, in 2012, California had cut its budget by 20 percent over the previous three years and was still faced with a $16 billion deficit.[1] Unlike Greece, California cannot avail itself of bailout funds from the federal level. Additionally, the Federal Reserve, like the European Central Bank, is barred by statute from bailing out a state government. Even as the U.S. Government places certain requirements on California’s budget that make it more difficult for the Government of California to make cuts, it could not avail itself of the bailout (TARP) that had benefitted Wall Street banks and the Michigan auto industry.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.

1. “California Governor Calls for Higher Taxes, 4-day State Workweek to Fill $16 Billion Gap,” NBC News, May 14, 2012. 

A Lawyer Comes Up Short on Obama on the U.S. Supreme Court

As president, Thomas Jefferson campaigned against the U.S. Supreme Court in the pivotal 1800 election after the court let the Alien and Sedition Acts stand. The law criminalized criticizing government officials of the U.S. Government. Lincoln announced during his 1860 campaign that he would not enforce the court’s Dred Scott decision upholding slavery in U.S. territories. In saying that invalidating the Affordable Healthcare Act would represent an unprecedented act of judicial activism, Obama was not going nearly that far. In other words, he was not saying he would ignore the decision. Nor did Obama announce anything like Roosevelt’s unsuccessful court-packing scheme.

The full essay is at "Obama on the U.S. Supreme Court."

Experts on the Supreme Court: Lawyers Who Teach

For all the American lawyers and law “professors” who had been predicting on the basis of their "expertise" that the three days of oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court meant that the Affordable Healthcare Act would go down, the Court's decision must have been a rude awakening. Immediately after the ruling, the decision came "as something of a surprise after the generally hostile reception the law received during the six hours of oral arguments."[1] This is an understatement at the very least.

The full essay is at "Experts on the Supreme Court."

 1. Mike Sacks, "Supreme Court Health Care Decision: Individual Mandate Survives," The Huffington Post, June 28, 2012.