[Peace-discuss] [OccupyCU] [sf-core] Re: Academic rebellion against Salaita firing growing?

Wed Aug 27 18:55:32 EDT 2014

I want to echo Carl's point about the "yahoos" in the administration. I
think part of what Carl's comment underlines is the systemic problem. Not
just a few bad apples. I want to go a step further. Wise's decision and the
board's univocal support raises other questions about administration
altering the value system of higher education. This has become clear to me
as I recently took a faculty position elsewhere. The power of
administrators.

Academic administrations, no matter the personal knowledge or wisdom, can
become a conservative force by the nature of the position. They have little
investment in "high-minded" notions bound up with free inquiry. It, it is
more properly called "it," is a class for whom good management is an end in
itself. As a conservative force, Wise protects the University (the donor
base in mind) from political controversy and upheaval. She chose "speech
decorum" to rationalize the pass on Salaita, though it was content rather
than form that triggered the job withdrawal. "It is not what he said but
how he said it," they would have us believe. It is happenstance that the
admin chose to police speech decorum when the speech itself lined up with
the political hegemon. Wink.

The issue is the role of administration as a proportionate sector of
education labor/cost. Admin takes the larger salaries. It increasingly
soaks up the total funds available to universities, diverting more to
itself than to instruction. It also governs its own growth by shifting
spending priorities toward more layers of bureaucracy and away from
teaching resources. The Salaita episode draws a vivid picture of this
process taking place at the level of values as well: how we value
instructors. It is part of the administrative eclipse of the teaching
university.

Evidence of the inflation is important:

administration-to-student ratios over time
<http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/administrators_ate_my_tuition031641.php?page=all>

1975:

1 administrator . . . 84 students
1 staff member  . . . 50 students.

2005:

1 administrator . . . 68 students
1 staff member . . . 21 students.

By some metrics, Illinois grants more funding for administration than
teaching resources . . . including faculty salary.

Carl notes that this kind of political-academic silencing has a history
back to the world wars. I agree. But the late 20th-century
self-aggrandizement and bloat of administrative functions at large in
higher ed is something new and clearly relevant. The two are linked and we
witness it in decisions about radical politics. The problem is not the
wisdom of Chancellors. The problem is in the power over the value system
represented by Chancellor (and staff members).

IKD

IKD

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Brussel, Morton K via OccupyCU <
occupycu at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

>  Useful comments.
>
>  No, they are not yahoos. This came about because of pressure from
> Israeli apologists and defenders on an unwise chancellor and others of the
> administration. As for the Board of Trustees, who can have Trust in them to
> uphold academic freedom and the higher values of society?
>
>  —mkb
>
>  On Aug 27, 2014, at 12:57 PM, 'C. G. Estabrook' carl at newsfromneptune.com
> [sf-core] <sf-core-noreply at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> I think this is largely right, except for the characterization of the UIUC
> administration as "a bunch of know-nothing yahoos" - as if their personal
> failings account for the university's hypocrisy in regard to academic
> freedom.
>
>  If we agree with that ungenerous assessment, we have to conclude that
> American universities have generally been run by "know-nothing yahoos"
> through a century of violations of academic freedom, from World War I
> through Vietnam. That may well be the case, but I think the problem is more
> political than personal. It will not be solved by appointing "good guys" as
> administrators, in the academy or the polity. But that would be a place to
> start.
>
>  --CGE
>
>   On Aug 27, 2014, at 7:36 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>
>  Reading the News-Gazette yesterday was like reading the "Stephen Salaita
> protest news."
>
>  The department of American Indian studies has voted no-confidence in
> Chancellor Wise. The English department may follow suit. Other departments
> are considering similar action.
>
>  What I suspect is happening, in part, is that the boycott of the
> University of Illinois is working, in the sense that it's drawing national
> and international attention, especially among academics, to the idea that
> there is a grave threat to the principles of free speech and academic
> freedom at the University of Illinois. And a lot of writing about this is
> also mentioning the Kilgore case, to establish the idea that there is
> problem in the University of Illinois Administration that runs deeper than
> the Salaita case.
>
>  I suspect that part of what is happening is that academics around the
> world are writing to their friends on the U of I faculty and saying,
> "What's going on?" And U of I faculty are reading in the academic press
> that their University has become a laughingstock, the kind of place where a
> modern-day Bertrand Russell couldn't get a job, because the University
> Administration is run by a bunch of know-nothing yahoos. And this is
> impelling them to action.
>
>  This is very positive. Good things may yet come of this, if the pressure
> continues to increase.
>
>  ===
>
>  Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> (202) 448-2898 x1
>
>
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