How Professors Ceded Their Authority | Chad Wellmon
further research, creativity, productivity and, consequently, economic growth
weed out prejudice/superstition/tradition.
The truth, though, is that the university is just one institution among others and that it has been rolled over by neoliberalism. It is hard to imagine how it could ever be immune from cultural, political, economic and technological changes in the wider society.
What is the main aim here (and is it governed by methodology)? Break down, analyse, deconstruct, historicize and problematize. In short: "Truthfulness" rather than the Truth. What, if anything, could unite the various disciplines into a comprehensive whole (Newman's question..which is not a question any more because the ideal no longer remains an ideal).
To talk about the moral or spiritual purpose of education or the university would, I suspect, appear to be some kind of joke to most students (and faculty too no doubt). Pursuit of knowledge for its own sake or to get a job; those seem to be the only two options left: esoteric, arcane, partial and trivial pursuits ("the life of the mind") or the furthering of materialism.
Morishima: 'The Good and Bad Uses of Mathematics':
"The transformation of American colleges and universities into corporate concerns is particularly evident in the maze of offices, departments, and agencies that manage the moral lives of students. When they appeal to administrators with demands that speakers not be invited, that particular policies be implemented, or that certain individuals be institutionally penalized, students are doing what our institutions have formed them to do. They are following procedure, appealing to the institution to manage moral problems, and insisting that the system’s overseers turn the cant of diversity and inclusion into real change. A student who experiences discrimination or harassment is taught to file a complaint by submitting a written statement; the office then determines if the complaint has merit; the office conducts an investigation and produces a report; an executive accepts or rejects the report; and the office "notifies" the parties of the "outcome."
These bureaucratic processes transmute moral injury, desire, and imagination into an object that flows through depersonalized, opaque procedures to produce an "outcome." Questions of character, duty, moral insight, reconciliation, community, ethos, evil, or justice have at most a limited role. American colleges and universities speak the national argot of individual rights, institutional affiliation, and complaint that dominates American capitalism. They have few moral resources from which to draw any alternative moral language and imagination. My students have adapted the old Protestant college’s moral mission to the demands of the institutions in which they now find themselves.
The extracurricular system of moral management requires an ever-expanding array of "resources" — counseling centers, legal services, deans of student life. Teams of devoted professionals work to help students hold their lives together. The people who support and oversee these extracurricular systems of moral management save lives and inspire students, but they do so almost entirely apart from any coherent curricular project.
It is entirely reasonable, then, for students to conclude that questions of right and wrong, of ought and obligation, are not, in the first instance at least, matters to be debated, deliberated, researched, or discussed as part of their intellectual lives in classrooms and as essential elements of their studies. They are, instead, matters for their extracurricular lives in dorms, fraternities or sororities, and student-activity groups, most of which are managed by professional staff members who, for many faculty members, seem to work in a wholly separate institution. The rationalization of colleges and universities has led to the division not only of intellectual labor (through academic specialization) but also of basic educational functions."
~~~
These bureaucratic processes transmute moral injury, desire, and imagination into an object that flows through depersonalized, opaque procedures to produce an "outcome." Questions of character, duty, moral insight, reconciliation, community, ethos, evil, or justice have at most a limited role. American colleges and universities speak the national argot of individual rights, institutional affiliation, and complaint that dominates American capitalism. They have few moral resources from which to draw any alternative moral language and imagination. My students have adapted the old Protestant college’s moral mission to the demands of the institutions in which they now find themselves.
The extracurricular system of moral management requires an ever-expanding array of "resources" — counseling centers, legal services, deans of student life. Teams of devoted professionals work to help students hold their lives together. The people who support and oversee these extracurricular systems of moral management save lives and inspire students, but they do so almost entirely apart from any coherent curricular project.
It is entirely reasonable, then, for students to conclude that questions of right and wrong, of ought and obligation, are not, in the first instance at least, matters to be debated, deliberated, researched, or discussed as part of their intellectual lives in classrooms and as essential elements of their studies. They are, instead, matters for their extracurricular lives in dorms, fraternities or sororities, and student-activity groups, most of which are managed by professional staff members who, for many faculty members, seem to work in a wholly separate institution. The rationalization of colleges and universities has led to the division not only of intellectual labor (through academic specialization) but also of basic educational functions."
~~~
Those in any profession usually inflate its overall importance to society. Academics are masters at this, often claiming that the university or the liberal arts or "critical thinking" will:
save humanity
lead to enlightenment
enhance democracy
help rationally order our livesfurther research, creativity, productivity and, consequently, economic growth
weed out prejudice/superstition/tradition.
The truth, though, is that the university is just one institution among others and that it has been rolled over by neoliberalism. It is hard to imagine how it could ever be immune from cultural, political, economic and technological changes in the wider society.
What is the main aim here (and is it governed by methodology)? Break down, analyse, deconstruct, historicize and problematize. In short: "Truthfulness" rather than the Truth. What, if anything, could unite the various disciplines into a comprehensive whole (Newman's question..which is not a question any more because the ideal no longer remains an ideal).
To talk about the moral or spiritual purpose of education or the university would, I suspect, appear to be some kind of joke to most students (and faculty too no doubt). Pursuit of knowledge for its own sake or to get a job; those seem to be the only two options left: esoteric, arcane, partial and trivial pursuits ("the life of the mind") or the furthering of materialism.
Morishima: 'The Good and Bad Uses of Mathematics':
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