Comments on: What to do with all this dissent?

By: Wendymr

Wendymr — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:23:19 +0000

Coincidentally, as I was about to start reading this entry, my eye was caught by a headline on CNN: Stop firing university presidents. The headline on the article itself isn't quite so dramatic: Why Public University Presidents are Under Fire - and is more than tangentially related to the topic of this entry.

By: cormac

cormac — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 16:19:12 +0000

Many thanks for the link to the piece from Georgia University. I thought that article the more hard hitting of the two, and it chimes somewhat with my own experience. The theme of incoming administrators who put massive changes in place before moving onwards and upwards, while the loyal do-ers are left struggling to adjust for the remainder of their careers is one that I think university administrators should consider carefully

By: Anna Notaro

Anna Notaro — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 12:28:10 +0000

Just like Vince I was also struck by the use of the word dissent in this post and, I should add, by the fact that the two examples of the American and Irish professors seem to deal with too different set of matters to make for a coherent view of the type of ‘dissent’ currently to be experienced within universities.
The word dissent made me think of its roots in religious matters and it is rather disappointing to see that some changes are embraced with a kind of religious fervor, thus without caring much for the consent advocated at the end of the post.
Unfortunately the religious analogy is still valid if one considers that Universities occasionally do behave like Churches towards ‘dissenters’, whose voices are too often ostracised, not to speak of how poorly they deal with serious issues like bullying etc. This brings me to the question of whether such difficulties are merely a matter of not having come up with a governance suitable for our age or instead they are the symptom of a deeper system failure.

By: Vince

Vince — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 10:45:16 +0000

I never said anything about a golden age. The reality was one or two a century produced anything that caused a lurch forward. But I could have picked Kant and Frege or any other pair in or out of the system that produced original substantial and incisive thought.
But to complete your point. If not in university, then where. Who can support such contemplation.
Well, I suppose you could have rich sources like Atlantic Philanthropies but that largesse was swallowed like baby gannets by the current system.

By: universitydiary

universitydiary — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:19:11 +0000

I agree with that. The response of the non-academic world is to feel a sense of satisfaction that people in the ‘ivory towers’ are feeling the heat and being forced to get used to real life. They don’t understand the pressures many academics work under. Tom Garvin’s diatribes don’t help at all.

By: Polly

Polly — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:14:10 +0000

my own response to the Garvin piece (as with a couple of similar interventions) was dismay and a degree of anger. As an academic of a younger generation than Garvin, I have many and deep concerns about the current and future direction of universities, about the rise of managerialism and the threats to academic freedom. However, to see a retired professor complaining that the phone directory has gone online rather than remaining in hard copy, as if THAT were the great threat to academia, is frustrating, as it undermines the very real concerns those of us still working in the system have.

I do think that Garvin is representative of an old boys’ network (and I use the term ‘boys’ deliberately) who used to run universities and are resentful that those days are over. What worries me more is that the outside world will judge the rest of us by the very public platform he was given, and will then never bother to listen to the considerable concerns we have. I therefore think that Garvin has done other academics – inside and outside UCD – an enormous disservice by writing that column, and would be well advised to remember that he is now retired, and might leave the field of commentary on the workplace to those of us still in it.

By: Andrew Fisher

Andrew Fisher — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 07:32:13 +0000

@Vince. I think you’ve rather successfully made the case that the ‘golden age’ was, as the OP says, a myth. Boole, IIRC, made his name whilst working as a schoolteacher. Hume was never accepted into any university post even after he had become famous. So neither was ‘nursed’ by any university system.

By: Vince

Vince — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 05:34:44 +0000

In fairness now you might be misstating things somewhat. Don’t you think that your use of DISSENT to be indicative of your thinking.

If I put it this way. In Ireland, our Constitution states that the citizen is Sovereign, Inalienable/Unalienable. Since this is the case then the government is administrative. If I’m reading the document correctly, there is no shirt-pin dancing about this either like with the Crown, Throne, person of the Sovereign. No, there is no cavilling about it at all. But this doesn’t prevent the minister for this that or the other coming out with the statement that they are the ‘sovereign government’.

How could this matter ?. Well, it’s one of orientation isn’t it.

In the case of the universities, there has never been a point when the individual scholar acted as a sole trader. Leastwise, not for a good while anyway. So it’s not as if the question is about ‘no’ management, but the style of that management. On the statement that they don’t understand the new needs/requirements, could that not be said by any drover rather than a shepherd.

Me, I would ask if the current conformation could nurse a David Hume or a Boole. I’d have to say it wouldn’t. Couldn’t, he/she would be tied up filling the worlds journals with versions of serialized studies a bit like Charles Dickins, or Šahrzâd.