Recently, while sorting through some of my papers, I ran across a poem I wrote about seventy years ago.
I want to go to college,
I know not where to go,
Whether individualistic
Or large and comprehensive,
Are numbers my chief interest
Or education glorified?
No, learning is profoundest
And learning over all.
A rather crude poem, its redeeming feature is that it reveals my state of mind in 1952 as a wannabee college student: naïve, sophomorish, idealistic.
In the blog “Milk, Ice Cream, and a Peachy Predicament,” I described my college experience as obsession with learning—avoiding the distractions of fraternities, drinking, and childish pranks to focus on academic work. My single-minded concentration on academics enabled me to handle a twenty-four hour work week and a full academic load.
This preoccupation with academics carried over into graduate school and dissertation research in Japan, and led to a teaching position at a university. However, my many years as a student in the halls of academia did not fully prepare me for the everyday dynamics of a professor’s life.
This shouldn’t have surprised me, because life inside an institution is often quite different from the outside perception. For example, when I went to work at Caterpillar Tractor Company right out of high school, I thought the employees would be interested in the latest factory products, but they were more caught up in check pools and pranks.
My innocent notion of universities had been that they were totally concerned with academic matters. I soon found out that, as with any human organization, politics and rivalry, conflict and power struggles, played a very important role. This post highlights one episode of university warfare that I witnessed firsthand.
From my early years, books had been an important part of my life, even some of my best friends. In school, I liked to write, and welcomed the challenge of crafting words and sentences into an essay. Reading and writing occupied much of my time, from early grades through graduate school.
After a lengthy graduate program, in 1965 I returned from Japan with a doctoral dissertation on Japanese mountain religion, and began teaching at Vanderbilt. At the same time, I was drafting a textbook on Japanese religion, completing it after moving to Kalamazoo and Western Michigan University. Having practically worshiped books in the sacred space of libraries, I was thrilled to be not just a recipient of published information and ideas, but a contributor to this domain.
As soon as I finished that first book, I began editing my dissertation for publication, and then published a number of textbooks and monographs on Japanese religion. Any creative activity requires a lot of hard work, but also involves ego, pride, and self-confidence. And success begs for reward—we learn this in kindergarten when the teacher puts a smiley face on our forehead, or the principal in junior high hands us a “student of the month” bumper sticker.
At my university, the ultimate warm and fuzzy marker was the distinguished faculty scholar award, announced at an annual convocation for one or two professors. I felt honored to receive that designation. This was the kind of goal I had been striving for but could not foresee in my 1952 wannabee scholar poem.
By all accounts, I had fulfilled my dreams. But from the late 1960s and through the mid 1970s, a black cloud began to overshadow my teaching career. A shortage of funds prompted our university to find a way to dismiss faculty—not to wait for retirements and resignations, but to eliminate mid-career teachers. In the 1970s, the university hired a vice president for academic affairs whose main mission was to reduce the size of the faculty. Many institutions of higher learning faced these financial and staffing problems. This blog focuses on the arbitrary and irrational way this vice president (who will be known by his nickname “Woody”), handled the situation.
This vice president also came to be known as “the hatchet man,” both because of his mission and also the heavy-handed approach he took. Even his personal appearance was off-putting, nervous and fidgety, blurting out his controversial opinions. He went on and on about the ailments of higher education. “Why should professors have tenure? No one else, in industry or business, has tenure.” He advocated abolishing tenure, getting rid of all the “deadwood” on the faculty.
To accomplish his downsizing, he set in motion a provocative scheme, requiring all faculty and departments to undergo a rigorous, detailed review. The end result of the review would grade academic units into four categories:
– Increase funding
– Maintain funding
– Decrease funding
– Eliminate funding (and dissolve the unit)
The review required each academic unit to fill out lengthy reports of the records of each professor and the department as a whole on four crucial criteria: teaching competence, research productivity, cost, and centrality to the university. The lengthy format had dignified labels for segments of the review, such as “dictionary,” “encyclopedia,” and other fancy names. After submitting their information, each department would have a hearing with Woody and later receive their grade.
Our department spent hundreds of hours discussing the project and writing our response; we created huge folders describing our individual and joint activities. We thought we were on safe ground, because student reviews of our classes were very good; as a small department we had published more than other units; we cost almost nothing besides salaries (no lab expenses, no teaching assistants); and our courses were in the mainstream of a liberal arts curriculum.
After a year of tedious, grinding work compiling hundreds of pages of information, our departmental faculty waited in a conference room for the crunch meeting with Woody, who would listen to our presentation, and respond to our material. Woody rushed in almost fifteen minutes late, looking nervously around the room. The university was in the process of limiting smoking to designated areas, and all conference rooms, such as this one, were identified as NO SMOKING areas. Woody plopped down in the end chair, then picked up the no smoking sign in front of him, turned it around, and placed it on a table behind him. He lit a cigarette, took a few drags on it, and filled the room with smoke before convening the meeting.
Our chair and individual faculty members summarized our written materials, making the case for good student reviews, considerable research publications, low cost, and liberal arts commitment. Woody squirmed, as we asked him how he saw our written materials. Uneasily, he admitted that what we had submitted was all good. He lit another cigarette, and whined, “You don’t understand. This is all about money!”
Our faculty members were flabbergasted that Woody would say, in effect, that his elaborate review process and our year-long effort were nothing but a charade. He did not even attempt to dispute the facts of our report or criticize us on any of the four criteria.
We were not surprised that later he informed us in writing that our “grade” was a four, meaning our department would not be funded, but would be eliminated, and the faculty terminated. (The philosophy department also received a category four grade.)
Personally, the end result of this review devastated me. After decades of schooling, and more decades of teaching, I had hit a brick wall. Teaching positions at other institutions were non-existent. Our family might lose our house. Even more important, with our three sons reaching college age, how could we support their education?
Ironically, at this time I had just been named a distinguished faculty scholar; I gave a presentation, and several administrators and fellow faculty hosted a congratulatory dinner at a nice restaurant. I tried to joke that the award should not be distinguished faculty scholar, but extinguished faculty scholar.
Most of the faculty were dispirited with Woody’s arbitrary and unreasonable program. For a while I was depressed. Then I had a good talk with myself, asking what we should do. I decided to go for a bold counter-plan. I asked all the other distinguished faculty scholars to join me at an off-campus restaurant (to avoid other university people), and we brainstormed about how to prevent the university from becoming a community college or technical institute.
We came to the conclusion that as some of the institution’s senior recognized “scholars” we should meet with the president, present an objection to the sham “review,” and respectfully request for Woody to be replaced. As the instigator of this counter-plan, I became the spokesperson for the group, and made the argument to the president.
This was a risky move, which could have led to recriminations from Woody. Much to our surprise and satisfaction, we learned that Woody would be leaving the university; his “leave” was to a think tank in Washington (at full salary).
The supreme irony to this tale came the next spring, when we heard rumors that Woody would be returning to our university. His year-long search for an administrative post had been unsuccessful, and our university refused to find an administrative post for him.
Woody came up with the argument that he had tenure in an academic department, and either wheedled or forced the university into giving him a tenured position as professor.
My risky counter-attack had paid off. I escaped the terrible transition from distinguished faculty scholar to extinguished faculty scholar.
Woody, who had railed against tenure and “deadwood,” in the end became tenured “Deadwoody.”
H. Byron Earhart 