SOUR GRAPES?

                   OLD MAIN.  PARTOF THE PROBLEM

Feel free to regard what follows as the ill-tempered mutterings of an obsolete academic whose attitudes were inherited from the 19^th century, if it pleases you.  Hell, I am so far from being “woke” that I had to ask Google what that word meant.  I guess I am, not actually woke, but rather more like drowsy.   I agree with most of the goals of you thoroughly woke people.  Not all, but most.  It’s about how to go about things that we tend to part company.

Take WWU, for instance.  I am not up to the minute on the details of current WWU policy, but what I do hear causes me to feel that my university has jumped the tracks.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the strong impression that our current administration regards combating social injustice as its primary goal.  I am all for fighting that sort of thing, but I think that a university is far from the best weapon for the purpose.  Social injustice, insofar as it results from inadequate education, should be confronted at the family and pre K through 12 levels, not at the university.  Universities have always been, and should continue to be regarded primarily as centers of scholarship, and their ruling ethos should be to strive to become ever more so.  They should be centers where knowledge is accumulated, debated, and disseminated.  Anything other activities have a tendency to get in the way.

 Here is an example.  In the 1970s and 1980s I think it would be fair to say that we (WWU) had the best geology department in the state.  We turned out well prepared B.S. and M.S. students who contributed mightily to society.  Many became college professors in their own right, and many more became engineers and other important cogs in the economy.  That’s because we took on our scholarly activities with dead seriousness.  (Our psychology department was similarly highly regarded.)  Now, I suspect, no WWU department stands nearly that high – at least partly because faculty tend to feel the need to continually glance over their shoulders at the cadre of social warriors recent administrations have deployed. Hiring the best, for instance, now (I surmise) will only work if that person also is somehow socially disadvantaged.  Don’t get me wrong; hire the disadvantaged candidate every time, all else being equal.  But be sure they are really equal

So, what I’m saying is something like this:  Let’s buy expensive lab stuff when needed, and maybe do without the long house on Sehome Hill.  Hire fewer vice provost/deans for diversity and such matters, and use the money to acquire the best young academics that come on the market.  Be the best damned university, in the traditional sense, that we can be.  Sure, always keep an eye out for top-notch scholars that happen to be under represented in academia, but don’t make that the preponderate deciding criterion.  Get the best, reward them, and turn them loose.  The future will thank us for it.

Anyway, that’s what I think.  Yeah, I know – I’m a crusty old crank.  So what:  I’ve earned it.