Alice Cooper’s parents were bridge playing Goldwater Republicans. He loves golf and has a big happy family in Scottsdale, Arizona.Who knows whether he’s a Republican as well.
So have college professors replaced shock rockers in the New Hysteria? Is your standard feminist professor or Adorno reading grad student the devil worshipping head banger here in our Lord 2023.
We went from punk to heavy metal to goth to ….Critical Theory.
Is this because dudes who used to
listen to Ozzie and Alice Cooper now love Trump and DeSantis?
Inability to upset one’s parents is gonna be hard on rock music but may be great for comp lit.
At Iowa it’s the football coach that runs things. At Duke it’s the basketball coach.
At The Ohio State University, let’s remember Gordon Gee’s remark about Jim Tressel, “I hope he doesn’t fire me.”
At a lot of flagship institutions, whoever runs the medical college and hospital have a lot to say. (At Iowa, the football stadium is across the street from the medical complex. I want to live long enough to see them fight over a chunk of property.)
Remember kids: commie adjunct faculty can’t get health insurance at a lot of places. (Neither can conservative adjunct faculty, but then they’re more likely to be David Brooks at Yale. 250k goes a long way.)
But “universities” should be including athletic directors and the tv network buying broadcast rights, the government/corporations funding research especially ones which hold all or part of any patents and the manager of the college endowment before they get to any faculty, though it’s the faculty heading policy institutes who really count. And students only count as much as their parents count, which comes under heading of donors and alums.
Don’t know enough about muppets to suggest anything past Big Bird to represent the athletic director.
Ray Vinmad @ 5,
Do not even mention Adorno without a cross and an oversufficiency of garlic. He singlehandedly took music out back and shot it in the head. We are, perhaps, beginning to recover, but we will never catch up.
In Australia you need to add “Associate Minister for Tertiary Education, at time of writing” somewhere in there. It seems to be either an intern role or a rotating position used to give newcomers experience before they’re moved up to something useful or returned to the back benches. Who’d want the job, it’s not as though universities donate to political parties or offer anything significant in terms of low-effort post-politics employment.
(I’m sure I unfairly tar a few ministers with that characterisation, but as with real estate agents 90% of them give the rest a bad name)
Those of us (recently) at Texas A&M University have found ourselves asking this question a lot lately. A lot of faculty and students think that it’s somehow been the President in cahoots with the Regents, but I think the Regents think it’s been the President in cahoots with woke faculty. The Chancellor seems to think it’s the Lieutenant Governor. But I guess we’ll see how the power vacuum gets filled.
Or … DARPA awards research grants to PIs. The PIs teach students in exchange for some lab space. The university admin (way down their food chain) supplies the lab space and the students.
In light of the recent developments at West Virginia University, and the many other manifestations of this trend elsewhere, the fundamental divide between, in general, the academic side and the administrative or business side of the university structure, in terms of values and priorities, which is becoming more and more decided in favour of the administrative, money-making side, should be recognized as the biggest problem facing universities, and as the biggest threat to the idea of the university in its historic role as part of human cultural evolution. Is there a response to the increased influence of political mobilization of right-wing primitivism, which the administrative side seems more sensitive to, that the academic side can take to bring things back into an effective balance in order to preserve the university’s ideals in the pursuit of knowledge, and, I would stress, understanding of the world? (An example of the non-academic “business”- side values, from an article in WaPo: “Amid declining public confidence in higher education, [WVU president G Gordon] Gee said, [in defending his moves,] universities must earn back trust. “The people of the state are telling us what they want,” he said. “And for once, we’re listening to them.”)
Sorry, that may not have been the point of this whimsical post, but the “who” clause in the title can be taken as a serious question (as is the question, “who ought to run it?”).
{ 16 comments }
Neville Morley 08.08.23 at 12:15 pm
Deeply disappointed that you could find no place in your schema for this classic confrontation of conservative donor and radical faculty:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KNYI3iINXrQ
CDT 08.08.23 at 1:26 pm
In the U.S., sports network executives need to be up there.
DS 08.08.23 at 1:30 pm
You might add Link Hogthrob as the governor, for those of us who work at a public university:
https://g.co/kgs/BjvCzd
Robert Weston 08.08.23 at 2:19 pm
CDT @2: More likely the Athletic Director. Maybe the Professor of Football/Basketball.
Ray Vinmad 08.08.23 at 2:42 pm
I love this.
Alice Cooper’s parents were bridge playing Goldwater Republicans. He loves golf and has a big happy family in Scottsdale, Arizona.Who knows whether he’s a Republican as well.
So have college professors replaced shock rockers in the New Hysteria? Is your standard feminist professor or Adorno reading grad student the devil worshipping head banger here in our Lord 2023.
We went from punk to heavy metal to goth to ….Critical Theory.
Is this because dudes who used to
listen to Ozzie and Alice Cooper now love Trump and DeSantis?
Inability to upset one’s parents is gonna be hard on rock music but may be great for comp lit.
PatinIowa 08.08.23 at 3:14 pm
At Iowa it’s the football coach that runs things. At Duke it’s the basketball coach.
At The Ohio State University, let’s remember Gordon Gee’s remark about Jim Tressel, “I hope he doesn’t fire me.”
At a lot of flagship institutions, whoever runs the medical college and hospital have a lot to say. (At Iowa, the football stadium is across the street from the medical complex. I want to live long enough to see them fight over a chunk of property.)
Remember kids: commie adjunct faculty can’t get health insurance at a lot of places. (Neither can conservative adjunct faculty, but then they’re more likely to be David Brooks at Yale. 250k goes a long way.)
steven t johnson 08.08.23 at 6:34 pm
But “universities” should be including athletic directors and the tv network buying broadcast rights, the government/corporations funding research especially ones which hold all or part of any patents and the manager of the college endowment before they get to any faculty, though it’s the faculty heading policy institutes who really count. And students only count as much as their parents count, which comes under heading of donors and alums.
Don’t know enough about muppets to suggest anything past Big Bird to represent the athletic director.
Frank Wilhoit 08.08.23 at 7:04 pm
Ray Vinmad @ 5,
Do not even mention Adorno without a cross and an oversufficiency of garlic. He singlehandedly took music out back and shot it in the head. We are, perhaps, beginning to recover, but we will never catch up.
KT2 08.09.23 at 12:55 am
Amusing. Thanks.
I am sure Harvard or Stanford will publish this- not.
If a forthcoming “Who really runs the university” series, perhaps Discworld Unseen University, via a Pratchett short:
“A collegiate casting-out of devilish devices
…
“That was, in fact, the last century, Archchancellor,” said Stibbons.
“Well, we are hard to drag and very good at kicking,” said Ridcully
…
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/a-collegiate-casting-out-of-devilish-devices/195991.article
Moz in Oz 08.09.23 at 3:52 am
In Australia you need to add “Associate Minister for Tertiary Education, at time of writing” somewhere in there. It seems to be either an intern role or a rotating position used to give newcomers experience before they’re moved up to something useful or returned to the back benches. Who’d want the job, it’s not as though universities donate to political parties or offer anything significant in terms of low-effort post-politics employment.
(I’m sure I unfairly tar a few ministers with that characterisation, but as with real estate agents 90% of them give the rest a bad name)
Kenny Easwaran 08.09.23 at 9:49 pm
Those of us (recently) at Texas A&M University have found ourselves asking this question a lot lately. A lot of faculty and students think that it’s somehow been the President in cahoots with the Regents, but I think the Regents think it’s been the President in cahoots with woke faculty. The Chancellor seems to think it’s the Lieutenant Governor. But I guess we’ll see how the power vacuum gets filled.
SusanC 08.11.23 at 1:23 pm
Or … DARPA awards research grants to PIs. The PIs teach students in exchange for some lab space. The university admin (way down their food chain) supplies the lab space and the students.
(Only half joking)
SusanC 08.11.23 at 1:27 pm
P.S. I think my version of it would need illustrating with screen caps from Oppenheimer, rather than the Muppets,
bartkid 08.17.23 at 5:43 pm
Pfft.
13 comments in and no one has mentioned the parking department?
Dreamers.
engels 08.17.23 at 10:55 pm
Adorno… singlehandedly took music out back and shot it in the head
Now that’s what I call a Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory.
JPL 08.19.23 at 11:42 pm
In light of the recent developments at West Virginia University, and the many other manifestations of this trend elsewhere, the fundamental divide between, in general, the academic side and the administrative or business side of the university structure, in terms of values and priorities, which is becoming more and more decided in favour of the administrative, money-making side, should be recognized as the biggest problem facing universities, and as the biggest threat to the idea of the university in its historic role as part of human cultural evolution. Is there a response to the increased influence of political mobilization of right-wing primitivism, which the administrative side seems more sensitive to, that the academic side can take to bring things back into an effective balance in order to preserve the university’s ideals in the pursuit of knowledge, and, I would stress, understanding of the world? (An example of the non-academic “business”- side values, from an article in WaPo: “Amid declining public confidence in higher education, [WVU president G Gordon] Gee said, [in defending his moves,] universities must earn back trust. “The people of the state are telling us what they want,” he said. “And for once, we’re listening to them.”)
Sorry, that may not have been the point of this whimsical post, but the “who” clause in the title can be taken as a serious question (as is the question, “who ought to run it?”).
Comments on this entry are closed.