Another doozy, Danny. I can appreciate why the university asset management team would prefer to unshackle itself from answering to an outmoded revenue stream. As a species I feel like - at least for the moment - we will eventually arrive at plunder in most collective endeavors. I’m bummed education continues to fall victim to the high seas violence (argh!) of late stage capitalism, but i’m definitely not surprised.
I do wonder, however, if the eagerness to give up institutional power in this case isn’t similar to the abandonment of journalistic ethics in your previous piece? That we’ve entered into a sort of state of emergency where people are keen to find a “more agreeable” authoritarianism to save them from the Trump era tyranny? That perhaps things are so scary we don’t have time to muddy the waters with democracy; especially with something like SB6 pounding at the gates of the DEIvory Tower?
The university in particular is a ripe place for agreeable authoritarianism, filled as it is with experts who are not keen to think of themselves as making bad decisions, and oriented as it is toward the delivery of knowledgeable, scientific, data-focused future managers. Expert-drift can be dangerous and, as in journalism, also lead to a lost community trust in the institution as it dilutes and contradicts its founding principals. In this sense, faculty seem to be the victims of their own identities as unquestioned experts.
Another doozy, Danny. I can appreciate why the university asset management team would prefer to unshackle itself from answering to an outmoded revenue stream. As a species I feel like - at least for the moment - we will eventually arrive at plunder in most collective endeavors. I’m bummed education continues to fall victim to the high seas violence (argh!) of late stage capitalism, but i’m definitely not surprised.
I do wonder, however, if the eagerness to give up institutional power in this case isn’t similar to the abandonment of journalistic ethics in your previous piece? That we’ve entered into a sort of state of emergency where people are keen to find a “more agreeable” authoritarianism to save them from the Trump era tyranny? That perhaps things are so scary we don’t have time to muddy the waters with democracy; especially with something like SB6 pounding at the gates of the DEIvory Tower?
I agree.
The university in particular is a ripe place for agreeable authoritarianism, filled as it is with experts who are not keen to think of themselves as making bad decisions, and oriented as it is toward the delivery of knowledgeable, scientific, data-focused future managers. Expert-drift can be dangerous and, as in journalism, also lead to a lost community trust in the institution as it dilutes and contradicts its founding principals. In this sense, faculty seem to be the victims of their own identities as unquestioned experts.