Dropping the hammer over the wrong nail
A Point of View © 1996
In order to climb the university ladder top job, folks face evaluation several times in their careers. First, there is the basic doctoral education and the accompanying required dissertation to write and get approved before someone sticks whatever D letter is appropriate to their name. It may take seven years to complete that doctoral process. Mine lasted from 1991 to 1998. A dissertation committee watches every word you say about your subject like a kettle of hawks.
The next step in the ladder is the tenure track professorship at the university. Here we must provide evidence of research and a plethora of publications in scientific journals. What other researchers think about your work, positively or negatively, counts. The more, the better.
As for the Presidential top, we must show leadership and communication abilities and dedication to a particular field, social or educational. We might think that after surviving all of this massaging of our persona and the opportunities to find anything resembling dishonesty in our record we might be able to apply for sainthood. But beware, saints don’t apply for that job, they are appointed, and the Devil’s advocate is always available to ruin their most saintly day. And there are many of those around.
Recently, members of Congress criticized formally the university presidents of three well-known Ivy League colleges for their handling of antisemitic demonstrations against students under their leadership and responsibility. The entire episode was all over the written and electronic world and social media, so I don’t have to provide the specifics or this article will become an indefensible dissertation. Members of Congress know that they must face their electorate for election and then survive more election votes, controversial in certain cases, but no other organization in society, public or private, subjects them to further review.
I don’t have or need to express my concern about any college demonstrations that are anti-anything. My record is clear. But I didn’t get a public verdict on one article I wrote when I might have been asleep at the wheel. I get it for driving the entire route. You start with the word “anti” and the rest follows; black, white, semitic, LGBTQ, Muslim, your choice. The first constitutional right to free expression is a fluid line that can fluctuate easily between expression and suppression, and we must choose wisely.
In previous articles, I shared with my readers the chaotic experience I had in my first-year class as a faculty member right after the terrorist attacks on the two New York Towers. The President of our university, concerned for the mental health of our students, Jews and Muslims alike, still others from other world areas, and separated geographically from their parents, asked us to talk about the incident in our classes to relieve pressure. I also remember sharing with you the physical effort it took for me to separate physically those students who blamed and attacked each other for attacks in New York where they had not even participated.
Months later, the students thanked me for keeping them apart sound and safe that day, even writing to me from their countries to express their feelings of gratitude after they talked to their parents, but it took me more days of classes to be able to feel secure in our environment.
After the recent congressional hearings, others in the area of public opinion subjected specifically one of those three female chief executive teachers to accusations of poor leadership and careless handling of the literary quotes in her original doctoral dissertation that amounted to plagiarism, and she decided to resign rather than continue to face the music. What was out of sight when that presidential candidate went through the three intensive review phases mentioned earlier and who missed it?
Questions about racism surfaced about the black president’s target of the strongest accusations, speculative questions that no one can fully answer: did she get a “pass” before when her inspectors ignored her weaknesses because she was black, or is she the “target” of accusations of incompetence now for the same reason? The word unfairness comes to mind.
I am not in the business of defending educational leaders. And not familiar with the ins and outs of this recent scandal, I plead ignorance and objectivity from the case. I am talking about a play, not the players. All of them are intelligent human beings capable of defending their actions, whether they are intentional or accidental, but being able to fall in error does not mean we are unable to stand up later to correct our ways. If we read the Bible correctly, we can see Jesus falling on his way to the Cross and lifting himself to continue when someone gave him a hand to do so.
If we require that our leaders look ahead and imagine crises that have not materialized yet and chain themselves to take measures to avoid criticism, we will deprive those leaders of the initiative and ability to represent us and care for us before and after those unanticipated events take place. And what is worse, is that we witness unexpected situations that are simple manipulative efforts to destroy the leaders. I cannot conceive of any attempt as serious to control our freedoms as those shackles we would be placing on them. And on us.
And that is my point of view today. So long.
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