University Follies

It will come as no surprise to Curmiphiles that this blog highlights education issues a lot.  And it’s usually not terribly complimentary to those in charge.  This time around, it’s University Follies.  Apologies in advance; this is going to take a while.

Let’s start with what, frighteningly enough, is the least outrageous of the stories.

Aqsa Khan

Cal State Long Beach grad student Aqsa Khan was unsatisfied with the Psychology Department’s treatment of minority students.  Disturbed by the response (or lack of response) from departmental administrators, she sent an e-mail to administrators and graduate students, using BeachBoard, the university’s online learning platform.  She writes that:

The program tokenizes minority students by pushing one or two to the forefront in order to appear diverse while doing little to actually help the majority of BIPOC students in any tangible manner, if not outright ignoring and denying them opportunities. In reality, the faculty this department employs and continues to employ have created an inequitable climate in this program.

Not surprisingly, the powers-that-be didn’t take kindly to this assessment; no one likes to be perceived, rightly or wrongly, in this light.  Curmie, of course, has no idea as to whether Ms. Khan’s criticisms are legitimate.  Perhaps she is highlighting actual issues of concern; perhaps she is exaggerating; perhaps her discontent is entirely misplaced.  What isn’t in question is her right to express those opinions.

Well, at least it isn’t in question in the mind of anyone who knows anything about either professional ethics or the U.S. Constitution.  Unfortunately, the list of people who qualify under either of those criteria does not include any decision-makers in the CSULB Psychology Department.

Khan was charged with the “use of computing facilities and resources to send obscene or intimidating and abusive messages” and the “use of computing facilities, campus network, or other resources to interfere with the work of another.”  Both of these charges are, to coin a phrase, bullshit.

It would be impossible for any rational being to interpret anything in Khan’s message as “obscene.”  That leaves only “intimidating” and “abusive” from that first charge.  Khan makes serious allegations against a fellow graduate student, but it would be difficult to call them abusive; anyone intimidated by Khan’s remarks lacks the backbone to perform even competently in an academic environment.

As for “interfering with the work of another,” well, all Curmie can see is that someone in a cushy corner office might have to do their damned job and respond to a student concern.  This would, of course, interfere with that bureaucrat’s conception of their (ahem) profession: playing solitaire on the office computer.

Anyway, the Star Chamber gave Khan a year of academic probation and a directive to submit a two-page “action plan” that amounts to “don’t bother us,” amidst concerns that Khan might “seek a wider audience when the investigation concludes, and she is not satisfied with the results.”  At least they got that last part right.

Curmie need hardly mention that FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) got involved very quickly to remind the university that even grad students have 1^st amendment rights.  Curmie has long considered FIRE a net positive; he’s beginning to think they’re essential.

FIRE, of course, is often regarded as a right-leaning organization because many of the cases in which they intervene involve the suppression of the free speech of conservative faculty or students.  That’s why the next cases are important in demonstrating that the only ideology FIRE seeks to uphold is that the US Constitution is indeed the law of the land, irrespective of what university administrators (in particular) think about the subject.

Two separate lawsuits have been filed of late by two now former professors at Collin College, a juco in McKinney, Texas.  Historian Dr. Lora Burnett and education professor Dr. Suzanne Jones have both claimed that the college severed ties with them in retaliation for, among other things, critical comments about the school’s COVID policies.  FIRE is actively representing Burnett; it’s reasonable to assume they’ll soon be in Jones’s corner, as well.

In addition to having the audacity to having an opinion about an issue which directly concerns them but is also a matter of public concern, Burnett had some harsh words for then-VP Mike Pence on Twitter, and Jones was one of the organizers of the Texas Faculty Association, described by Inside Higher Ed as “function[ing] somewhat like a union but… not recognized, per Texas state law prohibiting collective bargaining among public employees.”

Lora Burnett

But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, wait!  That’s not all!  There’s the whole business of a text message exchange (which the college spent over $14,000 in legal fees in an unsuccessful attempt to keep from going public) between Collin president H. Neil Matkin and GOP state representative Jeff Leach in which the latter wonders portentously if Burnett is paid by state funds and Matkin promises to “deal with it.” 

There’s the fact that Jones’s most recent performance review describes her as “a dedicated professor with a deep passion for education,” and that the renewal of her contract was supported by the associate dean, dean, and provost.  There’s the fact that there are numerous other such cases that just didn’t result in lawsuits… and the fact that Collin was listed by FIRE as one of the ten worst colleges in the country for free speech. 

Suzanne Jones

And there’s an article from this April about Matkin in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  (This may be behind a paywall, Gentle Reader.  If so, my apologies… but trust me, Matkin is portrayed by everyone except the fatcats on the board and a few Republican legislators as an authoritarian, possibly racist, asshole, unconcerned with actual education.)

There’s yet more, which you can check out at the links included above should you desire to do so.  We’ll close with two thoughts.  First, there’s the fact that Collin doesn’t offer tenure to faculty; these cases demonstrate both why that is so (so idiot administrators—the usual apologies for redundancy—can pretend they’re feudal lords) and why that’s a real problem (because dissent is essential to a functioning democracy and its educational systems).

Second, here’s FIRE’s Greg H. Greubel:

A professor expressing their political views on social media is not insubordination, it’s core protected speech.  Colleges and universities are supposed to be a space for individuals to engage in fearless debate on controversial issues, not a place where criticizing your boss gets you fired. If professors like Lora Burnett cannot inform the public about their views on public issues and problems on campus, our democracy is weakened. This case shows that when colleges treat professors as disposable, academic freedom and faculty expressive rights become disposable, too.

Yeah, what he said, even though that first sentence should have a semi-colon instead of a comma. 😉

It’s hard to figure out where to put the following story in an essay that’s sort of arranged in order of increasing awfulness.  It doesn’t fit the “free speech” motif of the rest of these incidents, but it sure is about a university behaving badly.  Indeed, it’s incomprehensible that anyone capable of even semi-articulate expression would think this is a good idea.

So we move on to Michigan State University, where there is apparently a shortage of student labor in the dining halls.  OK, that’s understandable enough, given the pandemic and all.  And let’s face it, it’s not a terribly glamorous job.  So, Gentle Reader, what do you suppose the university did to rectify the problem?  Possibly raise the pay to attract more employees?  Well, they did eventually get around to that, but first they had a better idea: get faculty and staff to volunteer to sling hash.  Such was the import of an e-mail from Vennie Gore, senior vice president for residential and hospitality services and auxiliary enterprises (what a title!).

That’s right, they’re understaffed because they don’t pay enough for it to be worthwhile for college students to do the job, so the obvious solution is to not pay anybody and to de facto extort faculty into this allegedly volunteer activity.  Faculty have been under extreme pressure in recent months: administrators have used the global health crisis and the ensuing financial crunch to enact whatever harebrained schemes infect their underutilized crania. 

Faculty, librarians, and all those other personnel considered irrelevant to the enterprise, are sacrificed so we can be sure to give the president a raise equal to the annual salary of a full professor or ensure that the football team doesn’t have to enter the season with a mere 20 coaches and other full-time staff.  Priorities, after all.

Faculty have also been pushed to the limit with demands that they accommodate in-person, livestream and online students simultaneously, adapt to new technologies that are evolving at a dizzying pace, and respond to an increasingly entitled student population and administrations that manifest equal parts narcissism and paranoia.  All this extra work, of course, would be for the same or even less money than they were making in pre-COVID days.

Moreover, any faculty member who isn’t tenured is absolutely under threat of being let go in light of “budget constraints,” so the right to refuse is rather like the right to vote for Fidel Castro’s opponent in Cuba a generation or two ago.  Had Curmie received such a request (demand?), he would have responded with a two-word message that rhymes with “duck poo.”  But Curmie was tenured until entering into semi-retirement this year.  And now, the prospect of losing a part-time gig that pays less than he’s worth, a job he accepted simply to keep his mind fresh, doesn’t really constitute a threat.  But administrations are all about “team players,” which is code for “silent acquiescence” (see above, re Collin College).

Oh-so-curiously, it appears that actually paying more dropped the staffing shortage significantly.  Who’da thunk it, right?  The university could hire a lot of student workers if they got rid of Vennie Gore and his $302,000 salary (plus perqs).  The university would be better served by leaving that job vacant rather than having it staffed by a clueless buffoon, and the fact that he still seems to be employed is a stain on the university’s reputation.

Curmie is reliably informed (by Beloved Spouse, who works in financial aid) that there are no governmental restraints on work-study job salaries.  The total amount a university is allocated is set by the government, but hourly wages are at the discretion of the employer.  So pay them what you need to, and cut some of those work study jobs for which students are de facto paid to do their homework or play games online.  Trust me, they are manifold.

And yet one more observation…  Years ago, the VP for Development at the college where Curmie then taught told a group of faculty that over time a well-managed portfolio could be expected to yield 6% over inflation.  Let’s make it easy and call it just 6%.  Michigan State’s endowment is $3.4 billion.  6% of that is $204 million.  That would fund… let’s see… 13,600 student half-time workers at $15/hour, for 50 weeks a year.  Remember that when you hear about how MSU can’t afford to do otherwise.

Finally, we move on to the There But for the Grace of God story as far as Curmie is concerned.  All Curmie knew about Coastal Carolina University prior to this episode is that they used to employ one of his former students, and that they have a good (if over-rated) football team.  But now there’s this.  And we’re back in FIRE territory.

About six weeks ago, a group of students walked into a theatre classroom at CCU to see a list of names written on a whiteboard.  Turns out, all of those names were of BIPOC students.  Any normal person might wonder why those names appeared on the board.  The more perspicacious might consider who was last in the room.  But nay.  It would be a gross understatement to suggest that students leapt to erroneous conclusions about the nature of the list; rather, they hurtled themselves into an ecstasy of victimhood. 

Overcome by a mix of raging paranoia and an apparent orgiastic fervor to be regarded as persecuted, the students entering the room presumed with literally no evidence that the names were intended to “single out” non-white students, apparently to some unspecified nefarious purpose.  Students proceeded to organize an on-campus protest a few days later rather than attend class.

Actually, the singling out part is true, but with nothing remotely similar to the intent manufactured by the wannabee victims.  Indeed, it quickly became clear that a guest artist had been working with a group of BIPOC students who wanted to get to know other non-white students in the program, so… wait for it… they brainstormed a list of other BIPOC students to possibly hang out with.  Literally no one seems to dispute that this was the purpose of the list.

Nonetheless, the visiting artist and the faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee both issued apologies, the former describing her actions as “thoughtless and careless” (it’s unclear whether it was the writing of the list or the failure to erase the whiteboard that merits such self-flagellation), the latter describing itself as “deeply sorry,” saying the incident “should never have happened” (well, that part is true), and promising to “[discuss] with faculty and students the gravity of the situation.”  Of course, the only part of this incident with any gravity at all is the apparent willingness of students to substitute fantasy for reality and subsequently fail to admit they were wrong, and the abject failure of DEI committee members to observe, à la Gertrude Stein, that there is no there there.

And now we’re back at the infomercials, because THAT’S NOT ALL!

Steven Earnest

Dr. Steven Earnest (who teaches pretty much the same courses Curmie has taught for many years) thought this was all a bit much, and responded (as written): “Sorry but I dont think its a big deal. Im just sad people get their feelings hurt so easily. And they are going into Theatre?”  Add a handful of apostrophes, and he’s absolutely right.  Ah, but the folks who had just been proven to have falsely accused the department of racial insensitivity decided they’d give it one more try, and therefore falsely accused Earnest of that transgression.  (Be it noted: although it is unlikely, it is not outside the realm of plausibility that Dr. Earnest does harbor racist thoughts.  This e-mail, however, offers no evidence to support that charge.)

So far, though, it’s just a bunch of post-adolescents acting like post-adolescents and members of a DEI committee feeling a mixture of self-importance and the need to justify their existence.  Curmie has seen more than a few variations on these themes for decades.

Ah, but then the idiot dean (again, apologies for redundancy) had to get in on the act.  It’s unclear exactly when Earnest sent his e-mail, but it was in response to the committee’s message, sent after 5:00 pm on a Friday.  The following Monday, Dean Claudia Bornholdt told Earnest not to come to his classes and to send her his syllabus, effectively suspending him from his teaching duties!

AND THAT’S STILL NOT ALL!

According to FIRE, Earnest’s lawyer says the university is now starting termination proceedings against him.  Needless to say, Curmie, who may or may not have sent an e-mail describing as “Stalinist” a draft “anti-racist” manifesto distributed to faculty in his theatre department a year or so ago, is more than a little concerned that Dr. Earnest is going through all this for the apparent crime of noticing that the emperor was… erm… déshabillé.

Also, Curmie can't resist the obvious joke here, noting the absolute Importance of Being Earnest.  OK, that’s out of the system.  Moving on...

Alas, there are even more stories like these out there.  Colleges and universities are being pulled apart in a way Curmie has never seen before.  Repressive forces are stronger than ever, and they’re coming from all political and ideological angles.  It’s not too late to restore thought, the search for truth, and the necessity of differing opinions as the center-pieces of higher education.  But we’re speeding towards that cliff, and if we don’t want to be Thelma and Louise ten seconds after the movie ends, we damned sure need to hit the brakes.  Hard.  Now.

Bright Sheng and the Sorta Blackface Othello

Bright Sheng

Curmie has seen multiple stories about the case of Bright Sheng, the Chinese-born Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan, currently under fire for showing the 1965 film version of Othello, the one starring Laurence Olivier, to his undergrad composition class.

Amidst the indignation from the Woke Folk and the indignation at the indignation from civil libertarians and conservatives, Curmie hereby attempts to make some sense of it all.

Sheng has impeccable credentials, including a MacArthur “genius” fellowship, a fact which may or may not complicate things.  Does this mean Sheng is inherently blameless?  Or does it make the offense more grievous, or at least more problematic, because students were afraid to come forward with legitimate complaints?  Curmie doesn’t attract a lot of idiots to his page, so he will take on faith that you, Gentle Reader, will know that the answer to both these questions is “of course not.”  Needless to say, however, this does little if anything to prevent the more foam-flecked on either side of the issue to assert otherwise.

Let’s start with the initial outcry.  The reaction of freshman Olivia Cook, quoted in The Michigan Daily (the student newspaper), may be seen as exemplary: “I was stunned.  In such a school that preaches diversity and making sure that they understand the history of POC in America, I was shocked that [Sheng] would show something like this in something that’s supposed to be a safe space.” 

If Ms. Cook believes herself to have been unsafe in any sort of physical sense because she watched a 56-year-old movie starring one of the most acclaimed actors of his century, she has some mental health issues and needs counseling, stat.  If, as is more likely, the safety in question is more mental, then she doesn’t belong at a university; having one’s ideas and perceptions challenged is, or at the very least ought to be, a major element of what higher education is about.  But she is a college freshman, and can be forgiven a lack of larger perspective.

It’s difficult to establish a precise timeline of what happened after the showing.  What is clear is that Sheng, with or without prompting, sent the class an apologetic e-mail soon afterwards, acknowledging (if that is the correct word) that the film was “was racially insensitive and outdated.” 

A second apology to students and departmental colleagues  a few days later actually exacerbated the situation.  Sheng cites his own failure to realize the “depth of racism” in past and present American culture (isn’t gaining such cognition what we’re supposed to do?), and cites his own experience of discrimination “[a]s an Asian American living in a primarily white society for the last 40 years.”  He notes, for example, that about 90% of singers of Madama Butterfly are white.  This experience, quite reasonably, makes him simultaneously more and less culpable: less because he’d “accepted it as a given,” more because he of all people ought to have empathy for others similarly excluded.

It’s also important that Sheng’s background is in opera rather than theatre.  The look of opera singers, unlike actors, is almost if not entirely irrelevant.  Curmie’s own sole experience as a performer in opera was as a narrator (literally no one wants to hear him sing) in a university production of an abridged (hence the need for a narrator) version of Offenbach’s La Pèrichole.  To avoid putting too much strain on young voices and to provide opportunities for more students, there were two different casts: the leads on Thursday and Saturday were in the chorus on Friday, and vice versa.  I’m willing to bet the Thursday/Saturday male lead outweighed his Friday counterpart by a ratio of more than 2:1.  What they had in common: they were both really good tenors, and that is literally all the mattered to the casting director.

Although Sheng explicitly states that he is not making excuses but rather “[realizing] how it happened,” his comments were perceived as “shallow” and insufficiently cognizant of the alleged harm the incident did to students.  Particularly problematic to his critics was a section in which Sheng comments on his work with BIPOC students and artists.  A letter signed by 18 undergraduate composition students, 15 graduate composition students and nine SMTD staff and faculty members asserts that Sheng’s apology “implies that it is thanks to him that many of them have achieved success in their careers.”  Two responses: 1). it does no such thing.  2). if it did, it would be accurate, at least to some degree.

We can also understand that Sheng thought it relevant that he has consistently, throughout his career, provided opportunities for BIPOC artists.  It sort of clouds the issue, and seems to be a variation on “but some of my best friends are Jewish,” of course.  But in the world of the ultra-aggrieved, it’s worse than that: a single misstep is grounds for character assassination, and any apology short of seppuku is “inflammatory.” 

Anyway, Sheng has been removed from the course because department chair David Gier is a weenie “it was the correct thing to do” and it will “allow for a positive learning environment.” He will remain as a tenured faculty member. 

The furor isn’t over, as a group called the International Youth and Students for Social Equality at the University of Michigan, whose page on the university website calls for “a socialist transformation of society,” has posted on the World Socialist Web Site a demand that Professor Sheng be re-instated, and that officials at Michigan “apologize to Professor Sheng and publicly repudiate all slanderous attacks on Sheng for being ‘racist’ or for carrying out a ‘racist act.’”  The authors of this piece are just as fervent as Sheng’s detractors, and they’ve done more homework.

Here’s an example:

The actions taken against Professor Sheng, a world-renowned scholar, may well rank as the most shameful episode in the University’s history. It exposes the extent to which the unrelenting promotion of racialist ideologies—fraudulently legitimized with pretentious postmodernist jargon—has created a thoroughly toxic environment on university campuses.

Any serious examination of Shakespeare’s play and the career of one of the 20th century’s greatest actors demolishes the charges of racism leveled against Olivier and the 1965 production. Comparisons to the racist depictions of African Americans in blackface are ignorant. The denunciation of Olivier’s performance is particularly preposterous in that the actor was attempting to take on the timid, semi-racist approaches to the Othello character that had prevailed for a century and a half.

OK.  There’s a legitimate argument here.  In an oft-cited essay on race and film versions of Othello, Laura Reitz-Wilson argues that Olivier’s performance, directed by Stuart Burge, is “revolutionary,” in that he plays a “very black Othello” and references the character’s race “as Shakespeare intended.”  Calling attention to Othello’s race makes it impossible for an audience to forget his outsider status, which is central to the character.  Indeed, although Othello is certainly a flawed character, he does elicit empathy from the audience, and underscoring his blackness thus becomes an anti-racist act.

Reitz-Wilson notes, however, that Olivier’s depiction “does border on a stereotypical portrait of a black man,” and that absolutely matters.  Still, actor Hugh Quarshie, who is black, wrote in 1998:

I am left with a nagging doubt: if a black actor plays Othello does he not risk making racial stereotypes seem legitimate and even true.  When a black actor plays a role written for a white actor in black make-up and for a predominantly white audience, does he not encourage the white way, or rather the wrong way, of looking at black men, namely that black men, or “Moors,” are over-emotional, excitable and unstable…  Of all the parts in the canon, perhaps Othello is the one which should most definitely not be played by a black actor.

In other words, Quarshie argues that the character per se, independent of the portrayal, is by modern standards racially problematic—the same way Shylock is in terms of religion.  Therefore any actor of any ethnicity risks reinforcing racial stereotypes.  For the record, Quarshie later changed his mind and played the role in 2015.

But this brings us around to the question of “tradition.”  Even the National Review, in its predictable response to events in Ann Arbor, notes that the role “has traditionally been played by a black actor in stage productions.”  Well, that depends on what “traditionally” means. 

Curmie fancies himself a reasonably good theatre historian, and as far as he can tell, the listing of black actors playing Othello opposite a white Desdemona in a significant professional production in the first three and a quarter centuries of the play’s existence reads like this: Ira Aldridge.  That’s it.  (I presume that although James Hewlett played the role in the African Company’s short tenure in the 1820s, the Desdemona was also black.)  It was therefore a Big Damned Deal when Paul Robeson played Othello in London opposite Peggy Ashcroft in 1930, and again in New York opposite Uta Hagen in 1943.

Since the 1940s, however, virtually all productions of the play do indeed feature a black actor in the title role.  The title roles in the only two Broadway productions since then were played by Moses Gunn and James Earl Jones, both of them outstanding black actors.  Similarly, any production in the last three and a half centuries featuring a male actor as Desdemona will rightly be regarded as a gimmick, albeit the role was originally written to be performed by a male.  Times change, and the structures and strictures of society would do well to change, as well.

So where does that leave us?  For one thing, the dominant philosophical paradigm under which we operate is now in question.  In Judeo-Christian thought, intentions matter.  No one that Curmie can find believes Professor Sheng was consciously and intentionally racist in his choice of cinematic Othellos.  Even a virtue-signaling jerk like Evan Chambers, who oh-so-coincidentally gets to take over the prestigious seminar now, feels compelled to include “regardless of the professor’s intentions” in accusing Sheng of “a racist act.”

There are cultures in which pollution trumps volition: the two Curmie knows the most about are Ancient Greece and Shinto.  According to these world views, if you cause harm to another person, even if you not only intended no harm but took active steps to protect the victim, you bear responsibility.  My favorite example is from the Greek orator Antiphon, who describes an athlete practicing the javelin.  Before releasing the projectile, the young man made certain the spectators in the area weren’t in the line of fire, and ensured that they knew he was about to throw.  The javelin went straight down the middle of the field, but while it was already in the air, a little boy ran out into its path and was impaled.  Although he was cleared of any charges of homicide, the young athlete was nonetheless charged with the boy’s death and threatened with exile.

Our society doesn’t work like that, or at least it shouldn’t.  Acknowledging harm is appropriate (but seriously, what actual harm was done here?), but intentionality matters.  Sheng’s initial apology was both timely and apparently sincere.  Learning to do better is the stated purpose of all those insufferably smug diversity seminars the professoriate endures.  It clearly isn’t the real motive, however, as precisely such a result has generated even more grief for Professor Sheng.

Don’t get me wrong.  Curmie doesn’t believe for a moment that either Sheng or Olivier committed a racist act.  But Sheng’s showing the Olivier film without context was an instance of remarkably poor pedagogy.  Sheng may have been born in China, but he’s lived in this country for 40 years.  Presumably he reads the newspaper occasionally.  Whether or not his students are hypersensitive, he needs to meet them where they are.  This doesn’t mean they should be coddled; their parochial mindset does indeed need to be challenged.  But in this instance patience truly is a virtue.

More to the point, when the Metropolitan Opera decided several years ago to drop what NPR timorously describes as “blackface-style makeup” for… wait for it…Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello, it’s your job, Professor Sheng, to know that and react.  Agree with that choice, disagree with it, Curmie doesn’t care.  But if you’re opening a seminar on musical adaptations of Shakespeare with Otello, you’d better demonstrate comprehension of the way staging has changed in the past half-century.

So here’s what do.  You show the Laurence Fishburne or Hugh Quarshie versions, or you preface the Olivier film, thus: 

“Giuseppe Verdi lived in the 19^th century, when stereotypical portrayals of black characters were the norm.  If we’re going to examine the interpretations of the text that existed in Verdi’s world, a world in which in both opera and theatre the title character was always played by a white man in blackface, we need to approximate as closely as we can those conditions. 

“The opera was written in 1887; we’re now in 2021.  Roughly halfway between those two dates was the release of what remains the best-known film adaptation of the play, that of Laurence Olivier.  Whereas he’s not in blackface per se, as his depiction was intended to be respectful, you will be seeing a white man in exaggerated makeup playing a black man.  This may be unsettling, even disturbing, to some of you.  But I think it’s important that you know the kind of production Verdi saw in his day, and this is the closest I can come.  I understand if you aren’t able to get past what you perceive as a racist production, but I hope you will try to examine the characterizations, the themes, and the language, as well.  Some of these may lead you back to your initial response.  That’s OK, but let’s see what else we can find.”

Providing context for virtually any in-class film-viewing is important.  When it’s something like this, it’s especially mandatory.  

Short version of all of the above: Sheng underwent far too much criticism for offenses he didn’t intend.  His initial apology should have been accepted.  That doesn’t mean it wasn’t necessary.