The Incompetence Has No Limits

Not a DEI reference

Curmie wrote a while back that he would be writing about the pair of plundering plutocrats only in passing.  Allow him now to clarify.  He’s not, at least for the moment, going to write about the Trusk administration’s policy decisions.  You may take as given, Gentle Reader, that unless you see something specifically to the contrary, Curmie is adamantly opposed to literally anything that pair of mendacious sociopaths do.

He’ll still link to articles on the Facebook and Bluesky pages, and might even offer a bit of terse commentary.  But there’s no need to spend 1000 words or more to say something that other folks have already said, and probably better than Curmie could.  So, what follows here isn’t about whether it’s a good idea to cut support of USAid or medical research, or to eliminate all references to DEI initiatives from government agencies’ websites.  It’s about basic competence.

Indeed, about the best thing American citizens have going for us right now is that Trump, Musk, Hegseth, et al., are so fucking stupid.  Imagine how bad things would be if these bozos weren’t, well, bozos.  Don’t even get Curmie started on the need to shut down major airports in Florida because SpaceX can’t make a rocket that doesn’t blow up.

If you’ve been paying any attention at all, Gentle Reader, you probably know most of the following: that the $50 million of condoms allegedly shipped to Gaza for Hamas to “use in making bombs” were in fact about a tenth that much money in contraceptives (not condoms) sent to the Gaza region of Mozambique, that three of the four examples of “wasteful spending” by USAid weren’t even USAid programs and the other one was mislabeled, that the $8 billion in savings accrued by shutting down one ICE program was in fact only $8 million (and actually less than that), that we didn’t spend millions on making mice transgender but on making them transgenic  (altering their genetic structure to better replicate human responses for research into such afflictions as cancer and Alzheimer’s)… and so on.

The most colossal act of stupidity, however, was the attempt to purge DEI references, which you undoubtedly know by now, Gentle Reader, resulted in the pending removal of photos of the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: the Enola Gay.  Also flagged were references to anyone whose surname happens to be “Gay” (or “Black,” presumably) as well as… you know… anything about the first black person to do this or the first woman to do that.  

Presumably, any accounts of vehicles needing a new transmission (trans mission?) would be even more problematic.  (I know, I know, Gentle Reader, I shouldn’t give them any ideas.  My apologies.)  It is not clear at this point whether these items have been permanently deleted (how Orwellian would that be?) or placed in some sort of archive inaccessible to us mere mortals.

Here’s the thing: mistakes happen, and if you rely on AI or lazy, hubristic techbros, a lot of mistakes will happen.  Musk chucklefucks the problem by cheerfully admitting that sometimes he’ll say something that isn’t true—this after ruining careers and shutting off aid to starving children, of course.  After all, “nobody’s going to bat 1.000.”  Well, if you’re going to take people’s livelihoods away, you pompous accretion of nitrogenous waste, you’d better be pretty damned close to 1.000.  And your batting average isn’t good enough to keep you around as a utility infielder.

The problem isn’t that someone (or, more likely, something) screwed up; it’s that no one stopped the publication of this bullshit without checking it first.  (Insert Allstate commercial here.) 

Back when Curmie was teaching fulltime, one of his departmental responsibilities was to compile the “ineligible list.”  In order to be eligible to participate in theatre productions, a student had to meet certain criteria that were intended to ensure satisfactory progress towards graduation.  Among other requirements, theatre majors needed to meet at least one of these criteria: to have passed all courses taken in the previous semester, or 12 semester hours of credit in that semester, or 24 hours in the previous 12 months.

The problem was that there was no easy way to get the information I needed.  The department’s administrative assistant could run a program that could tell me which majors had passed 11 or fewer hours and how many hours those students attempted.  That narrowed the field of potentially ineligible students down to 20-30% of the total.  From there, I could eliminate students who passed 6 out of 6 hours, or whatever.  And those whose GPA was below 2.0 were on the list irrespective of other criteria.  

But there wasn’t a way to get the total hours of courses passed in the previous 12 months except by looking up each student individually.  And because of a quirk in the system, students taking remedial courses (and a fair number of theatre majors take remedial math) get shortchanged unless you actually look at the transcript.  Remedial courses show up on the printout as attempted hours, but not as successfully completed hours, regardless of the grade, because they don’t count towards graduation.

So I checked a few dozen transcripts every semester, looking for whether the student had passed enough courses earlier in the last year to overcome a one-semester bobble, or had taken courses at another school, or had passed remedial courses, or had a WH (“withheld,” same as an “incomplete” at some places) but had already clinched a passing grade, just not a specific passing grade.  And yes, I’d email the prof to find out.

What I sure as hell didn’t do was to publish, even to my colleagues, the list of names generated by that computer search.  Do the work first, then create an accurate list.  All of this took some time when I would have liked to have really been on vacation, but getting it right was worth the effort.  Having students know where they stood so they could plan their appeal or adjust their schedule because they wouldn’t be doing shows, or whatever: yes, that was important.  But not having the names of students who should have been eligible appear on any sort of even semi-official ineligibility list: that was even more important. 

The foregoing is not to complain about the work I had to do instead of just letting the machines do all the work.  Rather, it was simply a matter of doing what needed to be done to get results that actually comported with departmental policy.  A similar approach would solve a lot of problems in the current DEI purge.  Sure, run your Control-F search… and then check to see if the thousands of hits generated are actually relevant. 

Even—no, make that especially—if you think purging the historical record of all references to DEI is a good idea, you probably don’t want to be a laughing-stock.  This level of incompetence does no one any good… unless, of course, it’s not really incompetence at all, but a strategy to distract our collective attention away from something more sinister in the works.  That’s a possibility, of course, but Curmie doesn’t think that’s the explanation.

Yet, at least.

The US Army Chorus and the Yes/No Paradigm

Years ago, no doubt when undertaking to direct a comedy, Curmie developed a theory that all onstage humor falls into one of four categories.  One variety is not funnier than another; they just behave differently.  The various forms are determined by two yes/no questions: does the character saying the line or performing the action know they’re being funny, and do other characters onstage recognize the humor of the situation.

This schema also works for allusions, which aren’t necessarily comic, but which function similarly to comedy in that they serve to underscore the superiority of the audience: those who catch the reference get to form the phrase “I see what you did there” and feel pretty pleased with themselves. 

A yes/yes comic moment, then, would be when one character tells a joke or delivers a witty line or makes a funny face or whatever and at least one other character laughs or otherwise acknowledges the humor.  This is the most straightforward comic form.

Yes/no moments are when the other character doesn’t get the joke, and the audience responds both to the joke itself and to the other character’s stolidity.  Audience superiority is essential, and we experience that superiority when we separate ourselves from the characters by understanding what they do not. 

No/no comedy happens when none of the characters understand, at least in the moment, the humor of the situation.  Comedy sometimes works best when the characters are dead serious.  That classic scene of Lucy and Ethel and the conveyor belt is a good example. 

This paradigm is where we find the most sophisticated use of allusion.  An example would be the scene in the first episode of the “Endeavour” TV series.  Our hero has just been transferred to Oxford and is looking for a place to stay.  The landlady of a rather rundown boarding house mentions that the other residents are Mr. McCann and Mr. Goldberg. 

Many, perhaps most, viewers won’t even know there was an allusion there.  Folks in Curmie’s line of work, however, immediately recognized the names McCann and Goldberg as the antagonists in Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, which takes place in the seedy boarding house where they’re staying.  People who get the joke get to feel superior; those who don’t won’t feel inferior because they didn’t know there was a joke to get.

Sometimes, of course, the allusions will be understood immediately by virtually all spectators: think of all the famous Shakespearean lines, plot elements, character names, etc., in a film like “Shakespeare in Love” or TV series like “Upstart Crow” or “Shakespeare and Hathaway.”  It’s a variation on this theme that is the real subject of this essay.

No/yes comedy scenes occur when a character is unaware of the humor, but another character gets it.  Often, this other character triggers audience response.  A few years ago, Curmie played the Master of the Revels in a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  In the Mechanicals’ performance in Act V, it was imperative that those characters not know they were saying double entendres with sexual overtones.  My job, as actor, was to have my character get those unintended jokes and react, subtly (I hope!) but clearly. 

Sometimes the audience got the joke immediately.  Sometimes not.  If they laughed as soon as the line happened, great.  But not infrequently the laugh came a beat late, when it took them a moment to understand the humor.  To the extent that some of this late reaction came from watching my character react, thereby tipping them off to the gag, those late laughs were a sign I was doing my job.  To some extent, the audience was reacting to a reaction rather than to the comic moment per se.

Of course, that one-second delay made things difficult for the mostly inexperienced actors playing the mechanicals.  If there isn’t an immediate laugh, they should move on with the next line, but that runs the risk of stepping on the laugh.  But if they wait for a laugh that never comes, that’s even worse. 

Anyway, moving on.  Let’s talk about recent events.  The U.S. Army Chorus performed at the White House Governors Ball on February 22, an event attended by both Donald and Melania Trump.  Their song of choice?  “Do You Hear the People Sing.”  It was, to be sure, an intriguing selection. 

One needn’t be a musical theatre aficionado to recognize the popular anthem from Les Misérables.  It is all about rising up against a tyrannical and oppressive government: “Do you hear the people sing? / Singing a song of angry men? / It is the music of the people / Who will not be slaves again!”

Bizarrely, it appears the song is a favorite of Trump’s, dating back to the days when he was pretending to be a populist (in the worse possible sense of that term, of course).  He even used it as his entrance music at a rally during the 2016 campaign.  He may be sufficiently stupid or sufficiently narcissistic (or both) to miss the irony in this choice this time around.

In the aftermath of Trump’s series of authoritarian executive orders, including giving free reign to the only person in the country more despicable than Trump himself as head of DOGE, the firing of top military brass (ever so coincidentally those who weren’t white men) and the installation of a fool like Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, after that bizarre line about “long live the king,” there is a delicious sense of naughtiness to the choice of song, whether intended or not. 

It could be, in other words, a no/no rather than yes/no phenomenon.  Curmie doesn’t think so. He rather agrees with Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), who tweeted, “They picked Les Mis—a musical about standing up to tyranny. They protested you at your own event and you were too stupid to get it.”

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter much what was intended, although it might affect the title of this piece.  Gentle Reader, what happened is what happened, and we all saw what we saw and heard what we heard.  Perhaps this was a postmodern performance, and the song was intended to catalyze meaning rather than carry it to the audience (us, as opposed to the folks in attendance live).

Or perhaps Trump’s fondness for the song provided a level of deniability for whoever chose to perform an anti-authoritarian anthem in front of a plundering plutocrat: “We were told he liked that song…”

Or perhaps the newly installed head of the Kennedy Center is just a stolid vulgarian who couldn’t decipher “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

Iowa’s Heinous, Bigoted, Incompetent, and Hypocritical “Drag Show” Bill

Orlando and Rosalind in Curmie’s As You Like It

The Republican-dominated Senate would have us believe that folks like Robert Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, and Kristi Noem are anywhere near qualified for the leadership positions to which they were confirmed.  At least the first three are outright threats to the nation and its citizens; Curmie was holding out hope that Hegseth would be merely incompetent, but it isn’t looking that way.  Noem is a vicious and self-righteous fool; that makes her look pretty good by comparison to the rest of that lot.

And 217 of the 218 House Republicans just voted for a budget resolution that would strip billions from necessary social programs that benefit the most vulnerable among us to clear the way for a tax cut for billionaires… and add trillions (yes, trillions) of dollars to the national debt.  So much for these assholes’ claims of fiscal responsibility. 

But with all due disrespect for the GOP quislings in Washington, the greatest example of legislative malfeasance just might be Iowa House Study Bill 158.  It’s currently been reported out of subcommittee with a recommendation to approve.

This totally wackadoodle legislation would criminalize “drag shows” (Curmie will explain the scare quotes in a moment) that allow minors to attend.  Venues would be fined $10,000 per minor in attendance; adults who bring a minor (anyone under 18) to such an event would be guilty of a class D felony (!), subject to “confinement for no more than five years and a fine of at least $1,025 but not more than $10,245.”  Oh, and parents or legal guardians can sue the venue for up to $50,000 plus legal fees for each offense.

Holy Dionysus, where to begin?  Curmie doesn’t attract a stupid or ignorant readership, so we’ll mention the obvious bigotry only in passing.  There is, of course, no rational reason to keep children out of drag shows simply because they are drag shows.  Some such performances may be unsuitable for other reasons, but it’s because of what can loosely be called “adult content”—language, actual sexuality, etc.—not the fact that a biological male (or someone who was once a biological male) is dressed as a woman, or vice versa.  “Drag queen story hours” never hurt anyone.  No, never.

So let’s move on.  The definition of “drag show” in this proposed legislation is a performance in which the following is true:

The main aspect of the performance is a performer who exhibits a gender identity that is different than the  performer’s gender assigned at birth through the use of clothing, makeup, accessories, or other gender signifiers.

The performer sings, lip-syncs, dances, reads, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment, whether or not performed for payment.

Needless to say, there are a lot, and Curmie does mean a lot, of theatrical and quasi-theatrical forms that fit that definition but aren’t drag.  The first one to come to mind is British pantomime—you know, Gentle Reader, that entertainment form that hundreds of thousands of British parents take their kids to every Christmas season?  The Dame, the comic older female character, is always played by a man.  And if there’s a juvenile male lead (as in, say, a version of Jack and the Beanstalk), that role will go to an attractive young woman. 

One of Curmie’s friends is one of the UK’s leading Dames.  He writes and performs in pantos not infrequently, but he also does solo work written specifically with children in mind.  He preaches that it’s okay to be different—sort of the kind of message that got actress Julianne Moore in trouble with the censorial asshats Trump administration for her children’s book Freckleface Strawberry.

I’ve seen my friend in a panto and in a solo show live, as well as a few performances online (it’s a long commute from Texas to England).  He’s very good at his job.  He’s empathetic and nurturing.  And I will positively go to war against anyone who says he’s doing anything but a positive service to the children who see his shows. 

But it’s not just panto, of course.  Many traditional Asian forms feature men playing women.  Ask virtually anyone to name a star of Chinese opera, and if they can think of anyone, it’s more than likely to be Mei Langfan, who was best exclusively known for—well, you’re ahead of me again, Gentle Reader—yes, playing the leading female role. 

Similarly, many Japanese Nō and Kabuki companies still employ traditional all-male casting; the onnagata (a male Kabuki actor specializing in female roles) is very much still a thing. But wait… wouldn’t that mean that the Iowa bill isn’t merely homo- and trans-phobic, but also racist?  Well, it kinda seems that way.

Of course, there are plenty of Western examples, too.  The most notable of these is probably Shakespeare’s As You Like It.  Curmie acted in it once and directed it once (that’s a photo from the latter at the top of the page).  There is no question that the play is very much about an actor playing a character not of the same sex.  What’s particularly interesting here is that there is no way to avoid that issue.  In the original, all-male production, we had a male actor playing a female character (Rosalind) playing a male character (Ganymede) playing a female character (Rosalind, again).  But whoever plays Rosalind, that actor is going to take on the identity of someone of a different sex; it just a matter of which scenes.

Curmie used to live in Iowa.  Imagine if you will, Gentle Reader, if Curmie had directed a production of that play with a special afternoon performance for local high schools.  This kind of thing happens all the time.  (We didn’t have such an audience when I did As You Like It in Texas, but we did for Macbeth.)  In this scenario, assuming a good attendance, the college and Curmie would each be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and both Curmie and every high school teacher who brought kids would have been charged with a felony.

Ah, you say, but no rational person would consider As You Like It a drag show even though it fits the description in the proposed legislation.  Well, no rational person would introduce a bill this fundamentally stupid, but here we are.  And I’m not ready to trust that Deputy Dunderhead, D.A. Doofus, and Judge Jackass aren’t more interested in parading their pseudo-morality than in exercising reason.

There are other examples, too, of course.  Arguably the greatest Spanish play of the 17^th century, Life Is a Dream, and the greatest Italian play of the 18^th century, The Servant of Two Masters, both rely on cross-dressing.  Is that “the main aspect of the performance”?  Well, it’s a main aspect of the performance, for sure.  And of course the multiple-Tony-winning musical Some Like It Hot is pretty much about the cross-dressing.

Curmie can’t think of a show he did in Iowa that would have caused problems, but he may well be forgetting something.  Beloved Spouse directed at a local high school there, and didn’t have enough boys audition for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, so she cast a couple of girls as “brothers.”  She probably would have been okay, though, as that wasn’t central to the production.

Similarly, when Curmie has occasionally cast women in roles originally played by men, he’s changed the character to female.  He did strap a fake beard on an actress to play a small part in Woyzeck, and had obviously fake mustaches drawn onto both men and women appearing as the fireman chorus in (Biedermann and) The Firebugs, but complaining about that would be a stretch even for Deputy Dunderhead. 

But Curmie has directed not just As You Like It and The Servant of Two Masters, but also The Breasts of Tiresias, in which the female lead decides to become a man (and does, beard and all), while her husband starts wearing a housedress and gives birth to tens of thousands of babies overnight.  (“Willpower!”)  Yeah, that one might rattle a few cages.  We didn’t have a lot of kids in the house, but those who came (and their parents) seemed to enjoy it.

There are also, of course, some productions (as opposed to the requirements of a play) which might raise the ire of the censorial set.  When Curmie and Beloved Spouse honeymooned in London many years ago, one of the highlights of the adventure was seeing Sir Peter Hall’s brilliant production of Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy.  

Publicity for the show emphasized the fact that the performance would be historically accurate in the sense that it would feature an all-male cast.  Thus, Clytemnestra, Cassandra, Electra, and the specifically female choruses of both The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides were all played by men.  Is that “the main aspect of the performance”?  Well, it’s the one that got highlighted in promotional materials…

We can, of course, add to this list any performance by a trans person.  Curmie can easily imagine a performance art piece by a former student describing his experience as an actress and the various psychological and physical forms of transitioning.  It would be, no doubt, a valuable service to those of us who have never experienced similar urges and especially, of course, to adolescents experiencing them right now.  Nope, can’t have that.

Which leaves us with the final term of the title of this essay: hypocrisy.  According to the sanctimonious right, it is reasonable to home school your kids even if you lack either the education or intelligence to do so.  It’s fine to deny them immunizations which would make them and indeed the entire population more impervious to diseases like polio, measles, mumps, etc.  You can make them go to your church.  What you do with your children is your business.

Well, it’s your business unless you decide to take them to a drag show.  Then, it’s a felony.  Your kids can attend an R-rated movie if you accompany them.  But if you accompany them to a drag show, even a drag queen story hour, perhaps even to a classic play, you’ll be arrested. 

Whoever thought this bill was a good idea is a clown.  Unfortunately, Curmie is developing a case of coulrophobia.  Perhaps you should, too, Gentle Reader.

Theatre Kids Do What Theatre Kids Do

 

A scene from [REDACTED]

We could all use a little good news once in a while, and it sure isn’t going to come from the pair of prancing and prevaricating plutocrats in Washington.  Luckily, there’s this.

When last we checked in on the theatre program at Santa Rosa High School in California, they’d recently had their production of Dog Sees God shut down by school officials who trembled at the wrath of Anonymous Whiny Folks.  There’s unpleasantness in that play, after all: substance abuse, homophobia, teen violence, isolation, eating disorders… all that nasty stuff that teenagers understand all too well because they and their friends are grappling with those issues. 

As Curmie said in the earlier piece, he doesn’t think it’s a great play, or, frankly, even a good one.  But you know what, Gentle Reader?  That doesn’t matter.  Curmie will probably skip going to the current production at the university from which he is now well and truly retired.  Why?  Because he’s not the target audience, wouldn’t catch all the references, and would not only be miserable himself but would run the risk of spoiling the evening for other spectators.  Similarly, Dog Sees God resonates with people a quarter of Curmie’s age a lot more than it does with him.  That’s absolutely no problem.

Anyway, if there’s anything a half century of working on shows has taught Curmie, it’s that theatre kids are a resilient lot, quite familiar with problem-solving, and they enjoy little if anything more than sticking to who we in our generation called The Man.  That was true when Curmie was one of them, and it’s true today.  So what did the Santa Rosa kids do?  They couldn’t do their show on campus, so they packed up their stuff, booked a space a few miles away, and packed the auditorium with enthusiastic theatre-goers.  Twice.

But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, WAIT!  THAT’S NOT ALL!  That brouhaha was in mid-November.  By January, those kids, working with their director, Jerome Anglin, and with Brent Lindsay, artistic director of the Imaginists theater company in Santa Rosa, had written a freaking musical, [REDACTED], about their experience.  And they entered it in the Lenaea Festival, a huge convention/competition that draws entrants from some 70 (!) high school programs.  As one does.  (Don’t get ahead of me here, Gentle Reader, even if you’re pretty sure you know what’s coming.)

Curmie presumes the festival is named for the similarly named event in Ancient Athens which was notable primarily for its stagings of Old Comedy plays (satirical works by the likes of Aristophanes); it also took place in the winter, which may or may not be relevant here.  Curmie won’t bore you with more theatre history, Gentle Reader, except to note that [REDACTED] is the kind of fare that would have fit in nicely with the Lenaea Festival of the 5^th century BCE.

One suspects that [REDACTED] isn’t going to supplant Lysistrata or The Frogs (both of which premiered at the other Lenaea Festival) in the dramatic lit anthologies, but with the Mommies Against the Arts chanting, “Protecting kiddies is our duty! / We cancel anything that smells a little fruity!” and defending school officials, “particularly those who make over $200,000 a year,” it certainly seems to have captured the iconoclastic irreverence of Old Comedy.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the troupe received the Spirit of Lenaea Award.  The festival of a couple of millennia ago would have been an appropriate venue, and its 21^st-century descendent seems to be so, as well.  Board director Cheena Moslen said, “This group refused to be silenced. They mobilized their community, pushed back against censorship driven by fear, and ultimately staged their production, selling out performances. But that hurdle seems to be the beginning of a larger issue of silencing and oppression.”

It’s interesting, too, that according to Anglin that particular award generally goes to an individual rather than a group, but it was the entire company who shared this prize.  Santa Rosa also won a dozen other awards, including the Gold Medal (Curmie isn’t sure what that means, but it sure sounds impressive, right?) and a host of individual awards; there are awards for songs, scenes, monologues, etc.

Curmie has never been a fan of awards in the arts.  He pays even a little attention to awards shows only when he knows someone whose project has been nominated.  But sometimes those awards serve a purpose.  High school theatre programs in Curmie’s adopted state of Texas are generally better (and much better funded) than they were at Curmie’s previous stops in other states.  That’s because you can win trophies in it, and school adminstrators love to brag, even if it isn’t about anything they really care about (cough… football… cough).

And, lo and behold, the district—the same folks (with the exception of a new principal) who shut down Dog Sees God—are now strutting around praising these kids.  District public information officer James Hodgman saw a preview performance of [REDACTED].  “It is clear the students wanted to be heard on any possible censorship, and the play is based on some things that happened in recent memory,” he said. “At the district level, we are working to prevent something like that happening again.”  Curmie notes the ambiguity of that demonstrative pronoun.  Does “that” refer to the censorship or to the students’ having the audacity to believe they should be heard?

That new principal, Monica Fong, had questioned some of the monologues students intended to perform at the Lenaea Festival; Anglin invited her to a rehearsal, but she “didn’t really have much of a response to it,” and the play was not approved by the administration.  Now, of course, it’s “We would like to congratulate the ArtQuest Theatre group from Santa Rosa High School for awards received at the Lenaea Festival.  Congratulations to the students and all of the teachers that made these awards possible.”  Uh huh.

Curmie and Beloved Spouse watch a lot of old cop shows on Hulu, Amazon, Britbox, etc.  Not infrequently, some antagonist tries pushing our hero or heroine around.  They’re not our hero and heroine by accident; we know they’re going to win in the end.  And Curmie finds himself talking to the TV, saying, “Don’t fuck with [insert name here].”

School administrators, boards of education, and anyone else who seeks to censor free expression, especially in the arts, take note: Don’t fuck with theatre kids.

 

The University's Lawyer Did WHAT???

Steven Lovett

This one might not interest you a lot, Gentle Reader, but if you’re in, or even care about, higher education, it should.  The Chronicle of Higher Education featured an article last week under the intriguing headline of “A University’s Top Lawyer Is Behind a Bill to Weaken Tenure. The University Had No Idea.”  Yes, really.  (BTW, the article is probably behind a paywall.  Curmie promises not to mislead you about its content.  Or you could check out a number of other sources, including this one.)

It turns out the university in question is a place where Curmie used to work as a part-time rent-a-prof for a year, Emporia State University in Kansas.  Curmie had a decent time there, but that single year was occasioned not merely by the fact that he was able to find a full-time position elsewhere, but by the fact that he couldn’t have stayed on if he’d wanted to.  This wasn’t because the university was dissatisfied with Curmie’s work (he taught more sections in the spring than in the previous fall, so they couldn’t have wanted him gone too badly), but because they were interested in saving a few bucks. 

Curmie forgets the exact details, but it was something like that anyone who taught more than two semesters over a three year period was entitled to benefits; the university therefore had a rotation of three professors to teach the course in question, each for a single academic year at a time.  Curmie got the job because the guy whose turn it was had acquired a full-time job as a bookstore manager and recommended Curmie.  But I couldn’t have kept the job for another year, lest the university would have been forced to treat part-time faculty ethically.

Anyway, let’s fast-forward a couple of decades to the time of COVID shutdowns, which cost colleges and universities, especially non-flagship state schools like Emporia, a lot of money in lost tuition and especially lost room and board income.  That’s when the state Board of Regents decided that state schools could propose plans whereby faculty, even tenured faculty, could be fired without the university’s needing to demonstrate financial exigency.  (N.B., there’s a difference between having a financial motive and financial exigency.)

To be fair, the policy was intended to be temporary, although of course its implementation would be rather more permanent on those affected.  Moreover, the political appointees of the Board neither know nor generally even care anything about education and, unlike, say the sociopath who pretends to think that firing park rangers, air traffic controllers, and USAid workers is going to be a net positive, they might actually have thought they were doing the right thing. 

They weren’t, of course, and almost all of the state’s public colleges and universities declined to participate (although it took the chancellor of Curmie’s PhD alma mater, the University of Kansas, five months to reach that obvious conclusion).  Emporia, though, cheerfully signed on, and fired some thirty tenured and tenure-track faculty. 

To say that the layoffs were handled poorly would be an understatement.  And it’s not just Curmie saying that.  The AAUP’s lengthy report concludes that Emporia’s administration’s actions “constituted a direct assault on tenure and, by extension, academic freedom” and “[demonstrate] that conditions for shared governance at Emporia State University are deficient.” 

More significant, because more potentially binding, the lawsuit filed by eleven tenured faculty dismissed by the university was allowed to go forward by a US District Judge in December. 

Whether because the short-term emergency had passed, because the administration saw the proverbial light, or because of the slap-down in court, Emporia officials now appear to be doing what they can to appear, at least, to support tenure.  Or, at least they were, prior to their lead legal counsel going rogue.

Yes, Emporia State’s chief legal counsel, Steven Lovett, de facto introduced House Bill 2348, which would re-define tenure by declaring that it should not “be defined, awarded, or recognized as an entitlement, right, or property interest in a faculty member’s current, ongoing, or future employment by an institution.”  That “property interest” business is really what this kerfuffle is all about.  Curmie struggles to parse that particular legalese, but this part is pretty clear: that tenure can be “at any time revoked, limited, altered or otherwise modified by the awarding institution or by the state Board of Regents.”

In other words, the bill doesn’t end tenure; it simply renders it meaningless.  The whole idea behind tenure is that faculty who have earned it, which is anything but automatic, should be able to do their research and teaching without administrators looking over their shoulders the whole time.  Academic freedom kicks in completely with tenure, allowing faculty to propose unconventional, perhaps even iconoclastic, ideas.  This benefits both the faculty member and the discipline.  It’s not a bad thing to question conventional wisdom; indeed, it’s the only path to progress.

What people outside academe often don’t understand is that tenure also benefits the institution by making it less likely that good faculty are lured away by another university.  It’s not coincidental that the vast majority of job postings in the academy are for untenured assistant professorships.  Also, of course, the professoriate is well-educated and, generally speaking, intelligent.  Most faculty members could be making more money, often a lot more money, doing something else.  The job security that comes with tenure is a compensating factor, and becomes a way of securing good faculty. 

Also, because the granting of tenure has a higher threshold than simple re-appointment, and because denial of tenure almost always results in a terminal contract, mediocre faculty tend to be weeded out before there’s even a tenure decision.  Obviously, mistakes can be made (in both directions), but in general the process works pretty well, and the existence of tenure is unquestionably a net positive.

For these reasons, the privileges that accompany tenure should be revoked only under extreme circumstances.  Gross misconduct—plagiarism, not meeting classes, sexual impropriety, etc.—would qualify.  So would actual financial exigency: not simply that the university is looking to save money, but that it has no other choice but to cut the position (i.e., not just this particular faculty member).

Back in Curmie’s debating days, one of the mantras was that “the presumption rests with the negative.”  That is, the burden of proof is on whoever wants to change the status quo.  The best-known version of this idea is “innocent until proven guilty”: the prosecution must prove its case; the defense need only poke enough holes in the case to create “reasonable doubt.” 

The same phenomenon applies to tenure.  Applicants must affirmatively prove that they deserve it, not merely that there’s no particular reason to deny it.  But once tenure has been granted, the university must prove that it should be revoked… and it must do so in accordance with both applicable laws and their own guarantees of due process.  That doesn’t mean that such revocation shouldn’t exist, and indeed it does, often but not always with just cause.

Mr. Lovett knows that, or he damned well should.  Thus, that he would seek to undermine the foundations of tenure is odd.  That he would do so in direct contravention of his (only?) client’s wishes is… well, Curmie isn’t a lawyer, much less an authority on legal ethics, but the phrase “grounds for disbarment” comes to mind.

On the one hand, we can appreciate that “the university respects Mr. Lovett’s constitutional rights and freedom of expression.”  That’s a good thing.  On the other hand, it doesn’t take much imagination to contemplate a scenario like this:

Lovett: You wanted to see me?

ESU: Yes, we wanted your advice on a legal strategy.

Lovett: Sure, what’s the case?

ESU: How do we defend the university’s interests against this fucking moron who wants to undermine our ability to attract and retain the best possible faculty?

Lovett: Oh.

This doesn’t look like it’s going to end well.  For anyone.

 

Another Law School Violates Due Process

Scott Gelber

DEI practices are all over the news of late, but this post is about something that happened nearly two years ago.  Well, it started then.  In April of 2023, campus police entered the classroom of tenured law professor Scott Gelber at Ohio Northern University and marched him to a meeting with the law school dean, Charles H. Rose III.  Rose demanded that Gelber resign or retire, or he’d be fired.

Gelber did not comply, and he was escorted off campus, allegedly “to ensure [his] safety, the safety of others, and to protect the instructional integrity of the college of law’s program of instruction.”  (Curmie notes the lack of parallelism in that sentence from a law school dean with wry amusement.)  Gelber was charged with “repeatedly violat[ing] the provisions of the ONU Faculty Handbook and ONU Staff Handbook governing collegiality”; and his conduct supposedly “r[ose] to a level sufficient to support separation.”

Wow, he must have done something really, really, bad to merit de facto arresting him in front of his students and denying him due process, right?  Ah, Gentle Reader, you’re ahead of Curmie once again.  The fact is, we still don’t know exactly what Gelber allegedly did.  What we do know is that he was a vocal opponent of the school’s DEI policy, and that the right-wing press was all over this case when it first broke, with headlines like “Lawsuit describes appalled law professor who witnessed illegal hiring in name of ‘diversity.’”

Law students, as Curmie has noted on several previous occasions are apparently remarkably fragile creatures, and law schools are, ironically, even worse than other kinds of higher ed institutions at upholding the constitutional rights of their faculty.  (See Curmie’s commentaries on four such stories here, here, here, and here.)

OK, a couple of things upfront.  First, Curmie knows nothing about what, specifically, Gelber is alleged to have done.  Perhaps he really did do something egregious.  Curmie raises a skeptical eyebrow, but grants the possibility.  But even if the university is “right” on the facts of the case, there’s no excuse for the denial of due process or the unwillingness even to spell out the specifics of the charges. 

Curmie went through a similar situation with less dire potential consequences a couple of decades ago.  The college claimed he’d done something wrong, but wouldn’t say exactly what.  So the opportunity to defend against those charges was significantly curtailed.  Claiming you didn’t do anything problematic is evidence that you think it’s okay to do Big Horrible Thing; wondering if you’re being accused of X is granting that X is a Big Horrible Thing (and that you probably did it).  Curmie believes Joseph Heller created a term for this situation.

“Collegiality,” of course, is a squishy term in the best of times.  Curmie was once accused of uncollegial behavior because he argued against requiring students to participate in a colleague’s pet project (not that the project shouldn’t be available, only that it shouldn’t be required).  And the only way mere uncollegiality ought to prompt a response like what ONU did to Gelber would be if it rose to the level of illegality (a “true threat”), which should be handled by law enforcement, not the university.

It is well within the realm of possibility that Gelber said something that made one or more students “uncomfortable.”  Good!  Students, especially law students, ought to be confronted with ideas that challenge their pre-conceptions and prejudices.  The only way Gelber’s stating his personal beliefs is actually a problem is if he punishes students who disagree with him (or rewards those who agree).  If there’s evidence of that, ONU hasn’t made it public.  Of course, it appears they still haven’t told Gelber or his lawyer… or perhaps they did, privately, after the case had gone to trial.

The university claims Gelber’s opinions on DEI were not the real problem, that Gelber was “intolerant of opposing opinions, disruptive, uncooperative and demeaning of faculty and staff members.”  These protests to the contrary notwithstanding, it appears that Gelber’s outspoken criticism of ONU’s DEI policies, which, as we know, came down from the mountaintop with Moses, was at the center of complaints.  (Again, even if those accusations of intolerance, etc., are true, marching the guy out of his classroom and denying due process is certainly not ethical and probably not legal.)

DEI policies, run correctly, search out qualified people from certain demographics.  They get some small preference, all other things being equal.  (Veterans get even more of an advantage at state schools in Texas.)  Straight white guys still get the job if they’re clearly the best person for the job.  Of course, inevitably, that “all other things being equal” part sometimes fades away, and a demonstrably less qualified candidate is selected.  That, say proponents, is precisely what happened for decades, just in the other direction.  This is where we avoid that issue and remind you, Gentle Reader, that this is more about Gelber’s First Amendment rights and ONU’s procedures, not the legitimacy of their concerns.

Show that Gelber discriminates against the kind of people who might benefit from a DEI initiative, and there’s a case.  Even then, there’s no apparent reason to attempt to embarrass him in front of his students or to not even tell him what he’s supposedly done to precipitate this situation.  FIRE (the Federation for Individual Rights and Expression), as well as Gerber’s attorney (obviously) tried repeatedly to the ONU to specify what he had done to merit this response.  The university blithely ignored those requests.

Attempting to fire Gelber for expressing his political views (which university officials knew about when they hired him and when they granted him tenure) without presenting literally any actual evidence and without allowing him due process, perpetrates a greater injustice than what they’re accusing him of. 

Anyway, Gelber sued.  It may or may not have been a good idea to hire America First Legal as his representatives.  As you probably guessed from their name, Gentle Reader, they’re primarily interested in right-wing causes.  That offers the advantage that they’d be particularly zealous about Gelber’s cause.  The downside is the temptation to make the case about what he said or did instead of the more compelling argument about the procedures the university followed.

The university tried to obtain a summary judgment to quash the suit.  They were partially successful, knocking out a couple of the counts of Gelber’s suit.  Other parts of the suit were allowed to go forward, however, with the judge declaring that ONU’s “lack of regard for particularity is either naive or a callous disregard for due process.”  But that ruling happened last September.  Why write about it now?

We turn to the headline on FIRE’s follow-up story, published last week: “Ohio Northern sues professor for having the audacity to defend his rights in court.”  Ouch!  Anyway, here’s the key paragraph:

But for defending his rights in state court, ONU sued Gerber in federal court on Jan. 20, claiming Gerber’s “perverted” lawsuit is apparently an “attempt to accomplish . . . personal vendettas” and “unleashing political retribution” against ONU — notwithstanding the state court holding Gerber’s claims warranted proceeding to a jury. ONU’s suit claims Gerber’s “true goal is to manufacture outrage, to influence political retribution, and to extract vengeance against” ONU. According to the lawsuit, Gerber’s attempt to hold the university to its own policies is an unlawful “abuse of process.” 

Oh, bloody hell.  FIRE’s Zach Greenberg calls ONU’s suit a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation), an all too common practice by litigants who don’t have much of a case, but who think they can outlast their opponents because their pockets are deeper.  Curmie is tempted to agree.

About the only thing no one can dispute here is that Scott Gerber is a controversial teacher.  It’s admittedly a small sample size, but the fact that of 13 respondents on the Rate My Professors site, 11 rated him either “awesome” (the highest ranking) or “awful” (the lowest ranking) sort of says it all.  Curmie has literally never seen anything like that inverse bell curve.  It certainly does make one suspect that Gerber’s politics play a role in students’ responses to his courses.

So… where are we?  The chances that Gerber did something that should get him fired: possible.  Chances that Gerber is an asshole: quite likely.  Chances that ONU violated their own policies, denied due process, and damned well ought to be humiliated and forced to cough up major moolah: bordering on ontological certitude.

Checking in with Anatoly Lunacharsky

Anatoly Lunacharsky
(1875-1933)

Curmie often told his theatre history students that Anatoly Lunacharsky had the coolest job title in history: the Kommisssar of Education and Enlightment.  Alas, it accompanied a contender for the worst job in history: the liaison between the leaders of the Communist Party (especially Josef Stalin) and the Russian arts community.

At the beginning of his service, there was actually a period of considerable freedom of expression, and whereas there weren’t a lot of great plays written in Russia after the death of Anton Chekhov, there were certainly some good ones, and thanks to the likes of directors like Konstantin Stanislavky, Vsevelod Meyerhold, Alexandr Tairov, Fyodor Kommissarzhevky, Mikhail Chekhov, and Yevgeny Vakhtangov the Russian theatre was universally regarded as the best in the world.

But then the restrictions came.  Beginning about 1918, Socialist Realism, the idea that aesthetic concerns should be secondary to political ones, gradually became the de facto policy.  (One of Curmie’s mentors in Russian theatre, a woman who was born in what was then called Leningrad, called these “boy meets tractor plays.”)  Chekhov and Kommissarzhevky left the country; Stanislavsky, whose worldwide acclaim made him a little more impervious to governmental threats, did what he could to protect his friends and fellow artists, but his efforts, though significant, were rather like Cú Chulainn fighting the waves. 

Socialist Realism wasn’t the official policy until 1934 (a year after Lunacharsky’s death), but it wasn’t a good idea to be even apolitical after the ascension of Stalin in 1924.  Tairov found that out the hard way, getting into and out of trouble repeatedly, not for being counter-revolutionary, but for not being revolutionary enough.  

Even having been a champion of the cause wasn’t enough to save you.  Just as Leon Trotsky was exiled by Stalin, organizations like Proletkult and the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, once advocates for precisely the kind of censorship Stalin wanted, were also suppressed.  Meyerhold, once the most outspoken Communist of the leading Russian theatre artists, was arrested in 1939 and executed a few months later.

Let me repeat: it wasn’t enough not to do something the powers-that-be didn’t like.  If you didn’t want to end up in Siberia (or worse), you had to be an active supporter of whatever Papa Joe happened to be thinking at a given moment in time.

So why is Curmie writing about all this?  Well, because he thought you might like a brief theatre history lesson, of course.  After all, he has said that he’s not going to write about the Manchurian Cantaloupe and the Muskrats.  If you start thinking about the Russian connection, the purges of career civil servants, that whole business at the Treasury Department, the perfect storm of narcissism and incompetence at the upper levels of government and the sloth and cowardice of the people who could put a stop do this nonsense… well, that’s entirely on you, Gentle Reader.  😉

Is This Fragility, Stupidity, or Just Narcissism?

Regular readers of this blog will know that Curmie is a big fan of finding links, confluences, and coincidences that bring together ideas that wouldn’t normally be associated with each other.  And here we go…

Last week, Curmie was called for jury duty.  He arrived at the courthouse a few minutes before he was scheduled to report, finally found an unlocked door, and joined the 75 or so other folks crowded into the hallway outside the courtroom of District Judge Jefferson Davis (this is Texas, remember, Gentle Reader?).  A few minutes after things were supposed to get underway, the courtroom door opened and we began to file in.

By pure chance, Curmie happened to be rather close to the open door instead of the one on the other side of the courtroom, so he was probably in the first dozen or fifteen propective jurors to enter.  But when he presented his card, the woman scanned down the list and couldn’t find his name.  Had he submitted the online questionnaire?  Yes, nearly three weeks previously. 

So either there was a technical glitch or one side or the other glanced at Curmie’s answers and ran screaming into the night even before the voir dire.  (Curmie rode down the elevator with another man who’d had the same experience, so it wasn’t just him.)  Anyway, Curmie proceeded to return home and take a nap.

The incident did recall, however, the one time Curmie actually served on a jury.  Twentysomething years ago, Curmie was a juror in a criminal case in which the defendant was charged with one count of simple battery and two counts of battery of a police officer.  It was pretty clear that the guy really did beat up his girlfriend, and that he took a swing at the cop who intervened.

That’s where things get a little murkier.  The policemen claimed he’d swung at one, grazed him, and ultimately hit the other, so he was guilty of both counts of battery.  Curmie believed that the guy had tried to hit the older cop, missed altogether, and accidentally hit the younger one.  He was able to convince the other jurors of his point of view.

The younger cop, the one who wasn’t a self-important asshole, was very hesitant on the stand and looked very much like he was more interested in appeasing his partner than in telling the truth.  Curmie remembers saying that he’d rather have the older cop lose his badge than convict the defendant, but that wasn’t an option.  Anyway, we convicted the defendant on two counts and acquitted him on the other. 

The day after Curmie’s jury non-adventure, he read this story from FIRE (the Federation for Individual Rights and Expression).  Curmie taught for a long time—well over 200 sections of college courses—and often used analogies and imagined scenaria to amplify or clarify a point in a lecture.  To see a law professor punished for doing so certainly aroused Curmie’s interest. 

But there was also the element of “transferred intent,” i.e., a situation in which someone tries to hurt Person X but hurts Person Y instead… precisely the scenario Curmie had been thinking about when remembering that case from a couple of decades ago.  So that raised the story from one to post about on the Facebook page to one to blog about.

The basics of the story are as follows: Kenneth Lawson is a law professor at the University of Hawai’i.  In a lecture about transferred intent, he used a hypothetical example: what if one of the school deans tried to shoot a different dean but shot Lawson himself instead?  This is precisely the kind of thing that happens in damned near every classroom in the country.  The only minor difference is that Lawson showed images of the hypothetical perp and the equally hypothetical intended and actual victims.  (You can see that image on FIRE page linked above.)

Ah, but one (apparently only one) anonymous (of course) student complained, describing the hypothetical as “extremely disturbing.”  Seriously!  This is a law student, mind you: in their twenties, at least, presumably of above average intelligence, and preparing for a career dealing with some stuff that actually is disturbing.

As FIRE’s Graham Piro wrote to the university, “To receive a proper education in the law, students will inevitably encounter difficult topics like sexual assault, homicide, physical assault, domestic violence, and may be faced in school and in their careers with descriptions of personal injuries far more graphic than those in Lawson’s hypothetical.”

The two cases both suggest pretty clearly that you don’t need to have the maturity of a spoiled toddler to get into law school, and that law school deans are apparently a hypersensitive, fragile, and humorless lot.  Naturally, the administration butted in, clumsily, stupidly, and in violation of any norm of academic freedom. (Details in a moment.)

Curmie was reminded of a case he wrote about almost 14 years ago.  The scenario was similar, although in that hypothetical, it was the professor who “shot” the dean.  Here’s a little of what Curmie said at the time:

I confess I have difficulty mustering a considerable amount of sympathy for the fragile little flowers who can’t endure a bit of a challenge to their world-view….

I don’t recall ever using my dean in such a hypothetical situation, but I very well might have. I know that in discussing Aristotle I’ve hypothesized that George W. Bush got hit by a bus (tragedy requires the protagonist be important). But, curiously enough, I never got visited by the Secret Service for that flight of fancy, because it was clear that I was making a very different point than threatening the President.

So what happened in Lawson’s case?  Well, the administrators admitted that Lawson had not violated any policy, but nonetheless demanded that he remove the thought experiment from a posted video of the class — or they would change it for him.  Curmie would be sore tempted to tell some busybody administrator that they could perform and exercise best suited to extremely limber hermaphrodites.  Or perhaps to break out a phrase that has found its way onto a good many t-shirts that get advertised on Curmie’s social media feed: póg mo thóin.

Of course, Lawson refused to do their idiotic bidding, and they did indeed alter his video… but get this, Gentle Reader.  They apparently didn’t care about the violence or the intentionality issues: they just didn’t want to be used in the exercise.  Curmie can’t do better than Piro in describing what happened:

“Remember: these changes were being made because, supposedly, some found a hypothetical of campus figures being shot to be disturbing. So this [the image you see at the top of this post] is what the administration came up with.

You will note that there is still a campus figure on that slide, and it’s the person who was (hypothetically) shot: Professor Lawson. Only the deans have been removed. It seems that at UH, some hypothetical victims are more equal than others.”

Tell it like it is, Graham!  (And nice Orwellian reference, too!)

Oh, and in the letter mentioned above, there’s this: “If the inclusion of the deans is “disturbing and harmful” to students in Lawson’s class, why would the idea of their professor being shot not be equally or more “disturbing”? This glaring double standard leaves room for only one interpretation: that UH’s objection to the slide is not about students’ psychological wellbeing, but rather about enforcing an unwritten and unwarranted prohibition against lese-majeste intended to protect the image or ego of high-ranking administrators.

Damn, Graham!

Piro goes on to suggest that this is more than “just more campus craziness,” and wonders “If administrators can ‘memory hole’ bits and pieces of curricula they don’t like, even when it violates no rule, where does it stop?”  He’s got a point.  Unfortunately, this kind of administrative interference has become so commonplace that it hardly even qualifies as news.  (And if it’s not some moronic dean, it’s an idiot state legislator.  Curmie offers the usual apologies for redundancy.)

Anyway, we’re left with three conclusions, which Curmie lists here in increasing order of confidence.

1.     1. Kenneth Lawson is good at his job.

2.     2. Law school deans need more bran in their diets.

3.     3. Curmie wants to be Graham Piro when he grows up.