Our University – The Fourth and Tenure

 

Independence of thought for a collected group of people and independence of thought for an individual are so tightly wound together that you cannot have one without the other.  First, the case of our nation.  The coercion exercised upon the early colonists of our nation was suffocating… they could bear no more.  Taxes, freedom to worship, freedom from social stratification, and freedom for opportunity to grow and change were all passions of early European citizens of the new world. 

The colonists wanted to be able to pursue their own lives in their own way without the intervention of any government, near or far.  While it was freedom from English law and rebellion against coercion that lit the fuse, freedom from all coercion carried the spark to the charge.

I re-read Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ a few times recently.  I consider myself reasonably thoughtful and able to understand complex ideas.  I was taken by the simplicity of the ideas Paine so graphically portrayed in this pamphlet, but perplexed by the depth and pervasiveness of them from another perspective. 

As I reflected on my small view of this great expression, person for person the most widely read document ever produced and circulated on the continent of North America, a number of emotions ran through my mind. 

I was, and I am still moved by a kind of patriotism that I know many of us feel for our nation.  A freedom to pursue personal faith, a pride in individuality, a freedom of expression of thought or a way of life that is particular to any one of us, unencumbered by intervention of any kind from any person, or any place.

What does this have to do with our university?

Not to over-make the case, I would argue that tenure provides to a faculty member the provision that our forefathers fought for, so that any man or woman might have the opportunity to think freely. 

The coercion that happens at many universities today is not the same as the one faced at the birth of our nation.  What was English was known to be English, and it was clear to many colonists that England was a coercive force. 

Coercive forces today lack that clarity in universities, and they have for a very long time.  Contemporary coercion comes in disguise, not in a Red Coat.

Coercion caused Galileo’s excommunication for the idea of a helio-centric universe.  It undermined the authority of the Catholic Church in the eyes of leadership at that time.

It was coercion that made the Protestantism of mid-twentieth century Yale University so challenging for a catholic boy named William F. Buckley. He should have thanked God he wasn’t Jewish.

It is coercion that makes traditional expressions of faith unacceptable in contemporary universities.  This is the coercion of trying to live in an offense-less society… a society where your ideas might offend another.  This impossibility might be the most noxious form of coercion in any setting.

It chokes free thought.

Our nation might be giving up certain freedoms through the force of courts, and our political leadership may be allowing and encouraging that strangulation for the friendship of the ballot box.  Academic freedom should be maintained at all costs. 

Coercion against intellectual freedom from any source, no matter how well intended, will undermine the nature of our university as surely as British rule undermined the freedom of this colony to pursue its destiny.

Our nation’s freedoms should ensure the academic freedoms of the university as surely as those same freedoms ensure the freedom of family, faith, and friendship.

The university should abound with patriotism for the power of Independence Day.

Our University – The Fix is In

There is a cloister of monks that makes wooden bowls from green, uncured lumber.  The bowls are very beautiful but they immediately begin to crack as the wood dries out and shrinks as wood is prone to do.  This is no surprise to the monks.  When the cracks occur, the monks very carefully begin a process of repair.  The repairs are made with a type of white plaster and, as the plaster sets, the bowls are sanded and rubbed smooth again.  And again.  And again.  And again.  The white plaster against the blood black wood makes traces and lines that look like river systems, arteries and veins.  The bowls are things of absolute beauty.  They do not look broken or like they have ever been fixed.

This process is a radical combination of planned obsolesce and deferred maintenance.

Our culture disdains maintenance.  People want things new, clean, and neat.  However, it is common that those things that are maintained take on the character possessed in the heart of the workers.  You need not be an aficionado to appreciate the beauty in it.

Universities across the nation suffer from scant funding and the strong heart to perform deferred maintenance.  Not much glory in repair.

A new building can easily and appropriately support a plaque that proudly proclaims it to be The John Smith Memorial Hall.

Can you imagine The John Smith Memorial Roof Patch?

The photo opportunities that are available when a new building is completed draw elected officials like a golfer in back swing during a lighting storm attracts  electricity.  Pictures of elected officials at ground breakings abound.  A shot of the painters after they have refinished the wood windows that have thirsted for that coat for twenty years cannot be found.

For our students, the purpose of the whole escapade, the opportunity to watch stewardship in action is a form of education – accentuated loudly by a society that largely disparages it, sometimes tolerates it, but never sees it like those monks.  It is an art form that a university and her students should aspire to.

Many of the people on university campuses who want to hold onto the “old buildings” are seen as backward-looking, rather than future-focused. While that is possible, I frequently find those who want to look back positively do so as a way to frame a future. 

I work in one of those old buildings that have, embedded in it, a history.  Here it is Home Economics, from the head, heart and hand of Professor Quigley.  Home Economics is not cool anymore.  It is not “in”.  At one time, by the look of what this building was, it was about the coolest thing in the world.  The building was beautiful, now it continuously cries for the hand of the monk, like so many buildings on so many campuses.

When I look at this place I see a lost art but I know that at the time of the original conception it was high art.  Passion at work.  Like great scholarship and emotionally charged teaching.

How to balance the complexities of building a modern research university is not a task for the faint at heart.  We need to see the campus as a wooden bowl, and when it cracks, we need to fix it.  Not because it is broken, but because a heartfelt fix begets beauty.  Ralph Waldo Emerson said “I see my trees repair their boughs”

At our university, the fix needs to be in.

Our University – Like a Church

I know I am trouble already with that title, but hear me out. 

For all the discourse about universities being like businesses, they are not run in a business-like fashion. Great businesses run on the nexus of merit, productivity and bottom line.  The best universities pay real attention to these ideas, but most only give them lip service, while the poor ones neglect even that.

Some think the university is a state agency: They miss the boat!  Some also think that its operation should be subject to the rule of patronage: They are all wet!

Universities are universities, unlike any other organizations; but if people insist on analogizing them to some other enterprises, we would be best served by thinking of them as churches.

Churches, temples, mosques, and almost all places of worship exist for a single purpose.  They exist to help people voluntarily change how they think about themselves in relation to the larger world around them.  From a Christian perspective in the plain language and tradition of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Saint Paul, and, by definition any man or woman who claims to be Christian, there is but a single purpose for any church:  for a man or woman to become more Christ-like. 

This is not something you can buy, not a ballot you can cast, not something you can trade, and most troubling in contemporary society, not something you can earn.  Rather it is a “skin in” transformation through the exercise of unadulterated free will.

Absolutely nothing more, and nothing less.

A student and his parents lay a check on the table, twice a year for four years, sometimes more checks for more years.  As these checks move across the table, from the family and student’s side to the university’s side, that exchange of value provides only one thing – the potential to change.

Opportunity.

Our university, and others worth their salt, provides the opportunity for students to change themselves from the inside out. 

Absolutely nothing more and nothing less.

We can’t change the students through any form of discipline, coercion, begging, pleading, threats, carrots, or influence.  We can only provide an opportunity for the students to inflict the burden of growth and change upon themselves.

Just like a church.

To be clear, trade or technical schools may be different, although only in degree.  A trade can be taught with a mild commitment of will, driven by a desire to produce capital to care for a family and provide sustenance.  The craft guilds provide guidance.

In the early first millennium, the guilds in India provided fraternity among workers and the sharing of ideas and insights.  Sounds a bit like a university.  By the beginning of the second millennium, the idea had gained traction in Europe, spreading from Italy into France and Germany and finally Spain.

Guilds bred two modern phenomenons: trade unions and corporations.  Precocious twins from the same parent.  After the 1800’s, they faltered and were seen simultaneously as a barrier to free trade according to Adam Smith, and a stigmatized social stratification according to Karl Marx. 

Talk about a rock and a hard place.

The university cannot provide a guarantee for employment upon completion of a course of study.

The university must be a strong advocate for the exercise of free will.  In the case of a public research university it must be the strongest civil proponent for the exercise of unfettered free will, free moral agency, and the pursuit of truth.  Otherwise it is not a university at all.

Our university should be more like a church than it is like General Motors, or the statehouse.

Our University – Service Motive

 

Anyone paying attention to higher education knows the familiar mantra:  teaching, research and service.  This three legged stool of mission is resident in nearly every public and private university in the United States and it is even leaking into institutions overseas in the rush to imitate what makes American higher education the best in the world.

On many occasions, I have had the opportunity to get involved with communities near the universities where I worked.  Community planning, energy conservation, workshops on neighborhood development, and other manifestations of “service” or outreach from the university to the community are common in nearly every discipline on a research university campus. 

Health and legal counseling, dental work, business advice, lawn and garden care, financial and investment counsel, and a multitude of other forms of service are provided to members of the community through universities all the time.  Our university has a great tradition of such action.  Recently, I had the privilege as is frequently the case to talk with a group of community leaders in one of our towns in southern Illinois about a planning project that may give the community ideas for a brighter future and students a special learning experience.

This is exciting.

Judging motives is like trying to hold a fish.  Every time you think you have a handle, it goes in another direction.

Nothing is more important in the value of service to a university and the communities it serves than the motive for service.  And there are many.

Sometimes service is rendered because a person needs service for annual review or promotion.  This is a cynical but reasonable perspective.

Occasionally, a departmental or college leader may encourage faculty and staff to render service as a means of promoting their unit within the campus environment.  A kind of bragging right that might help with the budgeting process on the campus.

University leadership service many be rendered to gain political favor.  A well served community, or interest group within the community might have impact on a local legislator, and she might have impact on funding for the university. 

At different levels within the structure of the organization different motives might exist for the provision of service.  No matter the internal motives if the service provided is not excellent, what starts as a positive step for the university ends in a ditch.  The fact that the service provided is “free” will not matter if it is not well executed. 

All service provided must serve the student.

If getting promoted outweighs excellence in educational opportunity for the student both service and learning will be low in value, even if the promotion goes through.    

If departmental or college prestige is held above the experience of the student, the unit and individual will suffer, even if the budget grows.

If political sway for the university is valued over the students’ acquisition of knowledge and insight the university loses, even if it gains political support for a season.

Most dramatic and important for me, if the motive for service is not excellence in educational opportunity, the service rendered to person or community will be second rate, and nothing is more hurtful to a university than the perception of second rate effort and, therefore, result.

“However brilliant an action, it should not be esteemed great unless the result of a great motive.”  Francois de la Rochefoucauld.    

Our university, in every action it takes, must pursue only one high motive: the enlightenment of the student, even as we serve the community.  All else will follow.