John Protevi's Blog

Professor Strangelove, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Corporate University

University Board Chair Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what John Dewey once said about universities?

Department Chair Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no.

Jack D. Ripper: He said universities were too important to be left to the administrators. When he said that, 100 years ago, he might have been right. But today, universities are too important to be left to the faculty. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow faculty infiltration, faculty indoctrination, faculty subversion and the international faculty conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious capital accumulation and strategic synergistic disruptive innovation fluids....

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Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to allow faculty to give grades? Grades, Mandrake, students' grades.

Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.

Jack D. Ripper: You know when faculty grading first began?

Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.

Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war faculty conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious diploma purchasing system without the control of the individual student. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core faculty works.

Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen... tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?

Jack D. Ripper: [somewhat embarassed] Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of strike-breaking.

Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.

Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of grading control.

Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.

Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Faculty, uh... faculty sense my power and they seek grading control. I, uh... I do not avoid faculty, Mandrake.

Lionel Mandrake: No.

Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them grading control.

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Inspired by recent events.

Open Letter on the University of Oregon graduate union strike

I am really proud to co-sign this Open Letter by Mark Alfano on the University of Oregon Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation strike. (See here at Lawyers Guns and Money and here at Daily Nous for background. Also here for a GTFF cease-and-desist letter on the threat to international graduate students.) Others can co-sign by commenting below. 

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President Scott Coltrane [email protected]
Provost Frances Bronet [email protected]
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Doug Blandy [email protected]

Dear Interim President Coltrane, Interim Provost Bronet, and Vice Provost Blandy: 

I write to express my concern for the state of academic integrity at the University of Oregon. In recent days, I have been troubled to learn that the university administration has undertaken a series of actions related to the strike by the local graduate student union (GTFF 3544) that are potentially illegal and obviously immoral. These include intimidating undergraduate students regarding their federal financial aid, diluting academic standards by issuing final grades based on work that was done before the strike started (in some cases less than 50% of graded assignments), threatening the visa status of striking international graduate students, and making final examinations and end-of-term assignments optional in multiple departments (including, to my knowledge, philosophy, linguistics, and ethnic studies).

Such scorched-earth policies are myopic and nihilistic. And in light of Dr. Coltrane’s own published work on the importance of paid parental leave, the administration’s behavior towards its own graduate students who are striking because they want two weeks of parental leave per year is deeply and shockingly ironic.

I urge you to give the graduate students what they’re asking for, cease the morally repugnant behavior, and manifest a little integrity.

Mark Alfano
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
University of Oregon

John Protevi
Phyllis M Taylor Professor of French Studies
Professor of Philosophy
Louisiana State University

Affiliation provided for identification purposes only and does not imply speaking on behalf of our respective institutions.