politics at the public university

Music: Quicksilver Messenger Service: Castles in the Sand (1970)

In my previous post I complimented UT President Bill Powers for publically disagreeing with the Board of Regents, most recently in regard to their not honoring his request for a tuition hike. Although the details of the plan that Powers (and various committees) proposed are important, his expression of disappointment was symbolically encouraging because of its advocacy for the welfare of the university and, by extension, its staff and faculty. The rumor broke last night that this advocacy may have put Powers' job in jeopardy.

According to that ubiquitous "undisclosed source," the so-called "dean of political reporting" in Texas, Paul Burka, has suggested that the Regents have approached the Chancellor to fire Powers. There's very little in this story to go on and nothing has been substantiated, but the story is being discussed and reported as truth, of course. The reason is that the fantasy is quite plausible---the reason is that the fantasy is true.

This is to say, the idea that a governor would indirectly fire the president of a university for disagreeing in public has been made real, and repeatedly, and remains an viable "option" for political movers-and-shakers in higher education circles. First, just last month the LSU Board of Supervisors (the equivalent of our Board of Regents) fired system president John Lombardi for vocally disagreeing with the governor's vision for the university system (basically, to free the flagship campus from the entire system as an autonomous enterprise). Second, closer to home, UT President Homer Rainey was fired by the regents in the 1940s for opposing the Regents demands to fire suspected "communists" in the Department of Economics. Since that time, the University of Texas has had a fairly colorful history of uneasy tensions between the administration and the Regents (and by extension, the governor's office).

Politically, the character of power illustrated by firing a university system head or president is the familiar "rank and file" or "chain of command," which of course is inherently at odds with the vision of education as a domain of "academic freedom." As least some of the reason why the gesture troubles folks is that it represents a challenge to the assumed autonomy of the academic enterprise---an autonomy that has never really existed but which we nevertheless hold up as a guiding ideal.

For me, what is most troubling are the comments and observations from my colleagues who have been here at the university for decades. Owing to the fact that the Regents are appointed by the governor, the University of Texas has been a political football for most of its history. Even so, one trusted colleague observes the firing of Powers is the least of our worries. What should trouble us, she says, are the looming appointments to the board: two seats are up soon, and those seats are currently occupied by "moderates." Because Perry has been governor for such a long time, the board is already stacked with his less-than-moderate political compatriots. What if Perry appoints two more neo-conservative, anti-intellectuals? (Many would say the question is not "what?" but "how soon?"---technically, the governor can appoint new regents at the beginning of the new year before the customary term of service is up on the academic calendar). Whether or not the rumors about ousting Powers are true, a more devastating reality is possible: an ideologically "pure" regency, a complete lock on less cognitively complex, bottom-line modes of management.

My colleague says that in her many decades at the university, owing to the nationalization of the tuition issue as well as Perry's political stature, she has "never seen it so bad." I've only been in higher education for sixteen years, and certainly as a graduate student I was shielded from the political realities of the public university, but even so I have also never experienced an educational system more politicized than that I do today. It's not that I believe in a non-political educational system; all organizations concern resources, the use of force, and thus "power." But it is often astonishing to me---despite my cynicism---that the politics is so naked, that the "do as I say, or else" has so much force, beyond the tempering of reasoned argument and consideration and perspective-taking/switching. Owing to a decidedly concerted effort to make education---previously an idealized, "safe space" of actualization and self-empowerment---the latest frontier of the Culture War, one wonders if there's any space left for free thought in the national, political imaginary. Your bedroom is regulated, whom you are allowed to love is regulated, and now we're engaging the possibilities and punishments of thought control.

Or as my teacher and friend Ron Greene would say: "Speech is Money."

Double-plus-good?