In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lee Vinsel writes about “innovation-speak and business bullshit” in higher education:
An administrator friend sent me a quotation about a faculty member’s work he’d provided to his university’s PR person. It was full of platitudes and nonsense about innovation, discovery, and a much-improved future that the work would create “impactfully.” My friend said he came up with the words in under 10 seconds while in a Zoom meeting on another topic with soccer playing on a television in the background and several social-media and messaging apps open on his phone and laptop.Lee Vinsel teaches at Virginia Tech. He has a website about his work.
It is worth striving to bring university communications within the realm of truth-seeking, but doing so would require universities that are quite different than the ones we have today. You have to imagine universities where the felt need to produce words does not outpace the time to think. The root of our word “school” is the Greek word skholē, meaning leisure or free time. To create a school is to create space for thought.
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comments: 6
I taught at universities for almost 50 years, and I've always thought that university education works out most ideally when there are students who are curious and teachers who have the time to think. Administrative work and filling out forms and committee work are important, but ultimately teachers need the time and space to consider.
Amen. In my academic life I saw the occasional faculty member who appeared to devote more time to committees and university politics than to teaching and scholarship. The life of the mind? Not always!
Having presented at the first Maintainers conference Vinsel co-directed, I am pleased to see his work get a shout out here. His is an important rebuke of a lot of the B.S. shoveled in our direction on a daily basis.
I find it easy to imagine the awkward silences that would follow if he were saying these things in, say, a committee or department meeting. So many people are reluctant to challenge norms of thought.
Matt, is your paper available for reading?
No, got distracted by other projects, but it's something I've been meaning to resist and make public. I'll let you know!
👍.
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