Administrative Disharmony

The rampage last week in Virginia by an angry and confused young man with a gun has me thinking about a variety of difficult issues: gun control; societal attitudes toward mental illness; the media’s delight over tragedy. Perhaps most disturbing are reactions on college campuses across the country that stifle engaged debate rather than encourage it. In the aftermath of traumatic moments like what happened at Virginia Tech, the deep paradox of higher education in America becomes painfully evident. On the one hand the academy professes the ideals of academic freedom and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, while at the same time it operates in an administrative business model that caters to student clients whose needs and desires must be protected. This perspective of administrators whose ultimate goal is the financial success of the institution (in addition to furthering the ambitions of administrators’ personal careers) often regards open and democratic discussion of controversial issues threatening and dangerous. Consequently, the institutional bureaucracies that steer the course of American higher education have no qualms in closing down unpopular approaches to volatile topics, as the case of Nicholas Winset at Emmanuel College clearly shows (click here for the report on Winset’s case by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Education).

Certainly, Nicholas Winset is no poster boy of good teaching; the former financial accounting adjunct professor describes himself as “a ham” in the classroom (click here for his YouTube explanation of his firing). And I certainly do not agree with many of his ideas about violence and gun control. But, my disagreement is all the more reason to be vigilant about protecting what he has to say. When it comes to ideas and how we discuss controversial subjects, schools cannot be sanitized places. Dangerous ideas need to be acknowledged, aired, and argued. Learning for everyone happens in the dialogue.

But the administrative sensitivity to public relations finds such notions an anathema, at least in practice. A commentator (RWH) on Jaschik’s report quotes Paul Goodman, who said, “It is the genius of administration to enforce a false harmony in situations that should be rife with conflict.” That false harmony, I contend, is an impediment to learning, to the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. And as the shooting in Virginia demonstrates, as well as the ever-vigilant presence of campus police (euphemistically titled “campus safety” by administrators concerned with the public image of harmony), a deep disharmony lies below the harmonic appearances. As long as we terminate the contrary voices and dissuade difficult, conflictive, but honest discussions about threatening topics, that disharmony will erupt again and again in ever more tragic events.

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