FRANK TALK ABOUT WHAT WE DO WITH OUR LIVES

A Glimpse Behind the Ivy Curtain—Footnote 1

[1] This last point deserves a long discussion of its own. For example, the short-lived ousting of President Teresa Sullivan at the University of Virginia has highlighted tensions between faculty and the politicians and trustees who want more influence over university governance. See “President Teresa Sullivan Gets Her Hollywood Ending,” Forbes. The Sullivan controversy also reflects a larger concern that university administration is increasingly in the hands of professional administrators who have never held faculty positions, which weakens the tradition of faculty self-governance. See Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty.

  1. […] Practically, this means that the work habits of academics are hard to reconcile with the patterns of most normal professions. Academics are supposed to do two things—produce knowledge and share that knowledge with the larger community. They are also, according to tradition, supposed to govern and police themselves. Although that does not mean what it used to, when universities had special laws and even their own jails (some of which are preserved as tourist sites in European university towns such as Heidelberg in Germany) it still means that universities pride themselves on being governed by their own—deans, directors, chairs, and preside… […]

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