Arousing the sleeping giant

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story this morning about a new activist organization on the Left Coast calling itself "USC Faculty Resistance."  Like the worldwide Women's March in January, this is yet another sign that women... and faculty... are rousing from past lethargy.  Donald Trump may be performing a patriotic service directly antithetical to his aims and interests.  He may be accomplishing what Barack Obama failed to do: create a sustained movement on the left to counter the far right's onslaught.

One might make a fair argument that university faculty, taken as a group, have been complacent for far too long.  The point might be made that too many tenured professors have been content to teach the lightest workload they can get away with, while enjoying full-time compensation for what essentially may be a part-time job.  Meanwhile, a perfect storm of disruptive technologies, declining high school demographics, and the gutting of American homeowners' equity blew the Fifth Wave onto higher education's placid shores.

Seemingly over night --- though it had been coming for a long tome --- tenured faculty find they have slipped from the majority to the minority of the professoriate; small and medium-sized colleges and universities find themselves in a tuition bind in which they can neither increase the cost of attendance nor further discount the current cost; and now --- yet another perfect storm --- the administration in Washington is challenging the fundamental purpose of the university: to seek and disseminate the truth.  As one commentator notes today, genuine intellectuals are being replaced by so-called "thought leaders."  Skeptics are being replaced by true believers... seekers of truth by one-trick-ponies touting single-minded dogmas.  While financial crises challenge the viability of many higher ed institutions, this latter trend challenges the very purpose of higher education as a whole.

Faculty can help administrators to wrestle with the financial crisis many of us face: with recruiting, with retention, even with fund raising via grants, alumni relations, etc.  But it's the faculty who must take the lead in regaining the ground lost to the Tweeters and Thought Leaders who strive to usurp the academy's role in the quest for truth and social justice.  

This morning's Chronicle story suggests that the faculty are beginning to get that.