Dear Donald, Wanna Open Trump University Again for the Greater Good?

Dear Donald Trump,

You opened a university and closed it with a court settlement. Without caring about fault, how'd you like to right that wrong and contribute much more to higher education besides?

Included in the case was a penalty of up to $1 million for operating an unlicensed university in the state of New York. I do care about this misdemeanor offence which government assesses in its control of higher education. I think this crime should concern everyone. I think it directly concerns you, Donald.

When you were opening Trump University I was working as an adjunct at two universities in my hometown and completing a PhD on the Hard Problem. Years before, in the early 90s, I was co-creating and promoting an alternative model for the service and stewardship of higher education. Along with Dr Peter March and Dr Robert Ansel, this profession-based model is our response to the obvious truth that everyone's higher education inheritance is fucked, like some twisted conditions in a crackpot will from a prickly distant relative, we inherited universities and colleges.

I offer wholesale change, in a new social contact, in the now.

Dear Donald, Wanna Open Trump University Again?

Dear Donald Trump,

Straight to the point, you look to adjustment higher education. I look to turn it inside out so there is no increased demand for public funding, no more exploitation and digitization of academics, nor leaning on labour unions, alumni donors, venture capitalists, accreditation boards, and departments of (higher) education. I offer a shift in paradigm from our inheritance.

Academic Freedom On A Model Diet - Parts 2-5

This is the second post of a series that uses interview responses from an expert on the academy to show how academics are failing us even in the most basic of functions. Hank Reichman is the academic I choose for demonstration purposes and he is interviewed by James Vernon.(LINK) 

This failure of academics is not easily detected. It is hidden in language and life that has evolved over centuries of reference to the inherited model of university and college service and stewardship for higher education. This institutional model is an only child of a dysfunctional heritage so deeply rooted in our concepts and cultures that the institutions have become synonymous with the education, research, and community service of higher education. The brand has become the product, like Kleenex or Tampons.

[NOTE: The plan was to write a five-part series, fading out on the fifth interview response because the job had been done (probably to the point of ad nauseum) or I couldn't bare the task any longer (again, from nausea). Instead, I dumped the lot here. So, there are four posts presented here as they were meant for separate publication, starting with this post two. Post one is found here.]

I aim to expose this mental magic for what it is: unnecessary and destructive. Though there are many unnecessary sources of destruction in universities and colleges, academic freedom is the focus of this series, because it is the focus of the interview. Hank has written books on the subject. I don’t have the resources or resolve to do for those texts what I do in this series for the text of this interview, but I'd bet on the results being the same: While they grow up to pick up a ball that has been rolling for centuries in a game whose rules they did not design and do not doubt, Hank and the Hornets assume the inheritance. This is a serious omission for academics. It is a breach of social contract.

I teach critical thinking. One of the toughest areas of thinking to instruct is the assumption. Inference is a tricky bugger too, acting like a ghostly glue between premise and conclusion. But the assumption is a hidden gem in reasoning, because finding them makes or breaks your position. Let’s continue to mine for gems and better positions.

What Can PSA Do That AAUP on FIRE Can't?

These days of raging FIRE are too poetic not to use in aid of their own ends to defend and sustain the free speech and thought of all Americans. From 1999 to 2022, the organization did this sort of thing for a very small subset of Americans in very specific, temporary, unbalanced, ROI relationships at very specific, temporary, unbalanced, locations. They did this sort of thing for those Americas who try to earn and learn in higher education. Let's hear about it from an overseas ally, Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF),

Founded in 1999, [Foundation for Individual Rights in Education] FIRE’s mission was to defend and sustain the individual rights of all students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights included freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of liberty. FIRE continues to educate students, faculty, alumni, trustees, and the public about the threats to these rights on our campuses and provides the means to preserve them.

Academic Freedom On A Model Diet - Part 1

Hank Reichman is a prominent figure among university professors, though perhaps not among academics. At least that’s what the title of his organization suggests, the American Association of University Professors. These people are, steadfast. That’s the term to use.

Hank is on the right and his interviewer is James Vernon.

This series of posts speaks with contempt because I have tried to get this champion of academic freedom, wrapped in a AAUP cloak, to fulfill academic duties for some time now. In fact, for over thirty years I have asked all academics to execute just one basic necessary function of the job: stop assuming.

Hank has remained steadfast in his silence and probable ignorance. But he has no power over me. Does he have power over you? Do his AAUP union masters have power over you? Or is it just your institutional employer and the bargaining unit is a liberator?

If the latter, then read on and I’ll again try to rob you of that fatal fantasy by critiquing a recent interview Hank gives on academic freedom. Using a common formula on the PSA blog, there is direct quote from the interview followed by analysis, evaluation and prescription. Another related example can be found here where I treat a promotion video from the California Faculty Association.

So, let’s dance to the disaster de jour in higher education: academic freedom.

But before the music begins, I feel an oft-repeated bridge coming on: The ills of higher education are not to be fixed by upmarket band-aids like academic freedom, shared governance, and tenure that are applied to an inheritance of university and college professors, or more precisely, them and their institutional employers that together form an unchallenged heritage of universitas. The Professional Society of Academics (PSA) adopts and adapts a recognized alternative universitas in the professions and applies it to higher education as a formal, viable, desirable challenge to the continued assumption of our inheritance.

Cue music to an old familiar faculty chorus…